AS TINY tots in the dusty fields of Chikwaka communal lands in Goromonzi, for want of recreation, we used to pre-occupy ourselves with various improvised games and hand-me-down rhymes whose origins or real meaning were lost to our innocent heads, but which served to justify the designs of the settler regimes that had imported them to our part of the world.
One such rhyme went, ‘‘Christopher Columbus was a great man, he went to America in a sauce pan, he went to Umtali, Umtali and over…’’ or something to that effect, which was a celebration and perpetuation of the myth of the heroism and greatness of the Spanish explorer who was in fact a villain to any sane man of colour.
Granted, Columbus is one of only two men honoured by having a federal holiday named after him in the United States today, a distinction he shares with Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
But the irony of the honour lies in the contrasting causes of these two men. Dr King fought racial prejudice and slavery; while Columbus not only opened the Atlantic Slave Trade but also launched a wave of genocide against the indigenous population of the Americas.
What is more? Columbus never even set foot in what is present day USA as his four voyages took him from Spain to the Caribbean, and back to Spain though through it all he was under the illusion that he was in Asia as he mistook Cuba for Asia, South America for a mere island, and the coast of Central America as part of mouth of the Ganges, one of Asia’s biggest rivers.
And having failed to achieve his intended objective of finding a way west from Europe to set-up a trade route with the east, Columbus sought to justify his voyages by promising to return to Spain with vast quantities of gold, when he failed to deliver on that promise, he settled on ship-loads of slaves starting the Great Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade that was to last four centuries.
And this is the man we lauded as a great man from deep inside our distended bellies as we raised dust with cracked feet in Chikwaka communal lands.
Well, I was reminded of this age of innocence after seeing pictures of celebrations held to mark the MDC-T’s 11th anniversary at Gokwe Centre, where the self-styled ‘‘party of excellence’’ was celebrating 11 years of fighting for ‘‘real change’’ in Zimbabwe when in fact what they have meant to the ordinary person has been change for the worse on account of plummeting livelihoods due to the ruinous economic sanctions they courted and Nichodemously celebrate today.
What MDC-T leaders have been fighting for is not change but the preservation of the pre-2000 status quo that had black people owning the flag, and the whites owning all the wealth represented by the green and yellow bands on that flag. That can’t be worth celebrating.
In fact, it is said that it was no coincidence that the MDC was launched on September 11 1999, just 24 hours before the 109th anniversary of the day the Pioneer Column set foot in Mashonaland and hoisted the Union Jack at Fort Salisbury proclaiming Mashonaland and its environs as a colony of the British Queen.
Sources say the launch was supposed to be on the 12th but it happened to fall on a Sunday which is why the organisers settled on the 11th, a Saturday to give their supporters time to return to their various bases in Zimbabwe before the start of a new week.
This is plausible given that the MDC launch heralded the revival of the Rhodesia shall never die spirit in white farmers manifest in the Nicole brothers proclaiming, as they wrote out cheques to a beaming Tsvangirai at Little England in Banket, that they were investing in the MDC.
That investment was the reason Fidelis Mhashu had no qualms telling the whole world, on BBC HARDtalk, that the MDC would return land to white former farmers if it assumed power.
Therefore, to me, MDC-T supporters who gathered in Gokwe were no different from the innocent children who lauded Columbus in blissful ignorance of the heinous crimes he committed against them and their own.
The MDC was contrived in London and launched to champion the interests of white former commercial farmers. And in 10 years, MDC leaders have not given the nation reason to doubt otherwise.
As Professor Jonathan Moyo put; the MDC-T had nothing to celebrate in Gokwe as its sustenance over the past 11 years had nothing to do with mass appeal but everything to do with the designs of Western think-tanks and the donors who held the purse strings.
Contrary to one Obert Gutu’s fulmination that the MDC-T has won the battle for the hearts and minds of Zimbabweans; what the MDC managed to win in previous polls was the battle of the stomach manifest in transient protest votes that can never be counted on in successive elections.
Such votes can not be compared to the Zanu-PF vote, rooted in ideologyy, that even hunger could not snuff out. A vote that so baffled establishment writer, Peta Thorncroft, who in an interview with one Violet Gonda of the pirate radio station SW Radio Africa expressed surprise at the support Zanu-PF continues to enjoy countrywide:
‘‘I wonder if we ever knew what it (the MDC) was. We just accepted it, didn’t we?... I think I just accepted that the MDC had been cheated at the elections and that this was a party that had the majority support in the country and it was only long afterwards that I discovered that in fact of course Zanu-PF had enormous support in certain rural parts of the country.
‘‘I first saw that demonstrated to me in the March elections of 2005, I was actually astonished by that and it is in my copy. I then saw it again demonstrated in the Budiriro by-election when 4 000 people continued to vote for Zanu-PF and it was quite a peaceful by election.
"They were just as short of fuel, water and electricity as all the other people in Budiriro. And I think that I realised that I hadn’t taken into consideration that Zanu-PF was an old established party, which despite its appalling lack of democracy and its top-down style of doing business — because of the liberation struggle and the propaganda it’s been able to feed everyone — it does genuinely have support.’’
That enduring support is why Tsvangirai failed to win outright, even in an environment of unprecedented hardships, in the virtual absence of an economy.
The other lie that was repeated ad nauseum at the anniversary celebrations, and which was picked up by Obert Gutu in his fawning piece in NewsDay was that Tsvangirai and the MDC had won the last elections, and that the MDC was now the biggest party in Zimbabwe in terms of popular support.
I would be remiss to let such wishful assertions go unchallenged.
For the record all the MDC-T had to show in the last election was a one-seat advantage over Zanu-PF in the House of Assembly, whereas Zanu-PF had a six seat advantage over the MDC-T in the Upper House of Parliament, the Senate.
While we know that the House of Assembly is considered the centre of legislative power, all who are familiar with parliamentary business can testify that there is nothing the House of Assembly can do without the approval of the Senate which is supposed to provide quality control on Bills from the Lower House. Though in the event of a dispute, the Lower House carries the day after a certain specified time period, MDC-T simply does not have the numbers to do that.
For those not in the know, MDC-T won 99 seats to Zanu-PF’s 98 with MDC — led by Arthur Mutambara — getting the other 10 seats. In the Senate, Zanu-PF garnered 30 of the 60 seats on offer with MDC-T getting 24 and MDC 6. Even when looking at the popular vote, Zanu-PF beat MDC-T in both houses amassing 45,94 percent of the vote to MDC-T’s 43,56 in the Senate; and 45,94 percent to 42,88 in the House of Assembly suffrage.
Put simply, more people voted for Zanu-PF than MDC-T in 2008.
And though Tsvangirai led President Mugabe in the first round of the presidential contest, he knew he couldn’t repeat that feat in the run-off once Simba Makoni, who played spoiler in the first round, had been removed from the equation.
It is important to note that Zanu-PF’s share of the popular vote excluded the two House of Assembly and Senate constituencies it won unopposed in Muzarabani and Rushinga constituencies.
It is simply inconceivable for Tsvangirai or his minions, to continue claiming to have won the presidential election let alone the general election when these figures speak for themselves.
Judging by the results of the two houses of Parliament, Zanu-PF, MDC-T and the MDC shared power which is why they do so in the inclusive Government.
My problem with the MDC-T leadership is their attempt to revise our history and launder their destructive engagement of the past decade as a quest for democracy and human rights when its clear as day that they were conniving with the erstwhile coloniser against the people.
The prudent thing for the party’s leadership is to change their ways in line with their mantra.
The people who gathered in Gokwe did nothing more than ignorantly celebrate a myth, the way we did in Chikwaka communal lands many, many years ago.
