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Reason Wafawarova On Thursday
For a good majority of our career politicians across the political divide the indisputable mental preoccupation is to retain the maximum possible power for the longest possible time, and this is not exactly the problem, until one looks at the ways and means used to satisfy this hankering. For many of our politicians the most preferred and most effective way is to ensure that one’s authority is never contested, and the real challenge is to come up with sugar coats impressive enough to disguise the ban.

It is important that there are mechanisms in place to obliterate all political dissidence, not only at state level, but also at party level. Good career politicians always surround themselves with bootlickers and yes people.

We have seen how the opposition in Zimbabwe has been splintering over the last decade, and chief among the causal factors are such things as imposed leaders, silencing of voices of dissent, and even emending of constitutional provisions to extend expired constitutional terms.

The ruling party has its own ways of barring potential contestants from upsetting the status quo, and of late we have been reading about what appears to be regulations prescribing the requirements for one to contest for a post in the party’s Central Committee — things like one having to prove active service in the structures of the party for a minimum 20 years. Clearly this requirement is meant to stifle competition at the upcoming Congress.

Most of our senior political figures are career politicians and if there is one career that has herculean challenges in sustaining, it is politics. What many African politicians do to sustain their careers is to ensure that everyone agrees with them, or they simply believe everyone agrees with them.

Once this sense of consent has been portrayed as being a matter of consensus, the task of obliterating dissent becomes a lot of easier.
Those that have to be slandered into silence will be silenced in the name of the people, and those that have to be eliminated from the political scene will be eliminated in the name of the people.

The MDC-T politician who put his opinions about leadership change in the party was assaulted in the name of the people, and after the assault his suspension from the party was also carried out in the name of the people.

If it is not the people one good rallying point to create manufactured consent is history. There is no tool more powerful for a long serving politician than the glories of past achievements, and as the ruling party heads for its Congress at the end of the year, we have heard high sounding reminders of the glorious and gallant sacrifices made by those that took part in the illustrious liberation struggle that gave us independence.

Those that aspire to contest posts held by our gallant liberators are no more than disrespectful Johnny-come-lately fellows with no manners and regard for the tradition of the revolution party and its sacred hierarchy.

We all know that authoritarian conduct is under attack from the progressive sector of this world, and no politician would ever easily accept being authoritarian or totalitarian. To avoid being labelled a totalitarian, any long serving politician worthy the credit will try their best to avoid any blunt actions of open oppression or undemocratic conduct.

Career politicians must avoid anonymity and security of people around them, and this is for the simple reason that people enjoying the freedom of anonymity and personal security are too independent to be controlled and mobilised for the benefit of the politician. We are not here talking about the anonymity of miscreants like the infamous Baba Jukwa, but things like the secret ballot and so on.

Political parties often avoid the secret ballot to go around the problem of anonymity, and those who use anonymity to express themselves against the leadership are often targeted with reminders that everything done under the cover of privacy or darkness will somehow find its way to the ears of the high ranking leader.

Recently we had one ruling party senior politician quoted by the media as having reminded a group of youths that the party had eyes effective enough to see through people’s bedrooms, and the idea was to make it clear to the youths that any dissident thoughts contrary to the interests of that particular politician were punishable by definition.

For career politicians to prolong their stay there must be a semblance of stability and unity among the electorate or the people being led. It is important that there are no protests, demonstrations, unrest, questioning of legitimacy or general political dissidence. When that happens at party level you got to quickly organise your loyalists and expel the dissidents from the party so an example is set for the would-be admirers. We just saw how the MDC-T did it a few months ago, with the expelled dissidents ganging up to counter-expel their tormentors.

The problem in this particular case was that the expelling was left until too late, and too much political dissidence was allowed to prevail for too long before corrective action was taken.

Of course the targeted leader himself is less than sophisticated, and in that regard what happened to him was not surprising.
The ruling is expertly timeous in carrying out such expulsions, especially when the threat is viewed as encompassing a broader image of the party leadership, and a few times such expulsions have taken place, the expelled cadres have found themselves in complete isolation, and in some cases they then get recalled with unquestionable expectation for an incontrovertible loyalty, with no ifs, ands and or buts.

One very effective way of sustaining long service for career politicians is to surround oneself with corrupt people, or to pay a blind eye to the corrupt conduct of one’s subordinates. Heads of ministries do it, politicians do it, and the whole culture of patronage feeds from this strategy. Corrupt people are enslaved by their own sins, and they are the easiest people to manipulate or exploit to one’s advantage.

If a politician bribes or corrupts a few hoodlums, they can do wonders in terrorising political opponents, or in spreading the propaganda that says a particular politician is uncontestable, and there are always excellent reasons that can be given for this. We hear of tradition, founder entitlement, respect for elders, past sacrifices, or as they say in opposition circles, a leader is “the face of the struggle,” or any such convincing babble.

A career politician must ensure that he is not subjected to the independence and freedoms of institutions of accountability, be it the wings of the political party, national audit institutions or any pressure groups.

At state level career politicians have always relied on appointing loyal friends or family members to be in charge of any such accountability institutions. At party level career politicians have often relied on factionalism, and we know that factional members are driven more often by their collective power interests than they are driven by merit or quality leadership, let alone by the needs of the electorate.

It is common to see factional members allocating political positions to each other ahead of elections, and thereafter concentrating on deriding and eliminating their competitors.

If one desires to be a career politician they have to find a way of dealing with democratically elected competitors. By democratically elected leaders we are looking at the Aristotelian sense of the term, where the electorate purely based on merit and the majoritarian will of the people popularly elects its leaders.

Leaders elected in this manner are a threat to the careers of politicians whose whole purpose in life is to eke out a living from politics, with no other known qualifications or options. You do not just come onto the scene with your democratic merits and popularity to end the political careers of others.

That is considered disrespectful conduct, not only to the noble principle of seniority, but also to the sacred value of tradition and history. It is important for aspiring cadres to understand that their turn will come when the turn of the elder post holder is over, or after their death, whichever comes first. Patience is the rule of the game.

This is the political culture that Africa has created, and needless to say, the culture hardly goes along with the demands of genuine democracy. We have heard terms like guided democracy being thrown around, and most of the time we are told what is being guarded are the core values of an organisation. A closer look will however show that sometimes what is being guarded are personal interests of those presiding over the so-called guided democracy.

One other way of sustaining career politicians is to politicise everything around. Some leaders have politicised almost everything in their constituencies, be it funerals, church gatherings, school sports, or anything that can be manipulated to keep the career politician in control of as much of people activity as possible.

This is why career politicians will not usually be in favour of humanitarian work carried outside their mandate.
Nobody else apart from the career politician must be seen to be good enough to spearhead humanitarian work in the constituency of the politician in question.

Africa has been derailed by corruption, incompetence of leadership, civil conflicts, coups and instability over the last 60 years, and part of the reason we have had these problems is power obsession in our politicians.

We have among our people this conscienceless belief that politics is a pathway to self-aggrandisement — a guaranteed highway to easy wealth. It is this belief that breeds among our people this breed of career politicians that will do anything to shut out political completion.

The calamity of career politics in Zimbabwe is not limited to incumbent governing parties only. Even rebel groups fighting for freedom often divide into numerous factions purely because career leaders will not phantom competition to their posts. Our opposition political parties fragment into many fighting outfits purely because of the same factors.

From the formation of FORD in Kenya in 1991, dozens of fragmented political parties have been spawned, including Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement.
In Zimbabwe the MDC has been fragmenting freely into tiny movements of disgruntled and power obsessed people, and like the First Lady recently intimated, it would not be a surprise if the party fragmented into at least 20 little parties.

There are career politicians by calling, and in our decrying of the bane of career politicians far be it from this writer that we demean the noble cause of the meritorious career politician, the revolutionary cadre fronted by his own electorate purely on the basis that theirs is a life calling to serve the people, not themselves.

When a party with warring power centres like ZANU-PF continues under the leadership of a ninety-year old, one way to look at it is to say such a leader has survived the torrid machinations of his party because he has the respect and support of his followers.

The assertion may be contestable, and that is all in order, but when one looks at the pro-people policies synonymous with the name Robert Mugabe, it can strongly be argued that the man draws support to his name more on merit than the calamities and shenanigans earlier outlined in this essay. There is a general identity to the name Robert Mugabe that says the man is driven by the needs of his people, and even his adversaries sometimes agree to this, only arguing that his policies are “unsound” or “populist.”

There is no doubt that President Mugabe’s opponents will disagree with the assertion, and many reasons can be outlined in support of their own positions.

However, the generality of career politicians in Africa have caused us more problems than good, and one hopes the situation will one day change for the better.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!!

REASON WAFAWAROVA is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.