It’s a great time to be a politician in Zimbabwe. The people are so exhausted with politics that it really gives you the room to experiment and improvise a lot as a political party. You can basically make it up as you go along these days. Play around with your economic policy here and expel some members there. It’s all the rage in the Zanu (PF) and MDC factions at the moment.
Zanu (PF) is having a great time. They’ve run out of heavyweights to fire so they’re now getting rid of ex-military chiefs and maybe some provincial leaders next. Considering that there is such an ineffective opposition Bob also managed to try out a stand-up comedy tour in South Africa recently which went fantastically. He was definitely a more polished comedian than that Zuma guy and he also managed to comically gloss over the xenophobic attacks that were happening at the time to his compatriots in South Africa. Bob’s jokes about Rhodes were even trending on twitter.
Just in case the fact that all opposition parties in Zimbabwe are called the MDC is confusing, the Mujuru-faction has decided that all parties vying to be the ruling party will be called Zanu (PF). However they have decided to make a cunning change to ensure they stand out – ‘PF’ will now stand for ‘People First’. Supposedly this stands fully for ‘People First, Questions Later’ since Mujuru and Mutatsa weren’t exactly pro-democracy heroes in their good ol’ gravy train days. Apparently the two of them have been working on a novel ‘The Long Walk to Democracy’ over the last 35 years with most of the chapters focused on their role in rigged elections and corruptly acquired wealth. But there’s a great twist in the final chapter.
The MDCs are not to be outdone either in this new era of improvised politic, fun factions and spontaneous policy. Morgan’s MDC decided to get the 21 MPs from the MDC Renewal team booted out of their parliamentary seats for leaving the main MDC party. Then they said maybe they shouldn’t have expelled the MPs since it gives Zanu (PF) the potential to control even more seats in parliament. The MDC have also said they won’t stand in the upcoming by-elections. But then again they might. They’ve also resolved to maybe withdraw completely from parliament. Or they might stay. The great thing with the MDC is they are so good at making it up as they go along. “We need to start a conservation movement for Zimbabwean opposition politicians,” comments bottle store revolutionary and resident apolitical analyst, Joe Black, “Our political pangolins have been dwindling to record low levels and if the by-elections are boycotted they will be virtually extinct.”
Also on the opposition side, the MDC Renewal Team decided to challenge being kicked out of parliament. The Constitutional Court dismissed the application so the MDC Renewal Team are back to square one: 21 unemployed guys trying to make a change. Air time and tomato vending is being strongly considered as potential income generating streams. Apart from one guy: Ol’ Tendai Biti has just got a job in the USA with a leading think tank, the Centre for Global Development. He’s gonna experiment at being the first Zimbabwean politician to run a political party via remote control. And the people will let him so why not?
It’s undoubtedly one of the greatest times in Zimbabwean history to be a politician. With Zimbabweans more focused on hustling to get by than on what the latest factional fight is there are unlimited options for chefs and wanna-be-chefs. In 2015 anything goes: you can repackage a former ruling party as a fresh opposition party or just build a faction within a faction. This is the year of the great political experiment.