Gwisai betrayed ISO
By Lovemore Mataire/ Zimbabwe Herald
LAST week the MDC expelled its problem child Munyaradzi Gwisai, the
Highfield Member of Parliament.
In the eyes of many, his expulsion was just an accident waiting to happen
after having clashed with the party’s leadership on many occasions.
But what does the future hold for this self-proclaimed socialist who seems
to thrive on nothing but controversy?
For one to understand what could become of Gwisai outside the MDC, there is
need for an introspection into where he is coming from.
After the formation of the MDC in 1999, there was fierce debate within the
Zimbabwe Chapter of International Socialist Organisation on the role the
organisation was to play.
While the majority of the members were against the idea of ISO joining the
MDC, Gwisai and a few others thought otherwise.
Gwisai argued that joining the MDC was the only way that the organisation
could influence national politics.
At no time did ISO members ever think that Gwisai had already made up his
mind to contest in the Highfield constituency on an MDC ticket.
It, therefore, came as a shock to many ISO members when Gwisai later
registered as an MDC candidate in the Highfield constituency in the June
2000 parliamentary elections.
It was a shock because the move was against the mode of ISO politics, which
opposed politics based on positions but on being effective in mobilising the
masses to achieve a workers’ based establishment.
The argument was that in a parliamentary democracy like the one existing in
most capitalist countries, it is only those who have money who aspire for
political office while the majority of ordinary workers’ lives continue to
be controlled by those with the cash nexus.
As a result of Gwisai’s monumental betrayal, most ISO members comprising of
mainly university and polytechnic students deserted the organisation in
protest against Gwisai’s decision to contest the Highfield seat.
Gwisai had betrayed ISO after he joined hands with those who celebrated the
capitalist mode of democracy.
But Gwisai was determined to be part of Morgan Tsvangirai’s bandwagon, which
at the time was thriving on a popular discontent mainly fuelled by economic
hardships the people were facing.
There are two interesting parallels that Gwisai and Tsvangirai manipulated
and propelled themselves into national politics.
While Tsvangirai used the ZCTU to launch his political journey, Gwisai used
the fringe ISO to assert himself as a fighter for workers’ rights.
He had also earned a name while at the University of Zimbabwe as one who was
fearless against all adversity with an undoubted propensity to violence — an
act that he was to later popularise and call it jambanja.
Both Tsvangirai and Gwisai were opportunists who took advantage of a popular
wave of discontent sweeping across the country soon after the food riots of
1998.
While Tsvangirai constantly suffers from intellectual inadequacy and is
therefore shallow, Gwisai is on the other a confused intellectual.
Although the two were opportunists, it was clear that their relationship was
temporary. Gwisai was therefore from the start not an MDC member or
supporter. Theirs was a marriage of convenience.
Driven by his obsolete ideals Gwisai thought that his entrance into the MDC
would be able to influence the direction of the party especially with his
background of being the champion of workers rights.
This was just a dream for it was clear that while being a product of the
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, its identity as a workers’ party was
still-born as the party was immediately usurped by those who nurtured it,
the white commercial farmers, Britain and the bourgeoisie.
So for Gwisai to imagine that he was going to change the MDC and even become
one of its leaders was just but a dream.
The problem with Gwisai is that like most Americans he always sees life as
some kind of drama in which he is the chief protagonist or main actor.
The eccentric Gwisai lives in his own world acting his own script even with
full knowledge that he is performing a mere stunt unable to accord him any
hero status.
But it would be wrong to dismiss Gwisai as just a confused socialist
demagogue. Even with all his shortcomings Gwisai did what others in the MDC
would dare not do.
Most people who joined the MDC on the assumption that it was a workers’
party now know that the opposite is the truth.
Since his days as a student at the University of Zimbabwe, with the likes of
Authur Mutambara, Gwisai has always been a consistent socialist driven by
the need for a new socio-economic and political order in which the workers
are the major players.
But the uneven ideological landscape of the MDC rendered Gwisai’s dream an
unattainable one.
While the MDC was presumed to have come from the ZCTU, very few ordinary
workers assumed positions of influence at its inaugural congress.
Sensing this dilemma Gwisai lashed out at the MDC leadership at a workshop
held in Nyanga by the opposition party to review the June 2000 parliamentary
elections.
Addressing MDC parliamentarians and executive members the dread-locked
lawyer said: "The overwhelming majority of positions of influence in the
national executive, the administrative, fund raising/finance, parliamentary
and security organs of the party are not ordinary working people living in
townships or working at the shop floor as had been envisaged by the February
1999 working people’s convention, but the upper class."
Gwisai asserted that the focus of the MDC had changed seeking to please
business people, the commercial farmers and Western governments.
But where Gwisai hit the raw nerve of the MDC leadership is when he
supported the Government’s land reform programme.
In fact, Gwisai went further and suggested that the Government should
instead take all white commercial farms without compensation.
Speaking in Parliament last year, Gwisai said the Government should not
compensate white commercial farmers because the land was taken by force from
the blacks.
He even criticised the Government for taking long to re-distribute the land.
Gwisai’s frequent outbursts against his party did not have much effect as
most people in the party, especially his fellow legislators, viewed him as
an anarchist bent on undermining their new found status.
Frustrated, Gwisai threatened to resign from the party if the MDC continued
engaging Zanu-PF in inter-party talks and its election petition challenging
the presidential poll results.
He said that despite having raised serious issues confronting the MDC during
the Nyanga workshop about the hijacking of the party by the neo-liberal
middle class and Western interests including the land question, nothing was
done.
He called for the re-orientation of the party to the working people.
But all this was in vain until he was expelled from the opposition party
after walking out of a disciplinary hearing chaired by the party’s vice
president Gibson Sibanda.
There can be no doubt that things are falling apart in the MDC. When the MDC
was formed independent observers warned that it was too much of a hotchpotch
and that given the diametrically opposed views and interests in the party it
was always going to be difficult to keep it intact.
In fact what has just happened to Mr Gwisai is a microcosmic of a wider
political problem facing a lot of people who joined that party on the
assumption that it representative of workers.
But instead of insisting that he is still the MDC representative in
Highfield, Gwisai would endear himself but leaving the party whose policies
are at complete variance with his.
Gwisai would surely be of service to a lot of workers who on a daily basis
are improperly rendered jobless by their employers.
It is understandable that Gwisai survives by stirring controversy but
insisting that he is still the MP of Highfield even after being disowned by
his party will not help him in any way.
Trying to contest as an independent is a disaster, as he is likely to be
seen as someone who is just power-hungry.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Ivinicus factus sum veritabem diceus." ( I have become an enemy for
speaking the truth ) St Paul!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mitayo Potosi
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