MDC-T: Where to from here?

 Launched at a colourful ceremony in Harare last week, the celebrations would run until September with the climax being a bigger partying slated for Bulawayo — the country’s second largest city.
Analysts were however, unanimous this week that the party, formed in September 1999, should stop the partying and get itself seized with the business of rejuvenating the economic fortunes of the country.
They said the MDC’s defeat of ZANU-PF in the harmonised elections should not distract the party from its main agenda of delivering democracy to the people of Zimbabwe.
Ernest Mudzengi, of the National Constitutional Assembly said: “It (MDC-T) must be seen to be delivering. This is what people want right now. There is no food, cholera is still right here among the people. The anniversary should just be a once off thing, but not to dominate their lives. Zimbabweans need tangible deliveries.”
The MDC rocked the boat on March 29 when its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, now the Prime Minister, outpolled President Robert Mugabe.
In the House of Assembly polls, the MDC won a total of 100 seats, ZANU-PF 99, marking the first time in the history of Zimbabwe that ZANU-PF lost its majority in the lower house.
In the presidential race, Tsvangirai polled nearly 200 000 votes more than President Mugabe. The results, never contemplated since the country gained independence in 1980, culminated in a presidential run-off on June 27, 2008 won by President Mugabe after the MDC-T leader pulled out citing violence against his supporters.
Mudzengi said the March 29 election victory marked one of the major milestones for the MDC-T which it needs to build on.
Takura Zhangazha, a director with the Media Institute of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe Chapter, concurred with Mudzengi, but added that going into the unity government has been another milestone for the MDC-T. He said the emergence of the MDC had also helped open up Zimbabwe’s political space, previously dominated by ZANU-PF.
“It ushered in a new era of change, democracy, and constitutional reform. Its presence in Parliament has been significant in that it presented the first defeat of President Mugabe and ZANU-PF in elections since independence,” said Zhangazha. “They have had their bleeps and blunders, but they have kept faith with the electoral process although there were glaringly flawed.”
Zhangazha cautioned the MDC-T to use experiences gained during the past decade to learn from past mistakes.
“There have been some achievements and failures along the way, but they should now be in a position to choose what works and what doesn’t,” he said.
But war veterans leader, Jabulani Sibanda, begged to differ.
Sibanda said the MDC-T had brought untold suffering to the people of Zimbabwe by lobbying for sanctions which have ruined any prospects of an economic recovery.
“This is the legacy which the MDC brought to this country,” said Sibanda.
MDC-T secretary general, Tendai Biti, described the past decade as “treacherous years”.
Biti was arrested several times on an assortment of charges including that of treason, which has since been thrown out by the courts.
“The road has not been easy. We have been blamed for things that we have never done or believed in, but we have soldiered on and managed to highlight the commissions and omissions of the former government,” he said.
Biti acknowledged that the MDC-T has had its ups and downs in the past 10 years, namely the split in October 2005 and failure to unite with the faction led by Arthur Mutambara in the run-up to the harmonised polls.
Analysts said failure by the two MDC formations to unite denied the party an outright win at the polls last year.
There has also been the issue of the imposition of officials such as the ouster of crowd favourite, Lucia Matibenga, as the head of the MDC-T Women’s Assembly.
Before the split, the party came close to absolute victory in the June 2000 parliamentary elections when it won 57 of the 120 contested seats while ZANU-PF won 63.
However, in the following five years leading to the presidential and parliamentary elections the MDC seemed to go to sleep.
 It won 41 seats against ZANU-PF’s 78 while President Mugabe controversially won the presidential polls. Independent lawmaker, Jonathan Moyo won the Tsholotsho seat.
While the MDC-T blamed its loses in 2005 to alleged ZANU-PF violence and massive rigging, party insiders are adamant the blunders by the leadership proved costly, including the intra-party violence, which saw senior party officials such as Trudy Stevenson being viciously attacked by the MDC-T’s agent provocateurs.
The insiders specifically cited the engagement of Australian dodgy character, Ben Menashe, to spruce-up Tsvangirai image as one of the monumental blunders committed by the party.
Ben Menashe, a discredited Australian conmen, entrapped Tsvangirai in a plot to kill President Mugabe. After nearly a two-year trial, Tsvangirai was acquitted but the damage had already been done as ZANU-PF exploited the Ben Menashe affair to discredit the MDC-T leader in the run-up to the 2005 polls.
Then came the October 2005 split over participation in the November 2005 Senate elections.
While Tsvangirai opposed the participation in the Senate elections, a group led by former Tsvangirai lieutenant, Welshman Ncube, categorically stated that they needed to defend their democratic space.
The group broke away group, weakening the opposition, leading to the formation of the MDC-M after some politicians in the camp parachuted Mutambara from the United States to lead the formation after they cast aspersions over Tsvangirai’s leadership.
“But we went on to rejuvenate the party at the congress held in March 2006,” Biti recalled this week. “We worked tirelessly and most of the time with a shoestring budget contrary to what most people were made to believe. In fact, we held the 2006 March congress very broke. It was by the grace of God that we managed to hold it in the first place. People that supplied us with food had to chip in with 10 000 extra plates after double the amount of people we were expecting turn-up,” said Biti.