Speaking truth to power
Zimbabwe’s CSOs have over the past 13 years or more been saddled with the Herculean task of highlighting government excesses and brazen breaches of democratic processes.
The long road has however inevitably inspired cynics to question their (CSOs) relevance if not to continue getting funding and blowing the moolah because poverty weary Zimbabweans have rightly looked up CSOs to lead or even catalyse the birth of a new nation, and as this logic goes, if it has taken them forever despite all the money they splash, they must be getting it wrong somewhere!
It is unfortunate therefore that the quest, like that of Zimbabweans and political parties yearning for a fresh beginning after a virtual one-party domination of political space has dragged for so long, and like Tsvangirai’s own for whom his delayed anointing has only given “the masses” ample time to scrunitise him more closely and ultimately doubting his capacity and competence. Time is such an ass.
Along the long way however, like typical fanatics who double their efforts and lose sight of their goal, the CSOs find themselves in a quandary of what happens after July 31 in the much awaited event that Zanu PF becomes history.
That is one of many thought-provoking questions raised yesterday by McDonald Lewanika, Crisis Coalition Director at a Food for Thought session at the US Embassy Public Affairs Section.
Because the CSOs have for long been criticized by the former ruling party as “running dogs of imperialism” who have turned social activism virtually into a million dollar industry, how they shape Zimbabwe’s post-Mugabe discourse has become a legitimate point to ponder, and for Lewanika, the fact that CSOs have morphed from their original ideal as “speaking truth to power” to unwittingly becoming more driven by the perks that accrue from that activism, it is a reality that their relevance becomes compromised.
However, as Lewanika pointed out, the success of CSOs in their agenda to hold State actors accountable and champion democratic transitions can in fact lead to their decline, which can be imagined as a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.
And the same has been raised since the chaos began here concerning the media who stood vigilante in the “speak truth to power” discourse. What happens to them after Mugabe goes, and this is apparently asked in light of what is seen as skewed coverage that favours one political party.
One thing that Lewanika raised that made that self-criticism of a movement he is part of some kind of daring honesty was the issue of activists who have become no different from the State actors they criticize, for example telling Mugabe off for refusing to quit when the CSOs activists themselves are afflicted by the same delusions of seeing themselves as permanent faces of the revolution.
That some CSOs virtually have “life presidents” has been an irony lost to the anti-Mugabe crusaders and it cannot be dismissed that this has made their relevance questionable, what with characters like Jonathan Moyo ever on the ready with unsavory epithets.
As Lewanika put it, bureaucratisation has been the death of some CSOs because now the focus is on positions and the perks that come with those positions, and some activists could in fact be positioning themselves for co-option into the “new MDC-T government” after July 31!
But that can never be reason to change generals during the war, as Lewanika put it!
The struggle continues and July 31 high noon beckons.