MDC-T president Douglas Mwonzora recent recalling of councillors coming hard on the heels of by-elections which were necessitated by his party’s similar actions has been described by analysts as no longer justified.
Zimbabweans on March 26 went to mini polls to fill in over 100 local authority and 28 National Assembly seats most of which had fallen vacant over the past two years as a result of MDC-T recalls as feuding factions battled for the control of the party.
However, after a crushing defeat in the by-elections by the newly-formed Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) and ZANU-PF, Mwonzora, who is accused of working with the ruling party seems unrelenting with the recalling strategy.
The MDC-T has recalled 16 councillors in eight of the country’s provinces while PDP, which claims it is part of the MDC Alliance of 2018 has also recalled Harare mayor, Jacob Mafume.
“Recalls are a bout of anger, jealousy and sarcasm,” said political analyst, Rejoice Ngwenya.
“They (recalls) benefit no one but his (Mwonzora) own demonic ego trip. It’s a reflection of his ignorance of what representative democracy is. His arrogance would not allow him to step back. He’s overwhelmed with shame, so he covers up by playing powerful.
Ngwenya added that it was unfortunate that Mwonzora does not seem to care about continuously subjecting Zimbabweans to elections.
“If he cared, he wouldn’t do it,” he said.
Sipho Nyoni, another political analyst said: “Why Mwonzora is continuing to recall councillors and what actual benefit he derives from that can be said to be one of the biggest questions of our time. But in our understanding of this, we perhaps have to look at what is actually at play here and who is behind him. The reality more or less for anyone who cares to know is that for all intents and purposes Mwonzora is not his own man, he is a political appendage of ZANU-PF.”
He said recalls are orchestrated in such a way that at the end of the day they compel political parties including CCC to enter into a dialogue in favour of ZANU-PF.
“Mwonzora or ZANU-PF won’t abandon that (recalls) anytime soon simply because anyone who really cares to look closely can see that in one way or the other next year’s elections won’t produce a clear undisputed outcome given there are no reforms which were carried out to address what is a very skewed electoral process,” he said.
“Mwonzora obviously doesn’t care about the impact of these recalls on the country’s resources and doesn’t care about Zimbabweans who are also being made to vote time and time again. To him and ZANU-PF, this is all but a game and the end justifies the means. They will do anything to get to achieve their aims of decimating the opposition and playing for time to lengthen the ZANU-PF rule which is being seriously threatened by economic mismanagement, corruption absolute lack of vision and just plain gross incompetence.”
Fortune Mlalazi, a public administrator, Mwonzora is abusing his borrowed powers to continue with the recalls.
“Recalls by Mwonzora are nothing but vindictiveness just to try to get to the other side and show the borrowed power that he has,” said Mlalazi.
“There is no principle in those recalls, it has nothing to do with either service delivery from councillor or incompetence but has a lot to do with him as an individual trying to exercise the power that he has, that is borrowed to him by ZANU-PF. He at least has shown us what kind of person he is, the counter-revolutionary person he is.”
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