Zimbabwe’s political parties lack strong ideological underpinnings and as result end up in splits, former speaker of Parliament, Lovemore Moyo, has said.
Moyo, who now leads the United Movement for Devolution (UMD), formed in 2018 was speaking Monday during the Breakfast Club, a daily online programme hosted by CITE.
“The problem is that our political parties are not formed on the basis of an ideology and therefore you just find yourself coming together to speak against a particular issue and there is nothing beyond that issue which you are fighting against or advocating to achieve that binds you,” said Moyo who is also former MDC-T national chairman.
“And therefore it is easier for you once you disagree, to retreat to your cocoons and say ah well because there is no ideology that is binding you together. But the second issue again is the issue of positions. People begin to argue on issues to do with positions, succession and so on which in most cases result in a split and so on.”
He said there could be more reasons as to why most political formations in Zimbabwe end in splits.
“I think it is really a difficult question to figure out.” He said.
“Maybe we need to find out more as to why we have these splits but to me really as long as the organisation has no foundation there is very little that is binding people together and you are bound to split just on a minor difference that could have been resolved.”
Moyo said it was unfortunate that Zimbabwean political formations have been tribal, dating back to the formation of ZANU-PF in 1963.
“Those politicians who were under the leadership of Nkomo decided deliberately to form a different organisation, which they later called ZANU,” said Moyo.
“That organisation was formed largely by the people from Mashonaland, people of one particular tribe, and that was in my view, the beginning of tribal politics in Zimbabwe. And when finally the independence was won, is unfortunate that those people who claimed victory, the ZANU people, continued with their tribal politics, and instead of building a nation, they built a tribal state and as it is, in this country our state in terms of its composition and form now, was built on the basis of tribe and therefore we still have it and unless we reconstruct the state it will continue to be with us”.
He added: “It’s a very unfortunate state of affairs that most of our political parties are constructed in that fashion.”
