Social democracy underpins MDC ideology

In this desperate attempt to demonise and in some instances, openly criminalise the MDC and its top leadership, we have witnessed a recent escalation of the hate language that Zanu (PF) propagandists have traditionally used against the MDC.

Both the Herald newspaper and its sister weekly, The Sunday Mail, have been misused and abused as vehicles to viciously and maliciously attack the MDC as a party and its top leadership in their individual capacities. The ZBH takes the propaganda war to another level by deliberately imposing a virtual blackout on all activities undertaken by the MDC led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

None of the MDC rallies and important report back meetings are covered on ZBC television. Contrast this with the massive coverage that ZBH gives to a mundane and poorly attended Zanu (PF) district meeting in Mbare!

Zims largest party

Since its formation in September 1999, the MDC led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has quickly developed to become Zimbabwe’s largest and most popular political party. You simply have to undertake a quick survey throughout the length and breath of Zimbabwe to appreciate how enormously popular the MDC has become.

It is pretty obvious that the Zanu (PF) leadership is acutely aware of their party’s declining popularity and its gradual breakdown into a rag tag organisation loosely held together by small and ineffective tribal cliques and regional groupings. For what can one say about a party that has dismally failed to organise elections for such a strategic area such as Harare province?

Witness the primitive violence at the recently held Zanu (PF) Women’s League’s congress and you then start really appreciating that Zanu (PF) is a mortally wounded organisation; a political party that has certainly gone beyond its sell-by date!

In some of my previous articles, I have discussed the need for any organisation, be it political, religious or even business, to periodically renew and regenerate its leadership. Simply put, the concept of dialectical materialism entails the inevitable collapse of the old and backward and the emergence of the modern and more forward-looking.

Renewing leadership

Zanu (PF) has dismally failed to periodically renew its top leadership structure ever since the days of the armed liberation struggle of the 1970s. By contrast, the MDC is a young and vibrant social democratic party. Its top leadership consists of a tantalising mix of fairly old and young blood; vibrant comrades from the world of trade unionism and some of Zimbabwe’s finest brains. The MDC’s membership consists of an interesting mixture of the urban poor, the students, the middle class and now; the rural peasantry. Some misguided political analysts have stoically argued that the support base of the MDC is full of contradictions.

Some of them pose the question of how a poor peasant in Dotito can relate to a young and up and coming business executive in Harare or Bulawayo. The answer is simple.

As a social democratic party, the MDC easily appeals to all people, across the racial, ethnic and class divide, who aspire to a serious paradigm shift in the manner in which matters of governance have been conducted in our beloved country.

These are people who are sick and tired of the politics of patronage, kleptocracy and autocracy. These are people who sincerely love Zimbabwe and who refuse to hate someone simply on the basis of the colour of their skin or the part of the country where they come from.

Because social democracy underpins the MDC’s basic ideology, the party is finding it very easy to attract new supporters each and every day; across the racial, ethnic and social divide. The majority of Zimbabweans, both urban and rural, see a future for themselves and for their children by supporting the MDC.

No matter how much crude propaganda the ZBC and Zimpapers continue to churn out, the people have now opened their eyes and they should no longer be taken for granted.