AS ZIMBABWE draws near to the harmonised elections, one thing that has been standing out clear so faris that , all things being equal, there hasn’t been a clear presumed presidential victor.
However, if President Mugabe’s weekendstar rallies in the Midlands and Mashonaland West can be interpreted as a harbinger of things to come, then it appears he is sprinting ahead of his opponents in the last lap to retain the presidency once again. This situation is complicated by the fact that Morgan Tsvangirai has also been commanding huge crowds especially in his weekend star rally at the Sheraton grounds.
Despite these pockets of success by the opposition, I am still of the firm view that on a national level, President Mugabe is still likely to retain presidency while the opposition will increase its stake in parliament. I will conclude that it’s never too late for the opposition to learn something from Mugabe’s vision for a self determining and fully sovereign Zimbabwe, negotiate his dignified exit and begin to navigate the nation from that vision to a day we will see the vision’s fruition.
Although this conclusion will rile some readers, remember that it’s an opinion, that’s all it is.
What seems to be working against the opposition and indeed causing the split in votes is that Zimbabwe hasn’t yet raised an opposition leader who has a very clear alternative vision which he can articulate in no uncertain terms to convince people to follow him. A vision, which can be defined as a clear picture of where the leader would like to take his people to, forms a distinct rallying point for people and therefore serves an overriding purpose of unifying them to a common cause.
Without it, people will not follow a leader and a leader who doesn’t look behind to see if he is being followed is only but taking a walk. When one looks at the evolution of leadership, there is compelling evidence that a vision is not a product of mass movements but a product of one person. It is that one person who sells the vision to the masses.
Richard E. Day, a leadership expert puts it this way, “Every golden era in human history proceeds from the devotion and righteous passion of some single individual. There are no bona fide mass movements, it just looks that way. There is always one man who knows his [God] and knows where he is going”
If one doesn’t understand how a vision is individually conceived before it is sold to the masses, one would never know the reason why there has been trouble in the MDC camp. The MDC was not born out of a single leader’s vision, but out of mass consultation among organisations that appeared to have a similar agenda on the surface but had ulterior motives under the surface. To a politically intelligent eye, it didn’t need magic to foresee that it was only a matter of time before that marriage split apart because of the underlying different agendas of its constituent members. Since the MDC vision was not born by Tsvangirayi, it is easy to see why he is mass driven instead of being vision driven. Consultation which is an essential element of democracy comes after a vision’s birth and not the other way round. No two people can dream the same dream together but one person dreams and others affirm. Any attempt to dream simultaneously is naturally impossible therefore any dream that is purportedly born out of this process is a fake dream.
It follows that anything built on a fake dream is like a house built on an imaginary foundation. It will split and that is why MDC split and it continues to shake the closer it gets the elections. However, it doesn’t mean that its leaders are necessarily bad people. They are good people. It is just like two good people who divorce because their marriage was not built on shared values and vision.
As one writer succinctly puts it, “All great leaders possess two things. They know where they are going and they are able to persuade others to follow” Put otherwise, great leaders have a clear vision, are able to cast the vision and convince others to rally behind that vision. The world has produced both good and bad leaders who had this ability. A few notable examples are Nelson Mandela, Ghandi, Hitler and Castro.
Leadership is influence, nothing more and nothing less. During the first half of his term Mugabe was carried by the liberation war (physical political deliverance) vision and during the latter part of his term, his vision appears to be that of freedom (mental, social and economic deliverance) which he espouses in the terms that Zimbabwe will never be a colony again and Zimbabweans must self determine and decide their political, social and economic destiny. We may disagree on the motive of this vision and on whether the vision has succeeded or has a chance to succeed but the fact of the matter is that he has a vision which goes beyond mere political rhetoric. This is an ideological vision and whether ideology has an immediate correlation with economic gains is one thing.
However, basing my conclusions on past world trends, there is something in ideology that makes people move even in the face of hunger and death. A few examples are Iran, China, North Korea, Venezuela, and Germany, Serbia and other East European and Asian countries. In the religious circles we have similar cases of Jim Jones and other destructive cults in which people chose ideology over their own lives. Mugabe has managed to influence masses on an ideological level and to that extend; he is a veteran leader whose name is etched in the leadership hall of fame. The conclusion on whether it’s for good or for bad is not within the purview of this article.
The future of Zimbabwean opposition politics lies in identifying a leader who can put an alternative robust vision on the table before the voters and such a vision must resonate with the masses’ emotions first. As I stated above, human beings can be very strange creatures. Sometimes times we are moved by emotions and a sense of nationalism rather than our bellies or even our lives.
Simba Makoni
Simba Makoni appears to be very level headed but he needs to clearly articulate what he stands for even if this might cause offence to the other politicians. I greatly admire him, but sometimes his tendency to dwell on the positive only can be too naïve because politics by its very nature is competitive and an objective comment on a situation or a person can not be judged as negativism.
In Shona they say, ateya mariva murutsva haatyi kusviba magaro.He seems to be displaying his technocratic side rather than his latent leadership ability. A technocrat is as good as a manager and Zimbabwe is not in need of a manager but a leader because the issues we are facing are broader and more complicated than one can see with a simple eye, so these are leadership and not managerial issues. The sooner the latent leader in Simba comes out the better.
According to Stephen Corvey, the difference between a manager and a leader can be seen in the following scenario, “If you envision a group of producers cutting their way through the jungle with machetes, cutting the undergrowth and clearing it out. The managers are right behind them sharpening machetes, producing manuals and commanding people etc. The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree in that jungle, surveys the situation and yells wrong jungle!” In other words, a manager can climb a ladder at the speed of lightning but leader first surveys whether he is climbing the right ladder in the first place.
A manager does things right and a leader does the right things! There is a huge difference there. After the elections, Makoni needs to rise above technocratic issues and delegate such issues to his leadership team and begin to focus on broader leadership issues of the country’s heritage, purpose, potential, identity and destiny. If he becomes the next president, the above advice will determine how far he rises and his inner team will determine how far he goes.
In an ideal country, an Ideologist like Mugabe needs a technocrat like Makoni and a technocratic can not function without an ideologist because he needs a vision within which he functions. Both the ideologist and the technocrat need a motivator like Tsvangirayi because he understands how to motivate the masses to follow a cause on an emotional level. It is difficult to find one person who embodies all the three attributes therefore the need for an effective leadership team.
Organisational and indeed a country’s success begin with a vision for its success, and is delivered by individuals working towards that vision. Success needs a robust strategy, appropriate systems and a way of identifying where you are on the long road towards it. How do you translate the excitement of your vision into a path that your people can follow? How do you motivate them to keep going when things get tough? It takes leadership and the right communication. You need to challenge the norms and reaffirm that you're on the right path. For some of you who have been following the evolution of leadership and management, you would notice that in the eighties the buzzword in organisational politics and business was management, in the early nineties the buzzword was leadership and now the buzz phrase is team leadership.
Leadership has evolved to a point where, for example, a visionary leader needs another leader who understands the law of navigation in leadership to be part of his team. Navigation enables an organisation to move from the point of envisioning through to outcome delivery by putting strategies in place and factoring in other key leadership dynamics like international rapport, global macroeconomics, economies of scale etc into the equation. A visionary leader also needs a leader who understands the law of momentum as part of his team. This leader is the one who will work with people on the ground to rally them behind a common cause and congruent goals.
On the basis of the above analysis, the future success of Zimbabwe depends on a leadership that understands the above leadership dynamics. The sooner these three gentlemen realise that they all need or can learn from one another, the better. Mugabe’s legacy is that he cast a vision that Zimbabwe can fully determine its destiny politically, socially, economically and mentally.
Thus far, we are a visionary nation. He can now retire in peace or become a ceremonial president. It is now up to Makoni, Tsvangirayi, you and I to make the vision of a self sustaining and sovereign Zimbabwe a reality. Pakistan seems to be going through such a transition and we can also do the same. Destiny, of necessity, demands unity and diligence.
Together we can.
Arthur Gwagwa London
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