The last couple of days have been rather difficult because of a family bereavement. When the news arrived at the weekend, I was preparing a review of the week’s topical news, for Sunday reading.

This now arrives a couple of days late but hopefully still of some relevance. I will pick two key pieces of news from last week: first, the saga involving a senior member of the MDC Renewal Team and second, the expulsions and suspensions of officials in Zanu PF.

We look at the effect and implications of both on the political landscape.

Mangoma, MDC Renewal and the MDC Family

A big news item last week involved Elton Mangoma, a senior official of the MDC Renewal Team, latest of the MDC formations, which emerged in 2014, after splitting from the MDC-T led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

The initial allegation, gleefully carried by The Herald, was that Mangoma had cultivated an inappropriate relationship with the wife of a member of their party, who is in the youth wing.

The matter soon got messy with fisticuffs allegedly having been exchanged between the protagonists in the love triangle at the offices of the MDC Renewal Team, with one side blaming the other for the violent incident.

Not surprisingly, the scandal was seized by different parties for their own agendas.

For the Zanu PF-aligned state-media and its supporters, this was yet another demonstration of the moral failings of MDC leaders. Apart from perpetuating the image of sexually irresponsible leaders, the violent clashes also fed into the view that the opposition were violent.

For supporters of the MDC-T and Tsvangirai, this was a particular illustration of the fact that what goes around surely has a habit of coming around, too. The irony here was that it was Mangoma who boldly challenged his erstwhile leader, Tsvangirai, questioning his moral credentials when he wrote a letter last year requesting him to consider stepping down from the leadership of the party.

Tsvangirai had previously suffered a difficult episode involving various women, a situation that Zanu PF exploited heavily in the run-up to the 2013 elections. Last week, it was Mangoma who found himself having to answer the same charges, which he has strenuously denied and characterised as a smear campaign.

In this regard, the incident also points to the dirty character of politics. Mangoma believes he is being falsely accused and targeted by his colleagues in the MDC Renewal Team.  Kusvibisana – it’s politics of labelling – negative labelling, Mangoma said in response, pointing towards his colleagues in the MDC Renewal Team.

There has long been speculation of a fight for leadership of the party between Mangoma and former Finance Minister, Tendai Biti.

If indeed there is a fight between the two, it also illustrates another of the many weaknesses in Zimbabwean politics. Leadership contests are often about personalities, and very little about programmes and policies.

The vicious succession battles taking place in Zanu PF are not characterised by ideological or policy differences but simply by allegiance to personalities. When the MDC Renewal Team broke away from the MDC-T, the whole affair was conspicuous by the paucity of policy and ideological debate.

People simply spent hours and acres of space scolding each other and calling each other names. Leaders or aspiring leaders rarely stand out for their policy positions but for who they are as individuals. This is why the country and organisations end up with a load of mediocrity.

The vicious succession battles taking place in Zanu PF are not characterised by ideological or policy differences but simply by allegiance to personalities.

When the MDC Renewal Team broke away from the MDC-T, the whole affair was conspicuous by the paucity of policy and ideological debate. People simply spent hours and acres of space scolding each other and calling each other names.

Leaders or aspiring leaders rarely stand out for their policy positions but for who they are as individuals. This is why the country and organisations end up with a load of mediocrity.

People simply spent hours and acres of space scolding each other and calling each other names. Leaders or aspiring leaders rarely stand out for their policy positions but for who they are as individuals. This is why the country and organisations end up with a load of mediocrity.

Now, while some MDC-T supporters might gloat over the calamity that has befallen their erstwhile colleagues at MDC Renewal Team, and while this is, perhaps, a natural reaction where there is a history of hostility between the formations, it should not be lost on them that the impact of this saga goes beyond MDC Renewal but hits the MDC family and the opposition generally.

In this regard, it is quite probable that to most ordinary people, Mangoma, Biti, Tsvangirai, Mwonzora, etc are quite simply “MDC people”. In fact, The Herald and other Zanu PF-aligned media know this only too well, which is why a PR disaster for a formation of the MDC is good news for them because out there in the public arena, it hits at the broader brand of the MDC and the opposition.

The distinctions in their suffixes might matter a great deal to the political actors, but it wouldn’t be surprising if this matters very little to the general public. To them, they are all simply “vanhu vaya veMDC” (the MDC people). This explains why when research units like Afrobarometer go out and ask the question “How much trust do you have in the opposition?” the answer reflects the public perceptions towards the opposition generally.

Zanu PF and the state media would have taken great delight in this particular story because it has themes – sexual irresponsibility, violence and moral decadence – which they have consistently tried to associate with the opposition. The propaganda machinery knows that it all feeds into the image which portrays the MDC as a party with a distorted moral compass.

In this regard, from a PR point of view, it does not matter whether it is MDC-T, MDC Renewal, MDC-N or any other MDC formation. The weakness is in the name, which they all share. But what the opposition leaders probably miss is that this point of commonality could also be their strength – since they are identified as one in the public consciousness, they might as well fight as one.

As long as they share that common denominator, the shenanigans of one will be portrayed, and in many cases, will be read as the shenanigans of the MDC family and they will all suffer for it.

So while some people may laugh and gloat over Mangoma’s and the MDC Renewal’s ‘moment of weakness’, the real loser in the public consciousness is the MDC brand and all who are associated with it. Down in the depths of Dotito, Dzapasi and Madhlambudzi, all the villagers are told and believe is that those MDC leaders are at it again – they can’t be trusted to provide moral leadership.