The Economist
Apr 10th 2008 | JOHANNESBURG
From The Economist print edition
FOR nine years the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has focused on ousting Robert Mugabe at the ballot box. No one questions the courage and resilience of its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who has been imprisoned, badly beaten up and survived treason charges. But what if he actually took office?
The MDC says its first job, plainly, would be to rescue the economy: stop printing money, stabilise the currency (with inflation officially now at more than 100,000% a year), slash public spending, call in the IMF and bring market forces back into business, while favouring some state intervention to protect the poorest. It would also scrap controls on prices and foreign exchange, which have fed a thriving black market.
The MDC says it would not give back all confiscated land to white farmers, as Mr Mugabe charges. But it would immediately start drawing up a land audit. It talks of leaseholds and decent compensation for farmers whose land has been grabbed. It also wants to “harmonise†the land-tenure system so that peasants in communal lands have individual title.
The MDC has long demanded a new constitution to limit presidential powers. But Mr Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader with little formal education, has himself been accused of being autocratic in his own party. In 2005 the MDC split after he flouted a decision of his national executive and decided to boycott an election for the Senate, arguing that the people were behind him.
David Coltart, a prominent MDC man, also criticised Mr Tsvangirai’s faction for ignoring violence in the party’s own ranks. The MDC splinter led by Arthur Mutambara refused to endorse Mr Tsvangirai as its presidential candidate in the recent poll, instead backing Simba Makoni, a former minister of the ruling ZANU-PF.
But the election confirmed that Mr Tsvangirai has the backing of Zimbabwe’s masses, especially in towns but also among the rural poor. The MDC’s Mutambara faction won ten seats in Parliament to the main one’s 99. Some of Mr Tsvangirai’s colleagues complain that, far from being autocratic, he listens to too many people and is indecisive. Some of those who wish him well think he has been serially outwitted by Mr Mugabe, especially in the past year’s negotiations under South Africa’s aegis. But the MDC was far readier for the elections this time round. In particular, it wrong-footed Mr Mugabe’s people by airing results from polling stations rather than letting them be centrally tallied.
Would Mr Tsvangirai, if he became president, prove either democratic or competent? Regional precedents are not encouraging. Next door in Zambia, another trade unionist-turned-politician, Frederick Chiluba, defeated the country’s veteran of independence, Kenneth Kaunda, at the polls, but was soon committing many of the worst sins of office. Mr Tsvangirai may be different; in any event, few think he can be as horrible as Mr Mugabe.