Movement for Democratic Change and the Rise of Nelson Chamisa

Introduction

Until 2018, Morgan Tsvangirai, the founding leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) since its establishment in 1999, and Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s long-serving president and leader of the Zimbabwe African National Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), dominated Zimbabwe’s multi-party ‘democracy’. While ZANU-PF practiced politics and governance through state-sponsored violence (Human Rights Watch, 2008), MDC carved a niche as the main opposition challenging ZANU-PF’s hegemony. However, in reality, both parties were seemingly appendages of their leaders – Tsvangirai and Mugabe. Both men were ultimate decision-makers and thwarted, in different ways, attempts at leadership change. For the MDC, resistance to leadership renewal led to splits in 2005 and 2014. In ZANU-PF, those perceived to be threats to Mugabe’s rule were expelled, with major purges happening in 2004, 2014 and 2017.

Because both MDC and ZANU-PF were personified in Tsvangirai and Mugabe respectively, the two leaders used their incumbency to maintain widespread grassroots support – making any challenge to their leadership at party congresses untenable. Mugabe’s dominance only ended in November 2017 with his ouster from power in a putsch that involved the military elite in what came to be referred to as the ‘military assisted transition’. Tsvangirai’s grip on the MDC was cut short by his death in February 2018. Their ‘demise’ happened in near simultaneity. Although the new leaders of both parties promised transformation, Nelson Chamisa (who took over from Tsvangirai) flouted the party’s constitution in ascending to power and purged opponents from the MDC leadership. Similarly, despite promises of a break from Mugabe’s authoritarian-style of leadership, Mnangagwa purged opponents both within and outside ZANU-PF. The effect is that both Chamisa and Mnangagwa continued with the personal-rule traditions set by their predecessors – both of whom left their parties without a clear succession plan. This is indicative of the weak institutionalization of political parties in Zimbabwe.

Within this context, this article examines whether changes in party leadership can lead to better institutionalization of political parties and imbue them with tenets of democratic politics. The focus is on the MDC and, in particular, the rise of Nelson Chamisa as leader of the MDC after Tsvangirai’s death in 2018. The analysis contributes to a nuanced understanding of the agency and efficacy of party leadership and elites in influencing governance within a polity, notwithstanding whether the party is in power or out of power. However, the article is not a biography of Chamisa, neither is it a public relations drive to prop up his persona. Rather, it establishes the nexus between party leadership change and national political dynamics: in particular, how and to what extent a change in party leadership influences political party institutionalization and de-personalization of power in favor of good governance.

The article proceeds as follows. We first present the methodological approach underpinning the study, followed by a discussion of the theoretical framing for the study. Thereafter, we engage with the varied debates within the Zimbabwean literature regarding the rise of political party leadership as a way of situating Nelson Chamisa as a political actor arising within similar contexts. A contextual overview of Chamisa’s early life and career in politics then follows. We conclude by looking at whether leadership turnover within the main opposition MDC party has shaped opposition politics and whether this influenced the character and substance of national politics post-Mugabe and post-Tsvangirai.

Researching the MDC

Research on political leaders in Zimbabwe is problematic due to difficulties in accessing information. Though existing studies on the MDC involving interviews exist (including by one of the authors), researching on factionalism within political party organizations remains a difficult venture. The exception is certain scholars who have had the privilege of studying the internal dynamics of ZANU-PF with some level of ease due to pre-existing networks within high political offices (Tendi, 2020b). Both political parties, ZANU-PF and MDC, are secretive with reference to a range of internal issues due to fears of infiltration and surveillance, especially in the case of the MDC. Beyond fears of surveillance, political parties in Zimbabwe do not systematically collect, process, publish and disseminate information. As a result, researchers tend to rely on personal networks, bits and pieces posted by political leaders on social media, and official speeches and statements.

In addition, in the case of Chamisa’s MDC, some of the available information might at best be half-truths and at the worst lies meant to portray the valiant side of Chamisa. This is expected, especially in political organizations where supporters, acolytes, and factional members and officials are desperate to demonstrate loyalty to the leader in order to advance and secure their political careers. At the same time, there are accounts by others (especially those who broke ranks with Chamisa) and those still within his party who are bent on discrediting Chamisa’s persona and leadership style out of internal petty jealousies, competition and rivalry. On balance, all these accounts paint an exaggerated picture of Chamisa. This study relies on a case study analysis involving a critical examination of grey material (for example, reports, press statements, newspaper articles, party policies), as well as discourse analysis of both spoken and written texts, especially radio and television interviews as well as rally speeches.

The coattail effect in politics

The article is anchored in coattail theory in explaining the rise and support of a current party president (Chamisa), as conditioned by his relationship to a past party president (Tsvangirai). Broadly speaking, the coattail theory argues that the appeal effect and support of a particular leader cascades to his/her loyal subordinates. The appeal of a presidential candidate can increase the votes of subordinate candidates during elections (Gadjanova, 2019; Kaplowitz, 1971; Miller, 1955), and it also has resonance between electoral periods within party structures (Calvert and Ferejohn, 1983; Campbell, 1986; Campbell and Sumners, 1990).

The cascade of goodwill, support and appeal will result in subordinate leadership, in this case Chamisa, becoming likeable and appealing not only on his own merits, as it may be due in large part to the endorsement and appeal of the incumbent party leader (Tsvangirai). This implies that successive leadership of political parties can be a result of the coattail effect of the predecessor. Hence, through the coattail effect, leaders can be s/elected to lead a political party not based on their leadership skills, knowledge, wits and competence, but based on popularity derived from their predecessors.

Scholars have long been interested in examining whether personal appeal (personality), wits, confidence, charisma and oratory skills can make an effective politician (Aberbach, 1996; Bhide, 2008; Weber, 1968). Although there is a general belief that this can help in building a political career, it seems that the role of top leaders in shaping young leadership is foregrounded in many analyses of party organizations. We argue that though Chamisa’s personality and oratory skills helped in shaping his rise, a fuller picture should include an examination of how support from a founding and top leader (Tsvangirai) translates into elevating the profile of loyalist subordinates. We maintain that apart from individual factors, support or endorsement by the incumbent party leader shapes the rise of (and support for) leaders within a party’s lower ranks.

The article argues that notwithstanding Chamisa’s personal attributes, he benefitted from the publicity he received as Morgan Tsvangirai’s protégé. Being consistently with Tsvangirai and pledging constantly his loyalty to him, even when other MDC leaders such as Welshman Ncube and Tendai Biti challenged Tsvangirai’s authority (leading to splits of the party in 2005 and 2014 respectively), endeared Chamisa to Tsvangirai and his supporters. The 2005 split was because of disagreements between Welshman Ncube, who was the then MDC secretary-general, and Tsvangirai. This led to MDC-T and MDC-N. The 2014 split from MDC-T led to MDC Renewal under Tendai Biti, who is now one of Chamisa’s deputies.

Nelson Chamisa’s loyalty to Tsvangirai and dedication to the MDC increased his publicity, enabling him to carve his own sphere of influence amongst MDC elites and supporters, especially when he became the party’s organizing secretary in 2011. By the time Tsvangirai died, Chamisa was already acceptable to MDC supporters because Tsvangirai portrayed him as representative of the new generation of leaders, to whom Tsvangirai was handing the baton of leadership.

Party leadership

Zimbabwean literature on party politics has increasingly focused on exploring internal party dynamics including factionalism (Hove, 2019), and how parties fare in elections (Booysen, 2014; Zamchiya, 2013), with no particular analyses of leadership of party organizations. Presumably, this is because, until recently, there was no party leadership change among the two dominant political parties in Zimbabwe (MDC and ZANU-PF). Likewise, information provided by the MDC on its leadership and history of the organization ends up more activist than scholarly. Research on how party leaders and leadership change influences party support, electoral mobilization and party institutionalization remains relatively underdeveloped (Sanches, 2014). Accordingly, a study on the rise of Nelson Chamisa in the MDC and Zimbabwe’s politics after the death of the founding leader – Morgan Tsvangirai – contributes to an understanding of the nexus between leadership change and party institutionalization. Lam (2010: 53) points out that party institutionalization is ‘the extent to which political parties develop a systematic set of mechanisms and structures that enable them to compete effectively for political power’. This focus is essential in order to go beyond studies of the attributes of political leaders and party activists (Wilkins, 2013), to examine how they rise to leadership and the implications of their rise for institutionalization of their political parties.

In political science and history literature, there exist numerous biographies and auto-biographies of prominent and influential political party leaders and activists. In Zimbabwe, notable biographies include Heidi Holland’s (2008) Dinner with Mugabe, which chronicles Mugabe’s conflicted history as a nationalist-liberator-cum-ruthless dictator, and Blessing Miles Tendi’s (2020b) recent book on Zimbabwe’s military commander, Solomon Mujuru. Leaders’ personal accounts include the autobiographies of Edgar Tekere (2007), Cephas Msipa (2015) and Joshua Nkomo (2001), and Tsvangirai’s Morgan Tsvangirai – At the Deep End, written with William Bango (Tsvangirai and Bango, 2011). Such literature is important in shedding light on the intricacies of life, moments and political events either as told by the people who lived the history or as told by those who were possibly close to the political actors or leaders who made the history. The one major challenge with much of this literature is a tendency for sensationalization and exaggeration aimed at deifying the featured political leaders.

Scholarship on the rise of national political leaders also discusses populism, one of the most studied topics in political science (Laclau, 2005; Mudde, 2004). The rise of populist leaders and the associated populist sentiment seem to be re-emerging, as exemplified, for example, by Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Turkey), Marine Le Pen (France), Geert Wilders (The Netherlands), Rodrigo Duterte (The Philippines), Naredi Modi (India), Viktor Orbán (Hungary), Nicolas Maduro (Venezuela) and Donald Trump (United States). This global rise has a striking resonance in Africa (Ismael, 2015). In Zambia, Frederick Chiluba evoked anti-establishment populist sentiments, and so did Michael Sata (Fraser, 2017). In South Africa, disgruntled by internal party politics, Julius Malema established the populist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party (Mbete, 2015; Nyenhuis, 2020). The literature on party politics indeed underscores how party leaders emerge under the crest of populist mobilizations. This is a situation not divorced from the rise of Chamisa in Zimbabwe, the difference being that political opportunity (death of a founding leader) also played a role. Less well understood, however, is whether leadership that emerges under populist appeal can change the party’s electoral fortunes and, if so, why and how.

A survey of existing literature on political leaders and politics in Zimbabwe suggests that there is minimal focus on opposition political leaders. This is notwithstanding that a handful of significant literature on the MDC party since its formation to date exists (Booysen, 2014; Mwonzora, 2017; Raftopoulos, 2006; Zamchiya, 2013). This literature has diverse empirical foci in examining the MDC party, including its successive electoral failures, its involvement in consociation-type politics during the Inclusive Government (IG) era (2009–2013) and its internal democratic deficits. Similarly, there is some emerging and significant research on post-2017 politics in Zimbabwe (Beardsworth et al., 2019; Hodgkinson, 2013; Lewanika, 2019; Tendi, 2020a). However, this corpus of literature does not focus on Nelson Chamisa’s MDC during and post the November 2017 transition. In this article, by examining Chamisa’s rise in the MDC, we also shed light on opposition prospects in the context of deepening authoritarianism under the Emmerson Mnangagwa regime.

Early years of Chamisa

The rise of Nelson Chamisa in opposition politics is tied to his student activism at Harare Polytechnic College where he studied for a marketing diploma in the late 1990s. In Morgan Tsvangirai’s memoir, Chamisa is described as a ‘fearless student leader’ (Tsvangirai and Bango, 2011). The formation of the MDC in 1999 by labor, civil society and student activists, mostly from the University of Zimbabwe, provided Chamisa with an opportunity to transition from student activism into mainstream national politics. As Morgan Tsvangirai shepherded the MDC into a formidable opposition party challenging ZANU-PF’s electoral hegemony in Zimbabwe, Chamisa also emerged as one of his loyal youth leaders. The biggest opportunity for Chamisa came when he replaced Learnmore Jongwe, who died of an alleged suicide in prison, as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Kuwadzana East Constituency and as the MDC youth leader.

However, the appointment of Chamisa as the MDC youth leader was not without controversy. A former youth activist in the MDC, Ishmael Kauzani, told the media that Chamisa faced stiff competition from the MDC party youth activist Alex Musundire. Masundire was widely believed to have won the MDC youth leader elections but was elbowed out of the race by the MDC’s national leadership which preferred Chamisa. When the 2005 split occurred, Chamisa remained loyal to Tsvangirai, a move that also endeared him to the MDC structures. In the latter years of his political career, he was to become the party’s organizing secretary – a position that put him in charge of elections and selection of MDC candidates – which enabled him to build his own personal patronage network.

In Zimbabwe, educational credentials are considered essential for national leadership and building respect among other leaders. Without a university degree, Chamisa’s credentials were inferior to those of his colleagues who held degrees, especially in political science and law. Pushed by this ‘disability’, he studied for a political science degree at the University of Zimbabwe, and later a law degree from the same university. In addition, he trained to be a pastor with the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM), one of Zimbabwe’s main Pentecostal churches. Thus, in situating Chamisa’s rise both within the party ranks and in national politics, his enmeshment of religion, education and political activism is instructive. Summing up his qualifications, Lewanika (2019: 1) describes him as follows: ‘Chamisa, nicknamed Nero (or Cobra), is a charismatic 40-year-old former student and youth leader, who is a trained marketer, evangelist, political scientist, and lawyer.’ Due to his multidisciplinary educational credentials, Chamisa creatively combines political and legal jargon, idioms, biblical verses and figurative language in his speech and when addressing rallies – which has made him hugely popular with MDC supporters. During the era of the inclusive government in 2009–2013, he was praised by Mugabe for his hard work ethic as the minister of information, communication and technology (ICT) and described as a ‘supersonic Minister’.

What this brief background suggests is that Chamisa, and other activists who now hold influential top and middle-level positions in the MDC party, started as student activists (Hodgkinson, 2013). This has significantly changed the MDC’s outlook from being a labor-activism-inspired party to being student-activist-inspired. The extent of this fundamental shift was demonstrated when Chamisa slowly rose to the helm of the party. Chamisa started to mobilize and field former student leaders and civil society activists in leadership positions and in party structures and, in a way, elbowed out the old guard. A former top party official – Tapiwa Mashakada – had the following to say:

Over the years you have seen that labor stalwarts have fallen by the wayside, have been marginalized or purged. You talk of people like James Makore and Cephas Makuyana . . . (O)ver the years, the participation and representation of labor was watered down in the new look Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) biased National Executive and National Standing Committee (of the MDC). (Daily News, 2020)

This shift signaled a difference from Chamisa’s predecessor (Tsvangirai), who accommodated various groups to the extent that the party was viewed as a broad church.

‘Power grab’?

Although Chamisa is not a political outsider or novice, his rise is attributable to timing, cunningness, skill and grand scheming. In short, his rise was a result of both contingency and chance. Both came into effect through the death of the party founder – Morgan Tsvangirai.

Chamisa’s rise to power is a result of his strategic use of populist narratives and scheming against his internal party foes. Though not openly expressed, there has always been a sentiment within party circles that Chamisa would succeed Tsvangirai ‘when the right time came’. To bring forward ‘the right’ time, there are claims that Chamisa fanned suspicion and conflicts between Tsvangirai and Tendai Biti, especially when Biti was the MDC’s secretary-general, a position to which Chamisa aspired. In the aftermath of the 2013 general elections, Biti and Elton Mangoma (then party treasurer-general) blamed Tsvangirai for the dismal loss to ZANU-PF and challenged him to resign. Chamisa, who was the organizing secretary, was also blamed for poorly organizing the election campaign and for imposing candidates on the electorate – most of whom were aligned to him.

When Tsvangirai refused to step down, 21 MDC MPs, including Biti and Mangoma, formed MDC Renewal, and Tsvangirai subsequently expelled them from the MDC. But, before the split, tensions had already been simmering between Chamisa and Tsvangirai on the one side and Biti on the other. Accordingly, the tension, which became apparent post the 2013 elections, was an expression of deep-seated animosity in the top leadership. The tensions were not only about how and why the party had fared badly in the 2013 polls, but also about the succession issue within the MDC party.

Biti and Mangoma’s acrimonious split from Tsvangirai’s MDC in 2014 benefited Chamisa and Douglas Mwonzora (then party spokesperson). The two became some of the few remaining founding members of the MDC in top leadership. However, at a party congress held in the same year, Chamisa (who was tipped to win the secretary-general position) suffered a shocking defeat to Mwonzora, who entered the race as an underdog (Chagonda, 2019). Some are of the view that Tsvangirai engineered the defeat of Chamisa as he was afraid of a young ambitious man who would challenge his presidency. In this regard, it is stated that he personally intervened in the accreditation of delegates in Manicaland to secure a nomination for Mwonzora. Tsvangirai’s then-spokesperson (Luke Tamborinyoka) denied that Tsvangirai, by playing such a role, had a hidden motive in the nomination process, as he argued that ‘the extent of Mr Tsvangirai’s involvement was to make sure that the process proceeds well . . . His involvement was just to dampen rising tempers’ (Newsday, 2014).

Post the 2014 congress and fearing that Chamisa would align with Biti and Mangoma in the MDC Renewal splinter party, Tsvangirai appointed Chamisa as the MDC’s policy and research secretary, a less influential but necessary position to keep him in the political limelight. Basking in his newly found overarching power, Tsvangirai in 2016 appointed Chamisa and Elias Mudzuri as vice-presidents unilaterally, much to the chagrin of other top party officials, especially Thokozani Khupe, who was elected as the MDC’s vice-president at the 2014 congress. The appointment of vice-presidents was ultra vires the MDC Constitution and was done only to secure Tsvangirai’s presidency by making the succession of the party’s presidency uncertain. By Tsvangirai’s decree, all three vice-presidents had equal powers and were of the same rank. To Chamisa, this was a welcome development in his political career. The vice-presidency position placed him on a solid platform to vie for the presidency when the opportunity arose.

Events came to a head in 2018 after Tsvangirai became seriously ill. Faced with the illness of the party founder, there were numerous acts of scheming by the top and middle-level politicians within the MDC-T party. Chamisa embarked on a campaign to discredit his rivals as disloyal to Tsvangirai. For instance, before his health deteriorated, Tsvangirai was negotiating with several political parties to form a coalition against ZANU-PF. Tsvangirai put Chamisa in charge of this coalition-building program. When the In Transformation Initiative (ITI), Trust Africa and the Zimbabwe Co-ordination Group (ZCG), among others, organized a coalition-building meeting in Cape Town (South Africa), Chamisa agreed to attend but then pulled out at the last minute when his fellow top party leaders – Douglas Mwonzora, Thokozani Khupe and Elias Mudzuri – were already there (Daily News, 2018).

Chamisa then used their attendance at that meeting as signs of the scheming against Tsvangirai, arguing that the party had not endorsed the trio’s participation in the coalition-building meeting. He hastily organized a National Executive Council (NEC) at the party headquarters in Harare, which turned out to be his ‘coronation’ meeting. Justifying his actions, Chamisa argued that there was a power vacuum since the passing-on of the party leader. His critics, namely Thokozani Khupe, Douglas Mwonzora and Elias Mudzuri, argued that the acting party president was supposed to have taken over, paving way for an extra-ordinary congress. Though the trio seemed to have agreed on the need for someone other than Chamisa taking over the presidency, they were somewhat divided on who was supposed to take over.

To further complicate the issue, Thokozani Khupe claimed that she was the legitimate acting president by virtue of being the only vice-president elected at congress, and in a way dismissing the two – Chamisa and Mudzuri – as mere appointees. It was against this stalemate that Chamisa’s rise was bolstered with the use of a letter that gave him an edge over the others. Tsvangirai supposedly wrote the letter just before his death, anointing Chamisa as his successor. What further eroded Khupe’s claim to the party leadership is that, prior to Tsvangirai’s death, she had absconded from numerous party meetings in protest at the appointment of the two additional vice-presidents. To his advantage, Chamisa made use of party organs and structures – including the NEC – to endorse and legitimize his rise to power in what others saw as an act of ‘forum shopping’. Consistent with the coattail theory (Gadjanova, 2019; Kaplowitz, 1971), he also rode on the support enjoyed by Tsvangirai to his own advantage. To this end, he underscored his unwavering support and loyalty to the former party leader.

Following these events, Chamisa engaged in acts of populism to gain further leverage. This included high-jacking the proceedings at Tsvangirai’s funeral to flex his grip on the party. In bolstering his firm grip on the party, he had willing agents in the form of the party youth wing. History being the best guide, it is clear that the party youths have always played an instrumental and decisive role each time there is elite leadership contestation – 2005, 2014 and lately in 2018. In 2018, they were instrumental in effecting a campaign aimed to project the need for youthful leadership at both the party and national level. But this support was not without a basis. Already Chamisa enjoyed support from MDC loyalists owing to his loyalty to founding party president Tsvangirai. He benefitted from the support that he enjoyed in the shadow of Tsvangirai, and was further helped by the fact that he inherited a party with intact structures and a support base to contest competitively in the 2018 polls.

Before 2018, MDC had never experienced a transfer of power at the presidency level. This meant that there was no ‘power transfer’ precedent. With Tsvangirai having used a combination of ‘decrees’ and political manipulation to address leadership challenges, there were no accepted rules and procedures for transfer of power because the MDC constitution had been overtaken by events (Matyszak, 2018). The constitution provided for one vice-president, yet, in reality, there were three vice-presidents. In addition, it appeared Tsvangirai had on separate occasions appointed Mudzuri and Chamisa as acting presidents. With Tsvangirai incapacitated and eventually dead, and a constitution unable to resolve leadership disputes, violence erupted. For instance, youths aligned to Chamisa (the ‘vanguards’) besieged Khupe and Mwonzora at Tsvangirai’s funeral and threatened to burn the hut in which they were hiding.

In 2014, MDC youths aligned to Tsvangirai physically assaulted Mangoma and Biti when they announced a split from the Tsvangirai-led MDC. Similarly, MDC youths physically assaulted Trudy Stevenson at the behest of Tsvangirai when the party split in 2005 (New African, 2007–2008). The 2005 split was over disagreements on whether the MDC should be in the re-introduced Senate. There were two distinct factions, the pro-Senate one which was fronted by then party secretary-general Welshman Ncube and the anti-Senate faction led by Tsvangirai (party leader). Before both camps went their separate ways, there was acrimony, rancor, hate speech and physical violence characterizing the separation of the erstwhile comrades. Thus, from the splits in 2005, 2014 and 2018, the MDC has demonstrated a propensity for using violence to resolve political disputes.

To further entrench his power, Chamisa resisted all pressure to hold an extra-ordinary congress which, in terms of the MDC constitution, was supposed to be held. Instead, Chamisa argued that holding an extra-ordinary congress was not cost-effective and was not strategic given that national elections were to be held in six months. However, financial and strategic considerations, as argued by Mwonzora (then party secretary-general), did not justify a breach of the MDC constitution. The reality is that Chamisa feared a surprise defeat from a coalition of his internal rivals (Mudzuri, Mwonzora or Khupe), and he wanted to contest in national presidential elections in order to strengthen his MDC presidency bid. Timing was important here. The reasoning was that losing the MDC presidency would not be significant if he won the general election and became Zimbabwe’s president. Hence, it was provident for him to hold the MDC extra-ordinary congress only after the national elections. An apt characterization of Chamisa’s grand scheming is that he did not want to hold an extra-ordinary congress before he purged his rivals from the MDC structures – replacing them with his supporters.

To deepen his claims to the party leadership, Chamisa instrumentalized his personal proximity to Tsvangirai, arguing that Mudzuri and Khupe were not as close to Tsvangirai. In addition to using politics of association (his closeness to Tsvangirai), he asserted that he was Tsvangirai’s political apprentice and that Tsvangirai had anointed him as the successor. Further to this ‘ordainment’, Chamisa also claimed that Tsvangirai gave him instructions on how to run the party before he passed on. In his words, he claimed: ‘Mudhara Tsvangirai akasiya andipa chinhu ichi (Tsvangirai gave me this crown). The vision is given to one person only not to many, we are following the vision’ (Daily News, 2019). Again, Chamisa presented himself as the custodian of the Tsvangirai legacy, claims which were unfortunately unverifiable. While Douglas Mwonzora and Elias Mudzuri seemed to have at the last minute countenanced his party presidency and left the fight for another day, Thokozani Khupe would have none of it. She went on to form a breakaway party and insisted on keeping the name MDC-T, as the legitimate heir of Tsvangirai. Throughout this phase, Chamisa continued to solidify his power base by arguing that Tsvangirai anointed him. Based on that, he dismantled any imminent centers of power that would challenge his rise to power and grip on the party, leaving him with only loyalists.

Nelson Chamisa in the 2018 national elections

After securing the party presidency, Chamisa faced the tumultuous task of unifying and mobilizing the party and its supporters for the 2018 national elections. Furthermore, he had to shrug off his political foes – namely Thokozani Khupe – who approached the courts to arbitrate on the MDC leadership tussle. Chamisa’s MDC, as the lead party, was part of an MDC Alliance (MDC-A) electoral pact in 2018.

Chamisa is not a political outsider; he has been in MDC leadership since its formation and under the mentorship of Morgan Tsvangirai. To that extent, he has generally been viewed as the ‘blue-eyed boy’ of Tsvangirai. Chamisa turned 40 years old in 2018, meaning he came of age at the right time to contest for the national presidency. Forty years is the minimum age limit prescribed in the Zimbabwean constitution in order to run for the presidency.

The 2018 election was important to Chamisa for a number of reasons. Internally, it was a platform to endorse and legitimize his leadership, inasmuch as it was also an opportunity to market his political brand nationally, beyond the party. Put in other words, it served as a litmus test to gauge his appeal considering that he had inherited a party built by Tsvangirai. To drum up support, he relied heavily on youthful mobilization through a campaign dubbed ‘generational consensus’. This was a campaign led by the younger generation advocating for enhanced youth political participation in political processes including in party leadership and electoral voting. Chamisa also used religious mobilization. In his rallies and speeches, he drew upon scriptures from the Bible to motivate his supporters and legitimize his MDC presidency. In the run-up to the 2018 elections, he preached the ‘mantra’ that he was ordained by the Lord as expressed in the cliché that he used throughout his campaign trail, namely, ‘God is in it’. As one scholar noted, Chamisa was ‘utilizing an evangelical Christian religious tinge’ (Scoones, 2018). While this might have endeared him to Christian voters, the reliance on biblical prophecies, instead of engaging in grassroots mobilization, invited stern criticism from within and outside his party.

But this was not a novel approach in his campaigning style. In a study on the MDC campaign in the 2013 elections, Zamchiya established that Chamisa went on to advise then-leader Tsvangirai against the guidance of experts that the party had not mobilized well enough; rather, he stated that the party was going to win resoundingly based on a prophecy that he had received (Zamchiya, 2013). This evidence shows that he is a person who strongly believes in marrying religion to political mobilization. This strategy has, however, proved to be ineffective in the case of MDC, although it is often effective in the case of ZANU-PF. The latter mobilizes voters from the traditional Christian Church (the apostolic sect) in and outside election times (Vengeyi, 2011).

Without doubt, Chamisa did tremendously well in the 2018 polls as he managed to increase the party’s vote significantly, judging from the performance of his predecessor in 2013. This managed to infuse some confidence in the generality of Zimbabweans on the outlook of the opposition’s post-Tsvangirai’s era. In this campaign, Chamisa articulated his wide vision of a ‘new Zimbabwe’, thereby projecting his party as a better alternative to the ruling party. Due to his rising popularity, it was unsurprising that, in some constituencies, Chamisa even garnered more votes than his parliamentary candidates did, especially in rural areas. In equal measure, his support meant that less appealing candidates in his party gained or leveraged votes at the parliamentary and local levels through the coattail effect. This entails that they received votes not because of their own personal or mobilization capacities, but because of their association with Chamisa, as a person. Hence, his votes automatically translated into their own votes as well. As one Zimbabwean scholar posits, Chamisa’s successful campaign was ‘aided by his magnetism, charisma, and exceptional oratory skills’ (Lewanika, 2019: 2).

Despite the fact that many extolled Chamisa for a spirited campaign that he ran against Mnangagwa’s ruling party, he also engaged in problematic practices on the campaign trail. One problem was the running of a very centralized campaign. Consequently, the campaign ended up being centered around his candidacy and not on key MDC selling points. This trend is not peculiar to the MDC party or Zimbabwe only. In weakly institutionalized parties in Africa and elsewhere, presidential campaigns are reducible to contests between the presidential candidates and are less contoured on policies and issue salience. In the case of the MDC in 2018, this lack of coordination of local-level campaigns and the focus on Chamisa as an individual affected the mobilization of voters, especially within the rural hinterlands where ZANU-PF enjoys a strong presence and dominance. Adding to this challenge, which affected the party’s electoral mobilization, the party also ran as a disjointed and factionalized entity. It fielded double candidates in several constituencies and, in the process, lost a number of seats to ZANU-PF. During this time, Chamisa’s internal critics also raised concerns regarding how and why the MDC was allowing the ZANU-PF faction of G-40 (Generation 40) – the likes of Jim Kunaka, Shadreck Mashayamombe, Kudakwashe Bhasikiti, among others – to hobnob with Chamisa.

Added to this, Chamisa also made several gaffes on the campaign trail. He pledged his own sister to the rival candidate in the face of an electoral loss. To this effect, he noted that ‘if Mnangagwa wins 5% in a free election, I will give him my sister. I have a sister who just turned 18 and looking for a husband. I’m betting on this because I know it won’t happen’ (News24, 2018). The other mistake was lying that he had a meeting with President Donald Trump, and claiming that the latter had vowed to make a financial bailout to the tune of US$15b to Zimbabwe in the case of a Chamisa presidency, a claim refuted by the US embassy in Harare (BBC Africa, 2018). By so doing, he sought to project his capacity to re-engage with the west, thus marking a distinction with his political foe (Mnangagwa).

2019 congress and Chamisa’s MDC

In May 2019, the Nelson Chamisa-led MDC held its congress in Gweru, the capital of the Midlands Province. What was particularly striking at this congress was the intense jockeying for positions among MDC leaders. However, as part of entrenching his hold on power, Chamisa’s position was ring-fenced – rendering him the uncontested president of the MDC. Just like in the run-up to the 2018 elections, Chamisa’s campaign crystallized around the youth, who ran a campaign dubbed ‘Chamisa Chete Chete’. For the 2018 national elections, this campaign underscored the need for Zimbabwean citizens to vote for Chamisa only. The entire focus was thus on the presidential candidate and not on the party. As for the internal party congress, ‘Chamisa Chete Chete’ was central to the ring-fencing mechanism whereby aspiring presidential candidates were not ‘allowed’ to challenge or contest him.

For this reason, those who expressed interest in his position were ostracized and their characters assassinated. This, however, is not to deny the fact that his victory seemed guaranteed even if the playing field had been level and liberalized. For instance, Douglas Mwonzora, who had shown interest in the presidency, did not receive enough nominations. Political analysts and party supporters intimate that Mwonzora’s desire and expressed interest in the top post was ill-timed, considering that Chamisa had done relatively well by garnering more than two million votes for the party in the 2018 harmonized elections. By any fair standard, the party sentiment was rooting for Chamisa and no one else. Consequently, through the coattail effect, most (though not all) of Chamisa’s loyalists received top positions. As it would turn out, some fell by the wayside. These include Lilian Timvieos, Morgan Komichi (now turned arch-rival for Chamisa), Tracy Mutinhiri (who has since deserted the party and rejoined ZANU-PF), Murisi Zwizwai, Lovemore Chinoputsa and Happymore Chidziva, among others (Chronicle, 2019).

On a closer look, it is noticeable that, though the main congress was held with minimal contestation, it was the lower congresses at the provincial level that were marred with infighting. This occurred mainly out of claims that the pro-Chamisa camp decimated local party structures at the district, ward and provincial level and, in the process, staked the structures with Chamisa’s loyalists. Following a similar pattern with previous congresses, candidates who belonged in Chamisa’s camp ran under ‘slate politics’. In this sense, it meant that most, except for a few, ran aligned to Chamisa, or under his preferred slate, a situation that reduced the congresses to personality-based politics. Candidates’ appeal, competencies, skills, knowledge, manifestoes, vision, and experience within the party did not matter; what mattered was their allegiance to Chamisa. Broadly speaking, and judging from the composition of the current leadership, we posit that owing to the slate politics, party diversity and leadership experience have become casualties in the MDC (post the 2019 congress). This results in a weak opposition unable to challenge ZANU-PF, a party of liberation, which boasts of personnel well equipped and steeped in the art of statecraft.

Claims also emerged that the Organizing and Elections departments in the MDC manipulated the internal voter registry to the extent that some legitimate voters were removed from the register. These claims, however, remain difficult to verify due to inconclusive investigations by the MDC into voter irregularities. What remains irrefutable is that the MDC party has always had a history of contestations regarding the outcome of internal party primaries. This is probably an indicator of how the party has failed to internalize internal democratic processes and deliberations over time.

Post-congress MDC

In the aftermath of the 2018 elections, and post the 2019 congress, Chamisa’s MDC has found itself engrossed in a legitimacy debate. This relates to questioning Emmerson Mnangagwa’s 2018 victory which the party rules as ‘illegitimate’ based on the grounds that the elections were rigged by the election management body – the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) – in favor of the incumbent. While such claims gained traction among opposition supporters and beyond, it appears this is slowly losing steam locally and regionally. To this end, even sympathetic critics argue that Chamisa’s MDC is doing a disservice to itself by focusing on the legitimacy issue, which seems to be a dusted issue. They argue that, though continuing to evoke the legitimacy issue may increase chances of Chamisa receiving more concessions in the unlikely event of a negotiated transitional or coalition government, it is not a sustainable strategy. By planning beyond the legitimacy argument, the MDC might be able to redirect its focus and energy on party building and mobilization of structures in preparation for the next polls due in 2023.

The issue of legitimacy around the Mnangagwa presidency has not been the only issue where the MDC seems to be at sixes and sevens. There appears to be a lack of consensus within the MDC leadership on whether and how to engage with the Mnangagwa administration insofar as protest action and negotiations are concerned. While it seems that Chamisa and other moderates are warming up to the idea of conditional negotiations to extricate the country from the economic and political morass it is currently in, there is a camp of hardliners opposed to such an approach. The hardliners include Tendai Biti, Job Sikhala and Thabitha Khumalo, among others. Drawing parallels with the Government of National Unity (GNU), they argue that any settlement with ZANU-PF will resuscitate a ‘crumbling’ ZANU-PF. The ‘hardliners’ privilege harnessing what they term as ‘people’s power’, as expressed through collective action aimed at making the country ungovernable. This lack of consensus on strategy has seemingly deepened fault lines within the leadership, resulting in a paralysis of strategy on how to deal with ZANU-PF, which is increasingly resorting to violence and selective prosecution of MDC leaders, activists and journalists.

It may be indisputable that Chamisa has become a household name, perhaps even more popular than his party as shown in the last election. Nevertheless, in subsequent by-elections, both at constituency and local government level, MDC has fared badly. For instance, in the recent local by-election in Shurugwi in 2019, the candidate for the MDC-A, of which Chamisa’s MDC is the flagship party, garnered only 16 votes (Matendere, 2019). Such a disturbing trend speaks to several issues: lack of party presence in the rural areas, absence of party structures to mobilize supporters, absence of key rural strategies to woo voters, and complacency on the part of the top elites. This then raises the question of whether Nelson Chamisa’s political star is still on the rise or is waning. This introspection is quite relevant notwithstanding the fact he did relatively well in the previous national election. It is simply not enough for the MDC under the leadership of Chamisa to sit on its laurels and bask in the past glory derived from the statistics of the 2018 elections. Instead, the party needs a clear critical evaluation of whether it is growing or contracting its support base, if the past by-election results are anything to go by.

Chamisa’s leadership is hailed for ushering in new blood and fresh ideas to the 20-year-old party through his short stint at the helm of the party. But there are disturbing trends as well. A percipient example is the several problematic changes made to the party constitution. To some, this does not bode well for nurturing internal party democracy as such acts tend to entrench personalist rule within party organizations. At the 2019 congress, several changes were made to the party constitution. This saw several posts that used to be contested at congress – for example, spokesman, deputy chairperson, deputy treasurer, deputy secretary-general, among others – being reduced to mere political appointments by the party president.

The fact that, as a party president, Chamisa now wields such substantial power is reminiscent of claims about the Iron Law of Oligopoly (Michels, 1915). In this regard, party congresses are then reduced to platforms that only rubberstamp decisions made behind closed doors by party elites, which is an affront to democratic practices expected of party organizations. At the same time, viewed differently, the changes might give the party president the leeway to appoint and deploy competent and experienced high-ranking party officials, and appease disgruntled sections of the party. In doing so this might also help in building party unity especially emerging from a polarizing, bruising and divisive internal leadership s/election process.

Fast forward to 2020, and the party has suffered another split. In March 2020, the Supreme Court, in a matter brought to court by MDC’s Elias Mashavira (organizing secretary of Gokwe Sesame District), ruled that the MDC led by Chamisa flouted its own regulations and should revert to the MDC party structure as it was in 2014, while it prepares for an extra-ordinary congress. The essence of the argument was that the congress held in 2019 was ultra vires the MDC constitution, and hence was illegal. Morgan Komichi, Douglas Mwonzora and Elias Mudzuri (part of Khupe’s own MDC-T party) supported the Supreme Court decision. They have recalled several Chamisa-linked MDC MPs, councilors and the Harare Mayor Herbert Gomba (who has since been replaced by Chamisa-linked Jacob Mafume), all whom are alleged to have ceased being members of the MDC-T through their acts and deeds.

For now, unity between the two factions remains a remote prospect. Chamisa and his supporters insist that the MDC-A morphed into a political party and that the congress they held in 2019 was in effect an MDC-A congress. The implication of the ongoing tug-of-war and political stand-off between the two camps (MDC-T and MDC-A) is that this will ultimately weaken opposition unity at a time when it should be pulling from one end; and, in the process, demanding wide-ranging electoral, media, legislative, security sector and political reforms from the Mnangagwa regime which is increasingly becoming intransigent and ruthless with each passing day.

Seeming to replicate a path dependency trajectory, again personal egos more than political values, as well as the failure to resolve conflicts amicably and internally, has thus led to another split within the MDC party formation. This split has come amid a deepening economic, humanitarian and political crisis at national level, with calls for a national dialogue and settlement between Chamisa and Mnangagwa growing louder. Despite the internal bickering between the two MDC formations, it seems apparent that in any mediated settlement (whether it is a National Transitional Authority (NTA) or a government of national unity), Chamisa’s MDC has an upper hand in deciding the course of the transition. This derives from the number of voters he garnered in the last polls and the significant support base that he still commands, compared to Khupe’s MDC.

That being said, both factions of the MDC will have to find each other and stop celebrating ‘small internal victories’ which are self-defeating, if ever they are going to form a formidable and united front ahead of the 2023 elections. Beyond external issues including electoral reforms and conducting free and fair elections, opposition unity is a key ingredient for opposition victory as attested by the recent events in Malawi. Until such time as both factions realize that winning internal fights is not the be-all-and-end-all, the future of the main opposition in Zimbabwe remains bleak.

Conclusion

The article traced the rise of Chamisa and his consolidation of power within the MDC, including after the death of Tsvangirai and across the Mugabe-Mnangagwa ‘eras’. It focused on the personality, politics and leadership style of Nelson Chamisa as a product of the party during his rise within the party ranks, in a way relating this to broader political themes and processes such as MDC internal elections, factionalism, stability and institutionalism and, further, the party’s prospects for electoral success.

There is a reinforcing nexus between Chamisa’s leadership style and that of his predecessor (Tsvangirai) insofar as personality politics and entrenchment of excessive power within the party leader are concerned. Across the Tsvangirai-Chamisa periods, there is a continuation in evoking the illegitimacy of the ZANU-PF leader, with Chamisa taking a cue from Tsvangirai’s disputation of Mugabe’s reign in challenging Mnangagwa’s legitimacy. Chamisa’s MDC has done this by refusing to acknowledge Mnangagwa’s victory, refusing to join smaller opposition parties’ engagement with ZANU-PF under the Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD), and in spurning the offer of being an opposition leader in parliament. His fears are, however, legitimate and understandable considering the history of ZANU-PF’s machinations in seeking to liquidate opposition parties. At the same time, the MDC party’s prospects in the future elections hang in the balance following a tumultuous power struggle that has split the party regarding the unresolved succession tussle. Likewise, the institutionalism and stability of Chamisa’s MDC, in terms of structured processes and mechanisms conducive to internal democracy, seem in doubt.