Who Owns Zimbabwe’s Opposition? Politicians, Journalists or ZANU-PF?

There is something peculiar about Zimbabwean politics that deserves far more serious examination.

We spend considerable time asking: Who represents the real alternative?

Perhaps the more important question is: What exactly does “being in opposition” mean anymore?

In a conventional democracy, the distinction should be reasonably straightforward. The governing party governs. Rival political formations organise themselves as alternative governments. Journalists scrutinise both. Civil society pressures all sides. Citizens ultimately decide through elections who should govern.

Zimbabwe has developed something considerably more complicated.

The space loosely described as the “opposition arena” has become a political marketplace in its own right. Political parties compete for influence within it. Activists occupy parts of it. Civil-society organisations operate within it. Journalists and media institutions sometimes move beyond observing it and become important actors inside it.

And, remarkably, ZANU-PF itself frequently enters the same terrain.

The result is one of the great paradoxes of Zimbabwean politics: ZANU-PF has sometimes managed to behave simultaneously as the government and as its own challenger.

When the referee enters the pitch

Zimbabwe’s ruling party has long understood something that its rivals have sometimes failed to appreciate: politics is not merely about controlling government. It is about controlling the political conversation.

Zimbabwe has historically developed a deeply polarised media environment. At various times, sections of the media have been identified so closely with either the establishment or its critics that the traditional boundary between journalism and political activism has become increasingly blurred.

This complicates the relationship between journalism and politics.

A journalist has every right—and indeed a professional obligation—to challenge government.

But there is a difference between scrutinising political challengers and competing with politicians to determine who should lead them.

When journalists begin prescribing leadership changes, campaigning for particular political configurations, declaring who must step aside, deciding which figures are sufficiently radical or compromised, and positioning themselves as arbiters of legitimacy within the alternative political space, journalism risks becoming political participation by another name.

Zimbabwe’s history makes some of this understandable. Journalists themselves have faced intimidation, arrest, censorship and repression.

But the democratic question remains important: Who scrutinises political challengers when those supposedly observing them have themselves become participants in the contest for influence within that same space?

ZANU-PF’s most extraordinary trick

Then comes ZANU-PF.

Perhaps one of the ruling party’s greatest political achievements has been understanding that it does not always need to destroy rival political formations.

Sometimes it merely needs to occupy their territory.

Factional battles within ZANU-PF can become so intense that ruling-party figures suddenly speak in the language normally associated with its critics.

They denounce corruption.

They attack elites.

They complain about captured institutions.

They expose one another.

They present themselves as victims of the establishment—even while belonging to it.

This creates a fascinating political decoy.

Instead of the national conversation being: Government versus alternative government, it becomes: Government faction A versus government faction B.

The ruling party therefore consumes both sides of the political oxygen.

It becomes protagonist and antagonist.

Authority and critic.

Establishment and rebel.

And genuine alternative political formations are pushed further towards the edge of the national conversation.

It is political ventriloquism of an extraordinary kind: the government can sometimes supply both the voice of authority and the voice apparently challenging it.

The career challenger

There is another uncomfortable character in Zimbabwe’s political story: the career challenger.

This is not simply someone who has spent many years outside government. Longevity itself proves nothing. Political change can take decades.

The problem arises when dissent becomes an occupation rather than a route towards governing.

There is a fundamental difference between being opposed to government and being a credible alternative government.

The first requires criticism.

The second requires competence, structures, policy, leadership succession, economic programmes, institutional credibility and a plausible pathway to power.

Too much Zimbabwean political rhetoric stops at:

“We need new leadership.”

Fine.

Who?

To implement what?

Through which institutions?

With what economic programme?

What happens during the first hundred days?

How will agriculture work?

What happens to currency policy?

What becomes of Zimbabwe’s international debt?

What is the industrial strategy?

What reforms would be introduced in education, healthcare, local government and public administration?

Calling for new leadership without presenting a credible alternative is rather like announcing:

“Zimbabwe must go to space.”

Wonderful.

Where is the spacecraft?

You cannot announce a mission to Mars and then arrive at the launch pad with a fleet of buses.

Yet this is sometimes what passes for political engagement: an endless description of what is wrong without an equally serious explanation of what would replace it.

The “Madhuku strategy”

Robert Mugabe once offered a particularly controversial interpretation of this phenomenon.

Speaking about constitutional activist Lovemore Madhuku and the National Constitutional Assembly, Mugabe accused some government critics of deliberately provoking confrontation with the authorities in order to attract arrest, international media attention and ultimately greater international support.

He referred to this alleged political method as a “Madhuku strategy.”

It is important to distinguish Mugabe’s allegation from fact. It was his political interpretation of the behaviour of opponents, and should therefore be understood within the context of the bitter political struggles of the period.

But stripped of the personalities involved, the accusation raises a broader question that remains relevant:

Can dissent itself become an economy?

Can permanent political crisis create careers, institutions, donor relationships, media brands, speaking circuits and public identities whose continued relevance depends upon the crisis never quite ending?

That question should not be directed only at political challengers.

It should be asked of government politicians, activists, NGOs, journalists, commentators and indeed anyone whose economic or social relevance becomes connected to Zimbabwe’s permanent political conflict.

Because once dissent becomes an industry, political resolution can paradoxically threaten the livelihoods of some of those participating in it.

Dissent as a brand

This brings us to perhaps Zimbabwe’s deeper political problem.

Some individuals no longer appear to be campaigning merely from a position of dissent.

They have built identities around dissent itself.

The distinction matters.

A genuine political formation should ultimately want to abolish its own status as challenger by winning power.

Its destination is government.

A permanent critic has a different incentive.

Their relevance comes from remaining the voice of critique.

Every political crisis creates another interview.

Every controversy creates another headline.

Every government failure creates another opportunity to demonstrate relevance.

Every failure within rival formations creates another opportunity to declare:

“We need new leadership.”

And so the cycle reproduces itself.

But ZANU-PF cannot escape responsibility

None of this should become an excuse for pretending Zimbabwe operates on a perfectly level democratic playing field.

Critics of Zimbabwe’s political system have for decades raised concerns about restrictions on political competition, the treatment of dissenting figures, media freedom, electoral institutions and the advantages enjoyed by the incumbent.

Therefore, criticising weaknesses within rival political formations must never become a convenient method of erasing the structural advantages enjoyed by the ruling party.

Both things can be true.

The political field can be unfair, and rival formations can still be strategically inadequate.

Acknowledging one does not require denying the other.

Zimbabwe needs an alternative, not merely dissent

Perhaps Zimbabwe’s problem begins with the language itself.

We have become obsessed with opposition.

Who is the real challenger?

Who betrayed the movement?

Which journalist supports which side?

Who is a ZANU-PF project?

Who is dividing the movement?

Who should lead the alternative space?

The country might benefit from asking a more demanding question:

Who represents a credible alternative government?

That changes everything.

A political challenger merely tells us why ZANU-PF should leave.

A government-in-waiting tells us what happens the morning after ZANU-PF leaves.

A protest movement mobilises anger.

A credible alternative converts dissatisfaction into institutions, policies, personnel and electoral organisation.

A permanent critic can survive indefinitely on commentary.

A government-in-waiting must eventually demonstrate that it can govern.

That is the standard Zimbabwe should begin demanding.

Because until then, the political space will remain overcrowded—with politicians, journalists, activists, political entrepreneurs, ruling-party factions and personalities all competing to become the loudest voice of critique in the room.

And ZANU-PF may continue performing its most remarkable political trick:

governing the country while simultaneously occupying enough of the space of dissent to influence the argument about who should replace it.

Perhaps that is the ultimate Zimbabwean political paradox.

In a country seemingly obsessed with removing the government, everybody wants a share of dissent—but too few appear determined to become the government.