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Abstract

This paper explores the role of language in the scientific study of politics. Conceding that politics is naturally an arena of heated disputation, it examines linguistic manifestations of factional polarisation by interpreting words, phrases, and sentences used by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) politicians during the party’s acrimonious splits of 2005 and 2014 and subsequent re-union of 2017. I contend that the use of vituperative, exclusionary and inflammatory language fuelled personality clashes; ethnic chauvinism; sexism; racism; ideological discord and intraparty violence. This often derailed attempts to reconcile the party’s bickering factions.

Keywords

Morgan Tsvangirai factions MDC-Mutambara insults MDC-Renewal Nelson Chamisa

Introduction

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is certainly the toughest political opposition that the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) party has encountered since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. In its 23 years of existence, the MDC, working hand in glove with its alliance partners, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), defied odds by dramatically defeating ZANU PF in a constitutional reform referendum in 2000. In 2008, the MDC won a combined 110 representatives in parliament while ZANU got 97 and for the first time, Morgan Tsvangirai (now deceased) trounced the seemingly invincible Robert Mugabe (now deceased) in a first round of the presidential election of 29 March 2008 whose results were officially announced after a whooping 30 days (http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1817057,00.html). Tsvangirai would later boycott the 27 June 2008 rerun of the presidential election citing allegations of vote rigging, voter repression and brazen violence that had culminated in the brutal murder and internal displacement of thousands of his supporters. Uncontested, Mugabe won the election rerun but faced a legitimacy crisis that forced him to eventually share executive power with his political nemesis Tsvangirai, who became the Prime Minister, in a SADC brokered political truce called the Government of National Unity (GNU) from 2009-2013.

However, despite its political successes, the MDC was dogged by endless controversies that have threatened its existence as a political institution in Zimbabwe. From 2005 to 2021, the party was embroiled in nasty leadership wrangles that culminated in several splinter factional groupings such as MDC-Tsvangirai (MDC-T), MDC-Mutambara/Ncube (MDC-M/N), MDC-99, MDC-Renewal (MDC-R), People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe (RDZ), Congress of Democrats (CODE), Alliance for National Salvation (ANSA), MDC-Alliance (MDC-A) and Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC). The alarming rate at which splits occurred in the MDC particularly in comparison with older African political establishments such as the African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA) in South Africa; Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) and Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO) and Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO) among several others is a concern that deserves further study. With eight full-fledged political parties directly tracing their footsteps to the MDC, the following questions begin to emerge: Did MDC politicians manipulate words, phrases, clauses, and sentences entrench factionalism during the party’s 2005 and 2014 splits? Did a conciliatory use of language play a role towards factional reunion of 2017?

Notwithstanding the multiplicity of political scientists and sociologists who have expertly studied several aspects relating to the party’s internal and external politics (Makonye, 2021; Marongwe, 2022; Mukwara and Chikonzo, 2021) and media personnel that have not only provided superb coverage but also brilliant analyses of the split events within the MDC, this article focuses on unravelling the language factor and its effects in stifling or spurring factional divisions in the party. Adopting a different perspective from Moyo (2020: 79) who correctly asserts that, ‘the reasons for the splits in MDC revolved around ideological contradictions, structural incoherence, deficiency in internal democracy, and succession or leadership renewal questions’, my interest in this article is to probe the extent to which language could have functioned as a doubled-edged sword that abetted and abated internal strife in the party. Because some direct offshoots from the MDC particularly the CCC (formerly called MDC-Alliance) party continue to demonstrate sufficient political strength to take on ZANU PF, I seek to examine the extent which MDC’s internal power struggles were reflected through the prism of language. I adopt a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective to understand how MDC politicians’ used and misused of language to entrench factionalism, tribalism, racialism, violence and sexism in the party. Since the activities of the MDC-Alliance which was rebranded and subsequently renamed Citizens Coalition For Change (CCC) in February 2022 continue draw immense intellectual interest among local and international students in political studies and other social science disciplines, the academia, the diplomatic community and the general society, studying the role of language use and discourse framing in political communication in Zimbabwe is therefore essential.

The movement for democratic change

The MDC was formed against a backdrop of crippling demonstrations over the deteriorating constitutional, economic and political crises in Zimbabwe. A series of industrial actions had set the ZCTU, which mainly represented workers but also included civil society and student activists, on a collision course with the state between 1996 and 1998. Enraged by repeated mass actions against his government, then president, Robert Mugabe, publicly dared the labour body to form a political party (Maroleng, 2004). This culminated in the formation of the MDC on 11 September 1999. United more by a cause to end ZANU PF’s growing authoritarianism than by any consensus in political policies, the newly formed party was from its inception riddled by ‘significant fault-lines of ethnicity, class, and ideology’ (Coltart, 2014: 443). Apparent at the outset was an archipelago of different ideas, ambitions, interests, and personalities that were loosely tied together just to depose ZANU PF from power. Such glaring faulty lines were easily exploitable by the state’s agent provocateurs who infiltrated and caused internecine power struggles, factional polarity and entrenched factionalism in the party (Auret, 2009; Coltart, 2014; Maroleng, 2004; Moyo, 2020; Tsvangirai, 2011).

Factionalism is a pervasive phenomenon across all domains, for example, education, religion, business and administration. In politics, several intra-party factional conflicts have been documented, for instance, in South Africa’s African National Congress; United Kingdom’s Labour Party; Spain’s Socialist Party; China’s Communist Party and USA’s Democratic and Republican parties. In Zimbabwean politics, almost all parties have been embroiled in factionalism as both Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and ZANU PF have had their own shares of messy incidences internal power struggles (Chung, 2006; Hove, 2019; Mashingaidze, 2010; Nyambi, 2016; Sibanda, 2021; Sithole, 1979). In the context of the MDC, two antagonistic camps emerged following disagreements over whether or not to participate in the then-introduced senatorial elections in October 2005. A group led by the founding president, Morgan Tsvangirai, was vehemently opposed to the party’s participation in the proposed elections arguing that, among other things, a senate was a ZANU PF project conveniently created to exacerbate the looting of state resources. Against the backdrop of disputed March 2005 parliamentary elections, Tsvangirai questioned the logic of participating in another ‘sham’ election that would ‘breed illegitimate outcomes’ in favour of ZANU PF’s kleptocratic regime (https://www.news24.com/News24/MDC-leader-gains-support20051021). But an opposing group co-led by vice-president, Gibson Sibanda, and secretary general, Professor Welshman Ncube (now deceased), adamantly insisted that MDC’s only avenue for democratic expression was through participating in elections (https://www.news24.com/News24/MDC-leader-gains-support-20051021). The continued dithering ultimately resulted in a secret ballot where 66 members of the national council voted. The outcome was 33-31 in favour of participating with two votes deemed spoilt. In response, Tsvangirai invoked his presidential privilege to veto the national council’s decision and unilaterally declared that the party would boycott senate elections. That escalated the acrimonious bickering and cemented the party’s split into MDC-Mutambara (MDC-M) and MDC-Tsvangirai (MDC-T).

After an inconclusive harmonised plebiscite in 2008, both MDC factions became part of a SADC mediated inclusive Government of National Unity (GNU) between 2009 and 2013. During that time, Job Sikhala, a national executive member in the MDC-M led a breakaway faction that identified itself as MDC-99 in 2010. He claimed that both MDC-T and MDC-M had abandoned the founding principles and values of the original MDC. Naming his faction MDC-99, Sikhala basically framed his discourse to encourage party sympathisers ‘to go back to our 1999 original agenda’ while also attempting to convince party supporters ‘that we are the MDC which still aspires to the 1999 resolutions’ (https://nehandaradio.com/2012/03/02/job-sikhala-on-question-time-part-1/). Sikhala castigated what he described as ‘the personification of the institution called MDC’ by some ambitious members who had usurped and transformed the party into personality cults by suffixing their surnames and faces onto the party’s name and symbol as was the case with MDC-T and MDC-M/N (Mwonzora and Hodzi, 2021). In 2014, MDC-T’s secretary general, Tendai Biti, and treasurer general, Elton Mangoma, formed a splinter faction that described itself as MDC-Renewal. They alleged that ‘the party has been hijacked by a dangerous fascist clique bent on destroying the same’ and went further to lambast Tsvangirai for ‘totally working against the working people of Zimbabwe’ for squandering three electoral opportunities to dethrone Mugabe from power (https://mg.co.za/article/2014-04-27-morgan-tsvangirai-suspended-by-mdc/).

In 2017, dispersed MDC formations later coalesced and reunited. They were joined by four other opposition parties namely, Transform Zimbabwe (TZ), Multiracial Democrats (MD), Zimbabwe People First (ZPF) and Zimbabwe African National Union – Ndonga (ZANU Ndonga). Led by Tsvangirai, Ncube and Biti, MDC formations and other little known parties entered into a political truce that culminated in the MDC-Alliance (MDC-A). However, another power struggle erupted following Tsvangirai’s demise in 2018 as his ambitious vice presidents, Nelson Chamisa and Thokozani Khupe, battled to inherit the vacant throne. As in previous splits, violence, tribalist and sexist slurs and strong language accompanied the acrimonious split culminating in Chamisa leading MDC-Alliance coalition while Khupe retained what she called the ‘original MDC-T’. While what was ‘original’ about her faction of the MDC-T was not fully explained, Khupe led the party until December 2020 when she lost the presidency to Douglas Mwonzora, amid serious allegations of violence, nepotism and vote rigging. She was physically attacked and publicly humiliated as ‘Hure’ (whore) and later retraced her footsteps to Chamisa’s rebranded CCC (formerly MDC-A) in 2021. In view of the continuous splits and subsequent reunions, this article investigates the extent to which politicians’ use of vituperative, exclusionary and inflammatory language fuelled personality clashes; ethnic chauvinism; sexism; racism; ideological discord and intraparty violence.

Language use in politics

Because politics is an arena of heated argumentation (Theocharis et al., 2020: 1), politicians are always engaged in perennial tussles to impose, depose, delegitimise, invalidate, discredit and out-manoeuvre their competitors (Mutz and Reeves, 2005; Theocharis et al., 2020). In constant display is the demonstration of wit, charisma, demagoguery, and oratory as seen by the mastery of language in all its caustic, ironic, circumlocutive, and vitriolic forms. In that regard, eminent scholars such as George Orwell underscore politicians’ obsession with controlling the meaning and use of words in the political arena (Orwell, 1946). He argues that because politicians are adept at changing and twisting vocabulary to shape the masses’ thought processes, words used in the realm of politics deserve further qualification, examination and possible correction since ‘politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia’ (Orwell, 1946). Orwell’s allusions evince the significance of discourse analysis in view of a rising tide of ‘political marketing’ to capture and retain the attention of a wider audience using language (Boodhoo and Purmessur, 2009) more than other forms of political communication.

Political discourse is always aimed at interaction, including interruption, debate and negotiation justifying why language is sometimes used as a counter mobilisation tool to incriminate, marginalise, silence, side-line, (de)legitimise and abandon other members in society. According to Prior (2013), in politically heated climates, words, phrases, sentences and languages may be framed to seduce less knowledgeable people to follow and reinforce partisan views. Words have direct implications on race, class, sex, gender, and ethnicity (Demszky et al., 2019). Language use can either deepen or repair existing racial, linguistic, political and ethnic divides. For instance, the ‘Birther Movement’ in the United States of America that was started by Hillary Clinton in 2007–2008 and ‘finished’ by Donald Trump in 2009–2011 witnessed virulent citizenship campaigns against Barack Obama (Klinkner, 2014). Irrespective of evidence to the contrary, the two White politicians attempted to use citizenship as a counter-mobilising exclusionary tool to marginalise and bastardise Obama’s participation in politics on grounds of his race and ethnicity. Similar to Obama’s political victimisation in the United States, the metaphorical reference of Jews as ‘rats’ during the Holocaust produced disastrous genocidal consequences (Smith, 2011) whereas the use of aggressive words such as inyenzi (cockroaches) and inkota (snakes) contributed towards the Rwandan genocide in 1994 (Hilker, 2011; Hintjens, 2001).

However, language use in politics may help promote social cohesion. In United States, Martin Luther King’s skilled use of language in his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech could have inspired a change of laws, attitudes, and behaviour towards racial tolerance, non-violence and respect for humanity irrespective of race, colour, or creed across the world. Responsible use of language can mobilise a sense of ethnic, regional or national pride in large, culturally diverse countries. In Africa, president Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa (socialism; literally ‘familyhood’) philosophy helped increase literacy and numeracy skills, strengthened national unity while also reducing infant mortality in post-independent Tanzania. A choice of words, slogans or terms such as Ujamaa motivated people to work together. Quite recently, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has, thus far, tactfully used language to embolden and invigorate his people to defence their territory against Russia, a seemingly indomitable invader. Zelenskyy’s ‘sɫaʋɐ ʊkrɐˈjinʲi/ Slava Ukraine’ (Long live Ukraine) rhetoric in appealing for military and diplomatic support has propelled him to folk-hero status not only among his own people, but also in the halls of Western legislative power (https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-03-16/ukraine-zelenskyspeeches-have-made-him-folk-hero). Because language plays a pivotal role in political communication, this article examines the extent to which power struggles in MDC have been reflected, abetted and abated through politicians’ use of language.

Sources

The acrimony that surrounded the split of the MDC in 2005 and 2014 is well documented. The article draws from critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine language use within the MDC. Critical Discourse Analysis links up ‘several methods of communication including spoken and written word, body language and gestures, as well as alternative media such as sound and visual aids’ (Van Djik, 1995). In the context of MDC’s factional fights in 2005 and 2014, the media (print, broadcast and electronic), autobiographies, political songs, speeches at rallies and minutes of meetings were collected and examined as among the ‘strategies of manipulation, legitimation, the manufacture of consent and other discursive ways to influence the minds of people in the interests of the powerful’ (Van Djik, 1995: 18).

Because CDA includes a combination of interdiscursive analysis of texts (different genres, discourses and styles), public and private media provide the juicy details as politicians battled to shape or alter the mind-set of Zimbabweans. Stories and opinions in daily and weekly newspapers provide a golden opportunity to analyse the extent to which language was manipulated to attain factional traction in the party. Local newspapers such as The Daily News, The Newsday and The Herald, alongside international tabloids such as Sunday Times (South Africa), The Weekenders (United Kingdom), and The Washington Post (United States of America) were relied upon as they helped frame a discourse that influenced the way party supporters’ interpreted the political splits of 2005 and 2014 as well as reunions of 2017. These were key sources of information as political activists employed rhetoric that justified their viewpoints and explained their ideologies in a bid to sway public opinion. This allows a determination whether or not language use in the MDC could have helped dissipate or heighten political tensions.

For political legitimation, some politicians have written autobiographies whose narrative accounts – notwithstanding their deliberate omissions, additions and simplifications – are very useful in describing the extent to which political actors used language in relation to the splits. In that regard, Morgan Tsvangirai’s, Michael Auret’s (now deceased) and David Coltart’s autobiographies provide rare eyewitness accounts of the 2005 split. I focus on the three authors’ narrations to understand the critical links that existed between language, event, discourse, behaviour, interaction and the wider factional conditions that prevailed prior to, during and after MDC’s splits. Linked to that, public rally speeches were useful in communicating events that transpired in MDC leadership meetings. Political songs were also critical sources as ‘neither written word nor radio transmission can convey these oral-physical symbols’ (Moore, 2020). Also, despite being evidently subjective factional material functioning as tools to discredit and sully factional opponents, political songs are examined to understand how music may influence politics or how it can be equally influenced by politics (Chitando and Mlambo, 2020). This provides, guided by CDA, an opportune chance to explore the extent to which MDC politicians manipulated language to justify perceptions, settle factional scores and legitimate factional narratives.

Tsvangirai and the mhondoro yenyika narratives

With political leaders becoming faces of their parties, a cult of personality in politics is widespread in most countries. Similar to what Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2009) describes as ‘Mugabeism’ where the former president was the only centre of power enjoying unquestionable loyalty in ZANU PF and the state, MDC also invested in a grand political marketing strategy. Local and international media, political and civil activists collectively framed a discourse that branded Morgan Tsvangirai as a courageous, feisty and combative fighter for democracy in Zimbabwe.

Joining the bandwagon of ZANU PF politicians-cum-musicians such as Elliot Manyika, Brian Mteki, Tambaoga (Last Chiangwa) and Cde Chinx (Dick Chingaira Makoni), MDC activists, Paul Madzore, Dread Reckless (Happison Mabika) and Sister Fearless (Patience Takaona), also dabbled into music. They did not only use music to openly announce their factional allegiances (Mukwara and Chikonzo, 2021) but also to celebrate their leader through music. In a song Chikara cheZanu (A beast that destroys ZANU), they lyrically sang:

Zanu yomira nani? (Who stands with ZANU?). Chikara cheZanu ndiwe Morgan (The beast that destroys Zanu is you Morgan). Bhobho womanya nani (Who runs against Bhobho? (Mugabe’s nickname)). Mikono yagwadama (Bulls have knelt down). Chikara chezanu ndiwe Morgan (The beast that destroys Zanu is you Morgan). Tsvangirai chitonga wee (Tsvangirai rule, please).

In another song on the same album titled Famba Tsvangirai, they sang:

Save musacheuka muridzo ngwarirai mabasa eZanu famba baba vedu tiende dzamara tatora nyika yedu (Save (Tsvangirai’s totem) don’t listen to whistling beware of Zanu’s antics, keep going our father until we take back our country)).

Tsvangirai imhondoro/igamba (re)yenyika ino kwatakabva naye kurefu isu semachinja takatevera Ncube naSibanda vakasara. Takasiya zvichingokakavadzana nenyaya yekurwira kutonga. (Tsvangirai is a lion of the country we came a long way with him. We, as MDC people, followed but Ncube and Sibanda remained behind. We left them embroiled in leadership wrangles).

Considering that music adds extra emotional and lyrical aura (Chitando and Mlambo, 2020), the careful framing of Dread Reckless’s and Sister Fearless’s language in singing Chikara cheZanu and Famba Tsvangirai was designed to produce a powerful propagandistic effect. In Shona language, the word chikara literally translates into a monstrous animal that causes unimaginable fear and enormous trepidation to its enemies. Of all the carnivorous animals in the entire cat family, the lion (mhondoro) is the most feared monster (chikara). Within the context of Zimbabwe’s national politics, the song Chikara cheZanu salutes Tsvangirai’s daring courage to fight ZANU PF and Robert Mugabe head on. As the metaphorical Chikara cheZanu, he has skillfully ignited fear in the hearts of political enemies to the extent that they have knelt down before him (mikono yagwadama). In one instance, kneeling (kugwadama) culturally symbolises fear induced by defeat in combat while in one instance and in another instance it signals respect to some superior authority within one’s presence. In Zimbabwe’s combative politics, combat situations, kugwadama suggests acceptance of defeat which resonates with song’s celebratory and victorious ending mode when is Tsvangirai cajoled to rule (Tsvangirai chitonga wee). Whereas this was mere party propaganda, it was framed in a way to sway public opinion as citizens’ attitudes can be influenced significantly by how the political elite frame its discourse (Chong and Druckman, 2007; Sadowsky, 2017).

The literal meaning of the Shona word mhondoro is a lion, a carnivorous animal feared but also famed for its bravery and unmatchable predatory skills that enable it to make meals out of even physically bigger and stronger animals than itself. In the wake of the party’s first split in 2005, the song Famba Tsvangirai (Go Tsvangirai) portrayed Tsvangirai as Baba vedu (Our father) to remind ordinary party supporters that he was the unrivalled godfather of opposition politics in Zimbabwe. It similarly presents him as mhondoro yenyika (the country’s lion) and gamba renyika (the country’s hero) as a means to imprint a heroic image of Tsvangirai as the doyen of democracy in the minds of his political foes internal and external enemies in both MDC and ZANU PF. Using such hegemonic titles such as mhondoro, baba and gamba renyika, Dread Reckless and Sister Fearless created a familial imagery that celebrated Tsvangirai’s heroic and paternalistic role in leading the democratisation agenda in Zimbabwe. The framing of their discourse empowered them to take a swipe at the pro-senate faction by presenting its co-leaders, Gibson Sibanda and Welshman Ncube, as power hungry politicians (zvichingokakavadzana nekurwira kutonga). In a spectacular way that highlights that politics and music influenced each other, Tsvangirai scornfully dismissed his former deputy as below:

Tsvangirai 2005:

Sibanda iduche chairo. [Gibson Sibanda is a complete fool.] He is way too junior to challenge me. (As quoted in The Zimbabwe Independent, 13 January 2006)

Reducing the 2005 split to a seniority contest between him and his challengers, Tsvangirai bolsters Dread Reckless’s and Sister Fearless’s projection of Sibanda and Ncube as not only power hungry but also as vile, jealous and ambitious leaders in the MDC. The duche insult mainly sought to dissuade party supporters against following a faction led by foolish and discredited leaders. Similar accusations and insults are contained in his autobiography where he likens Welshman Ncube, to a ‘parasitical tick’ (Tsvangirai, 2011: 451). Whereas such words, lyrics and statements often wrongly apportioned blame on Sibanda and Ncube alone for the part they allegedly played during the party’s first split in 2005, their repeated use in songs, rallies and autobiographies served to legitimate Tsvangirai’s unassailable role as the mhondoro of opposition and national politics in Zimbabwe.

Understood from a spiritual perspective, mhondoro yenyika lyrics idolised Tsvangirai for possessing superhuman attributes and demigod-like qualities. In Shona cultural belief systems, mhondoro refers to powerful territorial ancestral spirits of chiefs and kings. Only a handful of names such as Chaminuka, Nehanda, Kaguvi, Siginyamatshe and Mpotschwana are recognised in patriotic nationalist historiography as deserving the revered mhondoro dzenyika title (Ranger, 2004). Whereas this could be largely mythical, the song attempted to draw from religion to bolster the factional frame that Tsvangirai was not only superior to other opposition leaders but was equally deserving of the ‘Father Zimbabwe’ title that had, thus far, only been appropriated by ZANU PF (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009). As myths are not always deciphered, interpreted and demystified in politics (Fiorina and Abrams, 2008), Tsvangirai’s faction effectively appealed to supporters’ beliefs systems and equally warned their internal adversaries to stop challenging his authority. However, over-eulogising Tsvangirai as the fulcrum of MDC fed into the notion of ‘big man politics’ realised by the ‘institutionalisation of one-man rule’ (Mpondi, 2015: 511). This often culminated in the conversion of a party into a ‘fiefdom of the leader’ (Makonye, 2021: 80) where the personal brand of Tsvangirai eventually gets bigger than that of the party itself.

Hurling insults at Tsvangirai

Regretting that the mhondoro yenyika narrative had created an image of Tsvangirai as the mainstay of MDC, Job Sikhala attempted a pushback by scolding Tsvangirai as chikwambo (goblin) at a rally in Chitungwiza in 2005 (https://www.news24.com/news24/opposition-trades-insults20051114). In Shona religious beliefs, chikwambo is a loathed ugly, evil, blood-sucking spirit that is notorious for sexually molesting and physically tormenting human beings during the night. Any interaction with it culminates in misfortunes, failures, rejections, bad luck, diseases and death. Haunted by successive electoral defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2005, the chikwambo counter-narrative in essence targeted the party’s passionate and emotional supporters. Sikhala intended to tarnish Tsvangirai’s image as a cursed leader solely responsible for the party’s dismal electoral performances. Party supporters were hence warned to ditch a leader marred by a goblin’s blood-sucking, murderous, and destructive characteristics (Nyambi, 2018). Quite interestingly, Douglas Mwonzora (now president of MDC-T) was arrested for insulting then-president Mugabe as chikwambo in 2010 but was later judicially acquitted (Nyambi, 2018).

Insults, accusations and counter-accusations at political rallies, press conferences and media interviews illustrated the depth of factional polarity in the party. But more than that they exposed MDC politicians’ conviction that language can build and destroy political careers as highlighted by Gibson Sibanda’s scathing assessment of Tsvangirai’s leadership attributes as seen below:

Sibanda 2005:

What does Chematama [an ignorant ‘over-sized cheeks’ chap] know? There’s nothing special about him. (A rally in Nketa, 22 November 2005).

Although name-calling, mudslinging and derogation may qualify for political comedy (Nyambi, 2016), it is apparent that political diatribes between the founding leaders of the MDC had degenerated into incivility. Sibanda’s use of Chematama, an insult which, in fact, was a ZANU PF nickname to mock Tsvangirai’s supposedly ‘oversized cheeks’ (Makamani, 2010) demonstrates the brazen duplicitousness in Zimbabwean politics. Before the 2005 split, Tsvangirai’s credentials as ‘brave’, ‘selfless’ and ‘astute’ were celebrated but after the split he was castigated as an ugly moron. This further underscores that language was a manipulatable tool and strategy to assert factional authority in the context of MDC’s factionalism in 2005.

In a 2015 newspaper interview (https://nehandaradio.com/2015/09/10/tsvangirai-is-a-thief-claims-biti/), Biti embarked on an equally unmeasured attack on Tsvangirai where he charged that:

Tendai Biti 2015:

We don’t share the same values with MDC-T. Morgan Tsvangirai was a thief. He slept at the wheel during the GNU and his party is founded on violence. That is why we decided to part ways last year (Nehanda Radio, 10 September 2015).

It is apparent that, like Sikhala and Sibanda in 2005, Biti was stirring up his own political base by playing to the gut feelings of party supporters by invoking images of what they fear most. Against the backdrop of damning allegations against ZANU PF’s alleged kleptocracy and corruption, Biti’s accusation that Tsvangirai was a thief without providing any supporting evidence was designed to dent his former leader’s political image. He reiterated the same allegations peddled by the pro-senate faction in 2015 that the MDC-T thrived mainly through violence. It is evident that Biti was probably engaging in what Gwekwerere and Mpondi (2018) refer to as ‘selective amnesia’ where he ironically blamed all the violence on Tsvangirai despite his status as the yesteryear secretary general of MDC-T. In the same interview, he virulently attacks Tsvangirai as an amoral womaniser with ‘no conscience or morality’ (https://nehandaradio.com/2015/09/10/tsvangirai-is-a-thief-claims-biti/) clearly showing that he was on a crusade to delegitimise Tsvangirai’s claim to authority in the MDC-T by disparaging him as an enemy of the people.

The vindictive use of insults such as duche; chikwambo; chematama and parasitic tick was framed to publicly discredit targetted leaders opposed to a particular factional narrative while conveniently validating and propping up preferred leaders in MDC’s power struggles. Fabricating falsehoods and manipulation of basic truths empowered each faction to create narratives that emphasised its own sense of rightness, authenticity and legitimacy. However, the use of inflammatory language precluded reasonable dialogue and escalated factional polarisation. It gave birth to unbridled intraparty violence where some youthful supporters of the party physically attacked elected party members in councils and parliament (https://mg.co.za/article/2014-02-21-00-mangomas-succession-battle/) whereas others were almost murdered as factional temperatures rose to unacceptable levels (Makamani, 2010; Mashingaidze, 2010: 27).

Ethnic Chauvinism in MDC

Across the world, citizenship is sometimes scapegoated as a weapon to malign, divide, and marginalise the participation of specific individuals in politics. In the context of MDC’s power struggles, ethnicity was a thorny issue that was manipulated to influence factional contestations in 2005 and 2014 as evidenced below:

Anti-senate faction 2005:

The pro-Senate faction is a party of three Ndebeles and one white (The Herald Newspaper, 28 October 2005).

Pro-senate faction 2005:

The Humanikwa villager is not Jonah. He is an ordinary Zimbabwean like everyone else (The Chronicle, 18-25 October 2005).

Tsvangirai’s faction 2014:

Tendai Biti mubwidi akanotsvaga ruzevha kwaMurehwa (Tendai Biti is an illegal immigrant who sought a rural home in Murehwa) (Political speech at a rally at Huruyadzo Supermarket in Chitungwiza).

With statistical evidence on the contrary, the reference to ‘a group of three Ndebeles and one white’ is just a confirmation that ‘political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’ (Orwell, 1946). At the time, the three Ndebeles being referred to were Gibson Sibanda, Welshman Ncube, and Paul Themba Nyathi whereas the ‘white’ was David Coltart. Because it is impossible for a faction to be composed of only four people as implied above, it is critical to underscore that the import of the ‘three Ndebeles and one white man’ remark was to demonstrate that the faction was widely unpopular in Zimbabwe. This was further accentuated by Tsvangirai who asserted that ‘they rode on my popularity in the forlorn hope that part of it would rub off onto them’ (Tsvangirai, 2011: 221). Tsvangirai’s revelation was, however, validated by that the MDC factions that broke away had badly performed in elections without his support. One case in point was when MDC-M won only 10 parliamentary seats in 2008 against MDC-T’s 100 seats. Another is when the MDC-Renewal faction admitted that they could not contest in 2014 by-elections because they were still canvassing for support and building structures. This evinced that ‘they are hypocrites who wanted to ride on the popularity of Tsvangirai like what Ncube (Welshman) did in 2005’ (https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-local-byo-65572article%27mdc+renewal+tried+to+ride+on+tsvangirai%27s+popularity%27.html).

It is apparent that Tsvangirai’s factional contestants in 2005 and 2014 were less popular than him. Therefore, the inclusion of identities (race and ethnicity) was a ploy calculated to further discredit the pro-senate faction members as second-class citizens and dent their claim to power in the MDC. Using a different lens, the identity/ethnicity remarks resonated with concerted attempts to criminalise them as the ‘dissident faction’ (Sibanda, 2021) in view of the unfounded allegation that Paul Themba Nyathi and David Coltart were ‘dissidents’ (Coltart, 2014: 443). Against the historical backdrop of Gukurahundi (1982-1987) where anybody suspected or accused of any (direct or indirect) involvement in ‘dissident activities’ was extra-judicially executed (Mashingaidze, 2010: 23), the dissident slur was intended to criminalise the participation of politicians from Matebeleland and Midlands provinces in national affairs. The framing of such a discourse bears considerable similarities with the characterisation of Tutsi people as inyenzi (cockroaches) and inkota (snakes) in Rwanda and Jews as ‘rats’ in Germany (Hilker, 2011; Hintjens, 2001; Moore, 2020).

In repudiation, the pro-senate faction’s description of Morgan Tsvangirai as a ‘Humanikwa villager’ indicated their determination to push back against the narrative that political power was reserved only for selected ethnicities in national politics. The strategy to mention Tsvangirai’s home village by name was to provide the necessary emphasis that opposition politics did not revolve around one small rural village only and hence Tsvangirai was not on a divine mission to save the people of Zimbabwe similar to the biblical Jonah who went to Nineveh. Again, this served to dismantle the Tsvangirai mhondoro yenyika narrative that the pro-senate faction had helped create in the public media. However, unlike other leaders with proven educational and professional credentials, the amplification of Tsvangirai’s rurality appeared to resonate with his alleged leadership deficiencies. This, as illuminated in Gibson Sibanda’s Chematama insult cited above, intimated that the pro-senate faction perceived Tsvangirai to be an inept individual incapable of providing effective leadership in the party (Marongwe, 2022) especially in view of his humble rural beginnings.

Although the 2014 attack on Biti as mubwidi (Malawian migrant) was factually incorrect, it is, nonetheless a strong manifestation of the contested notions of citizenship in Zimbabwe. The above remarks underscored that despite having a rural background, Biti was, to the anti-senate faction, still not an indigenous citizen in Zimbabwe. Whereas having a rural home justified and bolstered one’s indigeneity in the eyes of ZANU PF politicians (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009: 1115), the spin by Tsvangirai’s faction tended to emphasise that Biti’s descent as a child to alleged Malawian immigrants precluded him from claiming Zimbabwean citizenship. By inference, his background should have divested him of the locus standi to fight for the throne in the MDC in 2014. Regardless of whatever factual incorrectness, the contested nature of citizenship contributes immensely towards the exclusion and discrimination of several minority groups both in colonial Rhodesia and post-colonial Zimbabwe (Mashingaidze, 2010). According to Muzondidya (2010), issues of ethnicity and race have remained the main basis for inclusion and exclusion. Due to descent, white citizens, for example, Judith and Garfield Todd, were characterised as effectively British or foreign and hence devoid of any genuine claims to Zimbabwean nationhood (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009). Similarly, black ethnic minorities such as the Ndebele, Ndau, Tonga, and Xhosa are sometimes conveniently sidelined while the Shona, by virtue of early settlement and demographic superiority, consider themselves to be more indigenous than other ethnicities. In validation, a former Deputy Minister of Information, Dr Energy Mutodi, once outrageously claimed that only the Shona are indigenous in Zimbabwe while the Ndebele are foreigners (https://www.zimlive.com/2019/09/04/deputy-minister-mutodi-suffers-backlash-after-he-labelsndebeles-refugees/).

In view of MDC’s factional fights in 2005 and 2014, ethnicity was weaponised as an exclusionary instrument to bar some factional contestants with ancestral roots in Mozambique, Malawi, Britain and other countries from challenging the preferred and ideal citizens. The regrettable use of discriminatory labels such as mubwidi, dissidents, and Ndebeles engendered racial and ethnic chauvinism. It similarly delayed the reconciliation of feuding MDC factions. One can even speculate that the perception of Shona supremacy (even in opposition politics) could have inspired pro-secession sentiments in some members from Matebeleland region as represented by the Mthwakazi Republic Party.

‘Fake’ versus ‘ideal’ democrats in the MDC

From its inception, the MDC was, from the onset, a hybrid organisation where chasms between trade unionists, intellectuals, and civil society actors were clearly defined as depicted in Tsvangirai’s and Coltart’s autobiographies. During the 2005 and 2014 splits, such differences found public expression through the media as seen below:

Anti-senate faction, 2005:

It is good for our colleagues to remember that we are not running a university but a political party (The Newsday, 22 November 2005).

Pro-senate faction, 2005:

The MDC is a democratic institution and not a terrorist organization. We do not thrive through fear and violence (The Zimbabwe Independent, 18 – 25 October 2005).

Obert Gutu, 2014:

Tsvangirai has the mandate of the party to lead us and yes, he should continue to lead us. Now these shrill sounds from some sickly fake democrats calling for his unconstitutional removal from office simply won’t cut. These fake democrats are wolves in sheep’s skin (NewZimbabwe.com, 18 September 2014).

Tendai Biti, 2014:

We cannot be ruled by a useless dictator, young brother of Robert Mugabe – Never in my lifetime – not over my dead body (The Washington Post, 14 April 2014).

In 2005, the anti-senate faction’s remarks above sought to sternly rebuke their competitors. The framing of their discourse highlights that they understood politics better than their ‘learned’ colleagues from the university. A deeper scrutiny of their remarks reveals that the main target of such a public rebuke were the educated leaders such as Professor Ncube, who was also accused of ‘his so-called intellectualism’. Such leaders were discredited as elite scholars who relied on academic theories to manoeuvre the murky political terrain. Because they allegedly did not command sufficient support from the undereducated masses on the ground, they were hence political parasites (Tsvangirai, 2011). In essence, the deliberate contrasting of words such as university and political party was meant to propagate a factional frame to sway public opinion (Chong and Druckman, 2007) regarding who commanded much public support in the MDC and the country. In sync with the mhondoro yenyika narrative, Tsvangirai and trade union leaders regarded themselves as the legitimate leaders of the masses.

Pushing back, the pro-senate faction also cast aspersions on their factional opponents whom they almost accused of ‘terrorism’. This is further corroborated in Coltart’s (2014) autobiography where he asserts that a worrisome concern was that the party was slowly digressing from its ‘democratic’ principles’ (pp. 426–427). Coltart’s observation is an indictment on the anti-senate’s alleged reliance on violence as a means to quash internal opposition. Similarly, Biti lambasted Tsvangirai’s autocratic and violent tendencies in 2014 by likening him to Mugabe, enemy that they were fighting against (Makonye, 2021: 79-80). Such discourse was willy-nilly framed to criminalise Tsvangirai’s camp as the ‘terrorist faction’ of the MDC and perhaps set it at loggerheads with the state which views terrorism as a heinous crime. In the absence of evidence to back up such serious claims, it is apparent that both the pro-senate faction in 2005 and the MDC-renewal faction in 2014 manipulated language to enhance their factions’ identification (Fiorina and Abrams, 2008; Prior, 2013) as the ideal democrats in Zimbabwe.

In response, Tsvangirai’s supporters mocked their detractors as groups of power hungry ‘fake democrats’ bereft of any ideological convictions. They insisted that Tsvangirai had been elected to lead the party at congress and therefore any demands for him to abdicate his presidential responsibilities was not only misguided but also equally unconstitutional. It is ironical that Tsvangirai himself, with the support of Biti, had similarly been accused of undermining the same MDC constitution in 2005. Together, they went on a national crusade lampooning Ncube and Sibanda for being an agent provocateurs deployed by ZANU PF to split the party. Equally paradoxical is that Sikhala, Ncube and Biti themselves later retracted their footsteps to MDC-A led by Tsvangirai in 2017 their earlier damning assessments of his alleged weak personality, character and leadership traits notwithstanding.

Admittedly, the clashes and splits in the MDC were sometimes ideological as the party was composed of moderates and militants and leftists and conservatives within their ranks (Maroleng, 2004). However, the name-calling, political mudslinging and character assassinations in public media exacerbated the existing differences. Public spats involving the use of strong, insensitive and unprintable monikers such as ‘terrorists’, ‘fake democrats’ and ‘dictators’ inflamed lasting racial, tribal, sexist and personal hatred among the politicians. This further entrenched factional grandstanding. Possibly disgusted by the dismissive language used in fanning factionalism, some opposition politicians formed their own political outfits, for example, Moses Mzila Ndlovu launched the Alliance for National Salvation (ANSA) in 2016 whereas Elton Mangoma similarly formed Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe (RDZ) in 2015 and renamed it as Coalition of Democrats (CODE) in 2017. Other top officials such as Obert Gutu and James Makore crossed the floor to ZANU PF whereas Eddie Cross and Sekai Holland elected to quit politics completely.

Factional reconciliation in the MDC-alliance

Whereas foregoing sections intimate instances where language misuse abetted factional polarisation in the MDC, it is instructive that I highlight that an appropriate, restrained and cautious use of language can similarly repair broken political relations. For illustrative purposes, MDC leaders’ remarks below deserve further critical engagement:

Morgan Tsvangirai, 2017:

It would also be equally dishonest not to recognise that in our journey with Professor Ncube we both made our own mistakes. We split our party in 2005 [. . .] ladies and gentlemen, it takes humble leadership to accept one’s mistakes but it takes bold leadership to correct those mistakes (Herald 21 April 2017. https://allafrica.com/stories/201704210694.html).

Welshman Ncube, 2017:

We are sorry for those mistakes that we made. But now, let us finish what we have started. We have defeated Mugabe before and we are going to defeat him again next year. (Herald 21 April 2017. https://allafrica.com/stories/201704210664.html).

Tendai Biti, 2017:

We came back to give the people another chance of removing Mugabe. We are here to give a fresh, new beginning, to reset factory settings to our struggle’ (African News Agency, 06 August 2017. https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/we-wasted-time-fighting-each-other-zimopposition-parties-10656766).

It is commendable that founding leaders of the MDC deployed the language of reconciliation to re-unite politically as MDC-Alliance. They openly acknowledged the debilitating impacts that the 2005 and 2014 splits had on their original agenda to dethrone ZANU PF from power. Backtracking on erstwhile polemical grandstanding, the leaders apologised for dividing voters along factional lines. These major concessions highlight that a conciliatory use of language can repair broken political bridges. Such gestures created space for open dialogue to rekindle broken political and personal relationships as they respectfully addressed each other as ‘brothers and comrades’ again. This thawed the tension, bitterness and repulsiveness not only among themselves but also among their supporters who had physically, emotionally and verbally abused each other. This gave further credence to a view that a ‘politician’s choice of words, therefore, can as much restrain and reconcile’ (Theocharis et al., 2020: 1) as the factions merged again into the MDC-Alliance in 2017.

The use of friendly language enabled the factions to easily reach out to each other politically and personally. However, it would appear later that MDC leaders reconciled to rescue their waning political fortunes (Makonye, 2021) but did not decisively deal with the substantive issues that had caused the acrimonious splits of 2005 and 2014. Moreover, they did not address issues regarding the role-played by vituperative language in severing existing personal, ethnic, ideological and factional differences among the leaders. As events would later turn out at the burial of Tsvangirai in Buhera in 2018, several leaders such as Thokozani Khupe, Douglas Mwonzora, Abednico Bhebhe and Lwazi Sibanda were physically assaulted by Nelson Chamisa’s supporters. Although her male colleagues were only beaten up as vatengesi (sellouts) and dissidents, Khupe was further humiliated as hure (prostitute), a sexist remark that further exposed the continuing culture of demeaning and disparaging women participation in MDC’s internal contestations for leadership. The party split again after that incident in 2018 and at the time of writing in 2022, the mentioned MDC-T leaders and others such as Lovemore Madhuku who actively participated in forming the original MDC in 1999 but broke ranks with it citing tactical, political and ideological differences, continue to be verbally assaulted as ‘surrogates of ZANU PF’ among several other unprintable monikers on Twitter and Facebook and other social media platforms.

Conclusion

Because political discourse is by nature heated, debatable, controversial and polarising, this article embarked on acritical discourse analysis of the words and phrases used during MDC’s acrimonious splits of 2005 and 2014. Without disregarding the influence of other factors towards MDC’s splits in 2005, 2014 and 2017, I demonstrated that politicians’ choice of language has far reaching implications on their personal, ethnic, racial and professional relationships. I further advanced that the use of vituperative language such as chikwambo hure, duche, mubwidi, vatengesi, dissidents and parasitic tick helped frame a discourse that deepened levels of factional grandstanding, intraparty violence, tribalism, sexism and racism in the party. Instead of encouraging factional reconciliation, vindictive language further shredded the MDC into several acrimonious fragmentations that vigorously competed hard to undermine, delegitimise and criminalise each other in public. This perhaps gifted ZANU PF with a tenure guarantee to perpetuate their ruinous rule in the country. Thus, in hindsight, politicians are therefore urged to avoid the use of inflammatory words but adopt neutral terms to rally supporters and mobilise leaders behind a particular political consensus.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: financially supported by the Northwest University

ORCID iD

E. Sithole

Author biography

E. Sithole is a PostDoctoral Research Fellow at Northwest University in South Africa. His research interests include but are not limited to: The sociolinguistics of language; Identity politics, Language use in the media, Lexicography and terminology development in marginalised minoritised transborder languages. Some of Dr Sithole’s works are published by Oxford and Cambridge University Presses and academic journals such as Lexikos, Language Matters and African Identities. He is also a Ndau language practitioner who translates online English reading materials into Ndau while also participating actively in the activities of Ndau Festival of the Arts (NDAFA) currently based Chikore in Zimbabwe’s Chipinge district.

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Language and Factional Polarity in the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe