Zimbabwe braces for battle of the political brands

Simba Makoni, the reformist and Mugabe's main challenge in the up-coming elections, has rebranded himself into an agent of change in Zimbabwe, breaking ranks with his party to challenge President Robert Mugabe for the country's top job.

In the process, he has caused a stir in opposition circles, even courting the ire of both ruling party bigwigs and those in the opposition MDC party faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

“Everywhere I go, people are talking about Simba Makoni,” a top civil servant, who declined to be named, said. “He's on the lips of most civil servants who see him as the only credible option to unseat Mugabe at the March polls.”

Tsvangirai is obviously unsettled, and sees his star waning while that of Makoni shines. Once a potent agent of change who almost removed Mugabe from power in the 2002 presidential race, Tsvangirai has slowly transmuted from being that much-revered agent of change into just an opposition leader battling for supremacy in opposition politics against a breakaway MDC faction led by robotics professor Arthur Mutambara.

In the 2000 parliamentary election, his year-old party snatched almost half the parliamentary seats – although he personally lost his bid for a seat in Buhera – but the numbers dwindled at the 2005 parliamentary election.

This fuelled discontent within the opposition.

Now Makoni has won the hearts of the disenchanted in both Zanu PF and the MDC. Apparently aware he could not offer a viable challenge to Mugabe's incumbency, Mutambara quickly gave up his bid for the top job, announcing he would back Makoni. Tsvangirai's supporters have even suggested he should stand down and back Makoni, but he remains defiant, and is now digging at Makoni.

“He's old wine in a new bottle,” Tsvangirai said of Makoni, suggesting he had the same wretched past as Mugabe, and was therefore unelectable.

“I have a team, Makoni has no team,” Tsvangirai said.

Inevitably, Tsvangirai has become a well-known brand in opposition politics, and has almost the same name recognition as Mugabe. However, as with Mugabe, people are starting to question the Tsvangirai brand, especially after three political upsets.

There has always been significant name recognition for the Makoni brand; even rural folks had always whispered, as much as the urbanites, that Mugabe should pass the baton to Makoni, long before his defection from Zanu PF.

Makoni is banking on that disillusionment with the existing brands to pressure voters into shifting loyalty from both Mugabe and Tsvangirai. This is obviously a big challenge. People can spend a little bit more on a trusted brand than a less familiar one.

Makoni has been up to last month part of the Zanu PF system, Tsvangirai alleges, and therefore is equally accountable for the heinous crimes committed by the regime.

Makoni is answering that with a brief of his record while in Mugabe's cabinet, where he was fired in 2003 for advocating drastic market reforms his distracters, including Mugabe, alleged were sponsored by enemies of the state.

He has not benefited from the chaotic land reform, of which he is very critical, and is referring critics to his three budget statements made before Mugabe sacked him in 2003 for an insight into his policies. He is offering himself as something different – an agent of peace in a volatile political environment where people have killed or physically hurt.

“Makoni is not worth dying for,” he said in his appeal to voters. Indeed the March 29 presidential election, to run concurrently with local government and parliamentary elections, will not be an issue-based contest, but rather one fought around prospects for change in a country where inflation has raced to 100 000% and the recession appears unrelenting.

Tsvangirai has been on the political market for close to nine years, and voters might punish him for failing to deliver – although supporters insist his sacrifices should not be discounted.

Mugabe has made too many unfulfilled promises to become discredited, promising to heal the ailing economy over the past nine years.

He has no new message even to appeal to his foot soldiers to hit the campaign trail When Makoni stormed the political arena early February, Mugabe called off his party's politburo meetings, and later conducted them with only a cabal of trusted lieutenants. There is increasing fear even his two deputies, Joice Mujuru and Joseph Msika, and party chairman John Nkomo, have privately endorsed Makoni.

In press conferences Makoni talks confidently of being the next president, and is talking of his “President's landslide victory on March 29”, backed by millions of Zimbabweans disenchanted by the status quo.

Something more has obviously unsettled Mugabe and members of his inner circle. When Makoni urged people to register as voters soon after publicly breaking ranks with Zanu PF, voter registration points across the country registered a surge in turnout.

“We were getting about one person in whole week, but over 50 people started coming to the voter registration points once Makoni made the appeal,” said a teacher who manned one of the points.

So, the battle begins, but will the outcome be entirely related to the suffering Zimbabweans have gone through over the past nine years?