By Vivid Gwede| With the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in September 1999, and its inaugural congress held at Chitungwiza Aquatic Complex in January 2000, the political landscape of Zimbabwe reached a positive point of no return.

The ruling party Zanu-PF, the complacent and degenerate liberation party, had almost succeeded in its long-held unholy ambition to establish a de facto one-party state by manipulating the Unity Accord of 22 December 1987 and more attempts at a de jure one-party state in 1989.

The one-party state idea held the fancy of former president Robert Mugabe, who entertained the dream of enjoying unlimited power and of being a life president.

Opposition to these plans from the Morgan Tsvangirai-led Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the Arthur Mutambara-led students and the Edgar Tekere-led revolt against his former party’s idea saved the day.
This is despite that Mugabe still forced his way into 38 years of disastrous rule.

After the rejection of a constitutional one-party state, multi-party democracy remained under siege from the state, which easily subdued ZUM and UANC parties throughout the 1990’s through sheer electoral violence and chicanery, retaining total political control and falling into worse corruption and economic mismanagement.

But it was in September 1999 with the emergence of the MDC that Zanu-PF’s attempt to drag Zimbabwe into a Soviet-style one-party state and the era of unaccountability and impunity typical of banana republics was effectively challenged.

Since that historic moment of its formation, the MDC has taken serious reactionary blows to its body from the State apparatus, but remains firmly on its two feet.

The seed of a new vision for the country, captured in the New Zimbabwe dream that Tsvangirai and his fellow founders sow refuses to die.

Zanu-PF has been displaced from the cities through consistent electoral victories and confined to rural areas for the better part of the last 20 years across most of the country.

Even in the rural areas the Zanu-PF stranglehold has been challenged, only surviving through a cocktail of undemocratic strategies.

As the MDC goes for its Congress, the first without its founding president Tsvangirai, who passed on in February 2018, it will be a consolidation of a new era and an era of consolidation.

The showing of the party in the 2018 elections reaffirmed its character as a party that is here to stay and one for posterity.

Most of the cadres who were elected into the top leadership at the inaugural congress in Chitungwiza have gone, save for new dynamic president Nelson Chamisa, then a boyish student leader who became national youth chairperson, and then secretary general, Welshman Ncube, who was part of the top six.

There are quite a few however who constituted the inaugural National Executive.

In May 2019, the MDC will continue its passage to a new era.

The Congress will be a consolidation of a new era as much as it will be an era of consolidation of the ideas that originated Zimbabwe’s truly popular post-independence democratic party.

With this development, the long-held dream by nationalist remnants of a one party-state, which desire is still evident today, recedes further into defeat.

Even without a formal power-sharing arrangement, like during the Global Political Agreement (GPA), the MDC has forced Zanu-PF to share power in terms of its control of the majority of urban councils and presence in parliament.

No doubt, the MDC, like any other organisation that needs improvement, will continue perfecting its art in aspects such as internal democracy, ideological refinement and rural strategy, but it is emerging as Zimbabwe’s true party of posterity.

While the state apparatus works through the witching hours to see the upcoming MDC Congress somehow thrown into disarray, like many such previous attempts, the sweat will be wasted.

The true MDC lives in the millions who vote for it.

The MDC did not only give Zimbabweans the platform dream again, but dared Zimbabweans to work hard together and make the new Zimbabwe dream come true in their lifetime.

Thus, the men and women, who will assemble for the 2019 MDC congress will know that the future is at stake.

But they also know that the past has to be honoured and in that past lies immortal symbols of the people’s struggle such as Tsvangirai, whose struggle inspires and fuels them.