The old adage that age brings wisdom may well be true and has been the hallmark of many political orders, but a politician’s job requires more than just wisdom — it requires dynamism, swift decision-making and the ability to convey confidence.
In a largely conservative society where experience and competence is equated with strands of grey hair, young entrants like the late Learnmore Jongwe provided a fresh impetus for the nation’s youth. He led them to occupy political space whose benefits past generations were denied.
Jongwe, who was in July accused of murdering his wife, was found dead on Tuesday in his prison cell, where police said he had been unwell.
Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said Jongwe had been treated in the prison clinic on Saturday for severe chest pains and coughing, and that he had vomited and suffered from diarrhoea on Monday night after eating food delivered to him by his relatives.
Pathologists were examining a towel he had used to wipe his mouth after vomiting.
However, the leader of the Movement for Democractic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai, said Jongwe had been ”in government custody and, without any explanation of the circumstances, they are accountable”.
”We believe this is part of a grand plan to eliminate as many MDC MPs as can be eliminated to create a constitutional majority in Parliament.”
Tsvangirai said the MDC’s legal department had asked for an independent pathologist to carry out an autopsy.
Jongwe inspired Zimbabweans to take an interest in politics and helped to get them in their tens of thousands to the polling booths during the 2000 parliamentary poll and the 2002 presidential election.
Repressive regimes often prefer to narrow the democratic space by ensuring that youths’ participation in politics is limited to a mobocracy — where young people are pliant instruments who have no role in decision-making, but instead act as electoral enforcers for hidebound elders.
Young MDC politicians like Jongwe and his colleagues Tafadzwa Musekiwa and Job Sikhala were thus inevitably going to be a source of irritation to the patrimonial Zanu-PF order whose definition of youth did not go beyond the menacing dark-green-clad militias and their middle-aged ”youthful” leaders. During his two years as an MP Jongwe demonstrated a key capacity — he mobilised the young to inject pace and dynamism into a moribund political system.
When he was arrested on the charge of murdering his wife in July, detractors were quick to seize on the event to bolster their argument that the MDC’s youthful MPs were not ready for office. They said national politics were very different from student activism where Jongwe cut his political teeth.
But their version of maturity meant deferring to incumbents and waiting their turn. Jongwe and his peers weren’t prepared to do that.
Born on April 28 1974 in the Zhombe communal lands in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province, Jongwe was an accomplished scholar who excelled in his studies at the University of Zimbabwe where he read law. He was elected Students’ Representative Council (SRC) president in 1997/98. He was later to relinquish that post to focus all his energy on reviving the Zimbabwe National Students’ Union, a body that groups students across the country.
It was at university that Jongwe’s charismatic leadership sparkled and he won popularity for his ”non-violent direct confrontation” policy.
This needed a larger-than-life character to sell it to students who knew only violent confrontation when dealing with the repressive regime and its riot police.
Jongwe’s SRC was to become the last SRC in the country to meet President Robert Mugabe to map the way forward for the volatile university. In 1997 he led students throughout the country in defying privatisation of services at tertiary institutions.
On graduation Jongwe was quickly snapped up by Gill, Godlonton & Gerrans, a leading Harare law firm. It was while at this firm in 1999 that he joined the newly formed MDC and was immediately elected national youth chairperson. In 2000 he was elected MP for the Kuwadzana area of Harare’s teeming townships.
Jongwe had rare qualities, said his successor as MDC national youth chairperson, Nelson Chamisa.
”His shoes will be difficult to fill. He was a hero of the youth in this country and his death will motivate us to fight this rogue regime,” Chamisa said.
There is little doubt the MDC’s youthful leadership has been tested by a campaign of systematic repression by the Mugabe government. The same fire that accompanied their meteoric rise has also been evident in occasionally ill-advised responses to provocation that owe more to inexperience than calculation. There have also been intense personal rivalries among the party’s ”Young Turks”.
The MDC has recently been battling to put a more sophisticated public affairs structure in place. And its MPs have been prosecuted for public violence. Very often, however, they have been the targets of a vindictive regime that has used the police to crush opposition.
Finding an appropriate way of dealing with this challenge while remaining committed to non-violence and the rule of law will be the MDC’s most pressing task in the wake of the loss of one of its brightest stars.
Blessing Zulu
Learnmore Jongwe, born April 28 1974, died October 22 2002