IT is rare to find near-unanimity about the greatness of a person who has blood — human blood — on his hands.
echoes: CONWAY TUTANI
But the death this week of Irish Republican Army (IRA) leader Martin McGuinness brought about this nearest level to undivided opinion across the political spectrum over his legacy because he had turned peacemaker. Who can, for instance, deny, in all honesty, that then Zipra commander-in-chief Joshua Nkomo has the blood of those people who perished when his Zipra forces shot down two Air Rhodesia passenger planes in 1978 and 1979? But, then, who can deny that at the end of it all, Nkomo, among others, drove the peace process to end that conflict? The peace dividend can be most costly the world over, as McGuinness, who was 66 when died, showed in his long political journey from paramilitary to peacemaker. We should accept that some of the great people in history have done horrendous things.
The Irish Question has been the Middle East of the British Isles in terms of intractability. The conflict in Northern Ireland, which has killed thousands, has political and religious roots that are centuries old. In modern times the conflict is centred on opposing views of the territory’s status. The mainly Protestant Unionist community believes it should remain part of the United Kingdom while the mainly Catholic Nationalist component wants to leave the UK and become part of the Republic of Ireland.
Enter a determined and dogged McGuinness into the fray. By the start of 1972, at the age of just 21, he had risen to become second-in-command of the IRA. He believed the British presence in Ireland could only be ended by armed struggle. When there was a call to arms, he rose to the occasion.
The fight achieved a lot because Irish nationalists had both a political wing — Sinn Fein, led by Gerry Adams — and crucially, a military wing, IRA. This is unlike here in Zimbabwe where the opposition only has a political wing. This is to remind those accusing the opposition of being ineffectual to factor in that great difference, which the Zanu PF regime is exploiting to the maximum. This shows that those who have been mocking the opposition as inept are offside. Either they are criticising without understanding or are deliberately using a false comparison between things that are not related in order to make one of them look less favourable in the eyes of the people than it really is.
The British government took McGuinness seriously because he had the clout of the IRA, which could — and indeed did strike —at the very heart of that government, bombing and killing both military and civilian targets, including assassinating prominent figures like British politicians. The lesson is that Zanu PF will have no one to blame, but itself, if it drives people to violence like the British did in Northern Ireland turning McGuinness and others into killers.
Like the late Nelson Mandela, McGuinness was not a saint, but there among the greatest people of his era and beyond as history will prove his positive impact and legacy to humankind.The common denominator between him and Mandela was that essential and total absence of personal vanity. These two did not have that insufferable and dangerous habit of taking themselves too seriously. They were team players though and through within their organisations and outside their organisations. Both has strong individual views without being individualistic, that unsavoury tendency for a person to act without reference to others. They did not modify things to suit themselves as individuals. They did not personalise things. Well, when a person constantly reminds the nation that he is the one centre of power, it can’t get more individualistic than that.
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When the call to peace came, McGuinness again rose to the occasion. He eventually came to the realisation that the solution could not be all or nothing. It was a classic case of negotiating with your enemy, not your friend. He went into an inclusive power-sharing government with the Unionists in 2007 for the greater good, as shown by his determination to make it work from day one. There was no obstructionism on his part like we had in Zimbabwe where, no sooner had the Government of National Unity (GNU) been sworn into office in 2009, was the Zanu PF component sabotaging it, disparaging it as some weird “creature”, saying they preferred to go it alone. Well, they are now going it alone and we are hurtling back to the pre-GNU economic meltdown. As they say, be careful what you wish for.
McGuinness had real political attributes, not merely naked violence, that served him well. He had that rare combination of being both “tough-minded and likeable”, as British journalist Alastair Campbell aptly put it. These two qualities are not mutually exclusive. They can operate side by side. This could be a timely reminder to some local opposition politicians who, being too, too nice for their own good, lack that hard edge that is needed in the dog-eat-dog, rough-and-tumble politics in Zimbabwe today.
As McGuinness — not to mention Robert Mugabe and Nkomo — showed, if need be, politicians should be prepared to fight fire with fire, not be nicey-nicey. You need that spikiness, that aggressiveness and that right dosage of nastiness and ruthlessness because a nicey-nicey attitude will get you nowhere in politics.
There is need to go into the trenches and get muddied instead of saying that nicey-nicey blah, blah, blah that you are playing the game in the right spirit. Without necessarily taking up arms, opposition leaders need to lead from the front. But some opposition parties are busy preparing detailed policy papers on every topic imaginable to the total exclusion of action whereas what is needed is broad action and confrontation as shown by McGuiness. May it be repeated here and now that the Zimbabwean opposition needs to be both tough as nails and marketable like McGuinness to effect change?
Former United States President Bill Clinton, who directly intervened to urge all of the Northern Ireland parties to reach a historic compromise in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, paid tribute to McGuinness thus: “He believed in a shared future, and refused to live in the past, a lesson all of us who remain should learn and live by.” Well, tell that to Zanu PF which seems to believe that violence is an end in itself and can be studied to degree level.
Martin McGuinness, may you rest in peace.
Conway Nkumbuzo Tutani is a Harare-based columnist. Email: [email protected]
