Chipinge District Candidate Profile Series #6

Name: Robert Mhlanga 

Party: National Constitutional Assembly (NCA)

Robert Mhlanga is a native of Chipinge West and has worked with NCA since 1999 when it was still a civic organisation. Coincidentally, he was a student leader at the University of Zimbabwe when the MDC was formed in 1999 and that is when his political career was launched. Robert Mhlanga is an educationist by profession, evangelist by God’s grace and a motivational speaker by passion. He is very passion about genuine socio – economic development and he feel strongly that Chipinge West lagged behind in development due to dereliction of duty by past political representatives of the area. A narrow view of community development has been constructed by these politicians in order to facilitate a false sense of being the solution. There are 25 primary schools and 10 secondary schools in the constituency with a teacher pupil ratio of 40:1 at primary level. There are only 3 schools that offer up to A Level. At the same time, there are 8 health centres in the constituency with at least 2 nurses at a clinic. Nevertheless, the constituency faces a challenge of classroom blocks, and also the numerous number of school drop outs due to failure to pay school fees and teenage pregnancy.

In Chipinge West Constituency, neither of the two main lines of political ideology brought significant solutions to the challenges of rampant poverty, school dropouts and lack of adequate health provision. The NCA party comes from a different background and is moving toward a different political narrative to the long-time existing political formations. Zanu PF ideology dominated the early years of independence and it came to the prime in the late 1990’s. In its extreme form, it was transformed into an agnostic anger towards what it perceived as enemies. Most people in the constituency have lost any justification in attaching this ideology to the communal socio – economic and political trends and aspirations. They are tired and are very much apprehensive as they contemplate moving toward a third ideological framework. The two dominant political ideologies in the recent past reflect apparently contradictory ways of looking at socio –economic development in the constituency. 

Robert Mhlanga’s political narrative is the breaking away from the old political adage of ideological turf wars at the expense of meaningful development.  The two political paradigms are no longer adequate to confront a plethora of challenges unfolding in the constituency. Zanu Pf is seized with the retention of power by any means necessary whereas the MDC formations at the very moment when this new ideology was announced, it was also breaking apart as can be witnessed by various nasty factional fights. This reflects their inadequacy and the subsequent reaching out for a political alternative. The comparative value of these ideologies is apparent in their failures, faults and ludicrous shortcomings. The NCA is positioning itself as a possible alternative. It derives from the experience of a people who were advocating for constitutionalism and democracy, and deals with the derivation in a very concrete people centred terms. It is evident that most perceptive people in Chipinge West are suffering from an anxious sense of something lost, a sense too of being displaced persons in the matrix of the political ideologies.

As far as political activism is concerned, Robert Mhlanga has with equal acuteness and clearness pointed out the process by which development will be effected. He strongly believes in people centred approaches to community development. In this election, Robert Mhlanga hopes to swing the voter pendulum to his side as conditions in the constituency are sufficiently inflammatory to create a new political paradigm. The conditions under which children, women and youths toil in the constituency are unimaginably brutal and need a new political narrative that can profer solutions. Zanu PF and the MDC formations appear to regard themselves as innocent of blame for such conditions for they are imbedded in the political rhetoric of sanctions and bad governance. However, one remarkable feature in this present condition of affairs in Chipinge West is that no politician pretends to be able to point out any remedy. Robert Mhlanga believes that he has the remedy.