MDC & TSVANGIRAI IN DEATH GRIP OF CO-DEPENDENCY
Human beings are strange creatures at the best of times - and under pressure we become stranger still. Psychologists would have a field day analysing human behaviour in Zimbabwe. The latest manifestation of the bizarre comes from the debate around MDC-T and Morgan Tsvangirai's leadership. It has been very odd to witness the intensity of the backlash against suggestions that the MDC should look at leadership renewal.
We seem to have here a case of what psychologists call co-dependency. This is a condition where one person manipulates and controls a second person who has a drug addiction or other serious problem.
The first person is often a narcissist (someone of over-developed ego and self-importance), while the second person gets meaning in life from being excessively and psychotically concerned with the well-being of the first person, even though that person is using and abusing them. It can also happen in a group context, where an individual or small group manipulates a second group.
Another aspect of this phenomenon is that when the controlling individual or group is threatened by an outsider, the second individual or group will viciously attack the outsider, despite the fact that intervention is exactly what the dependent needs to escape the abusive relationship.
Zimbabwe, where many people have serious problems (be they related to money, opportunity, self-esteem, hope and so on), is ripe for co-dependent relationships. We see it in the relationship between the youth militia and Zanu chefs. Narcissism and co-dependency lie at the very heart of Zanuism, beginning with the arch-narcissist, Robert Gabriel Mugabe.