The Sunday News
If you find yourself being juxtaposed to a comic character just know that you are no better than a figment of imagination, drawn in a graphic studio. It is common parenting knowledge that when your toddler watches too much cartoon network, he starts behaving as such. Super hero costumes are cried for, demanded and reluctantly worn off when its bath time.
Unfortunately, some of our politicians grew up with that cartoon habit and forgot that animation is simply imagination, nothing more than a paraded crayon effect. This is the case of Zimbabwe’s fantastic four; Morgan Tsvangirai, Joice Mujuru, Temba Mliswa and “Others” who entertain us week in and out with their gyrate political acrobatics pensive of nothing more than a leisure motion picture. I deliberately call them the Fantastic Four because it’s only them and others who make up Zimbabwe’s opposition politics.
The rest are spectators in the terraces, watching the imagined action and assuming they are also part of it.
You know what, the wrong impression you get from watching 3D television is that you believe you participated in a movie, oh no!, it’s just a wow factor made to mesmerise you, which is how the movie industry is making money out of it. Zimbabwe’s opposition politics is now a wow! Nothing short of a scripted animation, imagined at the Harvest House and repeated appearance on the ANN7 channel.
In our country, we now have political participants instead of competitors leading parties; a whole lot of followers throng the rallies to be fooled. First, don’t fool yourself, Zanu-PF will win in 2018 and don’t be fooled, everyone in the opposition can be said to Zanu-PF. Check the logs of all activists and opposition leaders, they all at one point were Zanu-PF, Morgan Tsvangirayi was once Zanu-PF youth chairman. Recently they emerge participating in Zanu-PF’s debates; classical example, Temba Mliswa.
Enough with the article conceptual framework, on to serious business, the first of the fantastic four: This week we witnessed Tsvangirai touring the country for coalition consultation. I am dazed I should say. Because this coalition is surrounded by a lot of confusion, particularly engineered by the former Prime Minister in the Government of National Unity, who; either by strategy or stupidity is an ideological shape shifter. At one point he declared non-participation, then the next he selected specific parties to work with leaving out his former general, Tendai Biti, then now he is consulting the public and I wonder how? Is the consultation happening through a ballot system where every MDC member votes or it’s a rally where Mr Tsvangirayi addresses his people and gives them false hope that they will win next year under the auspices of coalition consultations?
The process of consultation is itself confused because after all the hullabaloo, MDC- T then decides to consult the people about an already confused idea. Lesson from Botswana: Botswana’s UDP lost the elections to Ian Khama’s BDP under the coalition leadership of Duma Boko and they will again lose in 2019.
These are our close neighbours with a rich history of the oldest opposition politics by African standards of 40 years and it has never won. Tsvangirai’s Bulawayo visit is nothing short of a test of the waters, to check whether his cronies would still back him after they left him for Mai Mujuru’s ZimPF. His provincial squire, Albert Mhlanga, shifted and joined ZimPF, but well, as he carried his MDC DNA there, he is looking forward to being ousted as an interim provincial co-ordinator. As of last week, I don’t know what his political destiny after that would be, maybe he might as well join VIVA or YARD. As I said, opposition politics is entertaining; it’s a cartoon network channel.
It’s been 18 years since MDCs existed and the best they have been close to winning was in 2008 when they lost dismally in the re-run. After that, life has not been all rosy only for Mr Tsvangirayi and his close generals with him divorcing his other wife with $1 and marrying again only for him to announce mid-last year that he had been diagnosed with colon cancer.
Beyond losing a lot of weight and with a visibly frail face (never mind his comfort with his serially natural unhandsome look) depicting a lot of pain he is going through, I wonder why they are harassing him with a national tour.
One of the prescriptions of colon cancer especially if you are in the stage Mr Tsvangirayi is in; is a lot of rest. Already he is struggling with accepting his health condition, what do you think will happen to him when he loses again next year?
Not only is his health worrisome, but his supporters are too. I remember during my college days we used to debate a motion that read “This house will not vote into office individuals with terminal illnesses”; this is the case of Morgan Tsvangirayi, the odds are against him, he has a high probability of not making it to next year’s elections among all possibly contesting candidates next year, that’s how gruesome cancer of the colon is. He is broke too, remember, the party had to sell some of its properties last year to foot his medical bill, and he has a son who was implicated in the corruption scandal of Harare City council with the Mudzuri-led council. He is scared of his numerous wives/women in South Africa, so his political focus is livid. Too much worries for the man, too much, but I wish him less pain in all this, after all, he is human like me.
If only people like E. Manning would wake up from that political slumber before they get embarrassed once more. Tsvangirai has never been re-elected into their presidency, he always chooses to split whenever that subject comes up, remember in 2005 when he left Welshman Ncube and Gibson Sibanda after he was suspended and the 2013 suspension by the Biti cast, he refused to be suspended and in turn suspended Biti, how funny and ridiculous it is, and I repeat, it’s nothing short of an animation screenplay. He has a thing of turning down suspensions, phwee! How conveniently democratic that is.
I am compelled to remind you of how there is no political or economic redemption in MDCs when some Zimbabweans religiously believe that the answer to all their problems is the absence of Zanu-PF. First, let me remind you that MDC, like any opposition in Zimbabwe, was born out of Zanu-PF expelled members who had or have failed to display internal discipline, so it’s a reactionary led party. Secondly, lack of ideological rigidness best describes the party when it continuously imposes candidates on constituencies for individuals’ expediencies.
Nelson Chamisa was accused of being instrumental in the imposition of a candidate in Bulawayo in 2013 to the cost of Sandla Khumalo ending up as an independent candidate. Chamisa allegedly took that from his father Tsvangirayi who appointed himself as the sole appointer of all posts in MDC-T reflected by the confusing appointment of Chamisa as one of the Vice-Presidents, a plot to oust Thokozani Khuphe, a ceremonial official in the party. Many believe Khuphe is nothing more than a tool of Affirmative Action on the grounds of gender and ethnicity, she too should set ship sail before we read her a political obituary.
Thirdly, their divorce by Zinasu has left them stark naked, you should have seen the letter written by Alister Pfunye to Tsvangirai, telling him that they do not own Zinasu, in fact the students’ union owns MDC. To a large degree that is true, MDC-T had no response to that, they could deny it. The young chap says “this is from president to president . . .” surely bringing him to his level.
Like the prodigal son, Tsvangirai was hopeful that he had been taken him in when he had a taste of power in 2008 when he made it into the GNU. Alas! Politics is different from biblical fables we were read to at the Sunday school, in fact let me be precise, Zanu-PF’s political discipline is way too impressive to harbour opportunists like him. If you are not there for the people but for yourself, it’s hard to stay in, when the contract ended in 2013, it was back to business as usual. Tsvangirayi was an opponent again, who lived in a mansion bought for him by the very same government he opposed.
Lucky him, some opponents like many councillors in the Bulawayo City Council survive on stolen stands and spend much of their time debating General Lookout Masuku and the stadium, they don’t live in mansions like he does but they repeatedly vote for him. I say 2018, let us revise our choice of councillors, those people have no clue of what local governance is, they confuse urban management with village meetings, what can I say, they are products of a bleeding expired party.
Whenever we buy commodities we specifically check for the Best Before tag or guarantee label all to ensure value for our bearer trading. It is the same with Zimbabwe’s opposition, its way past its sell by date and has to be discarded.
Micheal Mhlanga is a research and strategic communication specialist and is currently serving Leaders for Africa Network (LAN) as the Programmes and Public Liaison Officer. He also administrates multiple youth public dialogue forums in
Zimbabwe including the annual Reading Pan Africanism Symposium (REPS) and Back to Pan Africanism Conference.
Feedback can be sent to [email protected]
