Opposition parties have similar genes

TO some, the clock has struck 12 and the 2018 election bells are ringing loudly. Recently, former Vice-President Joice Mujuru’s group announced through her ambitious “BUILD” manifesto that she is indeed entering mainstream politics as an opposition leader and this brought more joy to the stuttering opposition parties than everyone else.

Nonetheless, the recent revelation by Temba Mliswa that the People First project is embroiled in a leadership wrangle was long overdue. All opposition political parties have similar genes, that is, are formed by individuals who want to regain popularity and the only way to do so will be to assume influential positions. This People First project is a mere creation of the media which wants to give them the fame and hype they don’t deserve. Their political obituaries were completed when they were expelled from the ruling party.

The People First project is being hyped as the grand coalition coming out of Mujuru and her clique — the likes of Rugare Gumbo, Didymus Mutasa and Kudakwashe Bhasikiti with a possible coalition with certified perennial loser, Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T. Ah! Morgan Tsvangirai again! Political pundits argue that a politician’s life has an expiry date attached to it. For Tsvangirai, his brand reached its climax in 2008, as he hit a plateau during his brief romance with power during the inclusive Government only to crash land in the 2013 harmonised elections.

Sadly, he is still at the crash site sifting through the rubble for clues to his diminished status. The much chorused coalition between Mujuru and Tsvangirai is nothing but a pie in the sky, a fool’s gold to a desperate korokoza. Ego driven, ambitious politicians cast out of political systems where they claimed emperors’ robes only to trip on the hems and fall like axed poles, have found solace in forming opposition parties which threaten to snuff out the little flicker of light still left in Tsvangirai’s rubble and all this to coalesce with his nothingness to create a coalition of little and nothing.

The mismatched images conjured up by thoughts of such a coalition are comical. Imagine Mutasa yoked with Nelson Chamisa, Gumbo holding hands with Douglas Mwonzora or Obert Gutu reading a script with Jabulani Sibanda. Desperation couldn’t suggest stranger bed fellows. In such a scenario, political tensions are guaranteed like a funny face on a clown. How does a coterie of former liberators find comfort in the company of an imperialist organ where the natural reaction to the presence of a “Rhodie” surrogate would be to “Teurai ropa”?

The MDC first split on 25 October 2005, after a national council meeting at which party leader Tsvangirai was accused of vetoeing a vote to field candidates in Senate elections due later that year. Tsvangirai’s former secretary-generals, Welshman Ncube and Tendai Biti both have formed their own political parties indicating that he is a dictator who cannot manage diversity, as he always wants things to go his way.

Surely, it is not feasible that the same Tsvangirai who has mastered the art of holding onto power at all costs will suddenly tame his deluded ambition of “zi pa State House”, and let Mujuru who is still politically structure-less to upstage him. It begs for the question, has the leopard of Buhera changed its ever dividing spots? Can he ever play second fiddle especially to a woman, his usual prey?

A report compiled by the then united MDC in 2005 comprising of a three-man commission which included Dr Tichaona Mudzingwa, Moses Mzila Ndlovu and Giles Mutsekwa into violence that erupted at the party’s Harvest House headquarters in May of that year indicated that the party was overwhelmed by tribal mistrust and competing political ambitions.

Have these ambitions coalesced or indeed faded? Not if you read this with the beating meted out on Elton Mangoma and Biti for daring to suggest leadership renewal. It is public record that the MDC has splintered into at least six smaller images of itself (MDC-T, MDC-N, RDZ, MDC-M, MDC 99, PDP) all because of the dictatorial tendencies of Tsvangirai. It is the same ambitions that led to the Mujuru cabal being booted out of the ruling party. The ambitious cabal joining hands with the serial party splitter is a match made in hell guaranteeing sparks, division and failure on arrival.

And so we take our seats in the front row to watch the blue prints movie featuring the main actor and the joyless one in competition for the prize of the West’s best parrot, in what observers say, is akin to watching someone confidently taking donkeys to a cattle sale.