WHILE critics in literature have largely explored the psyche of the characters in relation to the colonial and post-colonial spaces shaping their existence, the same assessment cannot go unnoticed and unravelled especially where the MDC leader is concerned.

When the youthful leader took over his party’s leadership, albeit, under ‘unAfrican’ circumstances, some thought he would work for the greater of the country.

That was of course before the country was subjected to a bit of comedy when he took to the podium.

The comedy has unfortunately morphed into a sick joke, a big yawn and with it a serious national security issue.

This assessment emanates from a neurosis which Chamisa seems to be suffering from after his embarrassing defeat at the hands of his nemesis, President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa in the July 30 2018 harmonised elections.

The opposition leader has yet to shake off his hallucinations where he sees himself as the country’s real ‘President’ whose goats are being herded by ‘someone’!

“At the moment Mnangagwa is leading one piece of the country, and I have another piece,” said Chamisa in his so-called state of the nation address in Mbare last week.

“I have told foreign governments not to invite Mnangagwa because he only has one side and I have the other part.”

We will not waste precious space analysing these self-serving utterances.

We will however, focus on the violence that the excitable Chamisa threatened to unleash on the peace-loving people of this great country.

“This year, 2020, is the people’s year to start the people’s decade,” said Chamisa.

“It is the year of the people’s action. This is the year when something must and will give.

“This year is our revolutionary moment.”

True to form, and prior to that ominous threat, MDC security people had given Zimbabweans a foretaste of what is in the offing when they pounced on hapless Sly Media journalist Robert Tapfumaneyi who they harassed.

It is a psychological tragedy.

We will explore it through Lucifer Mandengu’s tragic existence both physically and emotionally.

Most critical works on Waiting for the Rain, for example, have focused on Lucifer’s alienation as a response to the subtle nature of colonialism.

This desire for the individual to become his/her own man against societal expectation leads to social neurosis, which impacts negatively on familial, communal and national discourses (Ziwira, 2015).

Defined as a mental disorder, neurosis causes obsessive fears, depression and unreasonable behaviour.

According to Boeree in “A Bio-Social Theory of Neurosis” (2002), neurosis is hereditary, and refers to a variety of psychological challenges involving persistent experiences of negative effect including anxiety, sadness or depression, anger, irritability, mental confusion, cognitive problems, such as unpleasant or disturbing thoughts, habitual fantasising and cynicism.

As everything starts from the mind, the individual contemplates the reality of his/her existence in relation to the world he/she believes exists somewhere else.

This creation of a make believe world, may be destructive if what is expected does not come to fruition, leading to anger, anxiety and sadness (Boeree, 2002).

Freud (1904, 1923, 1930), concurs with Boeree’s clinical notion of neurosis. Jung (1961, 1989) notes: 

“I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life,” (Jung, 1961, 1989:40).

The MDC has wrong answers to Zimbabwe’s political questions, no matter the support that he claims he is getting from his Western handlers.

His ‘haivhiyiwi’ politics can only suit the agendas of his sponsors and inept who naively believe that violence will take them to the coveted State House.

Chamisa cannot be part of a national discourse whose future he is yearning to antagonise.

If anything, there is only one discourse that he fits perfectly into, the MDC discourse and whose agenda of destabilising the country he does not hesitate to exhibit each time a microphone is waved in front of his face.

His officials have joined the violence bandwagon with no restraint and impunity such that it is not difficult to locate the author of the script they are meekly following to the letter and spirit.

Their strategy is as clear as daylight.

They want to provoke the authorities, and when they might of the law descends on them, they will wave the rule of law card and claim that Government is violating human rights.

We have been on that route before, it is a slippery slope for the MDC, and nothing has changed especially to those who think they are above the law.

Let them stand guided by the pervasive fact that the state will not hesitate to unleash its apparatus in order to protect the citizens.

They can make threats but the law is what it is and rules cannot be bended to accommodate violence from goons in our midst.

The country is seized with building the economy and that trajectory will never be swayed by those obsessed with unleashing violence.

Let those with ears listen…