IN March this year, this column predicted two things about Nelson Chamisa, the MDC Alliance and the opposition in general and these issues have come to pass rather too soon than anticipated.
Before we get deep in this week’s instalment, let me indicate that the issues have since risen to three.
We are going to unravel in detail so that the reader and the voter is in a position to make informed decisions on the direction they want the country to take.
The first issue that we spoke about was how the media sought, but with no success, to portray Chamisa as the ‘new game in town’, as a force to reckon with.
To the discerning, the immediate impression was that we were in for a period of social media abuse.
But before the ink has dried, the project has, as widely expected, fizzled out.
Supporters of Chamisa called this phenomena ‘momentum’.
They told us that the MDC-T leader had seized the momentum from President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa.
How President Mnangagwa became a factor in Chamisa’s antics remains a mystery to those of an analytical disposition.
Yet there was one issue that kept on lingering and which issue we probed at great length.
We spoke about how Chamisa’s momentum lacked a vision.
The Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) Chairperson Dr Tafataona Mahoso spoke on the lack of analytical skills by some media practitioners during a Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) Media Training Workshop in Kariba last week.
He gave the example of programme anchors.
Said Dr Mahoso: “We have what are called anchors, these people just say to every caller ‘thank you for your contribution’, but they don’t probe issues.”
Like the wind, many in the media failed to probe the issues that Chamisa was harping about.
For instance, he says there will be an airport in Murehwa to carry tomatoes to Mbare Musika but no one whispered into his ears on how the cost of jet fuel will have an effect on the price of the produce.
We leave it here.
Momentum has died.
Chamisa now resorts to do what his mentor, the late Morgan Tsvangirai, specialised in.
Tsvangirai gained notoriety for tarnishing the country’s image.
Last week, it was the turn of his protégé to do the same.
What we are being told is that the trip to the UK was a fundraising activity.
An unrepentant Rhodie who resides in the southern part of this country arranged the trip in the hope that some of his ex-friends in London would loosen their pockets to fund the MDC Alliance project.
But as fate would have it, Chamisa failed to read the mood and could not impress the Rhodesians there.
They duly refused to loosen their pockets and told him they were going to do business with the Government of Zimbabwe.
But how is that related to the issues raised above?
Chamisa’s campaigns have taken a huge toll on the depleted coffers of the embattled MDC with the ongoing court cases against his nemesis Dr Thokozani Khupe.
That is issue number two.
The MDC has run out of both money and momentum.
So what is next for the MDC Alliance?
Elections in another name and
colour
With no money and having run out of steam so soon, the MDC has gone back to its usual self.
They want elections to be held on their own accord and on their own terms.
What has been lost on them is that elections are held according to the country’s laws.
These are the laws they are failing to recognise and are frantically trying to scuttle.
Reforms and rigging are the terms they have summoned all in a bid to make the country look ugly, look bad in the eyes of an expectant world.
An embarrassing electoral defeat stares at them like an unforgiving ogre and who shall save the day for them?
Who shall save their faces?
The above two poignant questions bring us to Tuesday.
Tuesday was the day they were supposed to destabilise Parliamentary proceedings, ‘demanding’ for so-called ‘reforms’ from the ruling ZANU PF.
Again that strategy failed to achieve the desired result.
Most of their House of Assembly Members failed to turn up for debate on the Electoral Bill as they are battling to save their careers in the primary elections which have suffered a stillbirth from what we are gathering.
ZANU PF, which successfully held its primary elections, must surely be having the time of their lives.
We shall unpack the MDC-T’s electoral demands in future as something big, something very nasty is about to explode both in the MDC-T and in their ‘coalition’.
We do not want to spoil the party yet.
ZEC the unfortunate victim
We have said the MDC wants to give us a new definition and meaning to the term elections.
They have given us quite a spectacle in recent weeks.
They told us ZANU PF’s ‘shambolic’ primary elections were a foretaste of things to come in the July 2018 harmonised elections.
ZEC, the country’s electoral body was roped in as an extension of ZANU PF’s alleged rigging.
When that strategy failed, they then took a go at ZEC itself.
Poor ZEC is now accused of ‘planning’ to ‘rig’ elections together with ZANU PF:
– ZEC is responsible for the MDC’s failure to articulate its position.
– ZEC is responsible for Chamisa’s promise to give his 18-year-old sister to President Mnangagwa if the former manages to garner five percent of the vote.
– ZEC is responsible for the public relations disaster in the MDC where one official says they want to demonstrate while another official in the same department says something to the contrary.
– ZEC is responsible for Chamisa’s shameless lie that he had been invited to the UK by the Queen.
This is why the engagement with the media by ZEC in Kariba was crucial.
It helped demystify the myths and outright lies that are being created against the august organisation.
As we march towards the polls, let no one be distracted by the sideshows by the opposition’s.
Let those with ears listen.