LITTLE did MDC Members of Parliament realise they were inadvertently celebrating the demise of their party when Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda read our former President Robert Mugabe’s resignation letter.
For the fall of the former president went with it the relevance of their familiar rallying cry: ‘Mugabe must go.’
The main reason for the final disintegration of the MDC, once led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai, is the absence of ideology to guide the party.
This should not be surprising.
The MDC was formed by a group of people with variegated backgrounds lacking a shared vision.
They turned out to be mere tools of the anti-ZANU PF Anglo-Saxon axis.
This is a lobby determined to rid southern Africa of governments of former liberation movements of which ZANU PF is one.
So it was a party formed with the main purpose of destroying ZANU PF, with matters related to the welfare of people incidental.
This is in direct contrast to the party they seek to destroy.
When ZANU was formed, it was out of the conviction that racist minority rule, with everything that it entailed, had to be ended at any cost.
Thus the ideology of ZANU PF was, and still is as it will always be, centred around the promotion of the interests of the once marginalised indigenes.
The absence of a guiding philosophy has seen the MDC, which now claims to be representing the interests of the indigenes, doing some strange things.
The absurdity of canvassing for sanctions to be imposed on your country is obvious.
Here, the main interest seems in seeing the fall of the incumbent Government at the pleasure of Anglo-Saxon donors.
The lack of ideological guidance has seen the MDC fail to come up with anything of substance to the Zimbabwean electorate.
The indigenes, who were co-authors of the Zimbabwean ideological thrust during the liberation struggle, cannot be easily fooled.
Even when our economy has screamed, Zimbabweans have stood by the Party (ZANU PF), whose ideological thrust has matched their aspirations.
Professor Stephen Chan could not have been more accurate.
His argument that ZANU PF has loyal supporters while the MDC has transient sympathisers with the revolutionary party’s DNA sums up the composition of the two parties.
For instance, the majority of the unusually high percentage of 47 who voted for MDC in 2008 shows the level of disgruntlement among ZANU PF supporters as opposed to the growing support of the ideologically bankrupt party.
Elsewhere in this edition, we refer to former US Ambassador Christopher Dell’s leaked report under WikiLeaks, in which he discourages US continued support of the MDC.
His report, released eight years ago, dismissed the MDC as a party incapable of governing – a party which would need ‘massive hand-holding’ by the West if ever it got into power.
Ambassador Dell argued MDC’s ideological paucity had failed to attract genuine politicians with leadership capacity.
This explains the chaos over succession following the passing on of Tsvangirai.
The resounding defeat by ZANU PF in the July 2013 polls must have been the swansong of the party that had hoped to succeed without any ideological content.
The donors have since realised that they have been pouring their money into a bottomless pit.
Right now, the MDC is campaigning for general elections with its coffers virtually empty.
This, minus the ‘Mugabe must go’ mantra, means the MDC is unlikely to emerge from the July 30 general elections intact, especially after the expected severe mauling.