IT was, as many had anticipated, yet another farce, a big yawn that will reverberate, especially in the corridors of ZANU PF, that in Nelson Chamisa, the leader of a nameless political organisation, the ruling Party will effectively not have an opponent in the 2023 harmonised elections.
This was the MDC’s 22nd Anniversary, an event that comes at a time when ideas will carry the day in the said polls.
But as Chamisa wrapped up his hollow, dreadfully empty speech all that was left was a politician hopelessly out of sync with reality.
That has been the case with the MDC since its ill-fated formation on September 11 1999.
A party woefully devoid of ideas to take the country forward.
We have been down that road before where the MDC’s founding leader, the late Morgan Tsvangirai, fervently sought to bring the country to its knees through his ill-informed entanglement with the country’s ideological enemies.
There was Tsvangirai, all over the place, calling for sanctions against the country while at the same touting himself as a patriotic figure.
Chamisa is following in the same footsteps.
But the inescapable reality is that the two gentlemen are not, have never been, and will never be, paragons of patriotism.
This is because you cannot, on the one hand, destroy a country, a people and their aspirations as Tsvangirai did and as Chamisa is trying to do, while on the other, pretending to be a saviour of the same.
The true heroes, true national figures of this country have an impeccable track record of bringing the nation together and building it to the masses’ expectations.
Both Chamisa and Tsvangirai were driven by a penchant for selling wild dreams to the country, which dreams have yet to materialise.
In 2008, while addressing a rally at Mucheke Stadium in Masvingo, Tsvangirai asked:
“Are you hungry? Are you suffering?”
He further went on to say: “Hamusati… (You ain’t seen nothing yet….)”
Tsvangirai then said if the people wanted food, they had to remove the ruling ZANU PF from power.
He went on to promise the crowd US$10 billion which he said “…was ready and waiting” from the West only if the people unseated the ZANU PF Government.
Tsvangirai claimed he had ‘friends’ from the West who could make that dream a reality.
When he became Prime Minister in the so-called inclusive Government, Zimbabweans never heard of the US$10billion.
Instead, Tsvangirai spent most of his time in Government lamenting that he had not been given police escort, among other flimsy demands.
Chamisa came on the scene with even more ridiculous claims.
During the 2018 harmonised elections campaigns, he claimed he had met with the former US President, Donald Trump, who had promised him and his deeply divided party a staggering US$15 billion to revive the country’s economy.
His ‘address’ on Saturday was not any different from the madness that we have witnessed in the past.
He claimed his party would garner six million votes in the forthcoming elections.
Of course this is what we would expect from a person who has, time-and-again, demonstrated that he does not have what it takes to turn around the fortunes of this country.
The Second Republic has demonstrated that the time for cheap politicking is over.
Now is the time for development and revival of the economy as seen by the progress that is seen around the country almost on a daily basis.
Let us hear Chamisa speak:
“We are able to ramp it up (the six million votes). We will damage him (President Emmerson Mnangagwa) where we are going peacefully and electorally because we know the people are clear.
Even if ZANU PF holds its own election, we can defeat him. They are also seeing that they voted (for) the wrong person. ZANU PF is concerned by what we are doing because we are the real game. We are the people’s party.”
As expected, he tried to raise the now old and tired ‘legitimacy’ claim that President Mnangagwa has ‘captured’ Parliament.
“You have seen what has happened to our party. You have seen what has happened in Parliament; it’s now a playground for crooks. Parliament is no longer a legitimate body that has a reflection of the representation of the people because legitimate representatives have been withdrawn and replaced by unelected people,” he said.
“It tells you that illegitimacy that was buffeting Mnangagwa’s seat has now migrated into Parliament so we now have illegitimacy in Parliament. Illegitimacy is the biggest problem in this country. We have people who are not elected in Parliament but what is the way forward? The only way forward is what I am now going to give you as we go we have seen ZANU PF authoritarian consolidation dramatised – recalled, seeing people do this and that (sic).”
It is quite clear from the above utterances that as the clock fervently ticks towards 2023, Chamisa is in a panic mode.
The Second Republic has pulled the rug from under him and it will only get worse for him and his stuttering outfit as more and more developmental projects are unveiled.
Zimbabwe is very much on the right track, minus the disturbing noise and childish antics that keep on erupting from the hopelessly out-of-sorts opposition.
There is so much to do in the country and President Mnangagwa will be, in the next coming weeks, presiding over the ground breaking ceremony of the game changing steel plant in Manhizhe, Chivhu.
More projects will be unveiled in the near future.
Let those with ears listen.