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Nick Mangwana View from  the Diaspora
The direct link between a citizen and a political system is a political party. There should be some dovetailing between the aspirations of a citizen and the actions of a political party.

It is therefore necessary that any political party persuades the voters that what it is offering them is the realisation of those aspirations.

So when the 2018 elections come, it should be a choice between a pro-people party against the MDC-T, which would have re-absorbed all its splinters minus the people’s goodwill.

On offer from the opposition will be nothing but a call for Zanu-PF to be removed from power as an end in itself.

One is baffled to imagine that the people of Zimbabwe will be so insulted to be told that the culmination of all their dreams and aspirations is that Zanu-PF no longer superintends over their issues in Zimbabwe.

And all the opposition has to do is flash a red card — like they have been doing for the past 17 years — and it will have a buy-in from the people.

Is that not the height of political arrogance?

But then again who is surprised? Isn’t political arrogance one of the major reasons why the MDC-T has just remained an opposition party?

Did the people not reject them in 2013 for their arrogant behaviour on tasting power during the inclusive Government?

These people are quite unprofessional, arrogant and rude. But as is usually the case on this column, we evidence our assertions.

Let us look at this example. On April 8 2017, one regularly grandstanding and Zanu-PF bashing MP agreed to do a very pertinent radio programme with a Zanu-PF representative. Studio time was booked, engineers called back to work over the weekend, so too production and support staff.

The prima donna MP then said he was running 15 minutes late. An hour later, the guy was still nowhere. He stopped answering the phone and everyone thought that he was being a good citizen who could not drive and talk on the phone, alas he had other ideas.

After over an hour, his phone was switched off. That was basically it. He was a no-show. Three days later, no apology, no phone call, no explanation. Such sheer arrogance and disregard of the social courtesies we all subject ourselves to.

It is this type of unprofessionalism; total disregard of other people, and haughtiness that has now lost them the urban voter. The modern citizen does not appreciate politicians who behave like “divas”. Nothing short of a real tragedy can ever excuse such arrogance and unprofessionalism.

On the one hand, they cry for media coverage for their programmes, but when they are given such platforms, they immediately realise that they don’t have a message and decide to chicken out in the most amateurish way.

It is wrong for anyone to believe that so many people’s world is pivoted on the axis of his arrogance. If they behave like this without power, if they behave like this when they are just a depleted hollering tokenistic parliamentary minority, how will they behave if by some catastrophic miracle they gain power? God help us all.

It is this type arrogance they showed when they got into office via the inclusive Government. They emitted it, they swaggered it like peacocks and it rolled off their tongues.

As the saying goes, pride comes before a fall. And come 2013, we all heard the clunk of their fall. Their dream of urban politics dominance was breached.

They lost Chinhoyi Town Council, they lost Bindura, they lost Masvingo and they lost Marondera and others too numerous to mentioned in a limited column space. Out of 1 958 council seats contested, the MDC-T won a paltry 442 against Zanu-PF’s 1 493.

It is partly because of their contempt towards the electorate added to Zanu-PF’s different attitude that helped bring that historic landslide.

The opposition leadership is contemptuous of other people. It is the same contempt that made one of their leaders say to one old lady at a rally, “Nyarara kana vakuru vachitaura (Be quite when superiors beings are talking)”.

In this translation the term, “superior beings” has been preferred over “elders” because surely when it comes to age, the lady had years more advanced than the speaker of those snobbish words.

The only viable explanation for such insolence is a misplaced sense of superiority over what they consider as inferior human beings.

In case someone thinks this was a once-off incident, it wasn’t, not by any stretch of imagination. The same insolent self-righteousness was on display when the same opposition leader, who has now been chosen to lead the Grand Zero Coalition, was visiting villages trying to woo chiefs for the rural vote.

We all saw pictures of him in pretentious poses of humility with these custodians of our hunhu/ubuntu. He was always photographed sitting in rondavels with these noble people with his cap in situ. Now, we see arrogant politics where they withdraw from public debate but still want to cry that they don’t get media space. We thought they were complaining that they were being crowded out. Of course they are being crowded out by the big Zanu-PF ideas.

Or is it that to them, grandstanding is much more important than giving the people the respect they deserve.

What they might think to be political putdown moves is nothing beyond an exposure of a misdirected “libido dominandi” or the desire to dominate.

But then to dominate who? The people of Zimbabwe? If these arrogant prima donnas could humble themselves, then maybe, just, maybe the people of Zimbabwe might find it in their hearts to vote for them.

Those of them who are voted in never go back to the people. They arrogantly wait for the next election and then go back expecting to be voted in. Isn’t this a very skewed sense of entitlement?

You know dear reader, we see all these opposition parties — who only have 20 percent of the seats in Parliament — overreach their misplaced sense of power and importance. They start getting these ideas of grandeur in politics.

If Zanu-PF had the same grandiosity, it would not bother to engage with clear political minions. Not when one dominates the political landscape, intellectual field and ideological field like it does.

But knowing that these 20 percent are also part of the governed people of Zimbabwe, Zanu-PF chooses to engage them, but what do they do? They arrogantly don’t show up.

Isn’t this the same presumptuous arrogance that saw someone convene a cabinet selection caucus at the Meikles Hotel on the eve of the 2013 harmonised election?

Another example of opposition arrogance is how dismissive they are of the people who live in the rural areas. You always hear them disdainfully saying Zanu-PF is only voted for by people in rural areas!

But the rural population is 68 percent of the Zimbabwean population.

Supposing that it is true that only rural folks vote Zanu-PF, would that be wrong in the grand scheme of power acquisition or retention? Why would it be considered to be politically moral to be dismissive of a certain social class because of its lifestyle, means or resources?

It is tragic that opposition politics has made itself quite susceptible to the fallacy of knowing it all and the fantasy of self-importance much to the disrespect of the Zimbabwean people.

One writer said pride was one of the most difficult human passions to subdue. We see it over and over again. It comes with the type of political vanity that has seen the fall and failure of opposition politics.

They have such a narcissistic smugness that one detects a mile away. If they behave with such supercilious vainglory without power, how are they going to behave with it?

We have already seen snippets of it when they refuse to subject themselves to the same scrutiny that Zanu-PF does.

All parastatals, which are under the purview of Zanu-PF-run central government, subject themselves to audits. But we saw the other day, opposition-run councils putting up a sterling resistance to audits.

If this is their attitude to due process and transparency, when they run just councils, how much will the nation endure if they were to run the country?

And this is not just about their smugness as an end in itself, it permeates all Government sinews.

If power is given to those that have too much pride, then the next thing is mental entitlement. Power in the hands of a self-absorbed person is poison. Munotsvinyirwa mukazvirega (You will be despised until you lose the will to live).

Arrogance with merit is a bad trait, arrogance without merit is a curse but pretending superiority is a catastrophe for a nation.