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FEW TAKERS . . . Tsvangirai’s continued stay as leader has led to diminishing returns on the part of the opposition MDC-T, which has seen it being deserted by some of its founding menders such as Tendai Biti and Elton Mangoma

MY TURN with TICHAONA ZINDOGA

It is common street wisdom that it is only a mad man who does the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

THE reader may be tempted to jump to the conclusion that the madman referred to in the headline is one Morgan Tsvangirai, who happens to lead the organisation called Movement for Democratic Change.

Well, Tsvangirai is not, in the strictest and literal sense, a madman.
That is why he has carried himself, carries himself, agreeably enough for his 60 years or so, 15 of which as the leader of MDC.
Of course, in the latter capacity is where we begin to see hints of the madman in him – again not in the literal sense.

Let us digress a bit.
Douglas Mwonzora is the spokesperson of the MDC.
He has not done entirely badly in that brief and by the looks of it, may be aiming for a bigger post within the opposition party following an implosion that rocked the party, seeing the likes of Tendai Biti and Elton Mangoma decide to leave Tsvangirai’s big tent, as he likes to call it.

This week, Mwonzora wrote a note titled “National Convergence: Zimbabwe’s hope for the future”, whose main proposition is the formation of a broad alliance of opposition to the current Government.

He inserts, though, the caveat that this “national convergence is not an election pact where political parties decide on a single candidate to field during election time…What they decide to do when the election comes is an entirely different matter.”

Mwonzora begins his submission by making an important observation, which captures the gist of this piece.
He says: “That the Zimbabwean opposition parties have to avoid doing the same things and employing the same tactics as before if they are to get different results admits of no doubt.”

He goes on to state that the MDC has not been able to capture State power from Zanu-PF despite “having done well in checking Zanu-PF’s sordid march towards the creation of a de facto one- party state in Zimbabwe”.

It is common street wisdom that it is only a madman who does the same thing over and over again and expect different results.
It is telling that Mwonzora makes this observation right on the eve of MDC’s 15th birthday and on the back of successive defeats by the ruling party.
It is a reflection that speaks to the core of the opposition’s misfortunes.

The MDC has stuck with one mad- man called Tsvangirai, who has lost three presidential elections on the trot but believes he will eventually get what he wants.
He is all but confirmed to be around in 2018, thanks to a sham congress whose outcome he is engineering at the moment by purging rivals while trying to tinker with his party’s constitution to concentrate powers on himself.

Again, this is not the first time he is tinkering with what is supposed to be a supreme document in a democratic institution.
He did that a few years ago, paving way for his open-ended, indefinite stay in power in the opposition arguing that two-term limits only apply when he wins elections.
Dissenters such as Tendai Biti have noted that the continued stay in power of Tsvangirai has led to diminishing returns on the part of the opposition movement.

The law of diminishing returns, which in fact, is a banal piece of wisdom, is “used to refer to a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested”.

The so-called renewal lobbyists want a different approach, a different thinking and different personalities.
Whether they are able to achieve where Tsvangirai has failed is entirely a different question.

Tsvangirai has also been called “an albatross around the neck of the opposition”.
The other word for albatross is encumbrance.

One commentator, Mbango Sithole, notes just how the Tsvangirai formula is as futile as a dog chasing after its tail.
He believes “renewal is a noble call”.

“The MDC, under Morgan Tsvangirai, has waited for Zanu-PF to disintegrate on its own or negotiate itself out of power; that will never happen. We cannot sit and expect different results while we use the same formula that has not worked for 15 years. Many people saw this change coming. They sacrificed their limbs and some even their lives. All these sacrifices cannot go in vain. Renewal is the answer.

“Those that have failed must be told to leave. If they refuse they must be dragged, kicking and screaming. A new course has to be charted. In that regard, Tendai Biti and others have chosen the right path which every Zimbabwean yearning for real change in their lifetime must embrace and support.”

Mbango might be deluded to think that anyone in the MDC can be able to drag Tsvangirai “kicking and screaming” from the party he purports to own.
Instead, he is the one who will kick away everyone else and he remain the organisation, the leader and the led.

That is, along with his faithful like Luke Tamborinyoka, who think that Tsvangirai is a godsend – the face of the democratic struggle.
Back to Mwonzora’s piece, one cannot help this particular irony.

While noting, correctly, the downfall of the MDC in over-reliance on failed tactics, Mwonzora in the same submission does something as grave.
He complains that Zanu-PF is in the habit of manipulating elections and has monopolised State institutions.

He whines over the media, voter registration and disenfranchisement as “some of the tricks that led to the so-called landslide victory posted by Zanu-PF and the military in the last elections”.

The world has had enough of these excuses.
MDC supporters know this script even before the elections are held expectedly and lost by the opposition.
They deserve better.

It can be speculated that, whatever their motivation for supporting the party, they do not vote for excuses, which means that the MDC does not take its voters and supporters seriously.

They expect answers and results.
The continued excuses and whining will not inspire any confidence.

Neither will the latest gimmick to boycott elections, ostensibly in protest over the uneven playing field.
Milestones are meant to be celebrated but the way things are going within, and with, the MDC, more and more years of its existence will only amplify its failures.
It is rather unhappy that the party marks its birthday soon after a season of elections.

It is such a miserable coincidence.
It only adds to the pain of futility and sterility.

Last year, MDC “celebrated” its birthday with the theme, “Claiming the People’s Victory”.
Such hoaxes will only ring hollower and hollower in their vacuity, as the years pass by.