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Tichaona Zindoga Political Editor—

Opposition MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai has just declared the coming year, 2017, as the “year of people’s power”. The premise is rather predictable, he believes that the year will be economically difficult, forcing people onto the streets to protest against Government, all giving momentum towards elections in 2018.The other thing is that he considers a coalition of opposition parties, which he seeks to lead, as within grasp.

At a Press conference on Tuesday, Tsvangirai gave a glimpse of his game plan in 2017.

He said: “We have had a tough year and the signs are that next year will be even tougher. . . The signs are ominous for the coming year, especially with the smuggling in of the Zim dollar through the back door. . .We urge the people of Zimbabwe to continue with the same spirit of 2016 of using their power and traction to confront the challenges facing them.

“That is why we are declaring 2017 the year of the people’s power; the year in which the people will use their traction to demand prudent governance and to turn out in their millions in all programmes including, but not limited to, voter registration.”

It does not take much to realise that, typically, Tsvangirai is praying for the worsening of economic conditions in the country so as to benefit from a protest vote.

Tsvangirai and his party, devoid of any alternatives or any appealing programme of action, relies on people’s anger against the ruling Zanu-PF party.

It is this anger that he thinks will boil and bubble onto the streets in 2017.

He pins his hope on the failure of the local monetary and fiscal policies that, most notably, gave us the bond notes.

This prognosis, more like a death wish, is more of a street and bar talk kind of forecast.

The measures that have been put in place by authorities make 2017 different from 2007/8 that spawned a historic protest vote that saw him nearly taking power in the elections of March 2008.

It will be naïve to think that there can be a repeat of that.

Significant scientific pointers suggest that the bond note is not going to be inflationary, never mention hyperinflation which ravaged the old Zimbabwe dollar, which is the premise of Tsvangirai’s utterances.

There has been enough debate around bond notes, and crucially, the notes or essentially the currency has been accepted by the populace.

MDC-T was praying otherwise.

It will be useful to state that the multi-currency system remains firmly in place, and the bond currency has not replaced that regime.

Hence, the shocks that ravaged the Zimbabwe dollar and the attendant shortages that came with its galloping inflation — shortages of the material and increasingly useless currency and the shortage of critical goods such as foodstuffs and fuel — are unlikely to be seen in 2017.

This makes the use of the bond notes, even at a probable minimal inflation, a useful tool to both spur demand while being hedged against external shocks.

At a basic level, these are arguments that do not require the sophistication of economists.

Yet Tsvangirai does not seem to see these emerging realities.

He thinks, rather naively, that just because 2017 is the homestretch towards elections, things just make a sudden wrong turn to precipitate the suffering of the people so that they can deliver his much needed protest vote.

There have been reports, though, of certain businesses and interests spiriting money out of the country soon after elections in 2013 to cause a crisis, and the beginning of 2008 was characterised by increased external pressure on Zimbabwe.

The years 2017 and 2018 are going to be different by function of the ruling party having made a lot of traction in relation to mending ties with hostile international community actors, including financial institutions.

It is common cause that the hostile West of 2008 is different from the West of 2016, going into 2017 and ’18.

Even more critically, there is even recognition by the same that Zanu-PF is not going to show its back any time soon, hence, the prudence of working together with it for the stability and good prospects for the country.

This is different from 2008 where even a military invasion was planned and aborted.

Tsvangirai is obviously not reading these signs because he is naive.

He is probably also expecting a miracle.

The year 2016 has not been his best of years at the helm of the increasingly weak opposition.

He has been unwell himself.

He is probably looking for some miracle to cure his failing health both at organisational and personal levels.

Good luck to him — but the reality is that 2017 is not likely to make either any better.

The idea of street protests in and of itself does not seem to be the best programme of action by the opposition party.

In 2016 Zimbabwe registered so many of these protests that their efficacy has diminished, severely.

With protests being called every week, the diminishing returns were inevitable, and became glaring.

Crucially, protests lacked the buy-in of ordinary people on the vending pavements and stalls; informal traders and sleeping in queues waiting to withdraw their money from banks.

If we went by the book, these people would have been a potent ingredient in any uprising against Government.

However, by sheer resilience and dint of the new socio-economic realities these people largely ignored the opposition calls for massive uprisings.

They would be too busy to partake of the actions.

They would, chiefly, also not risk life and limb for a cause championed by moribund political forces.

This should stand as a warning to Tsvangirai.

Things may not be rosy in Zimbabwe but the electorate is unlikely to indulge Tsvangirai the political capital he little deserves as he enters the sunset of his opposition career which may as well be cut short by ill health.

He has been promising his supporters that he will defeat cancer — sincere best wishes there — and then defeat Zanu-PF [good luck!

The one thing that could throw him a lifeline is coalition politics in which all opposition forces form a consociational front against Zanu-PF.

However, and paradoxically, Tsvangirai is the stumbling block for that broad church.

He seems to believe that he is ordained to lead because he is strongest, yet he has lost for 16 years with all that vaunted strength.

Many in the opposition camp, including his own party, see him as a liability.

Tendai Biti is even uncharitable with him, calling him a fool and idiot and much worse.

He has reached his cap.

The year 2017 is not 2007 and much less 1997.

He is a man who, leading an organisation on a losing streak for close to two decades, nobody is now unwilling to entrust him with faith.

Ironically, Tsvangirai thinks he can still dictate the terms and lead a united opposition team.

On Tuesday he enunciated a framework within which he would engage a coalition partner.

He said: “The Presidential candidate must be selected on the basis of the best individual who can win an election for the coalition against the incumbent.

“The party which, based on past performance and/or other factors, is the strongest electorally in a given constituency must field the candidate for the coalition.”

All this is euphemism that he and his party should lead the coalition.

He will not take anything less — and that is the problem; his ego and the familiar “big man syndrome” he suffers from.

It was largely interpreted that he intended to shut out Tendai Biti and his party while accommodating, possibly, former secretary general Welshman Ncube and People First leader Joice Mujuru.

Only Biti, as he told us yesterday, is not interested in the first place.

He does not feel that Tsvangirai is a sell-able brand anymore.

But unlike Tsvangirai, he is a lawyer with so much to do and somewhere to work and earn money.

That is a point that has been raised a couple of times; here is a career politician who has nowhere to go and nothing to do.

But he better be promised that 2017, for all his misplaced optimism, is never going to be easy.

And by the way, the rains are falling, and there won’t be the danger of hungry men and women to aid Tsvangirai’s ambitions that now hang precariously.