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Nobleman  Runyanga Correspondent
Events in the opposition camp over the past few weeks should have left its adherents under no illusion about the type of leadership they are cursed with.If recent utterances by those opposition leaders who claim to lead the biggest opposition outfits in the country are anything to go by, then the Zimbabwean opposition politics is doomed.

First, it was MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who plumbed the depths of political bankruptcy at the beginning of the May 2017, when he addressed the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions May Day celebrations which were held at the Dzivaresekwa Stadium in Harare on May 1, 2017.

The opposition leader, who claims to lead a movement to achieve democratic change, seems to be getting impatient with both President Mugabe’s almost assured 2018 electoral victory and the hopelessly ill-prepared state of his party.

The man, upon whom the West once piled its hopes to unseat President Mugabe, is at wit’s end as both his own party and the much-vaunted coalition seem to be failing to gain traction ahead of the watershed 2018 harmonised elections. Stupid politicians believe in luck and a baseless coalition while astute ones know that political success is based on the principle of cause and effect.

His former party official, Toendepi Shonhe, did not mince his words when he pointed out that apart from zanu-pf, no other party had addressed the people’s needs post-2013.

While zanu-pf was addressing the electorate’s concerns using the Zim-Asset economic blueprint, Tsvangirai and company were planning to unseat the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairperson Justice Rita Makarau, for no reasons.

Faced with the reality of another drubbing at the hands of zanu-pf given its (opposition’s) own poor preparations, the man who claims to lead a “party of excellence” was forced to issue an ineffectual threat to refuse to recognise 2018 election results if he lost. So much for self-proclaimed democrats.

“We won’t agree on an outcome that is not my victory. Like (US President Donald) Trump, if I don’t win, I will not concede. How does a fragmented minority win over a united majority now that we are all wiser than in 2013 because of the grinding poverty?” pouted an already mentally-defeated Tsvangirai at Dzivaresekwa Stadium to the ululation and applause from his blind followers in attendance.

Even his handlers, past and present, should have hung their heads in shame on hearing this. But on second thoughts, the hapless career electoral loser must not be blamed. He is frustrated. For once, this writer vicariously understood what it feels like to lose one election after another.

The writer got an understanding of how it feels like to be a serial loser who is glaring at yet another electoral loss amid a lot of expectation from a party membership which seems not to understand that after the Government of National Unity (GNU) stint, there is nothing new to offer the electorate.

This writer began to understand the plight of a cornered opposition politician who has no way out except to repeat the meaningless demands which his uncouth youth assembly members make at bottle stores when zonked by cheap illicit brew smuggled from some of our neighbours.

Back in the village where the writer was raised, some people’s madness was known to follow movements of the lunar month. When the month was still young, the madness tended to peak and this seems to have befallen the opposition leaders. As the new lunar month “sat,” Tsvangirai was at it again.

This time the opposition leader, together with other spent forces such as the National People’s Party (NPP) vice president, Sipepa Nkomo, while addressing a National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) gathering in Chinhoyi on May 21, 2017, issued threats to zanu-pf if they lost the 2018 harmonised elections.

On the other hand, another member of the lunar club, the NPP leader Dr Joice Mujuru, while addressing a rally in Chitungwiza on May 28, 2017 displayed her political “mettle” by advocating for primary elections to choose the proposed coalition’s candidate for the 2018 presidential elections.

This drew criticism from many detractors and opposition party members, who felt that it was not tenable and could divide the fragile envisaged political union.

This was not the first time that the former senior zanu-pf member had verbally misfired in the opposition circles. In March, she revealed that she had signed a memorandum of understanding with the MDC-T which the latter strongly denied. The document was later signed in April 2017.

This exposed Dr Mujuru’s lack of political depth, despite those decades under President Mugabe. With this kind of harebrained opposition leadership, Zimbabwe’s opposition members are doomed.

They are being short-changed by men and women who claim to be champions of democracy but, when cornered, are prepared to reduce themselves to political thugs whose language is violence.

I now understand why President Mugabe described the mooted coalition as a multiplication of zeros by zero and projected that the union would turn out to be a coalition of defeat. The naivety and political immaturity of the opposition leaders cannot result in any miracle except for another resounding defeat.