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My Turn with Tichaona Zindoga
IT was Innocent Mpofu who had the beautiful cartoon of Sekai Holland laughing at MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai late last year when Holland left Tsvangirai to join MDC Renewal.

The humour of it was predicated on a pun on the former’s name, which literally means “Laugh (at us, as much as you like)” and she must have derived some pleasure at scoffing at perennial loser Tsvangirai.

Sekai Holland is not the only one to have deserted Tsvangirai, the whole “Renewal” lobby, from the likes of Tendai Biti and Elton Mangoma to Rhodies such as Roy Bennett, being part of an array of disillusioned members leaving Tsvangirai’s side soon after elections in 2013.

The elections were Tsvangirai’s successive third to lose in the presidential race with the result this time around sending shock waves through the opposition and its supporters, home and abroad.

So it was not surprising that Holland made the decision.

It was also supposed to be a reasonable step.

Said Holland: “It is clear that the MDC-Tsvangirai has become the personal property of an individual. It is time to reject that and return to our founding principles. The MDC Renewal Team is where those who still adhere to the original values and principles of the party are regrouping.”

Well, one can only surmise that whatever those values and principles are, they all translate to a desire to remove the ruling Zanu-PF party from power.

That is what the opposition followers would want, for better or for worse.

The best way for an opposition to remove an incumbent is to show itself as a credible alternative to the ruling party, offering critiques of existing policies and practices, holding the ruling party to account and generally offering policy alternatives.

That is why a modicum of respect is accorded to opposition parties, at least in other climes.

The reader by now may know that Sekai Holland is the leader of the MDC Renewal movement which we are not too sure is a party, a lobby group, a drinking club or anything else they may choose.

When she made her move in September and laughed off association with poor Morgan, she moved to become the president of MDC Renewal.

One cannot be sure how powerful she is in that role, in that club or society.

However, as an opposition leader one would expect Sekai Holland to act as such and parade herself as a credible alternative, in our case, a credible alternative to President Mugabe.

She has failed dismally and for what everyone knows, MDC Renewal constitutes a gang of bitter guys disaffected with Morgan Tsvangirai.

There is no ideology there — even in rants about politics of personalities which they supposedly want to move away from — and clearly there is no message of renewal of national politics.

No message of national socio-economic renewal.

Nothing.

But that is not Sekai Holland’s worst crime.

She committed one this week.

You must have come across an interview she did with a Zimbabwean news site.

Holland complained that her organisation was being “overshadowed” by, and “transfixed” on what was happening in the ruling Zanu-PF.

What is happening in Zanu-PF is reform and realignment in light of internal threats and new politics to be pursued, including the delivery of Zim-Asset.

But Holland complained: “Whatever we are doing now as a party is being overshadowed by this senseless infighting whose head or tail we cannot make.”

She also regretted that she did not see young people investing energy and feel no need “to be invited into the streets to fight for their rights.”

Let’s all laugh at this political stupidity!

Surely, how can a serious opposition allow itself to be overshadowed and transfixed by the incumbent it should hold accountable, keep on its feet?

How can an opposition commit itself to studying internal fights of the ruling party — and fail in the same, too — instead of concentrating on its own game plan?

And in the absence of programmes of action, what will inspire confidence in the party to the extent of pushing conscientised youths to rally to the streets to fight for their rights, as Holland would want?

Where there is no message, there is no inspiration; where there is no ideology there is no consciousness.

It is such a straightforward philosophy that Holland can never grasp.

And what, anyway, was she doing in the liberation struggle which she claims to have partaken of?

One hopes she is not party to those scandals that we are now hearing.

Ironically, Holland wasted another opportunity, on the same platform in December last year, which for all that discern, should make her a useless political actor and a shameful ambassador of the brand that should come out of this thing called Renewal — if that ever comes to pass.

(We hear there are already ego fights and personality clashes in the movement, which has since reached out to others, so much so that we may have a stillbirth of an unformed nothing.)

Holland told of something called “multi-party politics”, which she said should succeed whatever is obtaining now (is it not exactly multi-party politics, already?)

She is quoted as saying, “We need to move into the transition from liberation movements and opposition movements into political parties that embrace multi-party politics,” adding that there was need for a structure of non-partisan and politically detached individuals to be set up “in order to extricate this country from the economic, political and social malaise.”

Boy, oh, boy!

Where on earth do we get this Utopian superstructure?

Not in even in Heaven, where we know that democracy and egalitarianism does not exist.

The contending politics, the partisanship and detachment are an opportunity in itself, which mediocre politicians like Holland are failing to take advantage of.

She would like us to believe there can be a new species of politician that is value-free, non-partisan and detached.

How hare-brained can one get!

The best Zimbabwean politicians can do, which the opposition has not been disposed to, is identify national interest and work towards and for those shared national values, interests and aspirations.

Zimbabwe is where it is today because of the lack of a national vision anchored on the same national values, interests and aspirations.

You cannot do that, anyway, if you have an opposition paid to defeat the purest of those values by foreigners.

And funny, Martian politicians like Holland can only make the situation worse.