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Isdore Guvamombe Reflections
Back in my village, in the proverbial land of milk honey and dust — Guruve — my clique of friends often meet at the growth point early morning on weekends to buy bread or newspapers.

Here, we feedback on the week in town and in the village. Here, again, we briefly share new developments, new ideas and make appointments for meetings later in the day.

One of my so-called friends is Isaac, who prides himself in letting everyone who cares, know that he is an avid MDC supporter, and of late, MDC-Alliance supporter.

He also enjoys taking me on the media issues, Zanu PF policies and governance. But if there are people passing by, he raises his volume, tempo and crescendo, especially when attacking Zanu PF.

He loves megaphone politics. Isaac loves crowds and often misbehaves like what a donkey does before a grinding mill crowd.

In our latest interaction I had just parked my car by a shop and there he was bubbling in arrogance as usual and shouting on top of his voice that I was a staunch Zanu PF supporter who eats, drinks and sleeps Zanu PF and many more things. He shouted that the ruling party had unashamedly destroyed MDC-Alliance.

His booming voice, wide shoulders and pot-belly compares badly with his spindly legs. It is worse when he walks as if his fit were quarrelling and throws his hands up and about to make a point, which is often not even a point at all.

Well, as usual I had no qualms about his assertion, for, normally after that senseless ranting, we then engage robustly in politics and give him the facts. Our talk is usually frank and at times, he has emotional breakdowns.

That he is a loud mouth is not in question. That he is a rabble rouser is not in question too. That he has emotional instability is also not in question. That he is too shallow in his political analysis is too telling.

And, that he is always broke and we at times take turns to buy him bread and eggs is not a secret in our circles.

When you buy bread and eggs for his children, he humbles himself momentarily and picks up the pieces of his political arguments, later after delivering the goodies home.

He seems to come to the shops each time without money, and for that we laugh at him.

That preamble aside. Isaac is a typical MDC supporter. By typical I mean very typical in behaviour, line of thinking and brazen denial of the truth on the ground. The blame game. Rogue, rawness, gross indiscipline and disregard of the law.

His nonconforming argument, like many in his party colleagues is that there is no single internal problem in MDC that has no Zanu PF hand. That fallacy is what is bringing MDC to its knees.

This time around, I made an afternoon appointment with him and being under thee Covid-19 lockdown, we had to avoid crowding and take all precautionary measures.

Isaac was and is still in denial that MDC has had a series of internal power struggles from its inception, based on parentage, dearth of ideological clarity, brazen disregard of its own constitution, immaturity, blind activism, disrespect for women and violence.

He senselessly blames the splits from Welshman Ncube to Tendai Biti, Job Sikhala up to Thokozani Khupe on Zanu PF. This is brazenly silly.

The current problems rocking the MDC boat started with a monumental mistake by its late founding leader Morgan Tsvangirai when he unilaterally appointed two extra vice presidents in Nelson Chamisa and Elias Mudzuri. Khupe, had already been elected at the 2014 congress.

Tsvangirai did not ratify that appointment at congress to make it legitimate, until his death. Suffice to say, if the problem is Zanu PF, according to the narrative of Isaac, many MDC supporters and even Nelson Chamisa himself, then Tsvangirai was ordered by Zanu PF to make appointments and not make them legally binding as per his party constitution.

In that case Tsvangirai was a Zanu PF proxy. The fact is that he was not, but he bungled. That is when he created the problem bedevilling MDC today. Not Zanu PF.

After Tsvangirai’s death, (I hope his soul is resting in peace) Chamisa threw the party constitution out of the window and violently grabbed power, instead of going to congress, within the stipulated time.

Honestly where does Zanu PF come in? Zanu PF told Chamisa to disregard his party constitution? Crass!

Khupe herself had to return to parity courtesy of a court ruling after an aggrieved MDC member went to court to seek recourse on constitutional violations.

MDC in whatever form, T, 99, B, N or MDC what, what has similar problems. When they create problems among themselves through, in most cases tomfoolery, they blame it on Zanu PF.

Their main problem is parentage. The part was born by foreign parents whose interests are not Zimbabwean in terms of grassroots ideology. They always serve foreign interests and think their parents, America and Western Europe see themselves as big brothers to others.

That makes them forget to stick to the rules and abide by the law. Therein lies their problem. A child with a bad parent will never be well-groomed, for in my village, a crab’s child cannot walk in different style, it has the side crawl.

MDC has serious problems because it lacks that thought process, that sense of belonging to Zimbabwe, that sense of responsibility in national building and indeed that sense of nationalism. Parentage was wrong from the beginning.

This is precisely why Chamisa is the most contemptuous of the law and the rule of law. He disregarded his own party constitution and violated Khupe and other cadres’ rights, Mafia style.

As if that was not enough, after the 2018 elections, he challenged the results and lost, and the Constitutional Court aptly declared President Mnangagwa the legitimately elected President of Zimbabwe, but typical of that contempt, Chamisa went on and on claiming that President Mnangagwa was illegitimate. This meant that he held the highest court in the land in high contempt.

It is that lack of respect for the law, that disrespect of the truth and that rogue behaviour that had destroyed the MDC and all its roots.

My friend Isaac is not alone, he is living in the same illusions, the lies, the same fallacies and the same fantasies. Denial, blame game, illusions, lawlessnes and confusion are the hallmarks of MDC.

But time, they say, is a great teacher.