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AMERICAN industrialist and founder of Ford Motor Company once said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

This seems so true with the youthful MDC-T/MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa. Despite being dressed down on BBC’s Hardtalk last Friday, it is as though Chamisa never learnt that it pays to tell the truth and stick to facts.

His lies, which have now earned him the moniker “Lieson” on social media, continue unabated.

Zimbabweans didn’t need BBC’s Stephen Sackur to debunk Chamisa’s “Alice in Wonderland” fairy tales about bullet trains, spaghetti roads, airports all over and more.

They are on the ground and they know and understand what should be the priorities and what is purely “nonsensical”. They are also alive to what is achievable and not the “fantasia of the unconscious” that Chamisa continues to tell them as he travels around the country, without even acknowledging how the environment has changed for the better.

His supporters and sympathisers tried their best to fight in his corner regarding the gaffes he made on Hardtalk, but the excitable young man could not reflect on the wise counsel given, some of the advice coming from Alliance partner David Coltart who travelled with him to the United Kingdom.

Coltart wrote on his Twitter handle that Chamisa’s poor showing in the line of fire was understandable since he “has known nothing else other than the crazy political environment which has existed in this country since he entered politics in September 1999.”

But read Coltart’s post-mortem of their trip against what Chamisa told supporters at Murambinda Growth Point in Buhera district at the weekend and you wonder whether the two travelled together and met the same people.

According to the story carried in this issue, Chamisa claims that the moment they landed in the UK, they were not aware that it would be rallies galore: “Tichipinda (in UK) hatina kuziva kuti tiri kunosangana nemarally,” he said.

While Coltart says, they travelled by tube train, Chamisa claims there was a convoy of about 1 000 vehicles, with people ululating in that sea of white people. In London?

He also told people in Buhera that he met all members of the British administration, but a visit on his Facebook page will show how many he met and how high level they were, considering that he had made a false claim that the trip was at the invitation of the Queen.

From a psycho-analytical point of view, we have asked why Chamisa gets so excitable each time he is surrounded by a crowd. Why does he find it so easy to lie with a straight face, in some cases pure lies? Has age anything to do with this self-destructing act?

If it is his age and lack of maturity, who is he doing a disfavour — himself, or other young people who also want to enter the corridors of power? Why ruin this opportunity for other young people at a time when intergenerational issues are buzzwords?

We know that by nature, young people tend to be enthusiastic, energetic and in some cases use the art of exaggeration to convince their audience, but does Chamisa have to lie so badly?

We are in the information age where it is very easy, even for rural folk to cross-check utterances. BBC’s Sackur did not need Zanu-PF to do the script for him. Chamisa’s claims and counter-claims are in the public domain.

Leading a political party and an alliance of parties is a major responsibility that Chamisa must not take for granted. As a youthful politician he cannot afford to squander that opportunity for others. The sooner he gets mentors and/or mature advisers the better. He cannot charm supporters forever with his make-believe world.

As Presidential spokesperson Mr George Charamba said last week, the ball is in his court: “What young Chamisa has done and done inadvertently, but in a way that is nationally helpful, is to show that he can walk the length and breadth of this country uninhibited, which means it is going to be difficult for him to turn around and say it wasn’t free, it was unfair, then people will say comrade we saw you all over the country . . .”