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We have been following Mr Nelson Chamisa with interest since he catapulted himself by hook and crook to the MDC-T cockpit, following the death of founding leader Morgan Tsvangirai in February this year.

Chamisa avoided congress whose seal of approval he badly needed. Those within the MDC-T who supported his astronomical rise to power raised the new generation leadership discourse. They said it was time for the young generation to take charge.

They disparaged other presidential candidates in the 2018 harmonised elections like President Mnangagwa as “old” and therefore not worth the vote.

President Mnangagwa is 75.

Rally after rally, the MDC-T banked on Chamisa’s youthful age, which the opposition party flaunted as a licence to State House. Thus we have an opposition party that wants a nation of 14 million people to invest its future in nothing, but Chamisa’s age.

Chamisa is 40-years-old. At that age by any measure, a Zimbabwean is deemed mature — they are married, have a family and are the head of the family.

Ceteris paribus, at 40 they have finished their studies up to PhD level and are deemed academically sound. They are working and are accountable at the workplace, at home and their purse.

Recent developments have proven one can still be 40, be deemed mature and responsible when in fact they are highly childish. This aptly sums up Chamisa and this is no insult, but an observation.

In less than three months as MDC-T leader, Chamisa has done not only himself serious political damage, but the rest of those who see a national leader in him. In fact, he has soiled the new generation card on which he had launched his campaign for the presidency.

What are we arriving at? Chamisa has in the shortest period of time fast-tracked himself from puerile-ism to “pwere-ism” in a manner never witnessed in politics in our land.

We feel sorry for those who still invest their political faith in this man-child whose tongue has not only destroyed his political career, but the MDC-T itself; whose tongue has also tarnished the image of the church who saw a pastor in him and the legal fraternity which registered him as a lawyer.

The first promise from Chamisa to the electorate was bullet trains, spaghetti roads and airports in rural areas. The nation laughed about it for it was a joke, but his remarks last weekend while addressing a rally in Bedford in the United Kingdom are no joke at all, but an insult to women in this country.

Chamisa said: “If Mnangagwa wins five percent in free election, I will give him my sister. I have a sister who just turned 18 and looking for a husband. I am betting on this because I know it won’t happen.”

Pure commodification of women by an aspiring president who has nothing saleable about his presidential candidacy save age!

We note that this “pwere-ism” defines Chamisa in toto. He remains the man-child of our time who must be kept very far away from the throne even at party level. Why? This is not the first time Chamisa has disgraced women in this country and neither is it the last.

Addressing a rally at an open space close to Mkoba Teachers’ College in Gweru five years ago, Chamisa said, “if Emmerson Mnangagwa wins Zibagwe Constituency, I will give him my wife”.

The media was present at the rally and were bemused by these utterances. We believed he got carried away by the gathering before his eyes and some words escaped him. We forgave him.

Five years later, he is not only Utopian, but insults the womb from which he came by once again promising the President a wife in his 18-year-old sister. Questions then arise — is this the man Zimbabwe deserves as an opposition leader?

It is sad that at 40, Chamisa still behaves like a student activist.