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Mr Mwonzora

Joram Nyathi Group Political Editor
From the year 2000, when the united MDC won 57 seats in the House of Assembly elections, I was almost convinced that it was not possible to revert to a one-party state again.
Today I feel we might have been too optimistic given the MDC’s evanescent fervour.
Since then, the MDC has suffered such mental atrophy that it is difficult to imagine it winning an outright electoral victory against a resurgent Zanu-PF.

Never mind the self-indulgent claims about Nikuv following defeat in the July 31 2013 elections, itself an alibi invented by the media partly to justify their baseless predictions of an MDC-T victory, and secondly, to help Morgan Tsvangirai manage a constituency he had told on the eve of voting that an MDC-T Government was inevitable.

It has turned out that the party lacks serious and responsible leadership, that it doesn’t have much by way of policy alternatives besides “democracy” to counter Zanu-PF’s land reform, indigenisation and empowerment; and that it can’t think strategically despite all the goodwill from the media and beyond.

It was poor leadership and extremely dangerous of Tsvangirai to declare without any evidence that the election result was a sham, let alone call it a “grand fraud” and “theft”.

It matters little whether he himself believed that he might win. Various surveys had indicated that he was going to lose. The question was one of margin, not whether he would win or lose. By declaring the electoral result a fraud and theft Tsvangirai in fact wanted his supporters and other sympathisers to risk their lives demonstrating on the streets against an outcome he was warned of many months before the elections.

He wanted to foment chaos instead of explaining to his supporters how their policies failed to appeal to the majority of those who voted, especially those in rural areas where the majority of Zimbabweans are reaping the fruits of the land reform.

But people did not buy his fairytale. Those who had participated in the ill-fated “Final Push” could not risk taking part in another unconstitutional “Crossover” to State House.

The battle was lost at the polling station where all the contesting parties were fully represented and none had raised a complaint about violence, rigging, ballot stuffing or had witnessed the phantasmagoria of an “X” darting across the ballot paper from one candidate to his rival.

But that is not all.
Five months after the elections the party still appears dazed by the defeat. They have been talking about taking the evidence of the fraud and theft to the Constitutional Court, to Sadc, the AU and perhaps the United Nations.

Just before the elections, they had attacked SA’s Jacob Zuma as a biased facilitator, and African Union Commission chair Nkosazana Zuma for stating the obvious — that the AU would be guided by the Constitutional Court ruling on the due date for elections.

The MDC-T and its leadership can’t reconcile themselves to the reality of defeat and allow the nation to move ahead. Instead, they have kept their credulous supporters gazing at a mirage and hoping that the result of the July 31 elections might be overturned. Others have retreated into the churlish “tongai tione” mode which preceded the GPA.

This, unfortunately, while sounding sweet to the ear, deceives gullible party supporters who then view themselves as not part of any nation-building effort and in the process miss out on various Government projects which they are made to believe are solely for Zanu-PF supporters.

It is this grand party deception which has left many MDC supporters out of the land reform and indigenisation and empowerment programmes of the past decade. As part of a moral compensation, they are told that the programmes are executed in a partisan manner to exclude them.

But how do you benefit from a programme which the party you support says is wrong without being labelled a turncoat by your party? Government can’t force MDC supporters to apply for land if their party says they should not.
Meanwhile the leaders are eating!

Then this week we had MDC-T spokesperson Douglas Mwonzora telling “Zimbabweans” to brace for fresh elections “to be held soon” because “Zimbabweans have seen that the promises made by Zanu-PF were false”. Never mind the insinuation that Zanu-PF supporters are not “Zimbabweans”.

This is the same party which was dragged squealing to the elections, the same party which was making futile appeals in the Constitutional Court and to Sadc to have elections deferred because there was no money, or because Zanu-PF had refused to implement media and security sector “reforms”, and had not aligned all electoral laws to the new constitution.

Has Zanu PF suddenly resolved all these “outstanding issues” on its own in just five months? Does Zimbabwe now have money for fresh polls? Has Nikuv been disbanded and its treacherous voters’ roll shredded? In short, when is “soon” and what has changed to make the party so confident of winning elections now when it wasn’t ready after more than four years in government?

And people are expected to put aside everything which sustains them daily to get ready to return to the polls! Please! Part of the explanation for the MDC-T’s infantile brinksmanship and refusal to participate in national recovery programmes can be gleaned in a piece published in the Daily News on December 31, 2013.

The writer, who is supported by one Obadiah Chauke from Chipinge South who is described as a staunch MDC-T activist, indicates that opportunism by the party leadership cost the party dearly in the July 31 elections in Manicaland.

The writer refers specifically to the MDC-T’s opposition to the Chisumbanje Ethanol project, which the community viewed as a key investment which would transform their lives and had been endorsed by the party’s recalled Energy Minister Elias Mudzuri.

His successor tried to undermine the project at every turn, even after Tsvangirai had declared that given the power “I would take it to my home area in Buhera, it’s a Godsend for this area”.

People were now being told that effluent from the ethanol plant would kill their cattle and cause deformities in unborn children. It was better to forego the jobs!

The writer concludes his article as follows: “For some members of the senior MDC-T ranks, the feeling may have been that the project identity was Zanu-PF but geographically placed in MDC territory. No politician would work to support the enterprise of a perceived opponent.”

The result was that from 20 seats won in 2008, MDC-T collapsed to only four in 2013.
Meanwhile, the media have been at the forefront trying to condemn the 10-90 ethanol blending because it allegedly damages vehicles. Yet at independence ethanol blending was at 20-80. Could it be that Ian Smith was more democratic than Mugabe!

What is the strategy? Where are the policies to propel the party to victory besides carping on about what Zanu-PF hasn’t done in just five months?

In short, MDC-T is not offering us an alternative to Zanu-PF policies besides bitterness over failure to get into power. It’s been gloom and doom scenarios unmitigated by any glimmer of light. They would be happy to see the economy hit ground zero in the hope of harvesting another protest vote.

Happy New Year and prosperous 2014, Zimbabwe.