Zimpapers Logo

Isdore Guvamombe Assistant Editor
OF late, MDC-T has provided us a free political circus in which its three vice presidents have become chief clowns, in a fever-pitched battle to succeed ailing leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The succession battle pits Thokozani Khupe, the female and only elected vice president, Nelson Chamisa and Elias Mudzuri both appointed by Tsvangirai and hence unelected by congress. The wheels have certainly gone off the opposition party and a very sick and hospitalised Tsvangirai is being abused in spirit and will, by his power hungry deputies.

From the beginning I have always been opposed to MDC-T is its broad totality, in terms of ideology and what it tries to harbinger, but I certainly do not wish Morgan Tsvangirai dead. Neither do I seek to speed up his death. Ironically, his deputies are really seeking to fast-track his death, judging from their deeds and mentality. They seem to be convinced he is history. They seem to be convinced he is no longer a person but a cabbage in a fridge. That is very cruel and inhuman on their part.

The Zanu-PF Government, forever fiercely opposed by MDC-T, has shown a humane side, with President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his deputy Retired General Constantino Chiwenga visiting a sick Tsvangirai recently at his home and giving him moral and material support. They wish him well. It means they want him to live longer.

They don’t wish him dead. The Tsvangirai family is more than grateful to the new political dispensation, but I am sure the family cannot say the same to Tsvangirai’s three vice presidents. By that token, the new political dispensation has shown that it is more humane that the MDC-T leadership.

The battle to succeed Tsvangirai has become a cocktail for disaster, ruthlessness and unthinking on the effect of the ill Tsvangirai, and its lilt negates traditional African mantra on tending a sick person, especially one under mollifying care. They all wish Tsvangirai dead! All they want is power.

When normal thinking is that Tsvangirai’s illness should compassionately conclave MDC-T party leaders and supporters, the bizarre and the unthinkable is happening. The vultures from the party are circulating over his hospital bed, in more dramatic and ultra-predatory manner and the timbre being that they all brazenly wish Tsvangirai dead soonest rather than later.

The drama became more complicated by the closure of last week, when Tsvangirai’s family — itself another cocktail of disaster in terms of handling the matter — added confusion to the succession buffet, taking the centre stage to announce party issues. Fine, the party was surnamed T after Tsvangirai, but the confusion that the nomenclature has brought is that Tsvangirai’s family now meddles in both family and party issues, siring a monumental tapestry for disaster.

The family, led by Tsvangirai’s son Edwin, is anointing Mudzuri (but Edwin is not in party structures himself), while Tsvangirai’s spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka says Chamisa is the anointed one.

Khupe, insists that she is the only elected vice president at congress and, therefore, the only one with a constitutional mandate to take over power. Wither thou MDC-T? Who do party supporters listen to, now, Edwin, Mudzuri, Chamisa, Elizabeth, Tamborinyoka or Khupe?

The irritant we have been afforded is that Mudzuri and Edwin, are treating Chamisa and Khupe as criminals around Tsvangirai; unfortunately there is no “prospect for a military intervention” to restore the legacy of Tsvangirai. You get the sense they wish they were Zanu-PF in posture and structure. Zanu-PF managed its succession in a manner that left its detractors scampering for cover. No one has ever managed such a transition in that intelligent and peaceful manner. Let credit go to where it is due.

Back to MDC-T, the fight is more than the ascendancy to the party presidency. Tsvangirai’s first wife Susan died about a decade ago. His current wife Elizabeth is said to have been barred from seeing her husband — if newspaper reports are anything to go by — making it horribly bad for her and a group she favours politically. Dirty ilk is already spreading about an affair with one of the vice presidents and true or false, things have fallen apart.

Tsvangirai, who should be concentrating on recovering, is as good as hapless prey that watches predators parcelling out its body parts and its life legacy. Honestly, his vice presidents are so callous and heartless. They don’t like him. They want the power he has held for years. They want the party he named after himself. They have thrown out via the window all facets of humanism as power hunger intoxicates them.

In the event Tsvangirai wakes up to walk again, what will these three tell him? Even if Tsvangirai was to die today, would they honestly stand before his body or graveside and deliver speeches? What speeches? Am sure if God decides to take Tsvangirai today, the man will die with his party. The party has split over his illness and upon his death, the party will die. He is surrounded by power hungry crooks.

However, on another note, Tsvangirai created the mess around himself. He spent years concentrating on Zanu-PF succession, without sorting succession issues in his own party. He was seeing a speck in Zanu-PF, without seeing a log in his own eye.

Now Zanu-PF managed its own succession smoothly, but MDC-T is messy. It is stinking bad politics. In the final analysis here is a political party that lacks humanism. A political party whose top leadership is preoccupied with power and nothing more. It’s a free circus. In the end Morgan Tsvangirai will take his party to the grave!