Zimpapers Logo

The title of Mutasa’s biography is very telling. At a time nationalists were fighting for Zimbabwe and identifying themselves as such, Mutasa identified himself as a Rhodesian Black, i.e. Rhodesian first, then black

Benny Tsododo Correspondent

What Mutasa and company, together with the MDC-T forget is that political power in Zimbabwe can only be attained through the ballot box. All efforts to attract or appeal to regional, international or extra-terrestrial powers are futile. Though foreign players are good at donating funds, ideology and everything else, they will never donate votes.

The celebratory response to Didymus Mutasa’s Press statement by one Luke Tamborinyoka, who is Morgan Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, exposed not only the uniformity of the ideological thrust between the MDC-T and Mutasa’s team but also betrayed a well-choreographed wider plot to once again place Zimbabwe on the global spotlight.

Like a child receiving a new toy, Tamborinyoka, in an opinion piece published in the Daily News of January 15 2015, could not hide his over-excitement at how Mutasa’s submissions had dovetailed with the voter-rejected ideas of the MDC-T.

Part of Tamborinyoka’s piece titled “Welcome to sanity: Cde Mutasa” read: “It is refreshing to hear Zanu-PF stalwarts attacking their own party on the same grounds and using the same language we in the MDC have used over the years.

“Reading the Press statement by former Zanu-PF secretary for administration, Didymus Mutasa, and the allegations he makes against his former party is like reading a statement from the MDC’s Information and Publicity Department.”

Tamborinyoka further said: “It can only be a vindication of the MDC when Zanu-PF is now accusing itself of electoral theft, violence and intimidation.”

Tamborinyoka was over the moon. No one can blame him since after reading Mutasa’s statement anyone would not help but agree with Tamborinyoka that the former Zanu-PF stalwart sounded like a diehard MDC-T activist.

Who else, other than a losing MDC-T candidate, would, in a hysterical manner, cry foul over unsubstantiated electoral fraud in any given election?

It is shamefully on public record that the MDC-T does not recognise any election it loses. The party operates on the incorrigible belief that it must win all elections, failing which the polls should be dismissed as “rigged”, “nikuved”, “stolen” or described in similar doomsday nomenclature.

Tellingly, Mutasa now regurgitates the same “electoral fraud” line. He tells us that he was robbed of his Zanu-PF Central Committee position during elections he contested in and reportedly presided over by his son.

He is simply telling us that Nyati does not lose elections. He is “unconquerable” like the MDC-T!

Not only does the MDC-T habitually, and now irritatingly, whine over supposed electoral fraud but it is also quick to accuse its rivals of using violence and any such coercive tactics to tilt the electoral scale in their favour.

This is part of the opposition party’s well-known ploy to cite one frivolous excuse after another in a bid to sanitise all its electoral losses.

In similar fashion, Mutasa is seeking to deodorise his humiliating loss of Central Committee elections by claiming that “brute force” was used against him. How hilarious! By the way, who would have dared use “brute force” against the then dreaded and self-proclaimed “God- father of Manicaland”? From all indications, it was Nyati himself who had the capability to use such coercive methods against his political contestants, not vice versa.

Wasn’t he the one who, as then Minister of Presidential Affairs, threatened to unleash the State machinery on his provincial rivals during one famous meeting reported in the media?

Nevertheless, like the MDC-T, he now claims to be a victim of violence from Zanu-PF.

Ironically, just like the MDC-T, during the Central Committee elections, he was content with the electoral process and did not register his displeasure over the alleged violence, only to wait after the announcement of election results to complain.

What a calculative move Nyati!

How can Tamborinyoka not be overjoyed when Mutasa even copied, if not stole, the regional diplomacy or is it the regional offensive approach by the MDC-T? The MDC-T had severally sought to place Zimbabwe on the agenda of regional and international organisations by using an overplayed strategy to project the country as ridden by violence or any other unsavoury crisis.

Revealingly, knowing that the African Union Heads of State annual meeting is around the corner, Tsvangirai last week brewed a shocker when according to a Daily News report, he “stormed” an imaginary Zanu-PF “terror base in Budiriro” amid “escalating violence in the country”.

What a better way of vilifying the country and capture the attention of the African leaders than project Zimbabwe as a lawless nation where political malcontents are allowed to freely create fiefdoms under the nose of law enforcers.

Apparently, Mutasa and company have picked on the idea and are impulsively running with it.

Like the MDC-T, Mutasa and company, in a selfish bid to get back into power, are appealing to Sadc and the African Union to intervene in Zimbabwe’s domestic matters.

The idea is to hoodwink the regional and international groupings into arm-twisting the country into a political settlement, like the inclusive Government, which, in its flawed nature, accommodates electoral losers like the MDC-T and Mutasa.

By placing Zimbabwe on the agenda of regional and international groupings, the MDC-T and Mutasa are seeking to continue presenting the country as a global problem child that needs to be disciplined, by more sanctions if possible.

They are creating conditions for the incessant alienation of Zimbabwe by foreign investors and the accompanying economic isolation that, together with sanctions, has created the debilitating economic challenges gnawing at our communities.

These politicians have reached a level of selfishness where they are willing to get into power at the cost of the same people they are claiming to be representing.

With this level of selfishness, Mutasa and company, just like the MDC-T, will likely not have any qualms at calling for more sanctions against the country.

Judging by the alacrity at which they copied the MDC-T political template, it is only sooner than later that the nation will hear Mutasa and company calling for more sanctions against Zimbabwe.

What Mutasa and company, together with the MDC-T, forget is that political power in Zimbabwe can only be attained through the ballot box.

All efforts to attract or appeal to regional, international or extra-terrestrial powers are futile. Though foreign players are good at donating funds, ideology and everything else, they will never donate votes. Never!

The sooner Mutasa and team acquaint themselves to this fact, the better. All political players are better off preparing for the 2018 elections rather than indulge in any political chicanery.

Please, spare us the political sideshows and dexterously prepare for the 2018 elections.

In fact, the March 27, 2015 by-elections scheduled for Mt Darwin West and Chirumanzi-Zibagwe constituencies provides a congenial platform for Mutasa and company to prove their political mettle.

Instead of nauseously whining, the Zanu-PF renegades should urgently form themselves into a political party and contest for power in the by-elections.