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Joram Nyathi Spectrum
The inimitable Nathaniel Manheru opined last week in his Saturday column that Zimbabwe faced a real prospect of a national by-election next year. That’s instead of a so-called eagerly-anticipated harmonised election. A possibility exists that the national by-election could be a watershed event because finally Morgan Tsvangirai might meet his political demise, felled by the blow of a man his party loves to deride for his venerable age, at 94.

But given Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 as of yesterday, it might not be a national by-election after all.

Just a few by-elections.

Manheru’s point was that the opposition singly and as a collective is prostrate. Perhaps comatose, in the intensive care unit.

The enervated opposition is trying to share some dry little oxygen through the membranous tissue it calls a “grand coalition”.

Quite crudely, there is no hope. They are aware that there is no more life, the support system has collapsed, the end is glaringly cruel.

We did not wish to prescribe euthanasia by repeating what Manheru warned of last week, until we realised the party was facing its death in a cowardly manner by accusing everyone around for poisoning it.

It’s Zanu-PF poisoning its life. Today it is the military. No, it is the CIO.

It is ZEC, it is the Chinese or it is the IMF conniving in its death by colluding to give financial assistance to President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF Government.

Then this week it was Zanu-PF again, this time deploying Chinese technology to deliver a coup de grace.

Even their media backers are at their wits’ end.

They don’t know what can restore life to this dying creature the British thrust on them to nurse to power.

The prescribed diet they call democracy simply isn’t working. An empty “grand coalition” is not working.

Now the MDC-T and its pointman, one Morgan Tsvangirai, is being told to abandon all this coalition thing and focus on “electoral reform” or condemn everything related to next year’s elections.

It is a nice ruse. You can then blame the loss on Zanu-PF.

They refused to make necessary reforms which disadvantaged them.

You don’t have to ponder about why people should vote for a party which can’t come up with a single policy document, even a utopian one, even a resurrected JUICE.

Put blankly, few people know what this dying thing stands for besides criticising Zanu-PF and every national institution perceived to be run by people known to Zanu-PF or have a liberation war or military background.

They have more faith in foreigners, but they must be British or American, or just of Western parentage.

Like UNDP and NGOs sourcing the kits and foreigners supervising the actual voting.

Anything else must have a Zanu-PF DNA imprint, like the biometric voter registration kits from Chinese firm Laxton Group.

It’s tainted. Zanu-PF has rigged the elections and wants to discourage opposition supporters from voting, fumed MDC-T secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora.

Merit or no merit, the MDC-T complained bitterly that the tender for the supply of the BVR kits shouldn’t have been awarded to Laxton Group of China but to Demalog Identification Systems of Germany. (Never mind the noise they made and the money wasted last year trying to block a German firm which was supposed to print the bond notes for Zimbabwe.)

It is the latest antics about the BVR tender award which elicited the most pointed rebuke to date from one of the party’s most ardent and devoted strategists, one Dr Alex Magaisa.

He was the advisor to Prime Minister Tsvangirai during the GNU. He is a lawyer. He was neck deep in the drafting of the Constitution of Zimbabwe. He is a worried man.

Dr Magaisa didn’t say anything novel. Simply that he said it, repeating what we have said over the years ahead of every election since 2000.

Tsvangirai and the MDC-T are their own worst enemy. Talk of an election terrifies them.

They will invent every alibi to discourage their supporters from voting, meanwhile presuming to undermine or expose Zanu-PF chicanery.

Talk of vote rigging, politically-related violence, Diaspora vote, dual citizenship, reforms — whether media or political — are all a sign of this fear of the ballot.

A perfect concoction to discourage and demoralise a potential voter, especially one who has missed out on the benefits of land reform and black economic empowerment policies and can’t feed his children on the opium of neo-liberal democracy.

A disillusioned Magaisa was furious about the MDC-T’s brainless reaction to the award of the BVR kits tender to Laxton Group.

He said the decision was predictable, but “the leaders have to be more strategic and avoid conceding more ground to Zanu-PF”.

Hear more: “The election is as much a mental game as it is physical . . . People can only get up to register to vote if there’s hope. If there is no hope, they can’t be bothered.

“Why waste time queuing up to register and vote when there is no hope of winning? This is why the opposition leaders must invest more in hope and drop their energy-sapping public statements.”

Way back in 2009, writer Petina Gappa shocked me with a stabbing question. She asked; “Is Joram Nyathi now writing from Munhumutapa Building?”

My crime then was to chastise the MDC-T for its obsession with security and defence ministerial portfolios instead of social ministries during GNU negotiations.

Before then, I had warned about discouraging voters by constantly telling them the election would be rigged.

I wonder if the party has moved an inch from that mental rut!

But the party also gets tangled in its own web.

Mwonzora cited as part of Zanu-PF’s rigging strategy the fact that there will be more BVR kits in rural areas than in cities and towns.

This is from a party which claims to be the most popular in the country.

Is it a revelation that about 60 percent of the Zimbabwean population is in the rural areas?

Is the MDC-T telling us it doesn’t have supporters or structures in rural areas?

Add to that at least a happy million resettled on newly-acquired farms and will defend them with their lives from an MDC-T which sees only chaos!

That is before we mention the practical aspects of rural distances and scattered settlements.

How else should ZEC ensure everyone can exercise their “democratic” right to vote?

Mwonzora also hinted at something which piqued our curiosity.

He claimed the award of the BVR kits supply tender to Laxton Group “is contrary to the recommendation of the political parties that observed the BVR validation process”.

What did they recommend? Was the recommendation binding? Was it constitutional? We thought ZEC was entirely independent, even of an overweening MDC-T?

Rigging by recommendation presumably! Less loathsome.

Magaisa has every reason to be worried. His ship is headed for stormy waters, if not the rocks.

What we are waiting for is an announcement by Tsvangirai himself that the MDC-T has resolved to boycott next year’s elections if sadc or the United Nations don’t force Zanu-PF to reform electoral laws.

“It is with a heavy heart that I announce that the party of sexcellence will not legitimise this sham of an election.

“The international community will not recognise the outcome,” President Tsvangirai announced in a midnight Press conference. QED.