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Kaelin Choto Correspondent

As the 2023 harmonised elections draw closer, Zimbabwe finds herself gravitating deeper into a Fools’ Season with self-proclaimed academics selling their political cosmetics to desperate politicians bent on hoodwinking their unsuspecting followers.

The Brenthurst Foundation desktop survey which predicted CCC leader, Nelson Chamisa’s victory over President Mnangagwa in this year’s elections, becomes the latest misleading offering that feeds directly into the opposition’s traditional complacent behaviour when it comes to determining their electoral appeal.

It would be surprising if politics alone as a social science discipline had survived the advent of technological advancements that often drag along a myriad of gimmicks and tricks.

Since the Niccolo Machiavelli era, politics has drastically evolved as societies became more developed and advanced.

It moved from being a mere battle of controlling numbers to a more sophisticated battle of the mind.

The politicians had to influence how the electorate think and perceive the world.

That is how establishments such as the Brenthurst Foundation were espoused in 2004 to fund African development.

However, its activities clearly show that it was established to effectively rig people’s opinions and create an illusion from a particular people’s anxieties.

The South African Foundation, Brenthurst’s chief executive is former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, who is obviously not a friend of Zimbabwe.

Obasanjo has a close working relationship with CCC co-Vice President, Tendai Biti and the pair has gone on to make publications on the dynamics of democracy in Africa such as “Democracy Works”.

To then expect anything objective on Zanu PF from the combination of Biti and Obasanjo is foolishness to say the least.

Essentially, the desktop survey’s findings define Brenthurst Foundation as a political mercenary that is open for hire by any organisation that seeks to further its appeal to members of the public who are at many times not aware of the deliberate twist of facts that are engineered to lure them.

Before unpacking the findings, it is prudent for one to note the methodologies deployed to glean the data that predicted Chamisa’s 53 percent victory over President Mnangagwa.

Brenthurst claims to have used telephone interviews to collect data for their survey on a sample size of 1 000 registered voters.

It remains a mystery how they selected the sample. Issues on the composition of the sample remain unanswered, that is, its demographic representation, targeted age group, gender and location of the respondents.

How they got the contacts of the sample adds on to the misery, leaving one to ponder if they simply handpicked individuals they already had contacts with, that is if they contacted anyone at all.

Empirically, there is no reference to key policy deliverables that support and sustain their ratings.

It is not a secret that rating should not be based on expectations, but performance on tangible areas of assessment.

It is, nevertheless, crushing the glimpse of the obvious to point out that Brenthurst survey is devoid of facts and was probably carried out on Zimbabweans in the diaspora, given that the summary acknowledges that the exercise was carried out by SABI Strategy Group based in London, United Kingdom.

The findings are grossly detached from the realities of grassroots politics in Zimbabwe where Zanu PF has done tremendously well across the vast disciplines of a people’s livelihood from infrastructure development, retooling of industries, eradication of hunger, engaging the world, decimating inflation and stabilising prices among other interventions.

All things said and done, machinations by Brenthurst Foundation do not come as a surprise because the opposition has a running record of being dramatic ahead of elections, making frantic efforts to create an impression that their walk to victory was just as good as stroll in the park.

This is regardless of previous lessons that votes are not manufactured on social media neither are they decided by online elitists.

In Zimbabwe, elections have always been contested on the ground, at the grassroots where people see and judge for themselves.

That is why Zanu PF remains the household name in rural areas where it is in touch with the electorate through a plethora of projects and common understanding of the country’s war history which was fought in the bushes.

On the other hand, CCC stuck in its complacency mode does not realise the need to enhance service delivery to say the least.

Collecting garbage, proper sewer reticulation, clean water or maintenance of roads remain a mammoth task for the unable lot.

The biggest lesson for both the opposition and Brenthurst Foundation is that the ruling party had strong grassroots support “musangano wakasimbira kumasero”.

No amount of ideological political engineering can replace deliverables.

“Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo, no wonder Zanu PF’s support base continues to increase on account of defections by CCC members to the party.

Chamisa, Biti et al must simply work and stop wishing for votes and wasting time promulgating scam surveys.