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Mr Tsvangirai

In early March this year Morgan Tsvangirai, in his typical insensitivities, drew the ire and wrath of many when he bragged that his escape from a fatal accident that killed his wife Susan was a predestined predicament designed to preserve “the main actor.” These were his words, “One of the fundamental things is that the main actor doesn’t die if the film is still on.”
The rapacious quest for political power that Morgan Tsvangirai has displayed over the years can only be best explained by this misguided delusion that makes the man believe that he is a predetermined leader whose destiny is immune to the misgivings of anyone, voters included — totally unhindered or unbridled by any possible acts of omission or commission.

His extortionate ramblings over the election result are part of the illusion that led to his massive electoral defeat — a predicament squarely traceable to the misguided notion that Zimbabweans inherently hate Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF so much that victory for opposing him is guaranteed.

It is not surprising that Morgan Tsvangirai and Tendai Biti find it logical to postulate that the election result was fraudulent purely because they cannot believe they lost the vote.

They are quite oblivious to the detriment the crony- staffed kitchen cabinet has caused to their self-defeating political project. They have totally forgotten how the Makone-led kitchen cabinet disenfranchised many in the MDC-T when Ian Makone’s wife was imposed to take over the leadership of the Women’s Assembly — a move that was part of the beginning of this mighty fall that we have seen today.

Morgan Tsvangirai still deluded himself as Zimbabwe’s political main actor when elections leading to the 2011 MDC-T congress were marred by vote rigging irregularities and violence — counting those sins holy because they were being committed by his friends and relatives from the kitchen cabinet. Morgan Tsvangirai wangled Theresa Makone and many others into political positions they did not deserve and he dismissed every criticism as meaningless because he told himself the fate of his party was all installed in his person.

So overrated was Tsvangirai that after the telling split of the party in 2005 his colleagues found it warranted to totemise the name of the party by affixing Morgan’s second initial to it.

Why is Tendai Biti behaving like he is not aware that his name topped the list of people to be demoted or removed from cabinet when Morgan Tsvangirai axed the likes of Fidelis Mhashu and Elias Mudzuri through his 2011 cabinet reshuffle?

Does Tendai Biti seriously think that no one cares about the infighting in the MDC-T? He must ask the people of Chikanga who voted Arnold Tsunga.
The MDC-T leadership decided to go to sleep in the course of the maiden appearance in Government, and most of them foolishly mistook government perks for an expression of political power — even counting such for ultimate achievement.

Is it an exaggeration to assert that the MDC-T leadership totally lost any fighting spirit that saw them mount meaningful challenges to Zanu-PF the moment they tasted the sweetness of privileges enshrined in occupying ministerial positions?

And what did the MDC-T leadership think they were doing falling over each other to sing correctional praises for the otherwise deserved exceptional qualities of President Mugabe? Did they expect people to keep hating the man purely based on the yesteryear slander that had once spread from their lying mouths?

Morgan Tsvangirai, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, Tendai Biti and Nelson Chamisa all made glowing public comments correcting their opposition-era defamatory lies about the person of Robert Mugabe. If they thought the people were not listening then they are stupider than we all now know they are.

So unstrategic was the MDC-T leadership in the run-up to the 2013 election that the top three officials found it harmless to publicly pose for a photo reading a Zanu-PF manifesto right at the high table of an MDC-T rally. Undoubtedly they thought everyone was writhing with fury at the sight of the document — getting ready to unleash a thunderous protest vote against the “sunset party,” as Chamisa would put it.

Unconfirmed reports say Chamisa even went prophetic predicting a mighty demise of Zanu-PF, proclaiming supernatural communication with the Most High as the source of his foretells.

The biggest distraction for the MDC-T was the sensational internet clown by the name Baba Jukwa. The perfect fool did a feat by converting his Face Book page to an MDC-T polling station, getting an impressive 400 000 likes — clearly mistaken by many for votes. To think that senior MDC-T leaders actually thought the wanton ignoramus was doing a propaganda coup on Zanu-PF boggles the mind.

And Morgan Tsvangirai must have learnt that his sexometer should have been cut off in order to make him enter the kingdom of ruling Zimbabwe. In politics you do not scandalise and popularise at the same time.

An MDC-T activist by the name Simbarashe Dziruni had this to say about Tsvangirai’s disastrous sex scandals: “Finally people realised that serial bed-hopper is not their saviour. In fact they were wasting a lot of resources trying to protect their wives and daughters from open-zip policy.”

Blogger Denford Magora says the MDC leadership “are living in La-la land, delusional and completely off the mark with accusations of vote rigging.”
The only evidence Tsvangirai gave to a South African television journalist about vote rigging was that his party “used to control Manicaland,” and he could “not believe” they had lost the province to Zanu-PF. Staring at the journalist Tsvangirai genuinely wondered, “Could people have lost faith in us to that extent?”

Magora thinks it is simply illogical to treat Morgan Tsvangirai’s lack of belief as some kind of evidence to prove vote rigging.
Dismissing as baseless Tsvangirai’s sensationalised allegations of vote rigging Professor Lovemore Madhuku of the NCA had this to say:
“It is the NCA’s firm view that the complaints raised against the 31 July 2013 poll by the losers do not raise anything new and cannot be used as a basis for rejecting the results of an election in which they participated voluntarily.”

Clearly Morgan Tsvangirai and his inexperienced colleagues took support for granted, foolishly counting on the 2008 protest vote as a political plan to form the next government. Tsvangirai was possessed by this grand illusion that Zimbabweans would never desert him regardless of whatever he did or did not do, no matter how many sins he committed or how badly he behaved. In his world Mugabe was simply too evil and too old to be liked by anyone, and that alone sufficed to grant the MDC-T electoral victory anywhere anytime.

There was no point doing any outreach programmes to the people during the lifespan of the inclusive Government because the people of Zimbabwe now permanently belonged to the MDC-T and its leader Tsvangirai — so the thinking went.

Tsvangirai has no idea how the MMD lost the election in Zambia. Protest votes are seasonal by their very nature and this is no protest season for Zimbabweans. For most Zimbabweans this is indigenisation season, and whoever advises Tsvangirai must have told him so.

Instead of focusing on winning the election after the tenure of the inclusive Government Tsvangirai obsessed himself with this meaningless war for what he broadly called “reforms.”

He forgot too quickly that he led the first round vote in the March 2008 presidential race without any such reforms, just like Zanu-PF won elections at independence without crying for any reforms.

As soon as Tsvangirai got in the inclusive Government he engaged in committed personal fights for power and privileges — winning a mansion for himself in the process. When he was not doing that he was sparring with little Gideon Gono at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe — dismally failing to dislodge him from his job. He tried a similar fight against Johannes Tomana, the Attorney-General.

Again he lost the junior war and people were watching. The nasty little losses were a far cry from what main actors are made of, and the people soon realised who the actual bulls of Zimbabwean politics were. Someone must tell Theresa Makone the difference between a bull and a philanderer.

If Tsvangirai thought he was waging some kind of a political fight against the military leaders of Zimbabwe through his rhetoric about security sector reforms then he is in the wrong life career.

Military leaders the world over do not conform to the political voice of anyone who is not their commander-in-chief. Hearing Tsvangirai singing President Mugabe’s praises and deriding his military leaders as rogue at the same time; and also demanding reforms from them must have been an amusing experience for the generals.

They must have wondered what kind of a clown this prime minister was. Zanu-PF must have enjoyed it thoroughly as Tsvangirai called for Council of Ministers meetings that the party’s Cabinet ministers enjoyed boycotting — more to keep Tsvangirai distracted and frustrated and less for the merit of whatever excuses given by those who bothered to explain their absence.

In short Morgan Tsvangirai was thoroughly distracted for four and a half years while Zanu-PF was not only mobilising support on the ground but also getting its supporters registered for the vote.

Zanu-PF was in an election mode from day one of the inclusive Government. The jingles that the MDC-T ignored and derided, Jabulani Sibanda’s extensive outreach programmes, the draft constitution outreach programme, Kasukuwere’s indigenisation drive and the constant calls for an election were all part of the Zanu-PF strategy to keep its support base in election mode.

Meanwhile, Tsvangirai was womanising big time, taking his sexual adventures to the high seas of the Indian Ocean.
We were told Zanu-PF officials were pleading for favours in Tsvangirai’s government that would come after the inclusive Government. Tendai Biti said the tens of thousands that participated in Zanu-PF elections were all MDC-T supporters sent by himself to enjoy the fun of fooling Zanu-PF. He even suggested that the star rallies addressed by President Mugabe were made up of MDC-T supporters “fooling the old man’’.

The tragic mistake made by the MDC-T was that the leadership did not panic when red lights flashed in their faces, dismissing otherwise very informative surveys as fluke predictions, and even daring the surveys were part of a grand plan to fool Mugabe into complacency.

The United States, the United Kingdom and Australia must stand advised that their opinion over Zimbabwean polls this year neither matters nor counts, and precisely this is why they were told to stay away.

Bob Carr may want to pursue constitutional reforms leading to the recognition of indigenous Australians in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples before he calls for a re-run of an election whose context he knows next to nothing about.

Surely the rights of indigenous Australians to their own land cannot be less important than those of a few Zimbabweans who for one reason or the other failed to meet the criteria required for one to cast a vote.

Would it not be historical for Australia to carry out the historic reform of constitutionally recognising its indigenous people before the Australian Foreign Minister wails about reforms in faraway Zimbabwe?

Perhaps these reforms can be done before Australia goes for the 7 September election.
Meanwhile, the world is advised to listen more to those who were invited and accredited to observe the election in Zimbabwe instead of paying attention to the postulations emanating from Western capitals.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome! It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia.