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Isdore Guvamombe Assistant Editor
NOW that MDC-T founder Morgan Tsvangirai’s funeral is over, the chickens have come home to roost. People are beginning to sober up and indeed reality is setting in.

Those who thought the mourners who gathered for the funeral could transform into voting figures are very lost and should start rethinking.

The excitement was too much, the emotion was high and social media was agog with talk that Zanu-PF will be beaten in the forthcoming elections, counting on the numbers that turned up for the funeral.

Well, that is a fallacy.

When a popular figure dies the people who come to a funeral can be described as a motley of sympathisers, spies, professional mourners, rumour mongers, hangers-on and those generally trying to while away time.

Others go to just see and have a story to tell.

This, in the village, is called a cause-to-effect set up, were one thing sets off another until there is confusion as to how the whole thing started.

It will therefore be folly to describe the people at Tsvangirai’s funeral as Chamisa’s supporters.

It gives the young man false courage and hope.

Some people left the comfort of their homes to catch a glimpse of Sulumani Chimbetu and his uncle Alan, who were staging a joint show for the first time in many years and performed at the funeral.

Others wanted to see Mbuya Tsvangirai at close range as she had become a skit.

Others were Locadia, Elizabeth, Mbuya Tsvangirai and Tsvangirai’s sympathisers, haters and relatives and or former school mates.

Women’s empowerment groups cannot be left out.

Villagers too!

Party supporters.

The little-minded among us want to analyse the funeral crowd as an electoral crowd! Karitundundu weee!

To my ancestors be the glory!

What has made Morgan Tvsangirai’s funeral big is the Government that has created this celebrity funeral, funding all of it to give him a send-off befitting a former Prime Minister.

It was never MDC-T.

MDC-T does not and would never have the capacity to make a funeral that big.

Never!

Credit goes to President Mnangangwa, who has turned out to be a leader and not a ruler.

It is Zanu-PF Government that dignified the funeral. In fact, the Zanu-PF Government housed him properly, assisted him with his medical bills and indeed made befitting funeral arrangements that ensured that Tsvangirai’s body was handled in the best possible manner, normally a preserve of State Presidents and senior Government officials.

Wafa warova! (The dead is gone for good).

Soon as the dust settles after the funeral (in fact, it might never settle for MDC-T) the jostling for positions started, or had already started.

The election period will also be upon us where MDC-T will not only face itself, but concurrently face other political parties, the giant Zanu-PF in the forefront, others in tow.

But it is the battle within itself that might bring it to its knees; constitutionalism vs populism. Chamisa, long time vice president Dr Thokozani Khupe, a cocktail of many attributes — a voice of women; an epitome of the party constitutionalism — being the only elected vice president; a Ndebele and a committed cadre, has had the acting presidency snatched mafia-type by Nelson Chamisa.

A power-hungry Chamisa has disregarded the constitution and hijacked the party and using mafia youths, making sure that his co-vice presidents are subdued.

It is this friction that will bring the party to its knees.

The funeral is over and if Chamisa is the real deal or if MDC-T is the real deal, let them raise the same number of people as those who gathered at the funeral.

I dare them to gather that number.

The Zanu-PF machinery is oiled, and do village elders not say that a clever cock waits as two grasshoppers fight and then easily picks them up when they are at their weakest!

It has become clear to all and sundry that the whole talk about democracy and constitutionalism in MDC-T is a smokescreen behind which the party hides its dictatorial tendencies.

Suffice to say the MDC-T, as it was formerly known, fragmented into smaller other parties, and each time the breakaway group cited dictatorship on the part of the late leader.

Today, Chamisa, who mastered the art of dictatorship from Tsvangirai, has even perfected it to a point where he cannot hide his quest for power.

He did it in a very brazen and ruthless manner that it is quite clear that he has lost Khupe’s loyalists and he has lost Mudzuri’s loyalists.

He has also lost many of Tsvangirai’s loyalists, because of the way he conducted himself.

When you see a lizard nodding, never think it is happy, it is its nature. Many people attending those meetings are working their way closer to taking Chamisa head on.

Obert Gutu quit citing violence. Khupe refused to attend the meetings and sanctify evil.

Douglas Mwonzora and others are keeping with the echelons of power, but soon, they will have the last laugh.

In the most simplified version of politics, Chamisa would think that all those attending his meetings as executive council members are doing it because they like him, but they are doing it to find their way closer to the space where they can work to bring him down.

Chamisa faces a double blow.

He will be beaten by Emmerson Mnangagwa in the forthcoming election and within a year, he faces an angry MDC-T congress.

The congress will have more questions for him and the young man will have a few answers.

If Chamisa had applied a thought process to get smooth transition into power, he would have allowed Khupe to act and then take power at congress. But he chose, of all things, to use violent youths to close out others from the party headquarters and hence from the echelons of power.

Wait for the vote and then you will see the dangers of a rented crowd.

Let a funeral crowd be a funeral crowd.

Voting is another ball game altogether.

The elections are not too far away. Soon the chickens will come home to roost.

Those who came to mourn, mourned. Others are still mourning.

Voting will be a different story.

Time will tell.