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Nobleman Runyanga-Correspondent

On 30 March 2018, Alliance for the People’s Agenda (APA) leader Dr Nkosana Moyo posted a Facebook Live video on his official page which included a segment where he responded to a question on whether or not he would vote for the MDC-Alliance leader, Nelson Chamisa. 

Two months ago, The Herald ran an article on the same video clip. 

The interest in Dr Moyo’s sentiments on Chamisa seems to be increasing as the 2023 harmonised elections beckon. 

This week, a Twitter user who uses the name Batsirai K dusted off the video and posted it again in a bid to criticise the APA leader for freely speaking his mind on Chamisa’s quality as a presidential election candidate.

Almost four months ago, anti-Government activist Hopewell Chin’ono ignored Dr Moyo’s sentiments and attempted to get him (Dr Moyo) to join the MDC Alliance faction, but as expected and rightly so too, the effort hit a brick wall. 

“(Dr) Nkosana Moyo is my mentor, I have told him that elections are won through numbers that is why Nelson Chamisa should lead a coalition,” Chin’ono tweeted on 2 August this year. 

“Nelson Chamisa is my friend, I have told him that you can’t win elections without critical thinkers around you. They both need each other!”  

Despite the limitless power and influence that he wishes the world to believe that he has, Dr Moyo would not be moved by Chin’ono from his conviction that Chamisa is simply not leadership material for any right thinking person to consider as a candidate to lead this great country. 

A bit of context would assist many to understand the circumstances under which Dr Moyo criticised Chamisa. 

Many have counter-criticised him for unfairly speaking his mind on Chamisa. 

His sentiments were spoken in response to a question by a viewer who had asked him if he would vote for Chamisa. 

While I hold no brief for Dr Moyo and would have no reason to, those who have been criticising him for his sentiment should understand that his views were not an unprovoked attack. 

They were a response to a question. Simple. 

Some MDC Alliance faction adherents attempted to defend Chamisa by quoting Kenyan lawyer, Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba, who contended that one does not need to be an economist to lead a country with a successful economy. 

Lumumba cited the example of the former Burkinabe president, the late Thomas Sankara, who he said was not educated, but assembled a team of experts which assisted him to turn his country’s economy around. 

Unfortunately, Chamisa is not Sankara. 

Yes, Sankara was not as educated as Chamisa, but he achieved a lot more than the local opposition leader. Where Sankara surrounded himself with experts, Chamisa chose young empty-headed bootlickers, who are only good at singing his praises. 

Whenever economic issues are mentioned, Chamisa readily refers to one of his very ambitious deputies, Tendai Biti. 

Despite Biti touting and portraying himself as the foremost economic thinker in Zimbabwe, the fact that Chin’ono attempted to play political match-maker between Chamisa and Dr Moyo confirmed the fact that the MDC Alliance leader’s team is woefully inadequate. 

It points to the woeful inadequacy of Chamisa’s technical team. 

Until May last year when MDC-T leaders, Dr Thokozani Khupe and Douglas Mwonzora began recalling legislators and councillors following the 31 March 2020 Supreme Court judgment, which declared Chamisa an illegitimate leader, the MDC Alliance was in charge of 28 out of Zimbabwe’s 32 urban local authorities. 

Chamisa failed to put together a team of critical thinkers to turn around the fortunes of the urban areas, most of which have deteriorated in both appearance and functionality.

Since the MDC took over the control of Zimbabwe’s urban spaces in 2000, the state of the country’s cities and towns has deteriorated grossly, but this worsened under Chamisa’s charge.

The city’s residents suffered water-borne diseases like cholera and dysentery, but the situation has never been this bad. 

Harare’s city centre has never been so wilfully neglected as to be strewn with uncollected refuse all over. At the end of the day, Zimbabweans do not need Dr Moyo to convince them that Chamisa is a poor candidate for the country’s presidency. 

If he has failed the residents of 28 urban local authorities, what more harm and damage can he inflict on the country in the very unlikely event of him getting the chance? 

Dr Moyo is not the only notable Zimbabwean who sees in Chamisa what the impressionable and excitable youths who blindly follow him (Chamisa) do not. 

Another such individual is former MDC Alliance faction member and businessman, Eddie Cross.

Speaking with media mogul, Trevor Ncube in his programme, In Conversation with Trevor, in September this year, Cross did not mince his words about Chamisa’s suitability as a national leader and politician. 

“Look, I think is a sure Chamisa guy, but he is still a kid and I’m not sure, I’m not sure . . . You know the Chinese have a saying; “If you are going to ride the tiger you gotta be able to stay on” and I don’t think he had the wisdom and I don’t think he had the maturity. One thing I loved about Morgan Tsvangirai was his heart for the people. (He) never wavered,” Cross said.

Cross quit politics in August 2018 citing the need to look after his wife who was unwell and highlighted that the decision had nothing to do with the acrimony that followed Chamisa’s unorthodox takeover of the MDC-T, which was later christened to MDC Alliance. 

Those who have been following events in the various MDC factions and formations will know that upon taking over the party, which later reduced to a faction of the main party led by Mwonzora, Chamisa systematically got rid of the people who founded the party.

Cross’ sentiment that he missed Tsvangirai’s “heart for the people” represented the wishes of many old generation MDC members who have either been kicked out of the faction or relegated to the background. 

These are people like Tapiwa Mashakada and Elias Mudzuri, among others, who were there with MDC leaders like the late Morgan Tsvangirai and Gibson Sibanda in 1999 when the party was founded. 

Some people, especially the youth, have fought in Chamisa’s corner over his decimation of the elderly from the faction.

They have argued that there is nothing wrong with being a young leader, but Cross’ assessment of Chamisa as a kid in politics who lacks wisdom has been proved correct in that his lack wisdom has seen him divide the faction between the youth and the elders.

Chamisa has proved that he is a childish politician, who is conceited by perceived political popularity.

Unlike the uneducated, but wise Thomas Sankara, Chamisa has failed to harness Zimbabwe’s human capital to provide solutions to Zimbabwe’s urban spaces. 

Like Tsvangirai before him, he has failed to reward the urban voter with world class services, who has voted for the party and faction since 2000. 

Instead of being creators of solutions to the urban dwellers’ anxieties and concerns, Chamisa and his faction have superintended the ruin of Zimbabwe’s once very beautiful cities and towns, all the time using the childish propaganda that central Government is to blame for the urban areas’ sorry state.

This is despite Government’s interventions such as the ongoing road repairs in towns under the Emergency Road Rehabilitation Programme. 

Interestingly, Chamisa and his hangers-on have failed to explain how Bulawayo, which is also superintended by his faction and operates under the same Government, is run very differently.

The City of Bulawayo management case has proved that most cities and towns under the MDC Alliance faction are running on autopilot and one shudders to imagine the effects of the faction’s mismanagement template being overlain over the whole of Zimbabwe. 

As the 2023 harmonised elections beckon, the electorate, especially urban dwellers, should remember that the polls do not start on the election date which the President will announce. They start now. 

This is why Chamisa is going around villages to sell his faction. 

Those who are familiar with the 2018 elections will remember how Cross was vindicated by Chamisa’s childish, comical and false campaign messages. The time to assess who to vote for in 2023 is now. 

As the election season opens soon, it is important for the electorate to choose between those with an impressive record of delivering solutions and those who lie, engage in political comedy and give utopian promises while doing nothing for the electorate in both the rural and urban constituencies.