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Simukai Tinhu Correspondent
The party congress of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)’s, an electoral exercise whose main purpose was to reinvigorate the party in preparation for the 2018 elections, has come and gone.

Much of what happened was conveyed by the headlines in local newspapers; ‘Tsvangirai emerges weaker from the Congress,’ ‘Without Unity, MDC is fighting a hopeless cause’, and ‘Did the MDC-T Congress enhance 2018 electoral chances?’

Often, a sad, dithering photo of Morgan Tsvangirai, the party leader, accompanied such headlines, completing the media’s suggestion that the opposition group is a cause that continues to retreat.

As the MDC’s congenital failure, Tsvangirai’s retention as leader has not gone down well with some sections of the party’s traditional support.

Indeed, following an emphatic thumping by ZANU-PF in the July 2013 elections, many thought that the leadership problem had become so serious that the opposition group needed a replacement if the party was to successfully rejuvenate itself.

The most touted party apparatchik to succeed Tsvangirai was the youthful and charismatic Nelson Chamisa, who until the congress at the end of October, was the MDC’s organising secretary.

A scion of the student movement that shook Zimbabwe’s political establishment in the late 1990s, party enthusiasts expected him, with Tsvangirai’s blessing, to ascend to the position of secretary general in preparation to take over after 2018. However, Tsvangirai reportedly strong-armed the internal electoral process in order to have him defeated. Instead, former party spokesman Douglas Mwonzora (who is considered to be less able) took over as the new secretary general, shattering the fragile sense of democracy within the party.

The move to undermine Chamisa’s electoral chances was not only motivated by contempt for the very notion of anyone leading the party, but also a desire to punish the youthful politician.

In the run-up to the congress, Mwonzora had led a group of Tsvangirai’s allies who were advocating for whittling down the powers of the secretary general, and transferring them to the leader of the party, a demand that Chamisa ferociously opposed.

Thus, Mwonzora an ardent ally of Tsvangirai, who is associated with initiating and sustaining a mini-cult of Tsvangirai, was rewarded for his acquiescence to Tsvangirai’s demands, and Chamisa was punished for his opposition to the leader’s power grab.

The preponderance of loyalty over merit has seen the promotion, in all party structures, of those who campaigned for Tsvangirai, and the decimation of those with talent from the leadership.

With no official positions within party structures, voices of those such as Chamisa are now easy to silence or push down below the surface where they cannot disturb the ‘forward march’ of the MDC.

Inadvertently, this behaviour can make the party appear mediocre, making it even more difficult to attract the serious talent that it so desperately needs.

But despite this rapid declension of the opposition outfit, some of the party faithful have been quick to suspend their disappointment.

They argue that the party has the capacity to bounce back. However, what hasn’t registered with these optimists is that the grander party of yesteryear is gone.

Indeed, gone are the days of party stalwarts such as the late Learnmore Jongwe, the irreplaceable Welshan Ncube and Tendai Biti who left after having concluded that their future lies outside the anguish and failure of MDC politics.

• Simukai Tinhu is a political analyst. @STinhu