Chamisa's dangerous post-fact politics

Has anyone ever stopped to ask themselves why Nelson Chamisa lies, is caught out and does not backtrack or apologise or retract but will repeat his lie or totally ignore the fact that he lied?

Is he just an unrepentant compulsive liar or there is actually a method to the sustained falsehoods?

Well, it's clear that we have what is called a post-factual politician. Donald Trump is one such. He lies a lot and gets away with it. Nobody seems to care anymore. Chamisa is the new lying kid on the block whose whole genre on politics is post fact or post truth.

While politicians are known to be a bit more flexible with the truth there are very few prominent politicians that are known to tell blatant lies.

But the whole body polity has recently been receiving a shock to its system. Downright pathetic fibs have been told over and over again and there are hordes of activists out there volunteering to defend their leader's lies.

We have now been taken into the "post-fact politics" era. Some have dubbed it the "post-truth" era. This is defined as "a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored".

An example is someone claims to have been invited by the Queen to England. Well, it was not true but did anybody care to question the integrity of such blatant lies? No.

The fact that there is a serious estrangement between Chamisa and facts or the reality that he occupies the purgatorial space between lies and dark fantasies don't seem to bother many.

This is because we are now in a zone where some are only interested in the ephemeral excitement that these fibs generate than the cold hard facts of reality. But post truth is framed by emotion. Charismatic preachers have done it for decades and only now has it been fully taken into Zimbabwe's political arena in its raw form.

Someone claims to have been promised $15 billion by Donald Trump who he claimed to have met. The actual fact is that nothing of the sort had happened. But in the post-factual era did people question that? No.

On the contrary fanatical supporters were almost declaring a fatwa against anyone pointing out the glaring lies. So people moved on and thought the "man of God" would repent and stop his lying ways.

No he did not.

He felt he could ride on the wings of an iconic revolutionary that was Dr Nkomo.

But he showed a lot of disrespect to the family and his memory by roping them in his pathetic self-promotion. He falsely claimed that he had been given the symbolic family heirloom of his walking stick.

As it turned out the dude was just telling plane old Ananias lies. But the post- factual contemporaneous supporters went on a social media jihad against anyone who dared beam the light on this.

In the current electioneering taking place in Zimbabwe, there is one group of supporters that has shown a great susceptibility and to lies. This is a group that does not care about vision but about a personality.

They just want him given power regardless of whatever else. They don't care about his lack of integrity.

They don't care about his pathological lies and manipulative behaviour. It does not bother them.

We are now caught in this place where dangerous and illusory fantasy is preferred to enlightened truth.

It's granted that politics will have persuasive communication and then there are lies. Zanu-PF uses the former while its main opposition is using the latter.

This is part of politics. But the tragedy is the willingness of some people to accept being lied to even by a purported pastor.

Now let us not judge people's faith but there is a moral pedestal on which men of the cloth are placed. They understandably have a higher moral blameworthiness.

If truthfulness has immense value in religious circles, it should be considered good political currency with which to purchase the truth.

There are things that are left ambiguous in politics.

Sometimes it's part of the art of double speak. But there is no art needed except con arts in being so deceitful and deceptive to the trusting public. This is because lies have always been considered a perfect tool for a demagogue. Most demagogues have turned into despots. And with the level of dishonesty for which we are showing quite a high tolerance, we are going to pay the price one day.

Zimbabwe is going to make a choice in a very open political space. Their choice should be shaped by options between alternative visions. It's tragic that their choice is going to be shaped by misleading information. Fact checking used to be an enterprise in political discourse. But now facts depend on whether one is wearing a red or not.

If one is wearing red they can say anything and there will be a justification brigade ready to deny it, spin it, justify it or defend it. In a world where pretenders and manipulators and even con artists are taking centre stage, facts are meant to be our saving grace.

Facts are meant to be the cornerstone holding our burgeoning democracy together. But if we are happy to accept brazenly obvious lies being spewed by some politician whenever he takes to the podium what does it say about us as a people?

How can we as a country accept a situation where top international diplomats accredited to our country are rebutting lies from one of our top politicians every day and we don't see the danger that poses to us as a nation if such a one acquired State power? Which investor will invest in one whose truth is so fluid, a truth which depends on what table top one is standing?

Chamisa's post-fact politics should not be accepted and the nation should show revulsion towards it.

Politicians are not performance artists. Their job is not to entertain. Their job is to chart and communicate a plausible vision. But we seem very keen to embrace a world in which facts don't matter anymore.

Let's all stop and question ourselves. Why are some people ready to embrace a populist movement selling Utopia against a people-centred political party addressing a national grievance?

An egregious abuse of facts and populist demagoguery should never be the basis upon which we choose those who lead us. What sort of politics is this where one opens a magazine and sees something fascinating such as Tower Bridge opening in London and they go around saying they will build one in Zimbabwe if elected? Tower Bridge is one of those bridges that open up to allow ships to pass through the waterway.

It has to be said, it's a riveting piece of engineering. Now some young politician watches Discovery Channel or opens a magazine and sees this bridge opening and is now going to his next rally to promise that if he is elected president Zimbabwe will have these bridges and you are not disappointed when you hear highly educated people accepting this nonsense? So you want to dig a water channel so you can build a bridge?

The countries that have these types of bridges don't have them as a fashion accessory or a monumental must-have. These bridges were constructed out of need. There was a need for overland traffic to cross the water channel to the other side. But there was also a need for ships and other vessels on the waterway to be able to move down the channel unimpeded. So there is a functional purpose for having this bridge.

But to some Boy Scout politician this will be promised at a rally just like a spaghetti junction. A spaghetti junction is not a must-have. What is a must-have is a modern road network or simply a modern transport system. If in the course of planning one a need to design a spaghetti junction, then so be it. But many are refusing to question this clear assault on reason.

Part of the reason we are ready to embrace this post-factual politics is our adversarial approach to it. Facts don't matter. If it's said by the opposite side it's wrong. If it is said by my side it is right. This is what informs the propensity of some to be sympathetic to falsehoods. Give Chamisa a mic, a podium and an audience and he will make stuff up. It's getting worse.

Give him a smartphone and a social media account and he will make stuff up.

The tragedy is that there will always be people that are ready to gobble up these lies and defend them to the death. Cold iced facts are being ignored for emotional politics.

Do people no longer care about facts? Are we at a place where there is no longer a price to pay for political carelessness?

The next election will be a contest between factual politics and post-factual politics. It will be a contest between reality and fantasy, a peaceful battle between facts and lies. One hopes truth will always prevail.