Chamisa has no national interest at heart

MDC-T leader Nelson Chamisa's recent visit to the United Kingdom brings to the fore an instructive point made by the late Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith, who noted in his book, The Great Betrayal, that, "The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman thinks about the next generation."

Chamisa came out as the politician who is only thinking about the next election. It was apparent that the MDC-T leader had no interest of the country at heart when he appeared before the Chatham House for a presentation on the situation in Zimbabwe.

In a way that exposed his parochial appreciation of diplomacy, Chamisa decried that the UK government was being cosy with the Zimbabwe government without giving similar attention to his MDC-T party. This exposed his limited appreciation of the difference between political engagements and diplomatic engagements.

Because of his blurred political view, Chamisa ended up conflating government relations with political party relations. He was quoted during the Chatham presentation bemoaning that the British government was aligning itself to "one political party against another." He also vehemently complained that, "We have seen that there has been a bit of a shift on the part of the British government in terms of focusing more on political stability and trade and commerce at the expense of democracy."

Apparently the MDC-T leader was peeved by the government to government engagement between Zimbabwe and Britain. He sought to adulterate and degrade that economic and developmental relationship between the two countries to a mere political relationship.

To Chamisa, the British Government appeared to be engaging with ZANU PF not government. In his narrow-minded view, the British government should balance its relationship with the Zimbabwe government by extending similar relations to the MDC-T.

The same complaint was raised by Chamisa's colleague and cunning sidekick, Tendai Biti who similarly lambasted the British ambassador to Zimbabwe Catriona Laing, accusing her of siding with President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

All these puerile machinations exposed Chamisa and his opposition counterparts of pursuing a conceited kind of politics that is divorced from seeking national good but aimed at personal good.

Chamisa and team have proved that they are willing to sacrifice the national good that is coming out of the much-needed re-engagement between the governments of Zimbabwe and the UK. The same opposition team is equally lobbying for the retention of the sanctions regime imposed against the country for their own political good.

It is puzzling why a politician like Chamisa would complain about the British government's commendable strides to improve trade and commerce with Zimbabwe. Chamisa is urging the British to abandon all the efforts to improve trade relations with Zimbabwe and concentrate on what he calls democracy.

The question that arises then is which kind of democracy is he talking about which is devoid of a better economy. In fact, Chamisa has no moral pedestal to talk about democracy as he glaringly failed to practice democracy on his ascendancy to the party leadership.

For him to be on the helm of the MDC-T, he had to deploy some unconstitutional and overly violent measures to usurp power from Dr Thokozani Khupe, who is the constitutionally recognised heir to Morgan Tsvangirai.

Chamisa snubbed all appeals to subject his leadership to a constitutional test and he obdurately remain stuck to his dictatorial guns. So he must bring to an end this façade of calling for democracy when his leadership was born out of undemocratic antics.