Chamisa is THE problem

MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa is no longer a factor in solving Zimbabwe's problems and neither is he worthy talking to over governance. He is a waste of time. For President Mnangagwa to dialogue with Chamisa at the moment would be stooping to a record low.

A whole State President entering talks with a small fly that does not recognise him, when the international community and its leaders do recognise him?  No, Nelson, no! Over the months Chamisa has proved to be a big part of the problem himself that, in fact, needs a solution.

Naturally, a problem does not provide a solution to itself. It remains a problem. Chamisa has largely become an epitome of poor politicking, emotional instability and brazen dislike for order and a propensity to abuse the existing democratic space.

It is clear Chamisa's biggest mistake was overrating his stake in Zimbabwe's political space and with time he is slowly discovering his diminishing returns.

Since taking over power from MDC founding president Morgan Tsvangirai, Chamisa has distinguished himself as a problem that enjoys selfishly abusing the democratic space at the expense of the general populace and the development of the country.

His biggest mistake is ego. For example, there was no need for him to go to the Constitutional Court after the elections claiming to have "overwhelming" evidence of rigging yet he totally had nothing.

The Government exposed him badly by screening live the hearing for all and sundry to see. It exposed him as that politician who just wants to cause problems even where it is not necessary. He simply abused the democratic space and wasted everyone's time.

In normal and mature democracies Chamisa would have apologised to the nation for time wasting. But he did not. Well, this is the criticism most of  the gullible MDC Alliance supporters do not want to hear.

This is a departure from self-serving fanaticism. It hits below the belt. It hits the dangling bits until they retreat into the abdomen.  But it is realistic. It moves the country forward.

When he violently grabbed power in February 2017, many people in MDC and beyond got very excited but the mature ones urged caution.  Instead of uniting the party, he divided and split it much faster than anticipated.

Aided by the party's rogue wing of youth known as the Vanguard, Chamisa became the epitome of violence. Soon his violent nature spread like a veld fire and spilled over from his party to the nation at large. As the 2018 harmonised elections took a steady shape on a new trajectory of non-violence, thanks to the New Dispensation, Chamisa stuck to violent and foul-mouthed politics. He declared that no one except him should win the election. Any other result was unacceptable.

In the run-up to the elections, he violated his own party aspiring candidates by ordering them to delivering multitudes of supporters, by hook or crook to his roadshows, causing them to neglect their own constituencies. It was supposed to be him and him alone. It was a cavalcade whose plummage he looked at and thought it all provided votes.

No! Declaration that he should be the only winner, failure of which he would render this country ungovernable, even before voting day, was not only stupid but dangerous politics that has no place in a democracy like ours.

One would think a leader of a political party named Movement for Democractic Change would know what democracy is. But, alas, as we now have all learnt from Chamisa, what is in a name? Suffice to say, the election season is over and Zimbabwe needs to move forward but Chamisa is still in election mode, five months after the elections.

For as long as he remains in that mode, he is a problem not only to the country, but to himself and his party. For starters, after losing the election, then the election challenge at the Constitutional Court, after failing to get Sadc's and African Union's endorsement for his election challenge, if he was normal, he would have seen that there is no longer any other reasonable channel to follow but to accept defeat.

At first it was understandable that the huge defeat his MDC Alliance and himself suffered in the July 30 elections could have unhinged his brain and numbed his skull but by now he should have gotten over it. It seems he now needs psychiatric help to get out of it.

His propensity for political showboating through demonstrations is not only childish but self-serving especially when dealing with a mature democracy like Zimbabwe's under Zanu-PF. Yes, they will allow him to demonstrate on the streets and yet at the end of the day, it is much ado about nothing, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. Nothing! Besides showboating, spending the day on the streets, the demonstrations of that type prove nothing.

It is a waste of time by any standards. It defies logic — assuming Chamisa still has some semblance of it — that he wants to have talks with President Mnangagwa, yet he does not recognise him as the Head of State. What nonsense!

Chamisa's MPS go into Parliament and he says elections were not free and fair yet the voting process and system was the same. It was done simultaneously.  His party is demanding that ministers in President Mnangagwa's Government go to Parliament to answer questions but does not recognise their appointing authority — the President. What tomfoolery!

If Chamisa wants to be taken seriously in the matrix of governance he should change his attitude, his language, his politicking and get real.  What he has been doing since the elections does not make him a serious contender even for talks with the President. No President will stoop that low to talk to a mean person who does not seem to understand that opposition politics is not hate politics.

That opposition politics should be national in its interest and value system and indeed in it is everything. Nelson Chamisa is a failure practising archaic politics, the sort of politics that is informed by extreme arrogance bereft of tactic and vision.

The country has moved on and he has been left behind.