Rent-a-crowd; delude others not self

A few days ago, this columnist appeared to have steered a hornet's nest by appearing to criticise the recycling of crowds from one rally to another as a show of support.

There are people in the opposition who are quite aggressive and frankly violent even on social media.

They quickly get hot under the collar and see some red mist that they lose all rationality.

Trying to appeal to their higher sense of rationality is pointless; they easily turn fanatical.

It is this sense of dogmatism which makes us find no resonance with the so-called "generational consensus".

Many a time those that are unloading this kind of trash talk on us don't even know what the hell they are talking about.

What does that ever mean?

Which generation?

And what is its consensus?

Can a country have one generation dictating or domineering politics? No, it should not.

That doesn't matter whether it's a generation of the baby boomers or a generation of the liberators or the new generation of the millennials.

This is where a patriot known as Ndudzo Tugwete asked causally why a country cannot have an intergenerational consensus?

What's progressive about creating an Us vs Them society?

Why can't all generations find each other in a national consensus?

Are we in some old Kung Fu movie which is never enjoyable unless there is a villain and some hero?

Life is not like that.

We can all agree and work together for the betterment of our country in an intergenerational consensus. And if a cautionary tale is told by someone who is Zanu-PF aligned, analyse the tale and make a judgment on its merit not to approach everything as a dichotomy.

How then can anyone ever claim to have any sort of consensus when you dichotomise everything?

Anyway let's leave the fake consensus alone for now and focus on fake crowds at rallies.

The use of fake crowds in politics is not a new thing and is not going away.

The caution is just to do it and do something else which is genuine because fake doesn't vote.

Crowd politics is a strategy about creating virtual impressions.

Crowd effect is meant to psychologically numb rivals.

Since people know they cannot amass impressive crowds in certain locations, they have to hire transport from different parts of the country to ferry them to a venue where they have to make a show of popularity and hopefully create a movement with it.

It is all an above board politics. These days it's all about optics and perception.

How does it appear on photos or on video? So crowds are going to be rented, whether paid or not, it doesn't really matter. Look this thing started with Abel Muzorewa, was perfected by Zanu-PF and now half-backed by the opposition.

It does not work on its own unless accompanied a lot more attention to detail.

Crowd renting is part of psychological manipulation. It is meant to create deceptive perceptions. But the only problem with deceptive perceptions is when the one doing the crowd engineering ends up believing in their own virtual reality. One should always be aware that the people who are supposed to be impressed are others not themselves.

Besides the obvious impressions, sometimes crowd politics does produce a positive political outcome.

Crowd followers may start associating with an organisation they believe has the wind in its sails.

This is a group that doesn't have a position.

Their tendency is to just look where the crowd is. That's where they will also go. They can't be decisive.

They believe that the majority is always right so they have to join whatever group looks like a majority. So if one wants their support they have to create that virtual reality through crowd renting. Whilst they don't ideologically support that party, they just want to be associated with what's en vogue.

In the UK there is a company part of whose business is to provide background people for political events or "extras" as they call them. They have confirmed that they have provided such crowds for political parties during campaigns or build up to elections and are paid for such services. So the so-called bussing of supporters from one location to another sounds so much better than this renting of crowds happening elsewhere.

If this type of thing happens in dear old England, imagine what happens in the USA where optics is a major business? In the United States they go a little bit further and even hire the people that are going to cheer at a speech and strategically place them at a venue. They clap; do positive whistling, which is all kind of choreographed.

This is how cynical politics can be.

So when chicken buses and lorries carry supporters from all over the country to boost the political crowd in Murehwa, let us understand that it might be a desperate act but one which is modern.

There are some who do worse things like paying for bums on the seats.

Politicians are not the only group of humans that provide society with a lot to be cynical about.

How about those that actually hire mourners for a funeral or boost attendees at such events by hiring? Popularity is both a show and a reality.

A show of strength is shown by the masses one can gather together. So there is an automatic competition to show force. And for that to happen this is when some resort to padding their numbers by recycling same crowds from venue to venue.

The G40 cabal, particularly Kudzanai Chipanga, seemed good at it. There were always tens of thousands of people transported from place to place to give an impression of popularity.

The problem with that kind of politics is if it becomes an end in itself.

It might look impressive in pictures and on television but one needs real numbers come election day.

If not done in conjunction with real grassroots political activity, it becomes an exercise in self-delusion and there is nothing as counterproductive as lying to oneself and believing such a lie.

It is one thing to choreograph who is going to ask what question at a rally, place people to cheer or cry at certain announcements and others to do different kind of antics but these actors are only effective as a build up.

There needs to be more done on the ground to ensure that when the election day comes there will be a genuine crowd rooting and voting for you.

In Zimbabwe the idea of paying say $17 per person who is hired to attend a rally as happens in Russia or $25 per person as happens in the United States is not yet there.

But this writer believes he has seen some fake paparazzi mobbing one of these contemporary musical artists at a city hotel recently.

There was nothing genuine about those people taking photos and all over this person. It appeared all for a show. If this assessment was correct, then in politics it's not happening only because the money is not there but as the economy booms we are likely to go in that direction.

Ecstatic crowds capture media attention and sometimes help shift public opinion so it's not all vanity, really.

There is some real science behind this bussing of people around. It helps create some momentum. But like the caution rung earlier, one should have the ability to build on it with real voters that would stand up to be counted come election day.

The idea is not to have bravado as an end in itself.

Supporters do not like to feel isolated like some fringe lunatics. Numbers have the effect of validating them and giving legitimacy to their political choice.

So for that purpose one can say that rented crowds bolster confidence of both the supporters and sometimes the candidate.

But do we have to turn to this kind of politics of momentum and not that of substance to bolster our political fortunes? Sadly that's the way it is.

When one looks at decent folks like Dr Nkosana Moyo, their political careers don't seem to be getting anywhere because they are not building a political movement that generates momentum and impetus.

He might be one of the most substantive candidates in the next harmonised elections only next to ED but he is likely to have one of the most embarrassing numbers only next to Dr Dabengwa's 2013 results.

Politics is cynical enough without crowds on demand but imagine if we end up seeing people being paid to put bums on chairs in rallies and political meetings? That is where the rest of the world is.

This place where crowds are being perceived as a genuine political capital. It doesn't matter whether these crowds are genuine or fake.

The only problem is if the serious candidate begins to believe that they are very popular because of the crowd they see following them from rally to rally.

It is also a problem when someone advanced in age refuses to retire because when they see these crowds, they believe that they are popular and therefore must still be doing something right. It's well and good for others to believe it but the candidate should work with reality.