Despite his youth, Chamisa today proved he is stuck in the past

For a while, I have had today, the date of the MDC manifesto launch, pencilled into my calendar as Decision Day. For weeks and even months now, as social media has been full of people proudly declaring their allegiances, I preferred to wait to see what the MDC had to offer.
 
While like many I have been uncomfortable with some of the seemingly ridiculous promises coming from Nelson Chamisa over the course of the campaign (imaginary meetings with Donald Trump, bizarre claims to have engineered Rwanda's ICT policy, and building new trains twice as fast as anything in existence are my personal top three!), I decided to give Chamisa the benefit of the doubt and ignore his campaign rhetoric. I was excited by Chamisa's youth and charisma, and wanted to see, when push came to shove, what his offer was to us, the Zimbabwean people.
 
Having watched the event live on ZBC (by the way, what a nice surprise that for all the deserved criticism, the state broadcaster is at least trying to be even-handed), I must say I came out disappointed.
 
It wasn't so much the policies – which somehow succeeded to be both uninspiring and unrealistic at the same time – that underwhelmed me, but rather the tone. For it quickly emerged that rather than selling his vision for Zimbabwe, Chamisa instead used his speech as an opportunity to insult his opponent. I know opposition leaders are meant to oppose the government, but this was frankly ridiculous - within the first few minutes I lost count of the amount of times ED was mentioned!
 
The irony is, that while Chamisa is solely focussed on Mnangagwa, ED seems to be ignoring his opponent, and instead, sharing his policy proposals with the electorate. Instead of insults, the president talks of peace, unity and love, and at every rally instructs his supporters not to insult or even mention the opposition.
 
My conclusion from this is perhaps a surprising one. Despite his youth, it seems that Nelson Chamisa is the candidate obsessed with the past, while ED is the one focussed on the future. After all, it is Chamisa who is actively seeking the endorsement of Robert Mugabe and the Zanu-PF old guard, who constantly uses Morgan Tsvangirai's legacy as a means to assert his legitimacy, and can only seem to be able to define himself in contrast to ED. He talks the language of the youth and the future, but his politics is stuck in the struggles of the past. When a candidate launches his manifesto by obsessing over his opponent and the former president, you know there is a problem.
 
Meanwhile ED, despite looking and sounding like the older generation, in fact is the candidate who is embracing the future. He refuses to talk about the past, refuses to attack his opponents, and refuses to rise to the bait thrown at him, by both Chamisa and Mugabe. He seems to know where he wants Zimbabwe to go, and is in a rush to lead us there, without wasting time on the past or petty disagreements.
 
In the past few weeks, Twitter has been full of people sharing their #unpopularopinion. So here is one that I have arrived at this afternoon. Despite his youth and his energy, Nelson Chamisa today proved he is stuck in the past. And I cannot vote for someone living in the past. It may not be a popular opinion, but sadly, it's true.