Chamisa and Mugabe: Tell us the truth about your relationship

While reports that Chamisa met former president Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace in Dubai, agreeing on a 20-member Cabinet team if he wins the elections on July 30, may not be true, there are still very large question marks remaining about their relationship.

For many months now, the relationship has been partially exposed, with expressions of open support, dialogue and cooperation between the MDC leadership and the Mugabes and their proxy party, the NPF.

They have attended rallies together, embraced each other publicly and called for shared voting.

It is obvious that this is a relationship of convenience, and has little to do with ideology.

Chamisa needs support from wherever he can get it and he knows that the Mugabes still have significant support and deeper pockets that his financially ailing campaign can muster.

The Mugabes know that Chamisa is their sole ticket to return to some level of power. They know that President Emmerson Mnangagwa has permanently closed the door on them, but Chamisa's outreach gives them hope that the last seven months of a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe will be merely an aberration.

All Zimbabweans are well aware that Robert and Grace Mugabe were not able to stay in power so long without learning some devious and calculated tricks. Over the years, the pair used fraud, violence and wide measures of control to stay in power at all costs.

So making an alliance with the party of a former sworn enemy should be little shock to anyone, especially now that the memory of Morgan Tsvangirai, his people and even the values he stood for are slowly being expunged from the party he built and led.

In Chamisa, the Mugabes see a kindred spirit, whose sole aim is a lust for power.

Neither side has denied their relationship. So the questions that Zimbabweans will need answering, especially members and supporters of the MDC, are many.

What has Chamisa promised the Mugabes for their support?

Nothing comes for free in politics, especially in the Mugabes' machinations. They have risked the ire of the authorities further by involving themselves so prominently in these elections, and they still have much to lose, so they must be gambling that it is worth it.

If Chamisa does win the elections, what will become of the Mugabes?

While President Mnangagwa tried to do the Christian thing and leave them to retire far from the spotlight and in retirement, they disobeyed not just the president, but the will of the people who clearly want the Mugabes to remain sidelined.

Chamisa brought them out of retirement and made them relevant again, and the cooperation and collaboration before the elections is too deep for there to be no effects after it.

We need to know desperately and urgently what has been agreed and promised, because the Mugabes are not just any other Zimbabwean couple.

What is now becoming clear that was formerly thought as impossible is actually happening and the nightmare of the Mugabes' return to some type of power could be only weeks away.

While talk of meetings in Dubai, where Grace Mugabe would be given the vice-presidency, may not be true, what if the location was false, but the promise, or something like it, were on the cards?

They say there is no smoke without fire, and something is going on below the surface far from the eyes and ears of the general population.

If Grace Mugabe would be one or two heartbeats away from complete and total power, and with their history of dark machinations that small step to the presidency would be considered quite a short one, then we need to know now.

If this were to occur then the last seven months of a new Zimbabwe that is freer and fairer will have been just a dream as we return once again to being a country run by a Mugabe, with all that entails.

Nelson Chamisa talks about being an agent of change, and perhaps in a sense he could be. If his regime includes Robert or Grace Mugabe then he is certainly giving us an incredibly dire and calamitous change.

Our new Zimbabwe will be forever lost.