Chamisa, MDC at wits' end

It is three months since this year's harmonised election and all is not well in the MDC-T Chamisa faction. As each day passes, the faction and its leader, Nelson Chamisa, are getting to grips with the sobering reality of their electoral loss on 30 July. The opposition lot is getting more and desperate as the fear of being deserted by supporters after a record 19-year of one electoral loss after another sets in.

Grim future
An analysis of the situation on the ground indicates a grim future for Chamisa and the party. Unlike the late former MDC-T leader, Morgan Tsvangirai before him who enjoyed the political and financial support of some Western capitals, Chamisa faces the risk of political irrelevance as he has neither the wherewithal nor the political power to roll out programmes and projects to pacify his increasingly restive followers who are realising that merely chanting, "Chamisa chete chete!" will not bring bread to their tables. He is also realising with unuttered regret that advocating for the extensions of sanctions against the people of Zimbabwe to corner ZANU PF ahead of the elections was gross political miscalculation as even his own supporters are also suffering the consequences of the move such as the recent shortages of basic commodities and fuel.

Chamisa is also staring eye ball to eyeball, the gloomy reality of facing his supporters for the next five with the heavy millstone of a chequered record of electoral failure. He could lull them with promises but these will not sit well with generations of MDC supporters who can no longer trust his promises given his recent record which has it foundations and precedent in the 2013 when the party lost to ZANU PF under his watch as the secretary for organisation.

After the July defeat his other sources of hope were pressing for a Government of National Unity (GNU) and pursuing his ongoing dogged-but-baseless claims that he won the poll, which he is using to drive the false narrative that President Emmerson Mnangagwa did not win the election. Both strategies have hit a stone wall sending him and the party lurching into a dead end.

NTA/GNU doomed
Chamisa is fully aware that he has no basis whatsoever to pursue a GNU initiative or ask ZANU PF for one. This is the reason why he is broaching the issue using the economic challenges which the country is facing to appeal to ZANU PF for what he has dignified as dialogue. In a press conference, which he addressed last week at his office at what others have come to describe as the Harvest of Thorns House, Chamisa dusted off the rejected Tendai Biti and Southern African Political Economy Series (SAPES) Trust owner, Ibbo Mandaza's concept of a national transitional authority (NTA) and presented it as a solution to his imagined politico-economic crisis facing Zimbabwe.

 The NTA is a euphemism for bringing him into Government through the backdoor. President Mnangagwa did not waste time before paying him in his own coin on the matter. The President "vakazvidira jecha zveNTA izvovo" (dashed his hopes) when he indicated that Chamisa and those who believed in the NTA or GNU could dream on as ZANU PF would not enter into such a grotesque political arrangement with anyone. Door closed. In street lingo the youth would say "President vakamupedzera (the President dealt him a severe blow)"

Illegitimacy claim a closed door
The other avenue, the rejection of the poll result as rigged and the questioning of President Mnangagwa's legitimacy, is also heading for nowhere very fast. This is because Zimbabweans, the region and the world are itching to move forward after two decades of economic regression and stagnation. This explains why no serious nation regional or global has shown any interest in his feeble electoral tantrums. His failure to prove any rigging on the part of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) undid his quest to cast aspersions on the President's legitimacy. He emerged from the Constitutional Court as more of a dishonest politician who attempted to land power by deceitful means than a victim of alleged connivance by ZEC and the Constitutional Court as he wishes the world to believe.

Careless political brinkmanship
Given these circumstances Chamisa has been behaving like a spurned suitor. He is speaking and acting like a lover whose affection has gone unrequited. He is sulking as if Zimbabweans, ZANU PF, President Mnangagwa and the world owe him. In all this, what should, however, worry Zimbabweans and the world is his desperation which is now bordering on political brinksmanship, treason and outright provocation in the name of pursuing one's rights to protest.

During his party's 19th anniversary gathering at Gwanzura Stadium over the weekend, despite being a lawyer, Chamisa spoke like an ordinary politician by inciting his members to march to the State House "to take our power." Chamisa is also not just a Christian but a trained minister of religion who knows that kings are enthroned and dethroned by God and that the role of all citizens is to pray for the country's leaders and not to scheme to illegally wrest power from a constitutionally-elected President using violent protests.  He shamelessly spoke of how he intended to abuse his influence over the faction's excitable and impressionable youths by declaring that, "ndikati youth: itai zvakati, hakudyiwi rinopisa (If I instruct the youth to cause mayhem there will be violent disturbances)."

Democracy flame drenched
During Chamisa's much-vaunted 80 plus campaign rallies he spoke of how he would practise inspecting a guard of honour in anticipation of winning the Presidency but not many people took him seriously. Many right-thinking Zimbabweans thought that he was just making up for his lack of substance using humour. No one ever thought that he would attempt to be practical with his fantasies the way he did with his mock independence flame lighting, which he termed the democracy flame, at Gwanzura Stadium on Saturday. Nobody thought that he could be that desperate for political relevance. The earth of Zimbabwe would not countenance such an abomination and, to borrow his sabotage politics metaphor, poured wet sand on the mischievous initiative and the flame could not be lit much to his own embarrassment.

Jinxed and doomed political career
Those who are familiar with Zimbabwe's political landscape have already spoken. They have interpreted the incident as prophetic and portending a doomed political career for Chamisa. They have advised him to pursue his legal career as he stood better chances of success therein than in politics where, like Tsvangirai, he seems to be jinxed. The political oracles have pronounced themselves on his political career and the choices continue to be spread before him to make his pick.