'Zanu PF will not rig 2023 elections' 40 000 in Gweru believed it - proof we are still a naïve lot

Mankind is supposed to be a creature of reason, of rational behaviour and can think. In Zimbabwe many of us have taken leave of their senses and rational thinking and hence the reason the country has blundered from pillar to post these last 42 years!

Ask anyone of the 40 000 Zimbabweans who attended Nelson Chamisa's CCC Mkoba rally in Gweru, for example, what changes they expected from Chamisa and each would have produce a list a mile long. With the economy in total meltdown, unemployment rates a nauseating 90%, basic services such as education and health care all but collapse, etc.; the wish list is bound to be long!   

The rally attendees know that before Chamisa can attend to their problems, he must first wrestle political power from Emmerson Mnangagwa and his ruling party, Zanu PF party - something the opposition have so far failed to do.

The people of Zimbabwe have risked life and limb to elect MDC leaders (the forerunner of CCC before Chamisa changed the party name and colours in January 2022) on the understanding the party will deliver the democratic changes necessary to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. MDC, Movement for Democratic Change, as the party name implied was supposed to deliver the democratic changes the nation has been dying for.
 
Sadly, after 22 years, 5 of which in the 2008 to 2013 GNU, MDC leaders have failed to implement even one token democratic change. Not a sausage!  

Ask anyone of those CCC rally attendees to name just one democratic change the party has brought in the last 22 years, and you will be greeted with thousands upon thousands of blank faces. The blank faces are an echo of the empty heads!

However, if one was to ask the 40 000 rally attendees to name just one change MDC had delivered in the last 22 years, 5 of which in the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Not even one would answer because there is not even one meaningful change MDC have delivered. 40 000 blank faces a reflection of the empty head!

At all these CCC rallies Nelson Chamisa has made the usual empty promises of fixing the nation's economic and political problems including the all important and critical problem of stopping Zanu PF rigging the elections.

"This time I assure you, there will be no rigging, I now have eyes in ZEC, I am being briefed about their every move and even if they want to rig, we will know in advance and act to avert it," Nelson Chamisa told the 40 000 attending the rally in Gweru.

An empty promise, since Zanu PF has already decreed the regime will deny three million plus Zimbabweans in the diaspora the vote, for example. Chamisa was not doing anything to avert that one.

In September 2018 President Mnangagwa announced that Zimbabweans in the diaspora would finally have the vote they had been campaigning for decades. Sadly, this was just one of the many promises he has made but failed to honour since taking over from late Robert Mugabe in the November 2017 military coup.

The willingness of thousands of CCC supporters to believe Nelson Chamisa would solve the myriad of their problems, no questions asked, even when MDC has failed to implement even one token political reform in 22 years; is at the very heart of why Zimbabwe is in this economic mess and political paralysis. The failure to cross examine Chamisa and company's pathetic record of corruption and incompetence shows the people themselves have, at best, a superficial understanding of the big issues of quality leadership, free and fair elections, good governance, etc.

There is no denying Zimbabwe is a failed state; 42 years of economic decline and political paralysis - for neither the ruling party nor the multitude of opposition parties have a clue what is going on much less how to get the country out of this mess – would testify to that.

We are in this mess because the ordinary Zimbabweans themselves have allowed this sorry state of affairs to prevail all these years by their failure to think and asset their rights to a meaningful say in the governance of the country.  

Zimbabwe was not doomed to end up as the failed state we are today. Whilst we remain the naïve and gullible people who will believe Chamisa's word that Zanu PF will not rig the elections even all the evidence points to the contrary, for example; we will remain a failed state. Real change, from a failed state to a healthy and functioning democracy, will come after the metaphoric transformation from a naïve and gullible people to a thinking and question citizen.