Chamisa et al are hell bent on participating in flawed 2023 out of greed. What's in it for povo?

Zimbabwe's 2008 elections were a watershed elections in that Zanu PF's power to rig elections was exposed in its ugliest and graphic details.

Ever since Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, the country had never held free, fair and credible elections and all along the Commonwealth, AU and SADC had turned a blind eye to Zanu PF's repeated failure to hold free and fair elections. In 2002 the Commonwealth finally decided to act, it suspended Zimbabwe from the club. SADC pressured the regime switch-off its infamous vote rigging juggernaut for the 2008 elections.

The whole election process was conducted in peace and in a  transparent and professional manner, the March 2008 plebiscite would have been the first free, fair and credible election in Zimbabwe's history if only Zanu PF had not disrupted everything.

When Zanu PF informers imbedded with ZEC advised the party leaders the opposition was going to win the elections, Emmerson Mnangagwa, by his own admission, reactivated the Zanu PF vote rigging machinery. ZEC was instructed not to announce the election results. The Zanu PF juggernaut took over.

The 210 parliamentary results were recounted and announced in dribs and drabs over the next six weeks. Morgan Tsvangirai's 73% of the votes, by Mugabe's own Freudian slip, took six to whittled down to 47%, enough to force a runoff.

The Zanu PF vote rigging juggernaut came alive during the runoff. The juggernaut, headed by Mnangagwa (normally headed by Mugabe himself) and the top brass in the Army, Police, CIO and Prison Services, otherwise called the Joint Operation Command (JOC) launched Operation Mavhotera papi (Whom did you vote for). This was a rhetorical question to punish the electorate for daring to reject the party and Mugabe in the March vote.

Operation Mavhora papi was a military style operation with Zanu PF youths militia and war veterans assigned the role of the foot soldiers, harassing, beating and raping the electorate. The heavy duty tasks of beating, abducting and killing was carried out the  personal supplied and equipped by the Army, Police, CIO and Prison Services.

"What was accomplished by the bullet cannot be undone by the ballot!" thundered Mugabe, stamping his approval and encouragement of Operation Mavhotera papi.

Morgan Tsvangirai was forced to withdraw from the race. He complained of "Zanu PF has declared war on the innocent people!"

Mugabe went on to win the runoff one-horse race with 84% of the votes.

For the first time ever, both AU and SADC refused to endorse the Zanu PF victory and the regional body forced the regime to sign the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA), agreeing to the implementation of a raft of democratic reforms designed to stop a repeat of the blatant cheating and wanton violence of the 2008 election.

The primary task of the 2008 to 2013 GNU, comprising Zanu PF led by Robert Mugabe and the two MDC factions led by Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara and then latter Professor Welshman Ncube, was to implement the democratic reforms. Sadly, not even one token reform was implemented in five years.

Mugabe bribed the MDC leaders with the trappings of high office and the rest is history.

With not even one reform implemented, SADC leaders, who were the guarantor of the 2008 GPA, wanted the 2013 elections postponed until reforms were implemented. "If you go into the election next month," they warned the MDC leaders according to Dr Ibbo Mandaza who attended the Maputo summit. "You will lose. The elections are done!"

The warning fell on deaf ears, as we know.

MDC leaders like Tendai Biti have acknowledged the sheer futility of participating in Zimbabwe elections without first implementing the reforms.

"Look, you can't keep on participating in flawed electoral processes that serve to give big benefits to dictators such as Robert Mugabe. Mugabe has perfected the art of winning elections. So it will be very foolish for the opposition to continue legitimizing these sham elections which don't deliver. This country will go through a serious economic crisis in 2020 caused by Zanu PF. And yet, this is the only country where a government doesn't perform, it is encouraged by a super majority in parliament," said Tendai Biti in a 2015 interview with Isaac Mugabi.

"So you can't continue subjecting Zimbabweans to processes where their hopes just get crushed."

David Coltart confirmed the futility of participating and shed light on why MDC leaders are defying reason and keep participating in the flawed elections.

"The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn't now do the obvious – withdraw from the (2013) elections," confessed Coltart in his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.

"The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility."

So, MDC/CCC leaders defied not only SADC leaders' advice but their own judgement to participate in elections "so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw" in the 2013 and then in 2018 because of greed. They are doing the same again now, they are participating in 2023 elections out of greed.

Indeed it was greed that stopped them implementing the democratic reforms during the GNU, when they had the golden opportunity to do so.

But why are ordinary Zimbabweans participating in these flawed elections, assuming they understand the sheer futility of doing so and they can choose not to, unlike the rural voters who will be frog matched?

Answer; these are simple people, they have understood the concept of voting as a meaning to bring about political change. They do not understand that if elections are not free, fair and credible they are indeed meaningless or worse, as in this case, they service to give vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy.

Chamisa and company are taking advantage of these people's naivety to sell them the oxymoronic nonsense of having "winning in rigged election" strategies, given the Zanu PF rigging powers revealed during the 2008 watershed elections.

These simple people are like some who has struggled to understand simple arithmetic, the complexities of quadratic equations are way above their head. To play their role as voters they are expected to understand much more than quadratic equations and hence the reason why we are stuck - the overwhelming majority of our people have no clue what constitute free, fair and credible elections, a threshold we must reach to get out of the mess we are in.