Desperate, last ditch plea

It is not looking good at all, made worse by a sense of all-round panic. The MDC-T campaign has all but collapsed, its cabal of organic intellectuals already abandoning post, deserting, hawking mid-flight all manner of reasons for the disastrous outturn. I know the behaviour of a party in distress, having experienced this in 2008 when Zanu-PF was in a comparable situation.

This week I will not broach a new subject matter. Rather, I will sample for your appreciation the thought turmoil in the MDC formations, the frenetic psychological dimensions of this capitulation, of course interlarding it with a bit of comment, both sardonic and acerbic, to push another step forward our debate on electoral Zimbabwe.

But before this, the Zimbabwe Independent.

Beastly journalism
I take it that the gentle reader has already seen and read the extraordinary front page editorial comment in this week's issue of the Zimbabwe Independent? Titled "Face the beast without fear", the editorial comment is intemperately hateful, replete with animal imagery as would shame even the discourse of Rhodesiana.

Check this out: "Besides, he is evidently reeling from old age and frailty, hence memory lapses, incoherent rhetoric and valedictory-style-speeches.

In short, he is manifestly a hopeless case. So, Zimbabweans must next week rise to the occasion, face the beast and not fear the face.

The power is within your hands to do so. This is not the time to feel powerless, frightened or to wallow in self-pity.

There is no room for fear or defeatism. It is time to act, and do so fearlessly and decisively." Of course the "he" is Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe and Zanu-PF's foremost candidate in the pending harmonized elections.

One wonders why a candidate afflicted by such frailties need an extra arrow shot from the media, apart from a rain of them from his political contestants. In the intemperate attack seems to be a confirmation of the potency of the old man, is it not?

The day Goebbels drew a revolver
Of course the Zimbabwe Independent is supposed to be a business weekly, not a campaign flier of the MDC formations.

Its language is supposed to reflect the measured tones and balance of a paper that professes to abhor hate language, that claims clinical balance, indeed that boastfully claims to be the acme of professional journalism.

In the eyes of the Zimbabwe Independent, Mugabe is worse than a bad person; he is a beast that must be confronted and put down at once. So much about hate language!

But there is another noteworthy dimension. Why is the Independent and its sister papers in the AMH stable threatened by Mugabe's lessons in history?

Surely if these lessons amount to campaign time wasted, all the better for their oppositional proponents who must take full advantage of such reminiscences, inane in the Zimbabwe Independent view?

Of course the Independent knows the potency and force of history and culture, who they validate, who they invalidate.

The basic problem is that in that narrative, the paper's preferred candidate is a non-person, a non-actor, and thus mortally excluded by that crowning history. So better repudiate that history, so everything begins in 1999!

And of course we all remember Amilcar Cabral and his landmark essay on national history and national culture. I am of course referring that portion where he says when someone mentioned "culture", Goebbels "brought out a revolver"! The revolver discharged a shot yesterday!

So many questions
I am not worried about Mugabe. He is a whole President. No harm visits him. But I am worried about journalism, its standards, its futures. When a paper runs such an editorial comment, runs it ahead of an election, does it hope to publish a day after the "beast" wins, a day after "evil prevails"?

Or will it go into the Diaspora? Why burn bridges? And what happens to ethics, to VMCZ and its much-vaunted values which AMH professes to subscribe to, professes to follow?

How would the editor correct a junior reporter aping such a poisoned pen? A real existentially thoughtful moment for the publisher. A real moment of reflection for the media fraternity.

Quite a moment of soul-searching for crafters of our Constitution in whose reckoning the virtues of the press are beyond gainsay, well beyond proof and thus never to be earned.

Desperate, last ditch plea
But it is all very easy to miss the editorial's semantic value. Not so much in itself in the way of its argument, in the way of its exhortations. By way of its promptings, by way of the state of mind that gushes the words that animate it.

There is profound frustration behind all this intemperance, a sense of ineluctable political endgame which makes this one Friday before the poll one hell of a day for desperate, last-ditch pleas, indeed a day for throwing the last dice.

There is a profound sense of consuming helplessness translating into undisguised canvassing for an oppositional vote by a newspaper which by rule, must stand above choices, above personal predilections.

In that regard, the editorial comment is a faithful window to the psychological state of minds inhabiting the campaign rooms of the opposition.

They have all but given up, which is why what begins as a demonization of Robert Mugabe soon transfigures into a desperate plea for "a critical mass to make change inescapable."

Enter the MDC's British attaché
This week saw many texts with remarkable affinities to the above editorial, text, arguably, which the editorial comment rose to reflect and to reinforce. Sample Tsvangirai's British-attached advisor, one Alex Magaisa.

Like the Zimbabwe Independent editorial, he prevaricates between neutral description of things as they are to a veiled but impassioned, desperate last-minute plea for that magic vote he knows will not come. Let him speak: "The MDC is going to win, we are not thinking of any other possibility.

"The only way for us to lose is only if someone steals the poll.

"The people are coming out in numbers to support the party and we are confident that the vote of the people will be respected and usher in a new government . . . The only viable mechanism to counter rigging attempts is to overwhelm the system.

"There is no mechanism of rigging that can overwhelm the people's vote."

You cannot miss the wistfulness, the gnawing angst initially disguised as sanguineness but degenerating into a desperate plea for an overwhelming vote sorely wished, sorely absent and so desperately pleaded for. The intersection with the editorial comment of the Independent cannot be missed.

Mviromviro dzemhanza . . .
If the reader is fumbling for whys and wherefores, Theresa Makone furnishes us with these, furnishes us so gratuitously.

Drumming support for the desperate Giles Mutsekwa in Chikanga-Dangamvura constituency of Mutare, just a few days after Tsvangirai and his candidate preferences were repudiated by his irate membership in Rusape's Makoni Central constituency, Makoni afforded us a rare glimpse into centrifugal forces at work within the MDC-T a matter of days before the crucial poll.

"There are power hungry elements that are working hand-in-glove with Zanu-PF," she claimed, all to "engineer a split of the MDC-T like they did in 2005 with Welshman Ncube. We are certain about that; these developments are pointing to that mviromviro dzemhanza mapfeka (a bald head begins as splitting hairs)".

Asserting the role of women in defending Tsvangirai, she inadvertently registers the magnitude of the threat to Tsvangirai: "In 2005, it was the women who stood by Tsvangirai, and again this time we will solidly stand by him.

"There is no other person in the MDC-T that we are prepared to salute as president.

"This party has one leader and that is president Morgan Richard Tsvangirai.

"The rest of those fighting him are wasting their time, they are fooling themselves. Let not their good looks and egos mislead them.

"Kwatiri they are nothing, nothing. I know they will distaste my speech, but I want to tell those plotting against Tsvangirai that the women assembly in Zimbabwe will rise up against them in a reincarnation of Mbuya Nehanda, our bones will rise up."

Nor did this empty her chest: "They (rebels) won't leave the party; their plot is to make sure they destroy Tsvangirai's pillars of support one by one until he becomes a lame duck."

And then she names the scapegoat, although not the culprit: "I blame Roy Bennett for these problems. He is the one who paid people money to come back to the party after the split. Angadai akaregedza zvakaenda negungwa, we won't be having these problems".

A festering abscess that burst
First, this is a festering abscess that has finally burst open, in the process throwing yellowish puss about. And unlike in the past where allegations of fratricidal conflict were coming from quasi-MDC-T people like Madhuku, this time around it is coming from a high-ranking member of the MDC-T executive in charge of a critical wing of the party. It amounts to a marked escalation.

Second, there is a clear indication that these are serious internal dynamics in the party, so serious as to make Tsvangirai's concerns existential, so serious as to distract him from the national contest.

And the recall of 2005 conveys the gravity of the internal differences, while also foreshadowing the 2013 elections in the same way the MDC-T's poor showing in 2005 was foreshadowed by the Ncube split.

Thirdly, the avuncular rejection of Makoni by the local leadership of Manicaland makes a loud lie to the so-called grand alliance so sorely lacking in grand endorsement by other echelons of the party.

To all intents and purposes Makoni is as good as an MDC-T candidate. He has only retained an illusion of MKD to shore up claims to a grand alliance.

But instead of enlarging the MDC-T, the vaunted alliance is threatening to sink its support in the critical province of Manicaland.

Fourth, the outburst gives us wonderful hints into the 2005 split. Was Biti part of the original break-away as we have always heard? Was he brought, nay, bought back by Roy Bennett? For what end?

Fifth, is the MDC-T already disintegrating ahead of the poll defeat? These are key questions.

Already challenging the result
I will not have enough space for a detailed analysis of MDC-T's deserting intellectuals. I will just sample one or two, both of them quite indicative enough. One such is Thamsanqa Zhou.

This week he penned a piece which shares a telling joke: "A joke doing the rounds is that the MDC-T have already drafted legal papers to challenge the result of (2013) election."

Here is a serious joke from an erstwhile supporter of the opposition but now seeing its nigh end. Why is Tsvangirai being deserted by so many intellectuals who would have killed for him only a few years back?

Why are his party's legal initiatives, all along, that party's celebrated forte, now a derided response? Again, MDC-T's internal discussants provide the clue.

Here is Blessing Vava, another scholar-supporter: "The four years (in the Inclusive Government) did more harm than good to the MDC".

Blasting the MDC-T for going on holiday during the inclusive days, Vava contrasts this quest for opulence on the part of the MDC-T with Zanu-PF's relentless election mode.

"The MDC came out tainted with the love for opulence and corruption scandals which also involve their leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

"In short they were exposed as minors in Government who failed to realize that the GPA set-up was not a permanent creature, but a temporary measure to create a conducive environment for elections. Certainly this was it and they have no one to blame when the election result comes out not in their favour."

Apart from the evident capitulation in Vava's piece, one is also struck by this sea-change where Mugabe is now spared the traditional rheum from these intellectuals while Tsvangirai, all along their darling, now gets the whole bile, undiluted.

And these scholars have become so despondent that they self-repudiate.

Here is Vava again: "Hiring supposed political scientists to interpret clear messages of rebuttal and developing theoretical frameworks in dissecting political temperatures in the region is not sufficient and will not garner the gusto to avoid a rigged election.

From the look of things, this election is likely to go in Mugabe's favour..."

Tsvangirai dhonzwa!
To all this add the ever dwindling numbers to Tsvangirai's rallies and the mounting frustration in him venting itself as gratuitous insults to all and sundry. Add the serious diplomatic reversal the MDC-T now faces, again expressing itself as public altercation with Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, the AU Chairperson.

Add the sustained attack on ZEC, expressing itself as discarded fictitious ballot papers recovered from bins, all to show that the vote is being tampered with.

Add, again, claims of millions of disenfranchised voters by a party which is arguing as if Zimbabwe makes voting a statutory obligation for citizens.

After all, if there are millions who did not register, why are these assumed to be MDC-T supporters? And if they are - which they are not - why didn't their party get them to register?

All these put together suggest a party about to throw in the towel. Or bent on a more sinister option: to spoil the vote.

Whichever way matters take, there will not be an MDC-T after August 5.

Tsvangirai dhonzwa! Tsvangirai kakatwa!

Icho!

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Nathaniel Manheru can be contacted at nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw