Is MDC-T bigger than an individual?

Failed leadership is the surest way to kill any enterprise or organisation.

And that there is failed leadership at the helm of MDC-T is evident even to the most politically blind person. I hear some shrill calls to the effect that Elton Mangoma, Elias Mudzuri, Roy Bennett, Ian Kay etc should resign as soon as possible. Did they breach any MDC-T written or unwritten code?

If Mangoma and company propose that Morgan Tsvangirai should step down, to force them to resign is just getting a bit emotional. As far as Mangoma and company are concerned, they did not soil the party brand as Tsvangirai himself has done. With all due respect, I find that way of thinking deficient of reasoning, but driven by emotional connection to the leadership.

You do not purge people just because they hold different views to achieving the same thing you are all fighting for. Is that democracy, where people cannot express their views freely? Don't tell me MDC-T is like Zanu-PF, where succession is never debated! Mangoma and those that support his calls for leadership renewal are fully entitled to call for Tsvangirai to step down.

In times like these, it is folly of the highest degree to support and defend a tried and tested failure who has reached the overstay zone. Thinking like a blinkered horse where alternatives are available is a recipe for disaster. It's a battle of ideas and when we finally calm down we will realise we could argue a case better than to sound like dogma drunk demagogues.

It won't be long before we discover that loyalty and commitment to values is much more desirable than personalities, because the latter are fickle and may betray the very ideals on the basis of which one supports them.

Some people are vowing to go down with the falling leadership without stating what principle or value they are prepared to die for. They must articulate clearly what principles they are defending to the hilt, and that which Tsvangirai embodies, that they are fighting for. We need some enquiring and confident minds, lest we fall into that dark and bottomless pit where our loyalty is to a personality. It would be both sad and troubling.

The fact remains that someone has been sleeping on duty for some time now and that will forever be the naked truth. Facts are stubborn. Every man is an architect of his destiny.

It is sad and undeniable that Tsvangirai as a person has made several costly mistakes to the detriment of the party. No man is born a dictator, but dictators are created by those who surround individual leaders.

One's love or support for a particular leader must not blind reasoning or tolerate misdeeds. This idiocy of thinking one man is bigger than the cause is self-serving. Why congregating around someone with a self-defeating tendency of making fatal mistakes every now and then? Let us not get emotional; instead, let us get rational and go into intellectual combat with the movers and shakers, the Mangomas and those that are like-minded - those advocates of leadership renewal - those who believe that MDC-minus Tsvangirai is the way to go.

Our democratic ideal as a party is premised on change, nevertheless now a Movement for Democratic way to Change Tsvangirai. The people's project must come first before individual, selfish needs.

Many people died, were displaced and some are now disabled in an attempt to remove any form of dictatorial inclinations on the part of our leaders. We must win 2018 elections with a credible candidate at the fore and the time is now to debate and find that candidate.

This is a people's project and the people deserve better than Tsvangirai, whose many blunders, publicly or privately, threaten to derail the fundamental obligations of our struggle. This party is not destined to serve an individual.