'Tendai Biti's U-turn puzzling'

Tendai Biti, MDC secretary-general, on Thursday last week touched off a storm when he admitted that his party lost to Zanu-PF in the watershed July 31 elections due to poor electoral messages.

Biti, who was addressing a meeting of civic groups and academic leaders in Harare, had previously alleged that they lost the polls due to massive rigging, claims rejected by President Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF.

Biti had all along alleged that Zanu-PF had "stolen this election to the extent that they themselves are so embarrassed".

At the Thursday gathering, he claimed Zanu-PF's bhora mugedhi message resonated well with the electorate and added that the MDC's economic blueprint dubbed JUICE - an acronym for Jobs, Upliftment, Investment Capital and Environment - launched by party president Morgan Tsvangirai at his 8th national policy conference held at the Jubilee Christian Centre in Milton Park in Harare a month before the poll, was too complicated for the electorate.

Social and political commentators gave varying perspectives on Biti's sudden U-turn.

Playwright Cont Mhlanga said while he is not sure where Biti is coming from, he is sure where he is headed to.

"He is choosing a camp, finally coming out in the open the side of the coin he is on, the side that is calling for their president to step down," Mhlanga said.

"He is setting himself up to be the new leader in the new party that will come out of this crisis that they have pushed the party into."

The playwright said Biti has always known that Zanu-PF stole the election not from the ballot box but from the MDC structures that concerned themselves and not with the people and the future of the nation once they got into government during the inclusive years.

"It is true that while their leadership was showing off across the country, regionally and some internationally, Zanu-PF was busy stealing the hearts of their members through their empowerment programmes and later the manifesto," he said.

"They even called it vote-buying through indigenisation but failed to find an attractive counter to the vote-buying but only to shout Mugabe's old age and long term in office as if it is the one that was their party's policy and manifesto."

Mhlanga said after the election, Tsvangirai's MDC hurt themselves further by trying to make the people and the world buy the dummy of vote rigging when it was obvious that they willingly went to play and lost.

"They should just have quickly admitted defeat, congratulated Zanu-PF and gone swiftly to re-organise their party by opening up for other opposition parties and civil society inviting all to a round table to find new directions for the nation and not for MDC," he said.

"In the process the party was going to renew itself. We would be having no calls for Tsvangirai to step down as we have today."

Mhlanga believes the latest episode is time wasting for MDC and soon it will be election time and they will find themselves at a disadvantage as Zanu-PF will have a head start policy manifesto wise.

"This is equal and or even worse than the time wasting that they embarked on during the inclusive government. If they are plotting a split they need to move with speed to save on time and amount of destruction."

Civil rights activist Precious Shumba said it is unfortunate that Biti has chosen the time of their internal party dispute to make those serious claims, considering that he was vociferous in his denunciation of Zanu-PF and the so-called Nikuv involvement in the rigging of the July 31, 2013 harmonised elections.

"As the party's secretary- general, he must have been one of the key strategists to identify campaign issues, design campaign strategy and executive the election campaign plan, and provided a lot of input to guide the whole process up to post-election evaluation processes. "Working in a team means one is bound by the team resolutions, meaning the team remains united in failure and success. In a team, one must take full responsibility for their roles and be accountable for their own actions."

Shumba, however, said it must be soberly noted that the analysis into the July 2013 election must evaluate the content of election manifestos and their relevance to the Zimbabwean citizen.

"In that view, Biti's comments must be respected as they reflect a growing frustration within the top hierarchy of the MDC with the leadership style of Tsvangirai as the head of Zimbabwe's largest opposition party," he said.

"His utterances make the MDC a party of indisciplined party cadres who think that they all have the right to speak to the media on policy and administrative issues. That is where they lose the struggle to Zanu-PF."

Political commentator Blessing Ivan Vava said Biti's remarks are not surprising considering the infighting within the MDC.

"The sum of it all is to place the blame on Tsvangirai since he is the leader of the party and justify the calls for Tsvangirai to step down," he said.

"The statements therefore reinforce their argument that the loss was as a result of Tsvangirai's alleged bad leadership style."

A political commentator who refused to be named said Biti's statements are hypocritical and an act of desperation which should be viewed in the context of the current fissures within the MDC.

"What is clear is that the MDC is dominated by people who masquerade as genuine individuals wanting change and yet they are in it for personal gain.

"All along Biti and his colleagues have been telling us that the elections were stolen. He himself said that it was Nikuv who stole the election on behalf of Zanu-PF.

"He even went out of his way to take footage which has since gone viral on Internet of how Zanu-PF manipulated the elections on July 31 providing evidence from constituencies such as Mount Pleasant.

"So Biti's sudden U-turn is surprising considering that he is one of the top MDC leaders who compiled the much-hyped dossier they submitted to Sadc and AU about how the July, 31 election was stolen."

Media activist Tabani Moyo said the truth of the matter is that Zanu-PF employed both hardware and software strategies that led to the crushing victory in the just ended elections. "However, I do not believe it was anything to do with the messaging of the campaign, but it was more of the fact that the opposition was disorganised.

"Above all, the opposition's short stint in government exposed it to serious shortfalls pertaining to the governing of the country.

"The opposition, in short took, the people for granted and they thought it is given to win the next election," said Moyo.

He added that there is no departure point here only to say that yes, Zanu-PF won out of the opposition's complacency, "it was more organised than the rest but not mainly on messaging but recruitment and mobilisation of its supporters to vote."

"In addition it controlled through influence or otherwise the registration of voters in towns."

Media practitioner Rashweat Mukundu believes while it cannot be denied that Zanu-PF had a better message, one cannot completely say the election was free and fair.

"We all know of the failures around the voters' roll, the herding of rural communities like cattle to the voting posts," he said.

"The biggest failure was the failure by Tsvangirai, Biti and team to demand a genuinely free and fair election more so an independent ZEC, and transparent voter registration."

He added that Biti is right, "the election was not entirely rigged but was lost because the MDC leaders were sleeping on the job."