Chamisa tells MDC-T supporters of flying elephants

MDC-T vice president Nelson Chamisa is taking too long to realise that winning a national election or running a country is not the same as performing theatrics for a rented crowd or posting pictures from rallies on social media. Soon he will realise too that saucy jibes at opponents on their own don't constitute party policy to win national elections. And also that borrowed robes don't make one a king.

The Chinhoyi rally on Sunday last week summed up the Chamisa we are all too familiar with: fast with the tongue and words, but signifying little substance, an insouciant young fellow given to reckless showboating whenever he gets a political platform.

Of course, he exposed his worries about the forthcoming elections before he got off the rails. Continuing the Tsvangirai legacy which he loves to launder about like a king's robes, Chamisa told his rented little crowd of less than 5 000, but which he put at 20 000, that the MDC-T would boycott elections if there were no electoral reforms.

"MDC will not go into elections before electoral reforms," he said. Then trying to sound informed and grounded than he can ever be, he went on: "We are getting briefs from intelligence officers who are telling us of plans to rig the elections." That Tsvangirai legacy of indecisiveness and confusing the electorate has never won the MDC-T an election. No sane person will want to vote for a party which declares elections "a formality" well before an election date is proclaimed, on claims of voting rigging, to mask its fear of losing. If the election is already rigged, why should people go to vote for you?

Of course, given the crude manoeuvres and the unseemly haste he used to usurp power and install himself as the MDC-T leader even before Morgan Tsvangirai's lifeless body was cold, Chamisa should know a few tricks about rigging oneself into office. Including rigging a bussed motley crowd of less than 3 000 into a multitude of 20 000.

He has also not been coy about deploying his "Order of the Vanguard" militia to enforce his will to power. We have every reason to be very afraid of such a leader.

But that was only the appetiser. The main menu, his promise to the potential voter, by way of MDC-T policies, was coming. And it came in a torrent.

The bullet train

The MDC-T President will answer questions in Government every two months. He will end the cash shortages in two weeks by joining the Rand Union. He will kill the Bond Note. He will wean traditional leaders from abuse by Zanu-PF. Civil servants over the age of 65 will be cashiered off. He will reopen industries. He will pay pensions which were wiped away by inflation. He will immediately phase out diesel trains and replace them with bullet trains which cover the 448 km Bulawayo-Harare distance in less than 40 minutes.

That's the Chamisa Presidency for you. To cap it all, he told his bemused and breathless listeners that Zimbabwe required $14,9 billion for infrastructure. He repeated what we all thought was a joke when he told the nation after his trip of shame to plead with the US congress to maintain sanctions on Zimbabwe, that Trump had pledged to pull $15 billion out of his hat and give it to the MDC-T government for opening up Zimbabwe for rapine.

Chamisa said when he was asked what they would give back in return for the $15 billion; "We told them we have 60 different minerals; Zimbabwe has enough gas to feed the rest of Africa for the next 200 years." Perhaps if you asked him what Africa's population would be in 200 years he would tell you 20 million. The guy loves his figures. Tshiiiiiiiiiisa mpama!

No hint of hyperbole at all.

This is the guy whose party has always claimed fatuously that Zanu-PF was mortgaging our natural resources!

If you can take him as presidential material, what stops you believing American elephants can fly! And it's known such demagoguery often lands people on the political pinnacle if not challenged.

We, however, find it curious that someone who suspects that elections could be rigged is spurning an invitation by President Mnangagwa for a conversation with all leaders of opposition parties. Would that not be the best platform to raise his worries, concerns, misgivings and reservations about the next elections? Shouldn't that be the best platform to detail what his party means by "electoral reforms", one of the legacies from Tsvangirai?

Perhaps such a platform won't allow him sufficient space for posturing. Or the complaints are not genuine at all to be raised on a serious platform, without a cheering partisan crowd!

The contradictions

Let's expose further contradictions, which only the besotted can gloss over. In written responses to the Zimbabwe Independent earlier, on the forthcoming elections, Chamisa said they were the government-in-waiting and that the youth should be allowed to take charge in all social and political spheres. "This election is about preserving our history, liberation legacy, and freedom as a people . . ."

A few lines later, "We are behind our (regional) peers by 37 years but we can catch up and overtake in five years. Zimbabwe is a sleeping giant soon to be awakened . . . This is so particularly if we leverage on our educational and human capital — skills, knowledge and experience — dividend."

Surely there can be no history or legacy to preserve if as a nation we are where Ian Smith left us 37 years ago! Whose history or liberation legacy is Chamisa referring to? If our peers have left us by 37 years he means everything from 1980 has been stagnant, and that would be fairly consistent with his party's nostalgia about Smith being better for the oppressed black majority.

So whose educational and human capital does he want to leverage for Zimbabwe to overtake the rest of Africa in five years? The Smith legacy again!

All this comes of an African disease of refusing to acknowledge the efforts of our predecessors, who are often confronted by greater challenges of imperialist obstruction, including the imposition of economic sanctions.

Honouring Tsvangirai

Talking of sanctions, we are again reminded of Chamisa's glowing tribute to the late Tsvangirai, saying the MDC-T must win the next election in his honour. "There can never be any better tribute to the late icon's illustrious sacrifice than to deliver victory at the vote," he enthused. "That will be a befitting tribute to his life of service and sacrifice." Without detracting from the huge contribution Tsvangirai made to the preservation of multipartyism in Zimbabwe (for which President Mnangagwa went out of his way to accord him a State assisted funeral by the way), we have a different take on "his life of service and sacrifice". Service to who? Sacrifice for what?

Here is a man who, after leading a valiant struggle in defence of workers' rights against the depredations of IMF and World Bank austerities in the early 1990s, later abused the support and power he had so gained then to fight against the democratization of land ownership in the country to the point of inviting sanctions on his own people to preserve white colonial privilege or so-called property rights. It is a grievous sin for which Tsvangirai did not atone to his last breath. Chamisa and company honoured his legacy by going to Washington, DC following the Zimbabwe Defence Forces' Operation Restore Legacy to appeal for those sanctions to be maintained if not intensified.

It is too early to whitewash the MDCs' treacherous role in the course of the Third Chimurenga. It is not a legacy to be easily laundered to a Zimbabwe still reeling under sanctions. But because thousands of our patriotic young people sacrificed for the democracy we enjoy today, Chamisa can freely contest the Presidency as well as apply for free land.

A legacy in danger

Now to the matter of the day.

Media reports suggest that former President Robert Mugabe is intimately linked to a new political party calling itself the National Patriotic Front. It is led by Retired Brigadier-General Ambrose Mutinhiri.

These developments were preceded by reports two weeks ago of the former President making a volte-face about his resignation in November last year, telling visiting African Union Commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat that he was forced to resign by the military, that he was being denied his constitutional rights, that his security was not guaranteed and that his wife was being harassed and crying everyday. He reportedly claimed the next elections would not be free nor fair as the military was running everything.

There was a new militancy in his tone, a combative Mugabe, speaking a language associated with the criminals the Zimbabwe Defence Forces sought to remove from the former president. It appears they won't be giving up the fight any time soon.

Manipulating infirmity

There is an African Union summit in Rwanda later this month. The criminals around the former President want Zimbabwe on the agenda for what the military did in November last year. But more importantly, they want to be seen to be doing something to "restore" constitutionalism, even if it means them also putting forward a military man, Rtd Brig-Gen Mutinhiri, to champion their cause.

The real danger is what these criminals are doing to Mugabe's legacy, for they are taking full advantage of his physical infirmity to milk maximum capital out of his iconic status in the country and outside. To pretend to love him, to love democracy, to love justice more than they actually do.

They are forcing him to say and do things he can't resist because he is totally dependent on those around him, including feeding him rotten lies that the multitudes who demonstrated in support of the military calling for his departure in November last year were all MDC elements. He is made to believe Zimbabweans still loved, but even more, that Zimbabweans wanted his wife Grace to take over the Presidency of the party and country. Grand lies and delusions.

The result, and this is what worries most Zimbabweans of goodwill, is that the people manipulating Mugabe through his wife want to so contaminate his name in the eyes of Zimbabweans to a point where his legacy is so tarnished he will reduced to a rogue who refused to accept that people had rejected him. It's a pity some minds can be so evil.

Government should therefore tread carefully. It is not dealing with Mugabe. There are forces with a mission that seeks to destroy the party itself, but more importantly, to transform Mugabe from a hero of the liberation struggle and land reclamation in Zimbabwe to a fake martyr who died fighting for bourgeois democracy and constitutionalism.

We are happy so far that ED has pledged to look into the whole charade of Mugabe even contemplating a party and fighting to lead this country again.

We know he is stubborn man, and he has many weaknesses, and committed wrongs in his long Presidency to remain in power. There are people taking advantage of that to advance their own agendas. We have no stake in defending a Mugabe who intentionally turns rogue in the twilight of his life.