Daphine Zulu
The past two decades or so have clearly proven that opposition parties in the country, particularly the MDC (Chamisa led) has no authentic identity of its own except posturing as Zanu PF’s conscience.
Instead of articulating its own ideologies and convincing the electorate that they would make better leaders, MDC-A expends its energy rubbishing Zanu PF and calling other political parties names and proffering unwanted advice on how Zanu PF should run the country.
Through MDC-A’s Zimbabwe Agenda 2021 Statement, any reasonable person would acknowledge that Chamisa has nothing to offer, save to just utter anything in order to save face, given the criticism over his silence over the past months.
The ill-timed agenda 2021 could have clearly been delivered earlier, had there been anything reasonable to implement, seeing it is supposed to be implemented this year. Clearly the purported citizen driven convergence nonsense only came up as an afterthought realising that the party was bankrupt and the need to incorporate citizens into their ‘vision’ in order to get funding, sad.
Listening to Chamisa present his ‘strategy,’ it felt more of him chronicling a long endless list of the party and personal failures as the party’s leader, since taking office.
The ‘youthful’ leader spoke of losing the 2018 elections, and is still unbelievably using the illegitimacy debate as a cover. Imagine two years later, he is still parroting about the same thing which he clearly lost in court, having failed to prove his claims. Yet he is holding onto it till this day, how delusional!
Again he lost ownership of the Morgan Richard Tsvangirai House, former Harvest House and accuses Zanu PF and the judiciary for conniving against him. The same person who understands law so much and eagerly parrots about legitimacy issues should surely understand his own illegitimacy.
Chamisa’s party lost access to funding under the Political Parties Financing Act due to his naivety but again, he blames Zanu PF. Was it Zanu PF which chose populism ahead of principle. Whereas populism might have proven a potent weapon to getting him to the post of Student Representative Council (SRC) president or MDC president, it’s a different case when it comes to running a country, he should surely know that.
Again the charlatan failed in his diplomatic offensive as he was snubbed by the African Union (AU), Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), United Nations (UN) and World Health Organisation (WHO) who supported the current government on the removal of sanctions, much to his disgrace.
Likewise, the chaos and divisions on how to handle perceived deficiencies of democracy in the SADC region crippled the MDC-Alliance’s diplomatic charm offensive. Regional opposition groups, trade unions and western countries have since sensed the MDC-A’s serious divisions and lack of solidarity with fellow crusaders of western style democracy and neoliberalism. Hence, the MDC-A is no longer held in high esteem. The party is now desperately trying to recover from that situation, given the recent statements regarding Ugandan elections, and an interest in regional politics.
In his agenda 2021, Chamisa failed to articulate how his MDC-A led councils were fairing on public service delivery and curbing corruption. What more when it comes to running the whole country.
Instead of Chamisa seizing the opportunity to explain how the nation should move forward or how the self-hyped opposition would make the lives of Zimbabweans better, the MDC saw it fit, as has become the norm, to malign Zanu PF at every given opportunity, blaming it for all the ills bedevilling the country. Yet he forgets that he is the one who boycotted the State House invite to map the way forward towards rebuilding the country.
This proclivity by the opposition betrays a lack of alternatives to Zanu PF’s rule that would indicate that the former is opposing for the sake of opposing.
In his Agenda 2021 Address to the Nation streamed live on the party’s social media platforms Tuesday, Chamisa remained upbeat that despite the numerous challenges the MDC Alliance was facing, the party would emerge victorious.
“Despite all these attacks on our party, we refuse to be cast as victims. Rather, we are survivors and winners, for when someone works so hard to destroy you and they fail, it is because you are a winner and you are strong. We are invincible! We are indomitable and unconquerable.” Well we are yet to see.
Being an opposition party doesn’t mean attacking everything that the party in power does, instead providing solutions for the ills in the country could be a starting point in enticing the public. Hopefully the MDC will realise this sooner than later and work towards rebuilding Zimbabwe. If only Agenda 2021 had addressed this, then we could be having something to write home about, but for now, well we await and see.
