by David Chandisaita
Another disenchanted leader, another lost election and a derelict building – which is now but, an empty shell with shattered windows; captures the poignant story of Nelson Chamisa.
The over enthusiastic pastor has clearly failed to break the jinx of his predecessor the late, Morgan Tsvangirai.
There are splendid works of literature whose meaning runs deep and lingers on in the periphery of our imagination, and once you forget such works your life is devoid of taste.
One such poem is by English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The poem is a compelling reminder of the insubstantiality of the impulses of life due to the relentless forces of wear and tear with the passage time.
The die is cast and Chamisa’s fate is now engraved in stone, he will not last the mile to contest another election in 2023 at the helm of the opposition.
His problems continue to mount by the day.
The legal costs from the ConCourt, the labour cases of disgruntled former MDC employees who were dismissed without benefits, in-house fissures hinged on factions waiting for Chamisa at Congress under the guise of restoring Constitutionalism to the opposition party.
As if this is not enough the appalling state of Harvest House captures in its emptiness and shattered windows, how this once formidable party formed in the late 90s has lost its way and is now an emblem of the betrayed hopes, dreams and aspirations of the opposition.
Not even Chamisa armed with his cheap talk suffused with lies could turn around its fortunes and propped up by a bitter faction of the former ZANU PF G40s, mainly Professor Jonathan Moyo and Grace Mugabe.
His juvenile handling of party issues especially to do with primary elections exacerbated an already dire situation.
If the dwindling reception his press conferences are receiving and the prophecies of doom filtering on social media are anything to go by, then definitely the end is nigh.
Media mogul, Trevor Ncube, in a post on Twitter, opined, “Nelson Chamisa must start preparing for 2023. He needs the next five years in opposition to grow as a human being and politician. But then the Alliance is most likely to implode. Keep this tweet. Thank me later.”
All hope is but, vanquished for now.
