MDC president Nelson Chamisa says he enters the Christmas season depressed that President Emmerson Mnangagwa is taking time to feed fish at his farm with fellow POLAD leaders, while the rest of the people around the country are starving.

President Mnangagwa met POLAD leaders at his Sherwood farm near Kwekwe over the weekend, and part of the meeting involved touring the various projects taking place at the sprawling farm. Social media was awash with images of MDC-T President Thokozani Khupe and President Emmerson Mnangagwa throwing fish food into a pond.

Chamisa also said his conscience was troubled that millions of Zimbabweans will be without food, fuel, power and freedom during the festive period.

“Any serious and credible leader’s core business is the well-being and interest of the people they lead. On that score, I walk into the Christmas holiday depressed, challenged and burdened because my thoughts, mind and conscience are with the people of Zimbabwe who are suffering.

“They are suffering because we have deprived them of happiness and merrymaking. They are without cash, without fuel, without electricity, without water and even without freedom,” Chamisa said.

He said it was a difficult period for Zimbabweans, and he hoped that “this will be a vivid reminder of the urgency of our situation, the extraordinary circumstances”.

“I wish I could have the luxury of feeding my fish at the farm with my friends, but I can’t. It is just impossible. We must feed the people not the fish,” Chamisa said, in apparent reference to a video that featured Mnangagwa and MDC-T leader Thokozani Khupe at Mnangagwa’s farm.

Chamisa said he sympathised with the people of Zimbabwe who will miss the usual delicacies usually associated with the festive season.

“I sympathise with the people and feel with them, the definition of a sensitive leader. The way Zimbabwe is suffering, high school fees, dysfunctional hospitals; in other countries, people are busy having their best meals, their delicacies on Christmas and visiting best places. But in Zimbabwe, the situation is different. I was in Germany, I could feel the sense of Christmas, but that is not the situation in Zimbabwe. (A) sad indictment of those in leadership. Instead of dispensing love, they are dispensing agony and sorrow,” Chamisa added.

-Online