By Patrick Guramatunhu: “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt,” said Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to many by his pen name Mark Twain, a renowned American novelist and humorist.

“Wadzi pakata hwamanda, hauna kudzi ridza!” (You have been asked to carry the bugle horn, not to play it!) as the Shona would say.

There is no denying that Zimbabwe is in a serious economic mess with the economy in total economic meltdown and equally serious political paralysis with both the ruling party and opposition parties clueless as what to do. Some people have taken it into their stupid heads that the country needs political dialogue and been blowing the bugle horn to add to the cacophony of mind numbing noise. 

“The people are suffering. The current situation should bring everybody on board,” said Manase, the young brother of the late MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.

“It was not the dream of Morgan Tsvangirai to see the people suffering. That is why after defeating Mugabe in March 2008, he accepted to enter into a unity government (GNU) with him to save people from suffering. He was a selfless leader who put people first in all his decisions.”

Shocking that over a decades since the signing of the Global Political Agreement in 2008 and with the benefit of hindsight of what happened here is someone who still has no clue that the primary purpose of the  GNU was to implement the democratic reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging elections. 

Of course, Manase must have known that his brother, Morgan, was the MDC presidential candidate in 2013, the first elections post the GNU, and that he once again lost the election to Robert Mugabe. Mugabe rigged the elections because MDC failed to implement the reforms.

By failing to implement even one democratic reform in five years of the GNU, Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends sold-out big time because the allowed Mugabe to keep the Zanu PF dictatorship. The country is in this economic mess and political paralysis because Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and murderous tyrants. 

The proposed dialogue between Mnangagwa and Chamisa will result in a power sharing arrangement in which Zanu PF will maintain its 2/3 majority in parliament. There is no way this parliament will ever approve any meaningful reforms to end the curse of rigged elections. 

Zanu PF will never ever reform itself out of office. 

During the 2008 to 2013 GNU MDC would have got the reforms implemented because MDC had the majority in parliament and had SADC’s backing, the regional body was the guarantor of the GPA.

So unless the power sharing arrangement between Mnangagwa and Chamisa will result in the implementing of the reforms, it is a waste of time. Given the seriousness of the country’s economic crisis and the tragic human suffering and deaths it is causing; the country cannot afford another time wasting gimmick. 

“Implement the reforms” is one of the most commonly used phrase in Zimbabwe in the last 12 years. If Manase Tsvangirai has failed to comprehend what it means, that is clearly the case, then he should just shut up and not be telling the world just how stupid he is!