By Patrick Guramatunhu| Nelson Chamisa and his MDC friends have moved from being the opposition party championing the ordinary citizen’s cause of free, fair and credible elections to the party betraying the cause during the 2008 to 2013 GNU and to the one undermining the cause thereafter.
“We are waiting for communication from Mbeki who had informed us that he wants to contact Mnangagwa and we can know when the dialogue can start as he informed us that Mnangagwa did not want dialogue with Chamisa but we are ready for dialogue,” said MDC presidential spokesperson, Dr Nkululeko Sibanda.
“There is need to move forward but we need genuine reforms going towards 2023 elections so that we know that we have finished the unresolved legitimacy dispute of 2018.”
It is a historic fact that MDC have failed to bring about even one democratic change in the party’s 20 years on the political because its leaders are corrupt and incompetent.
MDC has the golden opportunity to implement “genuine reforms” during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. The party failed to get even one reform implemented. There is nothing in the new power sharing arrangement the party is calling for to make one believe meaningful reforms will be implemented this time. Nothing!
MDC’s wittering about “disputed 2018 elections” is disingenuous, to say the least, because the party agreed to participate in elections knowing fully well that whole process was flawed and illegal and that Zanu PF was rigging the elections.
“MDC has stringent measures to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections,“ boasted Nelson Chamisa a few months before the 2018 elections.
Of course, Chamisa was lying, MDC did not have any measures to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. The real reason MDC participated in the flawed and illegal elections is to win the few gravy train seats they knew Zanu PF was giving away to entice the opposition participate in the rigged elections.
Worse still, MDC leaders knew that by participating in these flawed and illegal elections, they would give the process “credibility” and thus give the result legitimacy, as David Coltart readily admitted.
“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the elections,” confessed Senator Coltart in his book The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.
“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility.”
MDC did win most of the bait parliamentary and senatorial gravy train seats on offer in the 2018 elections. Chamisa got decidedly greedier and has since been trying to squeeze more of the spoils of power from Mnangagwa. Chamisa wants cabinet posts for himself and a few MDC friends and to push his demands has refused to accept the presidential election result.
The dialogue with Mnangagwa is about securing more gravy train seats and not about implementing “genuine reforms”. Nelson Chamisa himself let the cat out of bag on this when he launched the party’s Principles for Reliable Inclusive and Credible Elections in Zimbabwe (PRICE) document on 27 February 2020. When he was asked if MDC would participate in the 2023 elections if none of the reforms were implemented; he confirmed that MDC would indeed contest the elections regardless.
Why would Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies implement even one token reform and reduce their chance of another electoral victory when they know the opposition will participate regardless giving the flawed and illegal process credibility and the result legitimacy – or be it at the price of concede some more gravy train seats to MDC.
The one reform Zanu PF will be introducing before the 2023 elections is creating the positions Official Opposition Leader and Shadow Cabinet – the equivalent posts Chamisa et al are angling for right now. Amend the constitution and created the above posts and Mnangagwa will have yet another hotly contested 2023 elections guaranteed; even if he still blatant denies 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora the vote, fails to produce a verified voters’ roll, etc., etc.
Zimbabwe is in this economic and political mess, “rumana dzombe” as one would say in Shona, because the country has failed to hold free, fair and credible elections for 40 years. For 40 years the country has been stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF regime that has rigged elections to stay in power.
To get out of the mess, Zimbabwe needs to implement the reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections.
Zanu PF will never implement the reforms. The Zanu PF and MDC power sharing arrangement Chamisa is clamouring for will never get any reforms implemented because there is no real pressure on Zanu PF to implement the reforms. If we are ever going to get the reforms finally implemented we will need to think outside the box, look to some other body not Zanu PF or MDC to implement the reforms.
So, if former SA President Thabo Mbeki is coming to Zimbabwe to facilitate the Zanu PF and MDC power sharing arrangement, he will be wasting his time and our time too. The 2008 GNU failed to implement the democratic reforms and this new one will do no better.