By Wilbert Mukori
“Chidembo kana choda kuramba mukadzi, chinoshereketa!” (When the skunk wants to divorce its wife, it will try anything and everything!) so goes the adage.
When Douglas Mwonzora realised that the fickle and shilly-shally MDC wildebeest herd had deserted him to go with Nelson Chamisa, following High Court ruling that the later’s 2018 seizure of power was unconstitutional; he knew his political career was over. Finished!
During the by-elections earlier on this year (he tried to have these cancelled but failed) he could not even attract more than a handful to his rallies. From there on, Mwonzora’s political mission was how to wiggle out of an election just as the skunk mission was how to divorce its wife.
The classic fable tell of how the skunk complain day and night about the many things his wife did to anyone who cared to listen. Indeed, even when there was no one in sight to hear him, he would continue mumbling. Even the fleas on his back would deep in the fur just to escape the incessant whingeing.
“Zhe chaz chairz growing in cher earz!” complained the skunk, when the village council agreed to hear his divorce case.
“What chairz are you wittering about?” asked the village head.
“He means, she has hairs growing in her ears.”
“It iz pozzively revolting!” cut in the skunk!
“Case dismissed!” ruled the village head.
The skunk was whingeing on how to divorce his wife, Mwonzora has been whingeing on how he to wriggle out of these elections and thus avoid a total electoral whitewash.
“We are not going to be part of this baptism, this blessing of this sham. This election is a farce,” declared Mwonzora as he announced his withdrawal from the 2023 Presidential rat race.
One of the reasons he gave for withdrawing is that ZEC had blocked 87 of his potential parliamentary candidates paying their nomination fees and yet allowed CCC candidates to do so.
Rubbish Mwonzora and his MDC and including his former colleagues now in CCC have all participated in 2013 and 2018 elections knowing fully well that they are flawed and illegal.
In the 2013 elections, SADC leaders literally begged Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC colleagues; of which Mwonzora, Chamisa, Tendai Biti, David Coltart and many others were senior leaders; not to participate without first implementing the democratic reforms to ensure the elections were free, fair and credible. MDC leaders ignored the advice and Coltart explained why.
“The (2013) 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,” confessed David Coltart in his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.
“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,”
In short, the opposition have participated in these flawed and illegal elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy out of greed. Mwonzora has lost the support of the MDC wildebeest herd and with it the chance of winning an gravy train seats. And suddenly he remembers that the process is “so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw”. How convenient!
The only take home from Mwonzora’s resignation speech is the admission that the 3 million Euros fund blocked by Zanu PF recently was meant to training and finance the deployment polling station election agents. All the three political parties with MPs in the outgoing parliament i.e. Zanu PF, MDC and CCC were going to benefit.
“In 2018 MDC A failed to field election agents at some 2 000 or so polling stations!” Mwonzora revealed.
At the time Chamisa claimed that MDC A, of which he was the presidential candidate, had ALL the V11 forms, summary of the vote count, from each and every one of the over 11 000 polling stations. However the affidavit he submitted to Constitutional Court, challenging of the 2018 presidential elections results, showed that he did not have ALL the V11 forms to account for all the 2.6 million votes he claimed to have garnered in that election.
He stoically refused to say how many V11 forms were missing and why.
It was only not a few weeks ago that Chamisa finally revealed that MDC A had failed to field election gents at 544 polling stations. This is a far cry from the “2 000 or so” Mwonzora is telling us!
Chamisa must come clean on just how many polling stations did NOT have MDC A election agents in the 2018 elections. And, more significantly, with just 14 days to go to these 2023 elections, he reveal whether CCC has election agents at ALL the over 12 000 polling stations to be used in these elections.
It is an outage for CCC to keep wittering about “guarding the vote” only for the nation to then learn the party did not even have the election agent to stop Zanu PF tampering with the V11 forms!
So why is CCC claiming the party has strategies to win rigged elections when it cannot do something as basic as having an election agent at each polling station.
The people of Zimbabwe have risked all; livelihoods, property, life and limb from the vengeful wrath of Zanu PF; to elect MDC leaders into power on the understanding they would implement the democratic changes to stop Zanu PF rigging elections. After 23 years, 5 of which in the GNU, MDC now rebranded CCC, have failed to implement even one token reform. Not one!
Fortunately for the MDC/CCC leaders, the party’s supporters, the wildebeest herd, have no clue what the reforms are much less how they were to be implemented. Even now with the benefit of hindsight of the GNU events, they still have no clue. And so the MDC/CCC have gotten away with the blatant betrayal of first failing to implement reforms and then participating in flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy.
As far as the MDC wildebeest herd is concerned Mwonzora is to blame for all the opposition parties’ failures and blunders. Mwonzora is a “Zanu PF project!” many of them will say. Mwonzora has become the fall guy.
Still, should the nation know, the truth will always come out sooner or later, that Chamisa and company dragged the nation into yet another flawed elections so flawed there was no verified voters’ roll, 3 million in the diaspora were denied the vote, rural voters were frogmarched to vote for Zanu PF, etc., etc. And above all, Chamisa and company once again lied that they were “guarding the vote” when did not have the requisite election agent at many of the polling stations! Chamisa et al will find that even the naive and gullible MDC wildebeest herd will not be so forgiving this time.
My prediction is that Zanu PF is blatantly rigging these 2023 elections, Chamisa and company know this and are participating to give Zanu PF legitimacy for a few gravy train seats reward. Many Zimbabweans will finally wake up to this political reality. Chamisa and many of his CCC leaders will know their political careers are over and either quietly walk into the political sun set or, like Mwonzora, they will be whingeing for an excuse to do so!