BY ALEX MAGAISA
The start of the year has brought a renewed wave of talk concerning political dialogue.
Where is this coming from and who is pushing it? To what end? Why, the great Chinua Achebe would have asked, is the toad jumping in broad daylight?
What could be after its life? It is hardly a coincidence that the tempo rose after the MDC-T’s extraordinary congress.
The Daily News has been relentless in its push for a discourse of political dialogue and casting the MDC-T led by Douglas Mwonzora as a critical player.
The Daily News, which in its heyday carved a stellar reputation as a robust critic of the Zanu PF regime, has undergone a metamorphosis in recent months, becoming a pliant voice of the political establishment.
While the idea of dialogue is not new to the MDC Alliance, the party must tread with caution lest it falls into a snare.
What is happening, including the discourse championed by that section of the media is choreographed.
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A few weeks ago, the BSR explained that the Mnangagwa regime is pursuing a double strategy of coercion and co-optation.
The coercive strategy is against the MDC Alliance led by Nelson Chamisa, while co-optation is directed at the MDC-T led by Douglas Mwonzora.
The harassment, arrests, and jailing of MDC Alliance politicians exemplify this hostile approach from the Mnangagwa regime while making the MDC-T comfortable and plying it with platitudes.
After the unjust detention and incarceration of deputy chairperson Job Sikhala and spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere, it’s the turn of MP, Joanna Mamombe and her colleague Cecilia Chimbiri at Chiukurubi Prison.
The MDC-T on the other hand is speaking the language of appeasement to Zanu PF, never challenging its repressive brand of politics.
It is playing the coy bride, unfazed by Zanu PF’s brutal strategies.
An unholy union is brewing between the two, and it has been on the cards for a while with the MDC-T playing the submissive partner.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the Daily News’ dialogue discourse has the Mwonzora-led MDC-T as a key player.
It implausibly describes the MDC-T as the country’s “main opposition party”, a narrative that has no empirical basis given that the last time the MDC-T contested an election was in 2013.
It did not contest the 2018 general elections. Its claim to political capital hangs on a technicality.
The political party that was registered at the nomination court for elections in 2018 was the MDC Alliance.
It was the MDC Alliance that won the seats in Parliament and was represented by Chamisa at the presidential election.
When the people voted in those elections, they were voting for the MDC Alliance.
Therefore, for a national newspaper to persistently peddle the myth that the MDC-T is the “main opposition party” is a political fraud and farcical.
The narrative is not helped by the emerging discourse of “Big Threeism” in Zimbabwean politics, again in the Daily News in which Mwonzora and the MDC-T are included in the basket of the country’s big parties alongside Mnangagwa and Zanu PF and Chamisa the MDC Alliance.
The quote is attributed to Stephen Chan, a long-term observer of the Zimbabwean political scene.
But with respect, the idea that there is a “Big 3” in Zimbabwean politics in which Mwonzora and the MDC-T are part of that triumvirate is without foundation.
Both Mnangagwa and Chamisa claimed at least two million votes each in the last election. They have a legitimate claim to the title “big” players.
They have proven it on the big stage. Mwonzora, on the other hand, has never run a national election. He is untested.
He has not led a party to any electoral contest. He lost his last electoral contest in 2013.
He got into Parliament in 2018 as a senator of the MDC Alliance.
Senators are nominated based on proportional representation.
His colleague who ran in the 2018 presidential election, Thokozani Khupe got just 45 000 votes nationwide, a pathetic performance that put her in her place. There is nothing to suggest that he will better that modest score.
How one who has shown no evidence of political capital where it matters most qualifies to be regarded as one of the “Big 3” is a big fiction that must be dropped until he and his party pass the test on the electoral field.
Otherwise, any such claim is merely conjectural.
Bryan Mteki has a better claim: at least he had the guts to run for office in 2018 and picked a handful of votes.
In short, the MDC-T under Mwonzora has no legitimate claim to being a big political party. A picture of a lion in a book is just that — a picture.
It’s not a lion. The MDC-T has not contested a single election since it was judicially reconstructed in 2020.
At present, it is running on stolen political capital after the Zanu PF political machinery helped it usurp the MDC Alliance’s political assets. Parliament, which is headed by senior Zanu PF officials, allowed the MDC-T to expel MPs who were elected under the MDC Alliance ticket.
The minister of Local Government and Public Works, a senior member of Zanu PF, also facilitated the expulsion of councilors who were elected under the MDC Alliance.
The ministries of Finance and Justice, both run by Zanu PF ministers unprocedurally diverted public funds that were due to the MDC Alliance handing them over to the MDC-T.
The state also assisted the MDC-T to grab the party headquarters from the MDC Alliance.
The MDC-T’s survival is therefore in the hands of Zanu PF and crucially, Zanu PF knows this.
It never consulted the electorate when it was expelling their MPs or when it was replacing them with a bunch of unelectables and rejects.
It has shown no appetite for elections because it knows the façade under which it is presently hiding will be blown apart in any serious contest. And once the facade is gone, they will be fatally exposed.
The Covid-19 pandemic has worked to the advantage of the MDC-T because it caused the suspension of by-elections.
This has given the unelectable party a much-needed stay of execution, which extends the shelf-life of its relevance by a few more months.
But this will not last forever. Its fate will surely be sealed when it presents itself to the electorate.
This is an extract from Alex Magaisa’s blog, The Big Saturday Read.
