"Do not underestimate Chanisa's resolve to boycott elections" says MDC - only when his life is on the line P Guramatunhu

“Hupenzi enyama yegakava!” (Idiots are stubborn and there is no one more stubborn than the certified insane!) so goes the Shona adage. Insanity comes and goes, it is triggered by the full moon in wild dogs and the smell of meat in hyenas.

Last Tuesday, 5th June, MDC Alliance leaders and supporters stage a demonstration demanding that Zanu PF must implement reforms before elections to underline the party’s usual “No reforms, no elections!” threat. Zanu PF completely ignored the threat and not even one reform has been implemented. Yesterday all the MDC leaders were running around like headless chickens making sure their nomination papers were submitted, crossing the red lines they had vowed not to cross only a week ago.

"Boycotting the election is the last resort but given the pain Zimbabweans have gone through we are preparing for the elections. Boycotting is a political possibility but at the moment we are concentrating on giving Zimbabweans an alternative in this election," Douglas Mwonzora, MDC-T Secretary General, tried for the umpteenth time to square the circle.

Nonsense, if elections are rigged, the winner is predetermined and therefore it is nonsensical to talk of the electorate having an alternative! MDC leaders are participating in these flawed elections out of greed, as David Coltart, former MDC Senator and Minister in the GNU has confessed.

“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 (2013) elections,” explained Senator Coltart in his recent book. 

“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.”

Three of the MDC factions have since come together to form the MDC Alliance but there was no talk of boycotting the elections.

MDC leaders have often talked of “No reform, no elections!” but only to silence those questioning their folly of contesting elections they readily admitted are flawed and illegal. MDC leaders have found it impossible to boycott the elections and lose the gravy train seats Zanu PF was giving away.

Hyenas are rightly regarded as a cowardly animal because they rarely pick someone their size. However, once the hyena gets a whiff of the smell of meat it is transformed into a different animal.

The whiff of meat toggles the hyena from the coward to insane mode; he will salivate uncontrollable, his ears pricked up, his eyes glazed as he breaks into a canter, led by his nose.

Unlike lions or many other carnivals; hyenas eat everything, skin, bone, hoofs and all the good bits along the way. Hyenas are not picky because, believing they can eat a bull elephant in one seating, it is pointless picking if you are going to eat everything anyway.

The hyena will be totally focused on the meal and savour the sheer satisfaction of a full stomach to the exclusion of everything else. Every often the hyena will be forced to apply emergency brakes. His glazed eyes saw the lion and heard the crunching of bone, but in his insane state with greed, such information take forever to register. When it finally does register, instead of alarm clock bells ringing it is church bells, hence the emergency brakes.

"Our president said if the demands are not met there will be no election, and I would like to reiterate that. Do not underestimate our president's resolve and capacity to follow this through," Jameson Timba, a senior MDC-T leader, chipped in.

Zanu PF has the carte blanche powers to rig these elections and MDC has been powerless to force Zanu PF to implement the reforms. The MDC’s half-heart “No reforms, not elections!” have been nothing more that the granting of a hyena faced with super pride of lions at a kill.

We can be certain, Chamisa et al will all boycott these elections if their own lives are on the line; other than that, they will stay in the race to the bitter end. The opposition are no more than a park of hyenas circling a pride of lions on a kill all day and all night hoping for scraps.

Zimbabwe political system is a jungle in which the only rule that counts is survival of the meanest! The few mean and filthy rich ruling elite have ridden roughshod over freedoms, hopes and dreams of the impoverished majority. MDC leaders have wasted the best opportunities to end the de facto Zanu PF one-party dictatorship by failing to implement the democratic reforms.

The best outcome of these flawed elections is for them to be declared null and void, so we can revisit and implement the reforms agreed at the start of the 2008 GNU. By participating in these flawed elections, MDC are shielding Zanu PF from the anguish of the people by feeding povo the falsehoods of impending democratic change, in return being fed the scraps from Zanu PF’s table.

As long as Zanu PF dangle a few gravy train seats MDC leaders will continue to contest the elections regardless how flawed the process. Neither Zanu PF nor MDC will ever implement the democratic reforms regardless of desperately poor the nation becomes; greed has made them as insane as a hyena.