"People are being forced to choose Zanu PF or death!" admit Chamisa. A consequence CCC selling out on reforms. W Mukori

 Zimbabwe is a failed state, stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical ruling power, Zanu PF. The nation should have got rid of Zanu PF by 2013, at the latest, if it had not been for the fact the opposition political leaders the nation had risked all to elect into power for the principle task of implementing the reforms to end the Zanu PF dictatorship have themselves turned out to be corrupt, breathtakingly incompetent and utterly useless.

Nelson Chamisa, the leader of the main opposition CCC party is so corrupt and incompetent he is devoid of common sense. He is 45 years old but behaves like a 5 year old who simply does not understand that he cannot have his cake and eat it too.

“You can't have your cake and eat it (too) is a popular English idiomatic proverb or figure of speech,” Wikipidea explain.

“The proverb literally means "you cannot simultaneously retain possession of a cake and eat it, too". Once the cake is eaten, it is gone. It can be used to say that one cannot have two incompatible things, or that one should not try to have more than is reasonable. The proverb's meaning is similar to the phrases ‘you can't have it both ways’ and ‘you can't have the best of both worlds.’”

Well with Chamisa, who will eat the cake and the next minute he is howling why is the cake gone! He wants it all and such phrases as the “two are incompatible” or “unreasonable” do not exist in his infantile mind. What makes his idiotic behaviour particularly obnoxious and right dangerous is that his actions have been felt most acutely by the millions of innocent Zimbabweans at the coal face of this failed state.

“Chamisa says intimidation is forcing voters to choose ruling party or death!” read New Zimbabwe headline.

“Mnangagwa is clearly triggering a national crisis,” he said during the interview in his 11th-floor office in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. “He is driving the country into chaos. He is actually instigating instability. He is violating the law. He is tearing apart institutions of the country.”

“On Thursday, a man wearing the yellow colours of Chamisa’s CCC party was beaten and stoned to death on the way to a political rally, police said. The CCC accused ZANU-PF followers of killing him and attacking other opposition supporters.”

The 2008 Zimbabwe elections have become the watershed elections in which Zanu PF showed the nauseating depths of barbarism the party would go to retain political power. After those elections both SADC and AU who have, up to then turned a blind eye to Zanu PF rigged elections, refused to grant the regime legitimacy. Zanu PF was forced to sign the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA), agreeing to the need to implement wide ranging political reforms designed stop a repeat of the 2008 cheating and wanton violence. 

A GNU composed of Zanu PF led by Robert Mugabe and the two MDC factions led by Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara was tasked to implement the reforms. Not ever one token reform was implemented is five years. Not one!

When SADC leaders realised that not even one reform had been implemented, they wanted the 2013 elections postponed until reforms were implemented. “If you participate in the elections next month, you will lose. The elections are done!” SADC leaders warned the MDC leaders to their faces. MDC leaders ignored the warning and participating in the elections. 

Zanu PF went on to rig the 2013 elections as SADC leaders had rightly predicted. SADC leaders, in sheer exasperation granted vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy. 

It turns out that some of the MDC leaders were aware of the futility of participating in flawed elections. 

“Look, you can't keep on participating in flawed electoral processes that serve to give big benefits to dictators such as Robert Mugabe. Mugabe has perfected the art of winning elections. So it will be very foolish for the opposition to continue legitimising these sham elections which don't deliver,” admitted Tendai Biti in a 2015 interview with Isaac Mugabi.

“So you can't continue subjecting Zimbabweans to processes where their hopes just get crushed.”

David Coltart went one step further and explained why MDC leaders participated in the 2013 elections knowing fully well the elections were being rigged by Zanu PF.

“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. 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,” confessed David Coltart in his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.

Nelson Chamisa, Tendai Biti and David Coltart were MDC ministers in the GNU and are senior leaders in the CCC led party. There is no doubt Biti and Coltart must have talked their fellow MDC friends on the need to boycott the flawed elections and stop giving Zanu PF legitimacy. All the three participated in the 2018 and are participating in these 2023 elections knowing fully well that Zanu PF is rigging and that doing so will give the regime legitimacy. They participating regardless out for the same reasons they failed to implement even one token reform during the GNU - greed and breath-taking incompetence.

So by insisting on participating in these flawed elections with no reform implemented MDC/CCC leaders have, per se, accepted that Zanu PF can repeat the demonic barbarism of blatant cheating and wanton violence the party showed in the 2008 elections and all the tragic human suffering that entails. You make your political bed and now must lay in it. Except in this case Chamisa is refusing to lay quietly in the bed of thorns he decreed for the nation he and his fellow leaders will get their few gravy train seats reward, it is povo who will suffer. 

Of Chamisa Chamisa is right, Zanu PF is giving the ordinary Zimbabweans a grime choice vote for the party of your will be punished or even killed. Zanu PF has reconstituted the party structure of the 1980s and people are being forced to attend these weekly party-cell meetings. A register of attendees is being kept and the same register will be used to tick-off those who turn up to vote. 

Within hours of the Polling Station result being declared the party operatives will have figured out who voted for the party. “Chisinga zikwanwi zhinji rufu. Avhota anozikanwa kuti abvakupi!” (Death has no track record. All those who vote will have a track record!) Mnangagwa has openly boasted.

Zanu PF’s plan A: is for Mnangagwa to win these elections with 50% plus, in the first vote. Plan B: is to make sure no one else win by anything near the 50% and he comes second so there is a runoff. 

The party operatives will have a list of those who voted for the opposition and so will move swiftly to punish them. Unlike in the 2008 runoff when the party did not know whom to target, this time they will know and so will move with surgical precision. 

“Zvirinane kuzviuraya!” (You will be better off killing yourself!) one Zanu PF operative warn in one audio recording. 

What is infuriating here is that Zimbabwe’s cursed political culture of vote rigging and wanton violence would have ended by 2013, at the latest, if MDC leaders had not sold out and implemented the reforms during the GNU. And ever since the GNU debacle, Nelson Chamisa and company have had the chance to redeem for their betrayal by refusing to participate in the flawed elections. They have participated to give Zanu PF legitimacy out of greed. 

Each time the Zanu PF vote rigging barbarism has turned particularly nasty CCC leaders have condemned it, as if they cared. They morning after the elections, Chamisa and company will complain of Zanu PF rigging the elections, they very thing they have been warned will happen unless the reforms are implemented, and  shed buckets and buckets crocodile tears. 

The prospect another five more years of this Zanu PF led failed state is unthinkable. Everyone knows that the soldiers with orders to shoot to kill will be awaiting any one who dare stage street protest, to protest the rigged elections, but the sheer anger some may feel may force them to throw caution to the wind. 

Zanu PF is rigging these 2023 elections and this circus could and should have been avoided if only Nelson Chamisa and his opposition friends had implemented the reforms or stop participating in flawed elections out of greed. The nightmare of the Zanu PF dictatorship is set to continue after the 24 August. 

The challenge is now for the ordinary Zimbabweans themselves to wake up to the political reality that CCC are running with the povo hare and hunting with the Zanu PF hounds. Will the penny finally drop on 24 August 2023; we will have to wait and see.