MDC-T instruct supporters to join Zanu PF - chain of fools are hanging themselves. By P Guramatunhu

Parental Alienation Solutions gives one of the best explanation of the proverb; Give a fool enough rope and he will hang himself!

“The classic novelists Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Oscar Wilde and others have written about how people allow themselves to be part of a Chain of Fools who have very dysfunctional values; lying, manipulating, abusing and harming others and eventually they “get enough rope to hang themselves” or in other words they believe their own lies and are very delusional that they end up being their own worst enemy and destroying themselves due to THEIR FALSE SENSE OF POWER, ENTITLEMENT AND REALITY.”

Tsvangirai and his MDC-T friends have become a stereotypical chain of fools and, as expected, they are now hanging themselves!

“The MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai has told his party youth to join Zanu PF in numbers, do slogans, perform activities in order that they benefit from opportunities that are exclusive to ruling party supporters,” reported Zimeye.

“He said youth must not complain that they are being excluded from industrial attachments, training programmes like nursing or even employment. “Don’t tell me you can’t say pamberi neZanu PF. Do it and join them in their activities but know where to vote when the elections come,” said Tsvangirai.

Zanu PF is a party of thugs who have used every dirty trick in the book to rig elections including harassment, intimidation, vote buying, beating, rape and even murder of the innocent. The regime has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans for its selfish political gain. The regime has applied these dirty tactics on everyone it considered a threat to its no-regime-change mantra be they critics, political opponents and their supporters, local civic organisation, charitable foreign donors, foreign governments, etc.

So, if Tsvangirai’s advice to the party youths to join Zanu PF is sound and strategic, it must also be sound and strategic to the rest of the party members to join Zanu PF; especially those in the rural areas who have been denied government food aid, have had their homes burnt and worse.
Most of these MDC-T supporters who outwardly, according to the new Tsvangirai’s strategy, are giving token support to Zanu PF out of fear will NOT overcome their fear and vote for MDC-T.

In a political environment where fear of reprisals is so perverse; by instructing his supporters to join Zanu PF to avoid being victimised Tsvangirai is per se acknowledging that the culture of fear in Zimbabwe is indeed real and perverse; the people will vote to appease the bully they fear the most, particularly when it is certain the bully will win and the challenger will never protect them even if the later was to win! This is exactly what happen in the 2008 Presidential run-off!

In the March 2008 vote Tsvangirai won 73% of the votes, by Mugabe’s own admission, but MDC was too weak and naïve to claim victory. After five weeks of recounting the vote ZEC finally announce the result with Tsvangirai’s lead reduced to 47% to President Mugabe’s 43%.

In the presidential run-off that followed, President Mugabe launched Operation “Mavhotera papi!” (Whom did you vote for!), a military style reprisal to punish the electorate for having voted for Tsvangirai in the early vote. Zanu PF youths and war veterans with the active support of the Army, Police and CIO were granted carte blanche powers to intimidate, harass, beat, rape and even kill for the single purpose of forcing the electorate to vote for Mugabe in the run-off. It worked; President Mugabe overturned Tsvangirai’s earlier 73% into a comfortable 85% Mugabe landslide victory!

It is a matter of public record that Zanu PF has routinely instructed traditional leaders like village heads and chiefs to list the names of suspected opposition supporters in their area. Now that votes of each polling station are counted separately it is easy to ascertain how people voted in each area. It is therefore not surprising to hear that some people have willingly allow the village heads to see how they have voted just to make sure their support of Zanu PF is never questioned.

Tsvangirai’s cowardly failure to stand up to Zanu PF bullying is graphically illustrated in his failure to implement even one democratic reform during the GNU. Yes, President Mugabe bribe Tsvangirai and company to kick the reforms into the tall grass but there is no doubt that MDC leaders have never had the confidence they could rule the country alone without Zanu PF approval. Hence MDC-T’s reluctance to implement the reforms and thus end Zanu PF’s autocratic dominance.

So, by instructing MDC-T supporters to join Zanu PF, Tsvangirai has just confirmed MDC-T to be a political weakling always destined to be play a subservient role to the village bully, Zanu PF. As any victim of playground bully will tell you, it is foolhardy to side with a weakling against the bully; you will be punished for backing the wrong horse!

What MDC-T should be doing is accept the political reality that it is impossible to hold free, fair and credible elections in Zimbabwe’s current political environment in which the electorate fear their livelihoods, personal safety and even their very lives. This is totally unacceptable and MDC-T and the rest of the opposition camp should stop contesting such blatantly flawed elections.

President Mugabe has since learnt that as long as he throws away a few seats during elections, there will always be some opposition politicians who will contest the elections to win these bait-seats regardless how flawed the election process gets. As far as Tsvangirai is concerned winning the few give-away seats and thus securing a few gravy train seats for MDC-T members and remaining the country’s main opposition party is now more important than securing everyone’s freedoms and basic rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections.

By telling MDC-T supporters to join Zanu PF for their own protection; Tsvangirai has therefore, unwittingly, confirmed MDC-T will never stand-up to Zanu PF vote rigging and other bullying tactic. He has hammered the last nail in MDC-T’s political coffin; if MDC-T cannot bring about any meaningful political change, then why risk life and limp voting for such a party!