Tsvangirai, "serious work" is not registering to vote but reforming ZEC to make registration easy. P Guramatunhu

“Nhamo inenharo!” (Intellectual) poverty is stubborn!) so goes the Shona adage. Nowhere is this more true and tragic than in Morgan Tsvangirai’s case.

"Fellow Zimbabweans, this being Workers' Day, we must remember that as a nation we have our work cut out for us as we brace for next year's watershed polls,” he told the workers in Dzivaresekwa.


"We can only be able to fight unemployment, poverty and inequalities if we use the perfect opportunity next year to vote for visionary men and women who will be able to extricate our country from its parlous predicament.


"Yes, we have serious work to do next year and that great work starts by registering to vote as soon as the voter registration exercise is rolled out in the coming days.”

The MDC buoyant with confidence of winning the next elections is all very familiar territory to many of us!

“In 2013 before the elections, the Maputo Summit was all about having the elections postponed at the Sadc summit. I went there,” Dr Ibbo Mandaza told Violet Gonda in her recent Hot Seat programme. “I was there at the summit and Mugabe pretended to agree to a postponement of the elections.

“If you recall, the postponement was based on the need to reform at least electoral laws, and after that summit, Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, all of them were called to a separate meeting by the Heads of State of SADC in the absence of Mugabe, that same evening.


“And they were told; I was sitting there outside the room with Mac Maharaj; they were told "if you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done".

As we all know, Tsvangirai & co. ignored the SADC leaders’ warning and contested the flawed 2013 elections and lost.

We also know that since the 2013 elections not even one of reforms were implemented and therefore it stands to reason that Zanu PF will once again rig the 2018 elections.

Whilst voter registration will certainly do no harm to the electoral process it must be emphasised that the opposition did not lose the 2013 elections because the people had not tried to register to vote. There is no denying that many people, in known opposition strongholds, failed to register last time because they were made to jump through so many hoops. No doubt the regime will come up with similar demands for the coming elections.

So, the problem here is not just motivating people to register to vote but stop the regime making it so damn difficult to register and that is precisely what the SADC reforms were meant to achieve. Indeed, Tsvangirai and company lost the 2013 elections precisely because they had failed to address the core reform problems.

Voter mobilization, coalition building, biometric voter registration (BVR) kits, etc. are not the core reforms we need for free, fair and credible elections, opposition leaders know this well enough. They have abandoned the core reform issues because they are hard to get and are instead spending all their time, money and effort on voter mobilization, etc. because these are easy.

The real reason why Tsvangirai & co. participated in the 2013, knowing fully well that Zanu PF will rig the vote was a simple one – greed. They knew Zanu PF will be giving away a few seats to the opposition to give the electoral process some modicum of democratic legitimacy and it was these seats they were after. They are lining up to contest the flawed 2018 elections for the same gravy train seats!

Tsvangirai and his MDC friends should have implemented the democratic reforms necessary for free and fair elections during the GNU when they had SADC and international community backing. Since the 2013 elections which marked the end of SADC’s involvement in Zimbabwe’s political mess, it has become hundred times more difficult to get the reforms implemented. If we go into the 2018 elections still with no reforms in place, we will make implementing the reforms even more difficult not easier.

No, the real “serious work” before the people of Zimbabwe is for them to realise that opposition leaders like Morgan Tsvangirai are not interested in implementing any democratic changes; they sold out during the GNU when they had the best chance ever to implement the reforms. Since then they have contested in elections without reforms for the sake of the scraps offered to the by Zanu PF.

The sooner the people realise opposition leaders like Tsvangirai are running with the hare (povo) but hunting with the hounds (Zanu PF regime), the sooner they can start the real tough task of searching for competent leaders with some common sense, at least. The sooner the people can finally realise that meaningful change will only result after implementing the core democratic reforms the sooner the nation will stop wasting time on trivial side issues like voter mobilization, BVR kits, etc.

Tsvangirai and his opposition friends have been advised on numerous occasions that they need to implement the core democratic reforms to ensure elections are free and fair they keep ignoring the advice because they are who they are – corrupt and incompetent. And, as we can see, intellectually impoverished people can be very stubborn especially when their judgement is impaired by greed. The most important task before the people of Zimbabwe today is for them to finally realise that Tsvangirai will never ever get out of the economic and political hell-hole Zanu PF landed us in by pursuing the easy tasks of voter mobilisation whilst neglecting the tough ones of ZEC reform, etc.


Tsvangirai & co. were warned against participating in the 2013 elections with no reforms. This time it is not only Tsvangirai and rest of opposition who have been warned against the folly of contesting flawed elections, the rest of Zimbabwe society is being warned too!