Povo have looked from Dr Moyo to Tsvangirai to Mugabe and back again and again - all they see are a**holes P Guramatunhu

The next parliamentary and presidential elections are still a year away but already a number of individuals have declared their intention to contest the elections. And there have been many opinion pieces expressing the many challenges the candidates will face and their chance of winning the election.

"What I will be reading this coming week is how Mberengwa born Vimbai Musvaburi (aspiring MP for Bulawayo South) and Mberengwa born Nkosana Moyo (aspiring President) fit differently into these narratives," said one punter, Discent Collins Bajila

The great disappointment is none of these narratives relate to the real big issue here which is why are the opposition contesting flawed elections in the first place?

Vimbai and Nkosana should know that President Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies have remained in power all these last 37 years not because they are consistently the best political leaders the nation has and the electorate love them and have voted for them in droves time and time again. The regime has enjoyed absolute power because the tyrant has instituted a political system that has ruthlessly denied the people their freedoms and rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections. Zanu PF has time and time again rigged the vote to stay in power. This is common knowledge.

We all know that Zanu PF rigged the last elections in July 2013. We also know MDC have failed to get even one reform designed to stop the vote rigging implemented. Zanu PF is set to blatantly rig next year’s election just as the party rigged the 2013 election; that is a certainty.

So, any serious political analysts worth his/her salt would be asking; why are people like Vimbai and Nkosana, seemingly street wise individuals, contesting an election they already know in advance would be rigged? They have failed to give a rational answer to the question because there is no rational to their decision. Still, they must have a reason for their irrational decision. They are not stupid that much is certain.

It is for us, the public to dig out the real reason why Vimbai and Nkosana are contesting the flawed election, they know are flawed.  The answer is stirring us in the face!

Ever since the fracas of the botched 2008 elections where President Mugabe was forced to eat humble pie and accept to share power with MDC; the tyrant has learned that he can still rig the elections and get away with it as long as he allows the opposition to win some gravy train seats. It is these give away seats that are attracting the opposition candidates like jackals after the scraps of a lion’s kill. David Coltart understood this only too well.

“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 elections,” wrote 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.”

Actually, it was not so much the distrust between them that stopped them doing the obvious thing and refuse to contest the flawed election; it was greed. Greed, the primordial and irresistible force, was so compelling that even David Coltart himself who readily admitted that contesting the flawed elections was an act of folly; he too contested the flawed elections.

Vimbai, Nkosana and hundreds of thousands of other potential opposition candidates are all queuing to contest the flawed elections because they are all responding to the irresistible pull of greed. They know they are in the rat race for whatever scraps Zanu PF throws at the oppositions, not to win any meaningful power, and they do not care that Mugabe is using them to get political acceptance of the illegal process.

Vimbai Musvaburi, like Fadzai Mahere who too has already declared her intention to contest the Mount Pleasant MP seat and is impatient for the race to begin, knows that the opposition scraps are in the urban seats hence the reason she has picked the Bulawayo South seat and not a Mberengwa seat, in her rural home. If she was contesting because she wants to end the suffering of the masses, then the rural poor are suffering even more than the urban people; she should be standing in the rural area.

If there was ever a good reason for the opposition to unite and field one candidate then it is in the parliamentary and senatorial elections. There will be so many opposition candidates, especially in the urban seats, the voters will be spoilt rotten for choice. Sadly, they will split the opposition vote so much they will allow Zanu PF to win with its guaranteed starting base of rigged votes.

No doubt, Vimbai or Fadzai would readily agree to the opposition fielding one candidate on one condition – that they are the candidate! They have already started dreaming of the stunning outfits they will be wearing as MP and how they too will finally get to wear the Gucci designer shoes Zimbabwe’s ruling elite take for granted. They have heard the call of the wild and their eyes and brain have already started glassing over, they will not listen to reason.  

Dr Nkosana Moyo will be content with adding “a 2018 contestant in Zimbabwe’s presidential elections” to his already very impressive CV. Having got the people’s attention, he can explain why he lost the race - Zanu PF rigged the vote –, his plans to fix Zimbabwe’s broken economy, etc. What he will never admit to is that he was warned that Zanu PF would rig the vote much less that he ignored the warning because of greed!  

Greed is infectious and Zimbabwe in stuck in this hell-hole of political paralysis and economic chaos because the nation is sick with greed. President Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies landed us in this hell-hole because they have betrayed the revolution and the promise of freedom and human rights for all Zimbabwe to gratify their insatiable appetites for absolute power, wealth and influence.

In the last 17 years, Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have had many opportunities to implement the democratic reforms and pave the way for free, fair and credible election which would ended Zanu PF’s corrupt and tyrannical rule. They have wasted all the chances because greed got the better of them all very time.

Now, Dr Moyo and the multitude of other opposition opportunists tripping over each other to contest next year’s flawed elections will not do the descent and logical thing and demand the implementation of the reforms first to ensure free and fair elections. They know Zanu PF is giving away a few gravy train seats as bribes and they are already salivating like hyenas!

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Wrote George Orwell in Animal Farm.

To paraphrase Orwell, ordinary Zimbabweans out there have looked from Dr Moyo to Tsvangirai to Mugabe, and from Mugabe to Tsvangirai to Dr Moyo, and from Dr Moyo to Tsvangirai to Mugabe again; but already it is impossible to say which was which. All they can see are a***holes crapping on them!