MDC A is imploding - so would Zanu PF, as Mugabe when dared cross swords with the Chinese N Garikai

 

There is talk of MDC A imploding!

 

“Chamisa made a grave mistake tolerating, incorporating and embracing in his party ousted members of the G40 Zanu PF faction, especially the flip flopper Professor Jonathan Moyo,” wrote Prosperity Mzila

 

“Yet others opined that just like the prodigal son, defecting members of the MDC-Alliance just want to go back home (ZANU PF Party) as they were struck in the MDC-A wilderness and now faced with the realisation that there is no progress in the opposition politics as it has been characterised by immaturity and disregard of democratic and constitutional principles. Consequently, home is always best.”

 

This is just the pot calling the pan black! Yes, MDC A is imploding because of lack of direction born out of the chronic dearth of competent leaders but then Zanu PF too is imploding for the same reason.

 

In 2014, then VP Joice Mujuru, Rugare Gumbo, Didymus Mutasa and many other Zanu PF bigwigs were booted out of Zanu PF just before the party’s elective congress. She had amassed more support for the VP position than her main challenger, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and that was the real reason she was booted out.

 

But before the dust of Mai Mujuru and others’ exit had settled down, two new factions emerged, G40 and Lacoste. The November 2017 military coup settled which factions prevailed – Lacoste led by Mnangagwa did prevail.

 

By the time Mnangagwa was sworn in as President, just weeks after the coup, there were rumours of the Lacoste faction had already divided, like amoeba, into two. One faction loyal to Mnangagwa the other to VP Chiwenga. The national elections in July 2018, 8 months since the coup, gave Mnangagwa the chance to consolidate his hold on power by appointing his loyalists into key cabinet posts leaving VP Chiwenga isolated.

President Mnangagwa has appointed some of VP Chiwenga’s friends in the Army ambassadors and appointed a whole battery of new faces in the Army top brass. VP Chiwenga will not recognise many of the faces in the Army he was the commander of until his appointment as VP following the coup.

 

The chances of the Army staging yet another coup to advance VP Chiwenga’s presidential ambitions has been neutralised, at least for a while.

 

MDC’s implosion started in 2005, six years after the party was launched in 1999, when then Secretary General of the party, Welshman Ncube broke away to for his own political party. Tendai Biti followed suit and broke away from MDC-T led by Tsvangirai to form his own party in 2013.

 

Ncube and Biti rejoint MDC-T to form the MDC Alliance led by Tsvangirai.

 

Next, in 2018 Thokozani Khupe broke away MDC A following the seizure of the party leadership by Nelson Chamisa just days after Morgan Tsvangirai death.

 

The impetus for the latest MDC-T amoeba division was the Supreme Court judgement confirming Chamisa’s seizure of the MDC leaders following Tsvangirai’s death had violated the party’s own constitution. The judgement has thrown the cat among the pigeons, both MDC A and MDC-T have been divided, merged and dividing into so many pieces, some have ended up landing back in Zanu PF, only a vulture can sniff them out.

 

Power and the influence, wealth and good life it brought to those in power was the glue that held Zanu PF together.

 

Mugabe inherited a wealthy nation, “the Switzerland of Africa” as the late Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania told Mugabe in 1980. “Keep it that way!” Mugabe squandered the wealth on the bloated civil service, bloated Army, bloated cabinet, etc.; he was buying their loyalty. The Zanu PF members are a wasteful lot and were always demanding for more loot.

 

By the late 1990s the national economy was slowly grinding to a halt, the two decades of mismanagement and corruption have left their mark. Zanu PF’s ruling elite kept coming, demanding for more loot.

 

Mugabe turned to the only thing of value left – land. He started seizing white owned farms, the owners were forced to leave everything including movable assets, and giving them away to his party loyalist mostly. The agricultural sector, the country’s economic engine, collapsed; the ruling elite failed to maintain farm productivity; and this was the coup de grace to the ailing economy.

 

By 2008 Mugabe was running out of white owned farms to seize and give away and the economy was in total economic meltdown with unemployment rate and inflation soaring to dizzying heights of 90% and 500 billion % respectively. Zanu PF infighting started in earnest as members fought over the ever shrinking national cake.

 

Without the loot Mugabe could not hold Zanu PF together. The booting out of Mai Mujuru and those around her in 2014 was the party “load shedding”, it simple did not have enough loot to satisfy the boated party. The economy has never recovered and hence the reason Mnangagwa is struggling to hold the party together; he has very little loot to give away.

 

If Chiwenga or anyone else was to emerge as the top dog, Zanu PF member will desert Mnangagwa just as readily as the deserted Mugabe in droves as soon as it was clear Lactose was prevailing over G40 in the November 2017 military coup. Zanu PF members’ loyalty is to whoever can give them loot, nothing else matters.

 

In the July 2018 elections Zanu PF won 2/3 majority in parliament and yet the powers that be had to resort to additional unorthodox measures; ZEC failed to produce 10% the V11 forms, summary of vote cast at which polling station, for example; just to get the party’s presidential candidate, Mnangagwa, over the line with 50.8%. A similar thing had happened to Mugabe in 2008 when Tsvangirai won 73% in the March vote, according to Mugabe’s own Freudian slip.

 

Mnangagwa knew that corrupt in Zimbabwe was the number one cancer killing the nation’s economy and hence the reason he promised “Zero tolerance on corruption!” However once in office he quickly realised why Mugabe before had done nothing to root out corruption.

 

Zanu PF ruling elite are the top brass in the Army, Police and CIO; those in key positions in government, government owned companies and private sector, the cartel bosses, and those in key positions in the party, Zanu PF. They are either the Godfathers or the chief beneficiaries of the rampant corruption in Zimbabwe.

 

Add to this list the foreign individuals and nations like China who too have an invested interest in keeping the status quo of the wholesale loot and political paralysis in Zimbabwe.

 

The Zanu PF ruling elite and their backers wield a lot of economic and political power and they will use it to bring down anyone they perceive to be a threat their corrupt activities even if he happened to hold the highest office in the land!

 

The cartel bosses and the foreign operators, who have a lot more brain power than the, would let Zanu PF implode into smithereen the day the party stops to be useful to their economic interests. They are the real power behind the otherwise brain dead Zanu PF politicians and the security services buffoons who are the puppets.

 

"They (the five diamond mining companies who had pledged $10 million each at the behest of then Indigenisation minister Saviour Kasukuwere) had me walk here holding a big board inscribed with a (US$1.5 million) cheque that they later refused to honour. You still have that grievance,” revealed Robert Mugabe at a Zanu PF rally in Mutare in 2017.

"I'm also bitter that a grown man like me, I'm made to parade a board (cheque) which doesn't mean anything."

"We took over everything from the Ghanaians, Lebanese, Chinese and South Africans who were running companies in Chiadzwa so that we do our own mining. But this has taken a rather long time."

 

Booting out the Chinese was not such a wise move because Mugabe was booted out of office soon thereafter. And with their man in State House, the Chinese were soon back in Chiadzwa. They are there to this day!