By participating in flawed elections, "so flawed the only logical step is to withdraw", we're fighting with a log in our own eye - blind! W Mukori

 The truth is when we can see the speck in our neighbour’s eye but cannot see the log in our own eye we are, per se, our own worst enemy. We are fighting blind and, naturally, the enemy will take full advantage of our blindness - he will be very foolish not to.

The dust of the 23 August 2023 nationwide harmonised presidential, parliamentary and local council elections has not settled and already a new wave of by-elections has kicked off. The by-elections were triggered by the recall of a number of CCC candidates who had won in the August elections. 

The recalls is just one of the many manifestations of the endless squabbling within the opposition CCC. More recalls have been made so there are more by elections coming. Some of the recalled individuals are CCC candidates in the by-elections and so they may well be recalled, if they win again!

Meanwhile Nelson Chamisa has dismissed the 23 August 2023 elections as a “gigantic fraud”! Yet right up to voting day he was boasting of CCC winning big because he had “plugged all the Zanu PF vote rigging loop-holes!” It was all hot air, of course.

ZEC had stubbornly refused to produce a verified voters’ roll. It is nonsensical to talk of stopping Zanu PF rigging the elections when the country did not even have something as basic as a verified voters’ roll. It turns out that CCC did not even have election agents at many Polling Stations and so Zanu PF was free to do as the party damn well pleased!

Zanu PF has beeb winning these elections for the last 43 years and counting! It is utterly pointless to be complaining about “gigantic election fraud” when you are the one who not only failed to implement the democratic reforms to stop the rigging but has been insisting on participating in the flawed elections.

Elections are like a war, you participate to win. And the Chinese General Sun Tzu, his book, The Art of War, argues that one must know one’s weaknesses and strength and the enemy’s weaknesses and strengths too. 

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Zanu PF has known MDC/CCC’s weakness and has exploited it again and again and again. MDC/CCC leaders’ greatest weakness is they are greedy and breathtakingly incompetent.

Of course, Robert Mugabe did not want any of the democratic reforms to be implemented and his carte blanche power to rig elections and stay in power, naturally. He bribed Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends with the trappings of high office, to make them forget about implementing the reforms. It worked!

And to seal the deal; Mugabe orchestrated a narrative to convince MDC/CCC leaders and followers into giving up the need for implementing the democratic reforms on the understanding the opposition can come up with winning in rigged elections strategies. Chamisa and his supporters have taken to the oxymoronic deception like ducks to water!

Some of the MDC leaders like Tendai Biti and David Coltart have since realised that all the democratic changes they thought they had accomplished during the GNU are an illusion. They have lamented the sheer sheer futility of participating in these 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,” said Tendai Biti in a 2015 interview with Isaac Mugabi.

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

There is no doubt that Biti tried to talk his MDC colleagues into stop living the Zanu PF lie of change when there was no change. His arguments, like the SADC leaders during the GNU before him, fell on deaf ears. Greed stopped MDC leaders implementing the reforms during the GNU and the same greed kept them participating in flawed elections, “so flawed and so illegal the rational thing to do was to boycott!” as Coltart aptly put it.

“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 (2013) elections,” confessed Coltart in his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.

“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.”

So even the shallow, thick and slow MDC/CCC leaders have knew they are participating in these flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy out of greed. They have kept up the false narrative of the opposition winning rigged elections to hide the real reasons they are hell bent on participating is greed and incompetence.

In post GNU Zimbabwe, Zanu PF and MDC/CCC have conned the ordinary Zimbabweans into believing the 2008 to 2013 GNU had brought about subtle and yet seismic political change allowing the opposition to win rigged elections. And so the people have been participating in these flawed, “so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw,” as Coltart confessed because they are ignorant, naive and gullible.

“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near,” said General Sun Tzu, in 544 BC. 

Zanu PF’s greatest deception was to convince the opposition and the public that the GNU had left the party weak and feeble they nation could remove the party from office without bothering with implementing even one token reform! The people have believed the oxymoronic nonsense even after 43 years of the Zanu PF mafiosi rigging the elections!  

"Why do you see the speck in your neighbour's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye' while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour's eye." (Matthew 7:3-5). 

Ignorance is curse worse than death; in their ignorance and naivety the people have been fighting blind. By participating in flawed elections, “so flawed, so illegal the only rational step was to withdraw”, to perpetuate the Zanu PF dictatorship; they might as well have been fighting with the log in their own eye! Zanu PF has conned them into believing the GNU has left the party weak and feeble when, with not even one token reform implemented, the regime’s dictatorial powers have not even been touched.