LETTER FROM AMERICA: MDC must learn from the past! 

Source: LETTER FROM AMERICA: MDC must learn from the past! | The Financial Gazette May 24, 2018

By Ken Mufuka

I  AM surprised that both ZANU-PF and the MDC do not utilise shadowy think-tanks. Think tanks create narratives, delineate the vision, and above all, avoid the mistakes of the past.

The MDC and Nelson Chamisa have the most to lose in this election by ignoring the lessons of the past. In 2009, after the National Unity Government was formed, I went home to consult discreetly with the movers and shakers of the world.
My first question was: “Why do you allow Morgan Tsvangirayi to cavort with juicy female characters?” The answer may surprise you.
“Iwe Ken, Morgan is a fully grown man. How can we tell him whom to sleep with and whom not to?”

As leader of government, Tsvangirayi no longer had the liberty to sleep with whoever he chanced to lay his eyes on (pun intended). There were 3,5 million Diasporas waiting for his success, so they could return home.
What I learned in that discussion frightened me. Tsvangirayi spent the whole part of the first year, and the rest of his tenure embroiled in peripheral issues, the size of his motorcade and entourage, a house befitting the status of the prime minister and, of course, settling marital issues.

In five years, he was unable to settle the issue of a house suitable for his new station in life.
I went into a toilet and cried. The great man had achieved much in his life and had won every election since 2000, a position which would have allowed him to overthrow an iniquitous tyranny. Tsvangirayi failed to understand a simple lesson about power.

Mahatma Gandhi did not have a house, and all his possessions constituted three pieces of a fakir’s wrap around cloths and two pairs of sandals. And yet, he shook the British Empire. Morgan did not understand Frederick Douglass’s dictum. There are no people in history who have given up power willingly. Power must be grabbed.
Mukuru (Robert Mugabe) has testified on three different occasions that Morgan won 73 percent of the vote in 2008. Tswangirayi was told that his life was in danger and he fled to Botswana in the hour of his most success.
Politics in Africa is self-sacrificial. One must see himself as destined to martyrdom. This, he did not prepare himself for and expected to be called from Botswana to assume what was by right his position as an elected president of Zimbabwe.

Chamisa in the UK
While Chamisa did not do any damage to his image among his followers, Stephen Sackur of the BBC Hardtalk exposed some loose chinks in Chamisa’ armor. Two examples will suffice.
Tsvangirayi died on February 14, 2018.  On February 15, Chamisa, who was junior to Vice President Thokozani  Khupe, called a meeting, chaired the meeting then declared himself leader. When Thokozani Khupe attended Morgan’s funeral, an attempt was made to put the hut in which she sought refuge on fire. As if this was not enough, when she held a meeting in Bulawayo, Vanguard Pose (Chamisa’s Praetorian Guards) beat her up.

Whether Sackur was working for the British MI V (Intelligence) in an attempt to create a narrative that there is the same difference between ZANU-PF and the MDC, one counts to six the other half a dozen, we do not know.
What we know is that a narrative is emerging in the UK and in the US-State Department that destroys the moral carpet underpinning the MDC efforts to unseat a tyranny. This is a very serious charge. Sackur further emphasised that the economic policies of the two parties are no different; both are based on the proposed beneficiation (local manufacture) of resources.

Therefore, if ZANU-PF equals the MDC, foreign support for either party makes no difference to the beneficiation of Zimbabwean citizens.
There is also an underpinning by ZANU-PF that some white farmers will return, while others will be compensated. The devil that has shown some contrition is better than a fresh and vigorous devil.

The mathematics

My brothers, Ibbo Mandaza and Hopewell Chin’ono, who are mightier than I, whose shoes I cannot untie, have prognosticated that the numbers will favour Chamisa.
I beg to kindly disagree, not about the numbers. We know that Tsvangirayi has won every election since year 2 000. So, yes the numbers are always in favour of the MDC.
It is about who counts the numbers, my beloved!

I will not hold the readers much longer.  Justice Priscilla Chigumba has “declined” to send the ballot papers for printing to a company chosen by tender. There is not a single MDC representative in the Electoral Commission. The ballot papers will be printed at night by a fly by night company known only to her Honourable Beatific.
In my previous life when I carried Joshua Nkomo’s bag, words to this effect reached me in 1980. Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere asked Zimbabwe’s Governor Lord Soames: “Why did you let Mugabe win with such a wide margin (56 percent)?”
Nkomo cried. The results of 1980 underplayed Nkomo’s support throughout Zimbabwe. To make sure that nothing leaked, the papers were air-lifted to the United Kingdom for incineration.
Sackur hinted on this childish tantrum.  Chamisa was anxious to participate in a game he felt was rigged. If the MDC flopped, what then?  “We will not accept it.”
Sackur went for the kill: “You cannot have it both ways.”
I will not leave you ignorant my brothers.

mufukaken@gmail.com