Chamisa: Product of economic malaise, but victim of his ego?

via Chamisa: Product of economic malaise, but victim of his ego? November 7, 2014

HE meteoric rise of Nelson Chamisa, the MDC-T’s former national organising secretary, and his dismal failure to land the party’s secretary-general post, reads like a fairy-tale.

A story written by “a single identifiable character” and exists in a mutable and difficult to define genre with a close relationship to folktales. His, is a story similar to French revolutionary Napoleon Bonaparte.

Like Napoleon, Chamisa is a product of prevailing administrative, social and economic collapse in Zimbabwe. The economic breakdown presided over by President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF party played a huge role in his rise.

It is ironic that the socio-economic conditions before the entry of the MDC was characterised by class privileges and intense discrimination unless one belonged and/or was connected to the ruling class.

But, the ideals of nationality, merit and equality initiated by the 1970s liberation fighters led by Mugabe allowed a commoner like Chamisa to attain high office — in the Legislature, Executive and now the Judiciary.

Mugabe, however, later betrayed the aspirations of the people, precisely giving birth to a vibrant opposition movement in the form of the MDC led by veteran trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai.

By 1999, Mugabe’s rule had increasingly become weak and inefficient. Zanu PF had failed to work in a cohesive manner and this led to increasing hardships for the citizenry.

The ruling party failed to initiate any strong steps to counter the prevailing economic difficulties. Their decision to remunerate veterans of the liberation struggle in 1997 and devalue the local currency led to high inflation and marked the beginning of “the lost decade”.

The increasing prices of necessary commodities also led to hardships in the masses and they started looking for change, and so it came in September 1999 with the formation of the MDC, which Chamisa helped to form.

This explains why, since he left college, Chamisa has known no other job or political home since the formation of the united MDC.

It is pertinent to point out that Chamisa was one of the four prominent youths in the MDC party at inception. The other young “turks” were the late firebrand spokesperson Learnmore Jongwe, Job Sikhala and Tafadzwa Musekiwa.

For 15 years, Chamisa’s star has shone from a mere student leader at Harare Polytechnic, MDC Youth Assembly national chair; national spokesperson; national organising secretary, Cabinet minister (in the inclusive government) and Kuwadzana East MP for over 11 years.

He was even touted as a suitable replacement to Tsvangirai especially after he defeated ex-national organising secretary and former Harare mayor Elias Mudzuri.

In Tsvangirai’s MDC, Chamisa was the most acceptable natural leader as his political and academic successes had transformed him into an “invincible hero”.

When he beat Mudzuri for the national organising secretary post in a tightly contested election in Bulawayo in 2011; he became an epitome of peace and order. He had proved his genius by defeating Mudzuri, who once boasted that he was by far the most popular politician after Mugabe.

Chamisa’s perceived administrative capability and eloquence inspired the youths across the political divide — even Mugabe was proud of him in Cabinet describing him as a “supersonic minister”. Youths looked up to him to pull them out from the political morass.

And the just-ended MDC-T elective congress had been seen as a formality with Chamisa tipped to rise up the political ladder —becoming the main opposition’s secretary-general.

As fate would have it, his spectacular rise was halted by fellow lawyer Mwonzora, the former Nyanga North MP, who trounced him by over 700 votes for the coveted secretary-general’s post and was relegated to a mere card carrying member.

He went into hibernation since Sunday after the shock defeat, and on Wednesday registered as a lawyer and urged his supporters to “let bygones be bygones”.
He, however, warned that he would remain in the trenches of Zimbabwe’s opposition politics, fighting for democracy in “whatever capacity”.

A gifted speaker, Chamisa’s defeat to Mwonzora was received with mixed feelings by many sympathetic to the youthful MP yet others celebrated his loss.

While a post-mortem is taking place in people’s minds on what went wrong, many felt a lot of factors contributed to Chamisa’s loss in last weekend’s congress despite going into the election with 11 nominations against Mwonzora’s one.

Party supporters gave differing opinions over how Chamisa could have lost the election with his (now) perceived poor organisational strategy as the organising secretary contributing significantly.

Under his watch MDC-T fared badly against Zanu PF at last year’s July 31 election.

“A number of members in MDC-T were not happy with the way he organised the party ahead of last year’s elections. People failed to understand why he sneaked in people like Eric Knight and others into the party. It angered genuine cadres who said he contributed to the loss,” a senior MDC-T official, who refused to be named, said.

Others felt that Chamisa had frustrated Tsvangirai’s attempts to make his office omnipotent and so that sealed his fate.

Chamisa reportedly challenged loyalists pushing to empower the party leader to appoint officials into the national executive with reports that Tsvangirai and the Kuwadzana East MP clashed in Mutare before the congress.

“Tsvangirai could have contributed to Chamisa’s loss for reasons better known to him. Remember, Chamisa had become a threat in the party and for him to occupy the post of secretary-general, Tsvangirai was uncomfortable with that arrangement hence suspicion that he played a big part in his defeat,” a top insider said.

The official added: “A lot of factors are now coming out including the theory that even (Thokozani) Khupe played a part in fighting Chamisa. Khupe’s ex-husband who is with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions conducted the elections and some in the Chamisa camp have problems with that given the dynamics in the party.”

Others felt Chamisa lost due to his perceived Zanu PF links where insiders claimed he has a contract with Gushungo Holdings, a company owned by the First Family.

Yet, others claimed Chamisa had a weakness for Mugabe whom he adores so much.

They based their argument on a letter purportedly written by Chamisa to a Zanu PF Cabinet minister in the inclusive government showering praises to the veteran Zanu PF leader during a Cabinet meeting at Munhumutapa Building.

“When greatness shall be measured, the man in the chair (Mugabe) shall be one among a few. I am impressed by his wisdom and deftness in dealing with matters and affairs of the State. I wonder who, among the aspirants, possesses even a ¼ of what he possesses. He is a great man.

“Meetings are different with him. It explains why I have not attacked him for a long while. My bone is with Zanu PF for now,” Chamisa wrote in the missive that was leaked to the Press.

Speaking at the launch of the National E-learning Programme at Chogugudza School in Goromonzi in 2012, Chamisa showered Mugabe with commendations saying: “We want to thank His Excellency for appreciating that for us to have successful innovation; we need leadership from the populace. The President has provided that leadership and we are willing to be passengers.”

As if to reciprocate Chamisa’s praise-singing, Mugabe described the charismatic politician as “a supersonic minister with the wisdom of elders”.
“We call him the youngest among us and we wonder why at this age before his hair turns grey, he has the wisdom of the elders. He said he read the books that we read and we encourage him to go forward,” Mugabe said then.

Still, many believe that Tsvangirai betrayed Chamisa if reports that he was behind the congress loss were true given the loyalty he had shown him over the years.

Chamisa remained loyal to Tsvangirai when he was deserted in 2005 by senior party officials including former secretary-general Welshman Ncube. In April this year, he stood by Tsvangirai when a faction led by fired secretary-general Tendai Biti differed with the ex-Premier resulting in another split.

A former MDC-T official now with the MDC Renewal Team yesterday said that Tsvangirai could have been successfully fired from the MDC-T soon after last July’s harmonised elections had it not been for Chamisa who fought hard to defend him.

“He was a stumbling block to our quest to oust Tsvangirai and we feel this was not the best way to reward his loyalty,” he said.

The Biti-fronted MDC Renewal has since extended an invitation to Chamisa to join their forces.

Chamisa, a known Tsvangirai loyalist was once cautioned for perfecting the art of bootlicking Tsvangirai in the opposition party.

At a rally in Budiriro, Harare, early this year, Chamisa said: “In a struggle there is a commander, others are lieutenants and no lieutenant should say they want to be a commander. If you dream while sleeping on top of a mountain that you want to be leader, we say no to that.”

He gushed: “He (Tsvangirai) is the founding father of democracy in Zimbabwe, the doyen of constitutionalism. You can’t replace a person chosen by God. Let’s keep on feeding into River Save (Tsvangirai’s totem) so that even Gushungo (President Robert Mugabe’s totem) can be swept away.”
On Wednesday, Chamisa said he was now focusing to the future.

“I take this as a good lesson. I have many moves to consider and not just one. You will see. Just watch the space, you will be excited,” he told journalists soon after he was registered to practice at the High Court.

He also dismissed speculative reports that he was now mulling plans to join the anti-Tsvangirai forces.

“Whether clean or dirty is not consequential, I am still young and I have a sea of opportunities,” he said.

This week, Chamisa reportedly told a senior colleague and his contemporary: “Young people must take charge of Zimbabwe. Why continue with a tarnished and haunted taxonomy?”

Chamisa is on record saying that his works are inspired by the ideals of equality and fraternity and he emphasize upon rule of equality and law.

He believes he still represents the ideal of nationalism cherished by the opposition movement.

But to others, whatever his supporters may say, the limitation of personal character of Chamisa could have played an important role in his downfall. He had become a highly ambitious person.

Sadly, his ambition inspired and motivated him to work for grand success, but his ambition knew no limit. His early successes motivated him to look beyond the frontiers of opposition politics.

He controlled all levers of the Tsvangirai-led MDC-T and his adversaries thought he was not satisfied. They thought he wanted a position within reach of the opposition party presidency. With the unconventional strategies of reconstituting party structures adopted by him to subdue his opponents ahead of the elective congress, Chamisa could have exposed the limitation of his “so called camp”.

It appears that he did not discriminate between moral and immoral means. Chamisa changed the game plans as per the convenience and used the weaknesses of his adversaries to oust them. That simple act of “perceived cheating’ he committed in restructuring party branches during nomination of candidates to the elective congress could have also weakened the moral foundation of his camp.

That could have exposed the real character of Chamisa to the entire MDC-T faithful.

Come the voting day his facade became ineffective and the MDC-T faithful realised his real intentions.

He lost support of the opposition party grassroots.