Whimpering David — the man who cried wolf
HAVE elections in Zimbabwe already been lost — and won — before their scheduled July 30 date?
This is a serious question that may need careful dissection as one looks at the configuration of the political players and their prospects in Zimbabwe.
Granted, there are more than 100 political parties in the country and a whole 23 Presidential contenders.
In other times and places that would be a sign of a healthy, ticking democracy. Actually, it is, in Zimbabwe. The country is experiencing an unprecedented calm before an election that should mark a transition from the old order of former president Robert Mugabe.
We are increasingly hearing talk of a Second Republic.
The first came about in a bloody struggle of 16 years of grinding death and sorrow.
The liberation struggle itself had lasted close to a century, beginning with the resistance and pacification of the native tribes when the white settlers came marching in before they raped and plundered the land and its people.
Zimbabwe’s early years of independence threatened to be a messy affair of teething problem before the last milk tooth fell in 1987, to settle wasting, messy bowels.
That was 1987. A man called Joshua Nkomo — he should have turned a century a few days ago — towered over political and regional sentiment and proclivities to help shape national unity.
We celebrate a holiday in his honour, while the name of Nkomo, himself a fighter and leader in the grinding war of liberation, is etched on different fixtures, remembrances, memorabilia, and institutions and in a people’s ear, not least. We call him Father Zimbabwe.
Father Zimbabwe left us on a wintry day in a season like this some 18 years ago.
Yet, he left a legacy of peace and unity and essentially a baton of a definitive historical and ideological era.
By 2017, the characteristics — or rather the whole organism of his politics, history, ideology and indeed era — were not wearing off because of corruption, but rotting and crumbling.
So, when Mugabe was retired by his party in the middle of a multiple force maelstrom, the era of Nkomo and indeed the era of Mugabe had passed.
You had a feeling that, with the going of Mugabe, Zimbabwe had reached the end of history.
And you felt that with a lot of sadness, but also an inner joy and sense of hope.
Many of you would never quite put into words the contrasts that we felt as we — the people — marched and signalled the end of Mugabe: whether we were retiring him, whether we were lynching him or hanging him on the cross.
It was a feeling that grew and gnawed into you, assuming a life of its own — and those few days of Operation Restore Legacy — for that was the name of the force that swept the old order away with Mugabe — appeared as though they would last forever in their orgasmic intensity and bitter sweet pain.
It is the miracle of a god that no blood was spilt in this moment of dangerous pleasure.
Thankfully, when we woke up, the resolution of the plot was the conception of what we are increasingly hearing as the Second Republic.
Pangs of elections
A country like ours, an organism like ours, has been ordained to pass the ritual called elections which are made routinely after five years.
The country is expected to renew itself by way of getting new life, new blood and a new skin, like a reptile that sheds the old skin into the tender smooth layer. Strangely, for us, we had become too hardened to this experience — after all Zimbabwe is one of the few countries in Africa that have regularly held elections since 1980.
Perhaps that was the problem, our downfall — this our major, defining strength — as we became too casual and ambivalent to the process of birth and renewal.
Maybe, just yet, nothing was being born: until year 1999, when something new began stirring in the womb.
In 1999, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change was conceived, out of a struggle by workers who were groaning under the pressures of an economy that was shrinking and becoming too austere for the comfort of the worker, the student and the elderly.
Zimbabwe had experimented with prescriptions from afar, notwithstanding their failures wherever they had been tried.
Amid an intercourse of event and circumstance, there was a threat or hope of something new.
Indeed, in this difficult moment of formation — one can imagine the pain and the sickness and gutting wrenching bodily discomfort — Zimbabwe stood on the edge.
It was an age of hope. It was an age of despair.
Forces acted from inside as outside. In 2013, though, the creature that was promised and threatened to come of the MDC died.
The MDC had in 2009, at the formation of the so-called inclusive government, set out to “take power from within”.
It did not happen.
By 2013, the challenge was effectively over. MDC-T split with Elton Mangoma and Tendai Biti going their way.
Tsvangirai, the brave libidinous warrior of many a fruitless nights, died this year.
Pleasure and pain of birth
Stakes are high in these coming elections. They represent the birth of something new — ironically for both the ruling party and the opposition. For starters, there won’t be a Mugabe or a Tsvangirai in the contest. There are new faces and it is way beyond the contrived binary between the incumbent and the perceived next best.
For Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF, there is need to complete the work of November 2017 and lay the newborn dispensation down on the comfortable quilt of legitimacy and acceptance. We are seeing the spirited attempt to make this bed of legitimacy; to birth something that is acceptable and beyond reproach.
One can imagine the scrutiny and peering eyes of outsiders.
Silent whispers under the eaves are bad enough, but a village song is a nightmare.
This is why Zimbabwe — or at least one side of the bargain — would want something way beyond reproach.
Ironically, with days ticking towards the birth — through the ritual of elections — of something new, there appears to be some serious ill-will on the part of the MDC led by Chamisa. They are dreading the day. It would seem they are not sure about the identity of the creature.
Each day that passes increases the cold dread that draws down the spine.
In the wisdom of old, we were told that a pregnancy cannot be coughed off.
It is then a sad, grotesque marvel to watch the likes of David Coltart trying every coughing trick to wish away that which is coming — and definitely coming.
The Lady says only an earthquake will move the day of reckoning.
That is not bias on her part — no matter how the likes of Coltart and Charlton Hwende may whimper.
In fact, for a lawyer, David Coltart is behaving strangely these days.Go to his Twitter, as he broadcasts every little excuse to delay the inevitable. He is crying blue murder. He is crying wolf. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to stop a birth whose time has come.