Opposition forces place hopes on doomed coalitions

TODAY, Zimbabweans woke up to a misleading banner headline, “War vets endorse MDC Alliance” by one private media player.

The story is about a little-known group of war veterans going by the name Concerned Freedom Fighters, which was appealing to other war veterans to join Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC Alliance on the misplaced basis that it had the realistic chance to dislodge President Mugabe and Zanu-PF from power in the 2018 harmonised elections.

It has become very normal for most desperate Zimbabwean opposition elements to pin hopes in the over-hyped power of numbers afforded by coalescing around politically-empty figures such as National People’s Party (NPP) leader, Dr Joice Mujuru, Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe (RDZ) leader, Mr Elton Mangoma and Mr Tsvangirai.

Ambitious and raw politicians are just sprouting out of the local political landscape like mushroom to claim non-existent political in a bid to unseat Zanu-PF. Last month, some people put the number of political parties in Zimbabwe at 73, a whopping 74 percent increase from the estimated figure of around 42 at the end of last year.

While this sprouting of political parties ahead of elections is perfectly normal, it is the quality of the parties and political organisations that is interesting. Take CFF, for example. The outfit is named along the lines of South African opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters. Due to lack of solid and sound ideology as well as clout and charisma, such organisations end up desperately attempting to make up for their shortcomings by assuming names of some organisations, which have registered some measure of popularity and are perceived to be successful.

It is interesting to note that CFF’s calls for war veterans to join the MDC Alliance are solely based on the fad that Tsvangirai has the charisma and potential to unseat President Mugabe and Zanu-PF and not on anything new that he has to offer. Mr Tsvangirai has contested Presidential elections in 2002, 2008 and 2013 and lost. In 2000, he had also contested in his home constituency of Buhera North and was trounced by Zanu-PF’s Cde Kenneth Manyonda by 12 850 to 10 316 votes.

Since then he has realised that he is not as popular as he fancies himself to be. Even if he was popular, political success is measured by electoral wins and not through isolated cases of urban popularity. As things stand, it is unclear whether or not Tsvangirai will be the MDC-T’s 2018 presidential election candidate as he is fighting a life-threatening aggressive colon cancer. He is also facing internal opposition from those who feel that he should give way to a younger and more appealing candidate.

Dr Mujuru, who leads the other coalition, the People’s Rainbow Coalition (PRC) which she launched last month, has been in opposition politics for almost two years and has not achieved anything meaningful except fighting with former Zanu-PF members, Mr Didymus Mutasa and Mr Rugare Gumbo over the control of the Zimbabwe People First (ZPF) from which she was kicked out. She has not formulated any sound policies, to attract a meaningful political following.

All she has managed to do is to criticise Zanu-PF but this does not attract followers. Followers do not support politicians blindly. They look for political parties which present policies with the potential to improve their lives.

Mr Mangoma, who fronts the Coalition of Democrats (CODE), is another political failure. He made headlines in January 2014, when he voiced the need for leadership renewal in the MDC-T. He, subsequently left the party to form the MDC Team Renewal which further splintered into his RDZ and Mr Tendai Biti’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Apart from advising opposition parties not to support the biometric voter registration (BVR) system which the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is using for the ongoing voter registration programme, he has not achieved anything or announced any policy worth paying attention to. If anything, he is slowly fading away into political oblivion.

It is, therefore, clear that the opposition parties which are vouching for the coalition are clutching at straws for political survival. They are pinning their hopes on the shaky coalitions which have been characterised by fighting for the leadership of the political groupings. That there are three coalitions instead of one demonstrates that opposition party leaders are not prepared to be subordinate to anyone. This indicates that they are doomed to fail. Leaders of smaller political parties are clinging to the coalitions because they have nothing meaningful to attract meaningful numbers of the electorate to win so much as a rural local authority seat.

Such is the reality of Zimbabwe’s politics of coalitions, which have no known history of success. Nobleman Runyanga