Tsvangirai, Odinga: Africa’s doppelgangers
Super Alliance recently garnered 44.7 per cent of the votes. This was nowhere near the incumbent’s 54,2 percent, dismissing any hopes of another power sharing deal, that common solace for losing opposition parties in Africa.
Demonstrating political inconsistency and in gross political prostitution like Tsvangirai, Odinga has changed political allegiance a record times. Being identified with the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy, Forum for the Restoration of Democracy-Kenya, National Development Party, Kenya African National Union, Liberal Democratic Party and the Orange Democratic Movement.
He has also been affiliated with the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy and the National Super Alliance (NASA) which has arguably put the final nail on his political coffin.
In similar fashion, before disowning the revolutionary genes, Tsvangirai was a member of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) to 1999 before falling on the wayside, advocating for a reversal of the gains of the liberation struggle, co-founding the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999, a movement which thrived up to 2005 before he identified himself with the Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai (MDCT).
Currently, Tsvangirai is fronting a coalition and as in the case of his Kenyan double, this coalition will arguably hammer the final nail on his political coffin, on its way to lie side by side his Kenyan doppelganger in the political cemetery.
Like his Kenyan double who, before accepting a half loaf in 2008, lost consecutively in 1997, 2007, and 2013 and recently losing to Uhuru Kenyatta for the second time, Tsvangirai lost to President Mugabe in 2002, 2008 and 2013. What followed were an array of consequences of a bitter and a heartbroken soul. The frustration was further and is still spiralling down to his unfortunate subordinates.
Tsvangirai has arguably divided political opinion. Those suffering from “Morganmania” and found wanting in the balances of honesty may choose to view him as a democrat who has sacrificed a lot in his fight against the so called human rights abuses but those suffering from “Morganphobia” see him as a scheming and a very selfish individual who will do anything to gain the dearly longed for power, and can be justified.
Recently, one of his deputies, Thokozani Khuphe and other senior members of his MDC-T outfit, were left nursing an array of pains which required some urgent medical attention, allegedly inflicted on Tsvangirai’s orders at the backdrop of his already doomed coalition endeavour.
Added to advocating for the imposition of economic sanctions, at the turn of the new millennium, Tsvangirai set out to remove a democratically elected Zanu-PF government from power through unconstitutional means, and in his words: “What we would like to tell Mugabe today is that please go peacefully. If you don’t want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently”. This has been followed by untold sabotage which has included urging workers and citizens to “shut down Zimbabwe”.
On the other hand, his jailbird double who spent six years of his political career in detention after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow President Daniel Arap Moi in 1982, recently echoed similar sentiments, seemingly oblivious of his political setting sun. Speaking from heaps of rubbish while addressing excited supporters at a rubble and rubbish strewn wasteland in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum which also happens to be his stronghold, Odinga vowed to “remove” Kenyatta’s government from power before urging his supporters to boycott work.
Refusing to accept that coalitions of nonentities do not work, still trying to come together, being led by Odinga’s double while awaiting their final and imminent demise due in 2018, that heart-breaking and unfortunate Odinga experience, Zimbabwe opposition in sixes and sevens, have spent most of their time clamouring for electoral and other reforms.
Unfortunately, utholukuthi hey, it’s a waste of precious campaign time which has apparently run out!
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