Violence: MDC-T must not tempt fate

IN a year’s time, Zimbabweans will go to the polls to elect their leaders for the five years to 2023, and election fever is slowly creeping into the nation judging by the discourse in both conventional and social media.

The discourse has taken various forms, but what has come to the fore is it is once again going to be a contest between Zanu-PF and the opposition MDC-T.

But while President Mugabe and Zanu-PF have put shoulders to the wheel and are working to deliver on promises made to the electorate as shown in the recent commissioning of Tokwe-Mukosi Dam and the dualisation of the Chirundu-Beitbridge Highway, the opposition is busy mocking the Head of State and Government, on account of his age, in addition to issuing infantile threats that they will unleash violence if they once again lose the coming election.

But all indications are, the opposition is headed for some heavy drubbing as has been shown by the feverish attempts to shore up numbers through a grand coalition against Zanu-PF as well as findings and pronouncements by think-tanks, eminent scholars and analysts.

Among those who have already foretold a Zanu-PF victory are Afrobarometer which conducted a survey, Dr Toendepi Shonhe erstwhile MDC-T insider, trade unionist Raymond Majongwe and scholars Professor Stephen Chan and Julia Gallagher, who have all received insults and brickbats from the opposition for their candour.

Be that as it may, whether opposition supporters like to hear it or not, as Majongwe pointed out, the party that will depose Zanu-PF has not yet been formed simply because Zanu-PF is anchored in the nation’s founding values.

Zanu-PF, as we know it today is an amalgam of the country’s two revolutionary parties ZANU (PF) and PF Zapu, which came together on December 22, 1987 to give birth to the united Zanu-PF which has continued championing the revolutionary cause.

The MDC, on the other hand, was launched on September 11, 1999 as a reincarnation of Ian Douglas Smith’s Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe in light of the fact that the party was mooted as an anti-thesis to Zanu-PF and its drive to redistribute land to the black majority.

The MDC, which had a fair share of ex-Rhodies and other quislings in its rank and file, soon aligned itself with white commercial farmers and white capital against the generality of Zimbabweans, farm workers and factory workers they purported to represent at launch.

The MDC, thus did not have a substrate, or super-structure on which to build its politics which is why we concur with Prof Chan and Gallagher where they say while Zanu-PF has supporters, the MDC-T has sympathisers. And therein lies the bane of the opposition.

Tsvangirai and company simply have to look at themselves in the mirror, warts and all, and ask themselves some tough questions.

As currently constituted, the quisling MDC-T can forget that even its threats of violence which are issued on the back of an alien agenda can be tolerated.

Such threats are an attempt to subvert the will of the people which is where the country’s vaunted security forces step in. Tempered by war, they can competently deal with any attempts to subvert the Constitution.

Our advice to the MDC-T is simple, as long as you pursue a patently reactionary, foreign agenda, you will go the way of Bishop Abel Muzorewa and Ndabaningi Sithole, to the dustbins of history.

Elections are not zero sum games, they yield one of three possible outcomes, a win, loss or stalemate.

Opposition must not tempt fate.