Govt of National Unity: My foot, it can’t!

We expect our vote to be respected … We can’t have a GNU with people that have won less than a third of the seats on offer. It can’t!

IT IS obvious that the authors of the disturbances which occurred in Harare on Wednesday August 1, 2018 had one thing in mind: an inclusive Government commonly known as a GNU. Let me explain. You see, they knew that they had lost the election. Yes, just after polls closed and the first V11s from Harare and other urban centres got to their offices, there was a brief moment when those within the MDC started picturing themselves in Government. But those hopes and delusions quickly evaporated when it became painfully obvious that once again, they had lost to a better campaign.

By Tuesday morning, the writing was on the wall. As results trickled in from the provinces, the tapestry of a ZANU-PF landslide started to take shape. In Uzumba, Shamva, Rushinga, Muzarabani and Mberengwa, wards were reporting MDC numbers in three digits against hundreds for ED and ZANU-PF.

A new narrative was needed. The Selous Scout, David Coltart, realising that some of the V11s posted on polling tents had been blown away by the wind overnight, started an online campaign saying that these had been removed in order to be altered. To the public, unaware that every candidate’s agent (including MDC agents) had copies, something looked wrong. It seemed like a real problem.

Suddenly, they could claim that ZEC was cooking the numbers. Of course, not once did they challenge ZEC saying the figures ZEC was giving were different from their totals from their returns. Because they didn’t want the public and the international media to know their dirty secret, that they had all the V11s. And knew they had lost.

Just as they ran to the West to beg for sanctions, Biti called two press conferences to allege, without evidence, that Chamisa had won the elections. Chamisa himself, either hiding somewhere or celebrating with Joana Mamombe her victory in Harare West (apparently ZEC didn’t cook those figures) sent out a tweet like Trump claiming that he had “won the popular vote”. On what basis? Because you can only know that from the V11s, the same ones they claimed were missing.

Biti was dismissive of all the African monitoring missions’ reports. Sadc, AU, Comesa and other regional bodies had said the election was peaceful and free. It was all a sham, Biti said, and claimed that the EU had said it was a fraud. They didn’t.

Then their lackey, Partson Dzamara, angling for a ministerial appointment in the event Chamisa won and seeing his chances slip away, went on a social media blitz about an alleged stolen election. They worked their supporters into a frenzy. And into the streets.

Of course, some were overhead claiming that they had been paid to march. Some said they were given beer and drugs. They were to march towards the international media, and provoke the police to beat them up. And they did.

The aim was to create a situation of chaos. In order to stop this, only a Government of National Unity can solve our problems over the next five years. And true enough, just as the first stones were being thrown at buildings and at innocent people, their soothsayer Ibbo Mandaza was on CNN saying “only a GNU can solve Zimbabwe’s problems”. It must not happen! It can’t! The biggest problem that the MDC and other urban elites have is to assume that ZANU-PF has no supporters. That the passion they have for their party and their leaders is not replicated in ZANU-PF. This is a mistake.

There are living and breathing people who support ZANU-PF because it represents the best hope they see for our country. Then there are people who voted for ZANU-PF because it offered a better vision for the country, better than science-fiction dreams about bullet trains out of Plumtree or airports in Murehwa. And then there are those who didn’t vote for the MDC Alliance because of Chamisa’s toxic association with Robert Mugabe as well as Chamisa’s failure to deny that he planned to make Grace Mugabe his deputy.

In addition, politicians will do well to not believe their own propaganda. The MDC has tried very hard to suggest that “these are the people we have had for 38 years and ED was Mugabe’s right hand man”. While that fiction plays well at MDC rallies, the voters see through it. First, many times Mugabe tried to kill ED.

That must have been for a reason and clearly suggests he was not his right hand man. Second, over the last nine months, ED has been singularly trying to undo the damage that Mugabe wrought to our economy.

To any right-thinking person that means he didn’t agree with Mugabe’s policies. Third, ED was crucial in getting Mugabe out, a fact confirmed by Chamisa himself when he said at his final rally “vakaramba Mugabe, and ini ndinoda wacho arambwa”.

Fourth, Mugabe himself said he was not on ED’s side and endorsed Chamisa. To think that that endorsement didn’t hurt Chamisa’s electoral fortunes is to bury one’s head in the sand.

The fallacy that the young are with the MDC is another big problem. ZANU-PF is the party of Pupurai Togarepi, Prosper Nachando, Barbara Rwodzi, Ethel Mpezeni, Lewis Matutu, Mayor Justice Wadyajena and yes, those girls with the EDhasMyVote matching dresses.

These are not old people. In fact, they are all younger than Chamisa.

When ZANU-PF has youth events, this is who the youths see. Plus the man they call General Bae, of course. And the country’s President. They don’t get insult-laden speeches from old people like Biti, but get to listen to business ideas from their peers. They don’t listen to Mnangagwa-bashing speeches but hear genuine concerns for the Zimbabwe they want.

Tied to this is the fiction that all youths live in Harare. This is so sad, because they don’t. There are youths all over the rural areas, all over the new farming areas opened up by this Government and benefiting from Command Agriculture.

Yes, urbanites and their youths can make fun of these projects on Twitter but to someone who is 24 years old looking at 50 hectares that their family can utilise and at their donated heifers from the Command programmes, those sneers are enough reason to suspect that if they voted for Chamisa, it will all get stopped.

So, when Twitter got saturated with lies about people voting every 45 seconds in Chiredzi and 8 million votes counted or 3 000 votes in one box, the MDC leadership cynically manipulated youths into the streets. “We will die to defend our vote”, Biti thundered, but was not on the street to die for his vote in person. Instead, he was leading from the rear, in his cushy home and sipping whisky while watching the protest degenerate (not his word no doubt) into chaos. Everything was going according to plan.

The youths on the street did not relent in the face of anti-riot police because, according to some in their number, they had been sent to “create a scene”. To be on the cameras. And that they did.

“The soldiers beated (sic) me”, one of them said, in broken English. We are supposed to assume of course that this person was sophisticated enough to understand what ZEC is allegedly doing with the V11s.

“We won this election, because our candidate speaks better English than Mnangagwa and is more handsome,” the “handsome” Biti had said. So these youths are in the streets to defend their vote cast for a handsome candidate that speaks the English which they themselves can’t speak?

The truth is that the MDC knows it lost. As one of them said to me in a private message, after sending me their internal totals which confirm that President Mnangagwa had been re-elected with no run-off: “They know but vakuru havadi kunzwa ma results iwaya.