MDC-A’s tendency for mindless destruction
AWALK along Harare’s Simon Muzenda Street (formerly Forth Street), past a City of Harare paid parking lot, reveals a rusting body of a bus parked near the eastern part of the municipal space.
It is a monument and testament to the opposition party, MDC Alliance’s tendency to default to mindless, violent and destructive protests as its solution to any issue it does not agree with.
In the absence of a sound strategy, destruction has become the opposition party’s default response to almost anything.
The burnt bus shell is what remains of Zanu PF’s 2018 Harare Ward 6 council elections candidate, Nyasha Zenda’s campaign bus, which he indicated was worth US$100 000.
It was torched together with a number of other privately owned motor vehicles parked at the nearby Zanu PF Harare provincial offices by MDC Alliance’s excitable youths.
The rampaging demonstrators had been dispatched on August 1, 2018 by the party’s leadership to protest against the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) for allegedly rigging presidential election results in favour of President Mnangagwa.
The premature protests were despite the fact that the national election management body was still collating the results.
Economic destruction
MDC Alliance members are a frustrated lot. The party’s two-decade history has shown that it lacks a consistent political ideological position and sound policies to endear itself to the electorate to gain enough votes to unseat Zanu PF.
This has resulted in the party’s largely youthful membership tending to vent its frustration on anyone.
Last week, a video of the goings on at the party’s contested Harvest House headquarters was doing rounds on the social media.
The video clip features some of the people who own businesses or work at businesses near the building bemoaning how its (MDC Alliance) youth had become a menace as they had a tendency to attack anyone passing by, which made running business near the Harvest House very difficult.
The rowdy and violent youths are the same people who use social media to complain of joblessness, yet they use politics to frustrate Zimbabweans who are doing their best to keep businesses open and employ as many people as possible.
Zimbabwe’s major problems are largely economic than political.
It is, therefore, surprising that instead of ensuring that economic activity goes on unhindered, the MDC Alliance has transformed itself into an agent of economic destabilisation.
Back in 2016, members of the same party went on a rampage, looting, destroying shops and pick-up trucks belonging to the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) ostensibly to protest against Government’s alleged delay in implementing electoral reforms.
Last year, still smarting from a rap on the knuckles of its leadership by the Motlanthe Commission for their hand in the August 1, 2018 violent protest, the party used the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) as a proxy to organise the January 14 to 16 protests against the fuel price increase which had been announced two days earlier.
The extent of the damage and economic losses that the nationwide protest wrought left many wondering whether the issue at the centre of the demonstration was still the price increase or something else.
Many questioned the rationale of an opposition party, which is aspiring to rule the country someday, destroying the same country’s economy and negatively affecting the livelihoods of the same people they claimed to be fighting for.
The regional retail giant, Choppies, lost US$2,5 million in looted and destroyed stock and US$6,5 million in destroyed assets when nine of its shops fell victim to the MDC Alliance’s protests.
If the Botswana-headquartered company had failed to understand that the MDC covered up its gross strategic deficit with attention-seeking destructive protests, it would have divested from the country.
The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry (CZI) indicated at the time that the country, which is already suffering from the debilitating effects of Western-sponsored sanctions, suffered national daily loss of business to the tune of US$100 million for each of the three days that the protest subsisted.
When the MDC Alliance lost the 2018 elections, one of the party’s vice presidents, Tendai Biti, laid bare the opposition outfit’s heartlessness and meanness of spirit.
He demonstrated to the world that his party thrived on the suffering of the innocent people of Zimbabwe. Stung by the defeat, Biti was quoted by some media outlets vowing that “we will mobilise more sanctions, Zanu PF won’t get a penny.”
The country’s image
The MDC Alliance demonstrated to the world that it is prepared to use the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe, as ammunition against Zanu PF without any qualms or conscience.
In this regard, the party has been spiritedly fighting President Mnangagwa’s re-engagement policy, which is calculated to enable Zimbabwe to re-join the global community of nations following his predecessor, the late Robert Mugabe’s two-decade go-to-hell foreign policy.
Nothing exposed the opposition’s unparalleled hate for its country and people than Biti’s decision to write a letter to the World Bank last month suggesting that the international financial institution should be strict with Zimbabwe after it (World Bank) had offered US$7 million towards the country’s Covid-19 fight.
He justified his unpatriotic and selfish decision by claiming that Government was not sufficiently transparent.
However, Government continues to account for the Covid-19 donations, and recently published a statement of accounts for the same in The Sunday Mail edition of June 21, 2020.
The party’s ongoing calls for protests ostensibly against the prevailing economic hardships are meant to create a negative image of the country as an investment destination, a point which the then CZI President in January 2019, Sifelani Jabangwe alluded to, following protests of that year.
“This economy will not improve because those actions (violent and destructive protests) will just destroy whatever prospects we have for foreign direct investment because right now there are people that have woken up and have no jobs (and some) that have lost their factories,” he said.
Movement for the Destruction of Con
stitutionalism
As the nation discussed the internal challenges facing the MDC Alliance over the past few months, one citizen remarked that the party had degenerated from being an outfit for pushing for democracy to being a movement for the destruction of constitutionalism.
This was after the Supreme Court ruled that both the party’s leader, Nelson Chamisa and his predecessor, the late Morgan Tsvangirai, had breached their own constitution by ascending to the party’s leadership irregularly in February 2018 and appointing additional vice presidents in July 2016 respectively.
To his credit, Tsvangirai reportedly said that he would rather get into a Government of National Unity with Mugabe than get to State House over bodies of dead Zimbabweans.
His successor, on the contrary, is prepared to land State power at all costs even if it means destroying the country’s economy through mindless protests, tarnishing its image on the global stage and subjecting his party’s own female members to grotesque and demeaning theatrics of self-abduction.
Voting for one’s own destruction
If Chamisa cannot uphold internal democracy, what assurance is there that he would not do the same for the nation in the very unlikely event that he gets into power?
If he is prepared to destroy the national economy for his own selfish and narrow-minded ends, what assures MDC-Alliance members that he would not do the same even if he gets the power that he is fighting for?
The 2023 elections are just over 24 months away and it is time Zimbabweans thought deeply before committing their votes to people who stand ready to sacrifice their lives and future for their own unbridled ambitions’ sake.
As Chamisa calls for protests, Zimbabweans should know that it is their own lives and livelihoods that he is calling them to participate in destroying.