2023: Preferring experience to youthfulness

IT is not a complex exercise to explain the failure of opposition politics in Zimbabwe for the past 23 years, one only has to know that they are a tide of anti-establishmentarism and puppetry.

They are an offspring of neo-imperials whose embodiment is nothing but being arrogantly reactionary.

The opposition, in particular the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), an offshoot of the MDC-Alliance and a project of both the United States and Britain.

These two Western countries do not listen to the CCC and its leaders Mr Nelson Chamisa, they handhold and direct them by sponsoring unconstitutionalism in Zimbabwe.

History will harshly judge Mr Chamisa as we approach the next election.

Between July 2004 and up to 2007, he pleaded with the officials through former US ambassador Mr Christopher Dell to have the US Special Forces to invade Zimbabwe with their full might so that Zanu-PF would relinquish power.

Mr Dell was prepared to facilitate the opposition’s rise to power in such fashion.

2023 will be testimony through the ballot that no people in a democracy tolerate anarchy, chaos and Western regents bent on political thuggery and hooliganism.

The victory of Zanu PF will be colossal. When Zimbabwe’s liberators fought and won against the colonial establishment, they were not an opposition party, but people who had a cause, conviction, determination and also a justice movement.

In post-independent Zimbabwe, the majority of the citizens still trust in the stabilising effect of our liberators to steer the national ship and take it safely to the harbour even in the face of international turbulence.

This faith is because of the combined experience Zanu PF has managed to pull together to protect the nationalist interests, aspirations and Pan-African values espoused in the commitment to maintain Zimbabwe’s sovereignty that has to be enjoyed by both the young and the old.

With calendar days being subtracted as Zimbabwe heads to the harmonised general elections next year, it is difficult to believe that State power will be safe in the hands of the opposition or any other political actor other than Zanu PF.

Because the opposition is driven by anti-establishment, giving power to people who mobilise economic sanctions against their own country will cause an unabated national carnage when challenged.

To stop such vulnerabilities, the young and old who identify with the interests of Zimbabwe are set to maintain that position next year, by defying the politically unscientific conclusions by the CCC that young voters are their supports.

It is both a curse and demon of youthful exuberance that needs to be exorcised when people assume because there is a so-called young politician contesting a national election, then all youthful voters belong to his constituency.

Their experience, not ours

There is no African country that has fought and defeated the colonial establishment through a protracted struggle more than Zimbabwe.

African countries are not a homogeneous entity and their experiences are never the same.

If Zimbabwe’s existence is a peculiar case, even its outcomes on national elections are peculiar.

The peculiarity of such outcomes is because Zimbabweans are more politically awake and have the ability to discern what is and what is not in their best interest.

The opposition parties and the CCC have used the 2020 elections in Malawi that brought Dr Lazarus Chakwera to the presidency and the ascension of Zambia’s Hakainde Hichilema to the presidency in Zambia last year as a “signal” of what is to come in Zimbabwe next year.

Also, Kenya’s electoral experience has been misleadingly used to mirror what will happen in Zimbabwe when this year Mr Chamisa was hoping opposition leader Mr Raila Odinga would win, yet he lost to President William Ruto.

In Lesotho, Mr Samuel Matekane is a new entrant who campaigned on the back of his experience as businessman.

With temporary glee, Mr Chamisa has impressed upon his supporters that it is the opposition’s turn in Zimbabwe.

Political immorality is using political and electoral experiences of other countries and contextualise their outcomes to your country, hoping to win power.

Zimbabwe cannot and will not be compared with other countries for their circumstances cannot be replicated in Zimbabwe.

The majority of Zimbabweans still trust in the stabilising effect of the Zanu PF party, whose tap roots of political consciousness feed Zimbabweans who understand and appreciate that the tranquillity and stability obtaining today are products of the safe pair of hands of our liberators.

A forgotten man named Guaidó

Western nations have a penchant to use young politicians as pawns to foster their agenda because they are aware of their ideological shortcomings and political naivety.

This is evidently seen with how the US under Donald Trump manipulated Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaidó to facilitate a military coup the US termed a “low hanging fruit”.

Currently, the support that Guaidó received from the United States appears to have its days numbered upon realisation that his alternative presidency was one of the most extravagant experiments in the history of international diplomacy.

The US relaxed sanctions on Venezuela government because it needs oil and has admitted that the only legitimate leader of that country is Nicolas Maduro.

It is an era about to come to an end. Likewise, Mr Chamisa had his experiment for the alternative presidency after being ‘inspired’ by Kenya’s Raila Odinga sometime in October 2018.

The intention was to portray the Zanu PF Government as illegitimate, unreliable and that the actual administration with whom the other nations should negotiate was the one theoretically ‘formed’ by Mr Chamisa.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela the Americans are dumping Guaidò.

Likewise, the 2023 defeat of Mr Chamisa is going to change the relationship dynamics between the West and the local opposition.

The fruits of the Government’s policy of re-engagement and engagement will become visible as the West will also want strategic geo-political dividends from associating with Zanu PF than the CCC.

Guaidó, Odinga and Chamisa are not democrats, and will never be.

They are mere right-wing populists. Their diplomatic experiments have occurred in a drastically different context and changed environment whose circumstances have no precedence.

Inevitable failure, defeat

The predicted electoral losses of the opposition have a number of causes.

First, the population’s trust and support, which are necessary for a political movement to become legitimate, are missing links in all outfits, including the CCC and its leader.

Secondly, the internal divisions within the CCC point to a split before or after the elections as a result of lack of institutional organisation and the cliques that are emerging for those aligned to Mr Chamisa, his ‘interim’ deputy Mr Tendai Biti and Mr Job Sikhala.

In view of such shortcomings, the opposition will face a prepared, welloiled and rejuvenated Zanu PF party that has a correct ideological orientation, experience in political mobilisation and which has finished its party restructuring exercise manned by new teams in all wings.

It is a scary imagination that should not be entertained by right-thinking citizens under the assumption that the ruling party, Zanu-PF, will be elbowed from power by those whose interests advance the agenda of foreigners and can grandstand to announce they are ready to reverse Zimbabwe’s post-independence gains.

While the youth are a key component and demography in the national body-politic, their presence makes the political landscape vibrant and when their zeal and enthusiasm are given guidance by the elderly and experienced, they learn better.

Experience teaches wisdom.

The election contest next year will be decided on choosing the more experienced and wiser leaders than the naïve and imprudent young leaders sent by the West to spoil the agenda of the masses.

Zimbabweans, remember we are one! This is our homeland.