Grand Coalition: Cdes without a Code

No sooner have they come together than they had forgotten the code that brought them together. That is the story of our opposition, and their famed grand coalition that was hyped to tediousness by the media. Then the People First was an idea, more attractive in promise than in reality. Those of us who have watched opposition politics for a little longer kept warning this is the beauty of far away rains, as the Shonas say. Get caught up in the drizzle, and distant smooth azure beauty gives way to something horrible.

I was dismissed as wishing ill­luck to the newly begotten. Typical Zimbabwean political reasoning: refusal to acknowledge what the DNA points towards, a fool’s hope that outstrips hard fact. Now they have it, and have it in abundance. Too costly, too, too costly to marry Joice is struggling to keep her thing together, a thing threatening to eat her up. It did not need a conjurer to know that, only a dispassionate analysis of characters involved. The trouble in this country is that an invitation to analysis is an excuse to exhibit one’s hatred of ZANU­PF.

A false sense that if you acknowledge opposition’s constitutive weakness, you have accepted or endorsed ZANU­PF’s formidableness. Or vice­versa. Now the very media that used to defend Mujuru are in the frontline of telling us the ruckus that is already gnawing the thing from within, but without admitting that each official amounted to a seam of weakness at birth

We hear it is Mutasa versus Mujuru. No, it is the rest against Nguni, Matonga, etc, etc. Or Matonga versus Nguni, with the latter facing the charge that he still behaves as if he is “a minister of state in the Vice President’s Office”. Nothing new really, just maladjustment. My instalment made that point, namely that the biggest challenge to Mujuru’s party was freeing itself from the party that sired her, the party she needs, but she must defeat. Now before she is even a brand, she has become a cost for all to see, too costly to entice any hopes for a grand coalition so­called. We shall see how she pulls through this one. She needs much more than a plaintive voice; she needs acumen which she has never had, judging by her days in ZANU­PF

And this whole ruse about a vote of no confidence was an attempt to paper over the cracks, an attempt to soar above chasms of divisions in the hope of forging a singleness of purpose where none exists. If truth be said, no self­respecting MP will ever want to jeopardise their 2018 prospects for this one. Ask mudhara Lule, aka Bhasikiti, and he will tell you that Mwenezi has proved a hard nut to crack, never mind the tones and tones of wildlife meat his party has deployed. The villagers simply take the meat and then withdraw to their ZANU­PF pieces of land, homes. Ungavadii? Or mudhara Mavhaire, who has been trying in Chiredzi. The going has been truly tough for this workhorse, one which everyone in People First hoped was going to pull a good surprise.

Ndoozvazviri. MuZanu­PF hamubudiwi. As for mudhara Mutasa, well the graveyard has better whispers than his gasp. He does not know whither to go: forward into opposition with all the threats of litigation from people he is supposed to be sharing the anti­Zanu­PF fight with, or back to the ZANU­PF cell with all the ignominy but with all the security he so sorely needs. It is a dilemma which will visit all the members of People First, a dilemma much more formidable than losing elections in 2018

Now back to the Comrades without a Code to regulate their conduct. We are told that all the small parties have come together to form what they term Coalition of Democrats, CODE. And in Zimbabwean denial nomenclature “small” means “weak”. The Simbas, the Welshmans, the Eltons and humwe hurubvurubvu hune mazita asina mushumo. Vese vabatanidza their weaknesses to create this thing they call CODE. And Tendai Biti was there, in attendance, but without signing up to the CODE. Listen to him: “if you want to go fast go alone [but] if you want to go far go with others”.

Which is to say? I mean his non­committal, standoffish stance? That he neither wishes to go fast or far? Well, both shall be granted him, duly served him as he surely knows. But the moment gave him a fleeting sense of bigness: the only “small” party among reviled weaklings. Promises of backing from the likes of Dabengwa, and People First about whose weaknesses the opening paragraphs were. Fitting portion for he who does not have a dog So how has the MDC­T, another “small” party, reacted to this piece of news? Cleverly I must say. It has dusted off NERA, National Election Reform Agenda, and posited it as a counterpoint. So we have CODE. So we have NERA.

So we have both aspiring to be a grand coalition! Says Mwonzora: “We do not just join. Why should we join them? We are a mass party and the MDC­T is against anything that looks like an elite pact. We do not know their logic, what they stand for, their objectives and some of them were heard saying they did not want MDC­T to be part of them. We have the numbers, the talent, vision and determination to remove Mugabe.

There is a huge problem with such an incisive response from MDC­T. Firstly, a fellow opposition party does not know what other opposition parties that have come together stand for? Where does that leave the opposition agenda? In tatters, truly. Elites? Where does that leave ZANU­PF? With little else to do now that the demolition is being done from within.