THE Daily News warned repeatedly for five years, about the certain defeat that awaited the opposition at the polls if its leaders did not change their ways.
But there are none so blind and so deaf as those who will not see or hear, especially vain politicians. Now, it has all ended in tears. Without a doubt, the results of last week’s elections, which Zanu PF won at a canter, were predictable.
For all the issues that arose ahead of and during the polls, opposition tin gods know that they are largely to blame for the beating they got, as they often shot themselves in the foot and were like wrecking balls within their own ranks.
Stark cases in point here include the mindless wars which eventually led to the demise of the MDC; new opposition leader Nelson Chamisa’s authoritarian bent; his alienation of former allies; his ruthless purging of his top aides ahead of the polls; and the cooked up primaries of his cult-like, quasi-religious movement.
In this light, the polls highlighted, among other things, the importance of a solid election strategy, unifying politics, mature leadership and strong structures — not the divisive and empty posturing on social media that opposition paper tigers specialised in.
Unfortunately, the few credible voices which pointed out these obvious truths, as well as the need for opposition unity and an end to futile one-man bands, were foolishly labelled as “enablers” or “captured” by opposition tsars.
The folly of this twisted logic, coupled with the inability of the opposition to read the vastly changed political dynamics in the country, has resulted in this fiasco. As the saying goes, the chickens have now come home to roost.
As was also expected, the manic trolls, hacks-for-hire, sub-par academics and manifestly overrated shyster lawyers who advised the opposition tricksters as they embarked on their suicidal mission are now mostly nowhere to be seen. In fact, some of these charlatans have since turned on the opposition phoneys with a brutal relish.
To restate what we at the Daily News have always advocated, Zim needs a strong opposition, which we last had when Morgan Tsvangirai was alive — as that is in the best interest of the country. Our printing press was bombed in 2001, and our company later shut down unjustly, for eight long years, by the late former president Robert Mugabe’s government, for standing up for this. After our notable rebirth, Mugabe’s goons kept on harassing us in a futile bid to stop us from ‘telling it like it is’ — as we still do.
Thus, to be clear, we will never support people just because they are in the opposition. All politicians have to earn our respect and act in everyone’s interest for us to do so. If some spoiled politicians don’t like this, too bad for them.
We certainly didn’t point out what was not going well in the opposition with ill intent. And those hyenas who brown-nosed fragile political egos all this time did not do this for the country.
It’s sad beyond words that Chamisa and his close allies, in particular, resented being told that to succeed, they needed to persuade voters that they fully deserved Zim’s support — and not just prance around like peacocks, while childishly insulting their opponents on social media, taking citizens for granted.
Even after this lashing by Zanu PF, Chamisa continues to behave as if he has patents to the opposition movement — displaying a worrying main character syndrome and messiah complex.
Depressingly, in that regard, it is doubtful that he has learnt any lessons from these damning results. The odds, therefore, are that 2028 will yield more of this nonsense — unless he changes his conduct. Success for the opposition cannot be the enduring ability to move from one poll failure to another with no loss of juvenile enthusiasm, while spouting insufferable twaddle about strategic ambiguity and hollow claims of rigging.
