Calls abound for the people of Zimbabwe to “carry on supporting the MDC” even though there is nothing happening at all on the ground that suggests that support is making any difference to their lives. The reasoning behind this is that people must support the party at all costs because the MDC is their only hope out of the abyss. Yes, in fact the MDC has been the only hope for the people of Zimbabwe for the past ten years but that hoping has changed from promising, to waning and now to completely fading.

 Yet the people of Zimbabwe have given everything in the name of the MDC. They have given their lives, their freedom, their dignity, their properties; they have given everything just so they can support the party of their choice to deliver their aspirations. And what has the party given them so far? Surely false hope.

The reasoning for the MDC party’s flagging fortunes cannot be put simply as due to ZANU PF profligacy or thuggish politics and I will continue to propagate that proposition until events on the ground make it completely illogical. It is also due to the stark reality that the MDC does not know what to do with support whether it is the support of local indigenous Zimbabweans or that of the international community. Most disturbingly, the party has a propensity for self destruction especially during key moments that could have seen off ZANU PF from the Zimbabwean political landscape. There have always been, there still are and there always will be, leadership and strategic issues at the very heart of the MDC. 
Why is the MDC party always the first to throw the oxygen mask to Robert Mugabe? Why does the part always scary water vests to the crew of the sinking ZANU PF ship? Zimbabwean politics need to be put into real context and proper and due scrutiny should be made of the MDC and ZANU PF both as the two main political parties that are all failing the people of Zimbabwe from opposing angles. ZANU PF is killing Zimbabweans and the MDC is killing the prospects of the Zimbabwean people and there are no questions about that.

 The most unsettling scenario is that if visible contagion between the ZANU PF sewer of rotten politics and the MDC green belt. Typical ZANU PF self-serving politics and tendencies are very notably spilling over into the MDC rank and file. The fact that MDC MP’s would unscrupulously refuse to accept cheap vehicle models that are locally made and demanding $30 000 worth imports to serve people who are walking on empty stomachs speaks volumes of the MDC’s failure keep the founding promises of the party

Talking about Mugabe and ZANU PF and how bad they are to the country and the people of Zimbabwe is like preaching about the evilness of the devil to a church congregation. Everybody in that congregation knows about the devil and his warped ways and at times it may be good to extend the focus to the church ministers and the prophets who preach about chastity and deliverance when in fact they are sinking and in equal need of such deliverance. The MDC should never fool the people of Zimbabwe by issuing ZANU PF style threats to leave the GNU because they will never do so. They have realised that opposition politics has become bankrupt and the money, thanks to the World Bank and IMF, is now in the GNU. Their hands are deeply immersed in the jar and they like the contents just too much to contemplate that. It was a seemingly plausible arrangement to give the MDC one shoe in government while the other shoe stayed with the people, but the comfort and power of governing, regardless of how peripheral the MDC is from real power in Zimbabwe has completely overrun them that all feet are in and the people of Zimbabwe have been left to pick the pieces.

There was a real opportunity for the MDC to pin down ZANU PF Robert Mugabe through this power sharing arrangement or whatever it was in the first place. Of course, the whole deal was flawed from the beginning, but there was a very good case for perfecting it while in the process the MDC could have very significantly consolidated their hold on power. There was a lot of pressure on Mugabe and ZANU PF and this was why they (ZPF) went on for more than eight months without forming a government despite their outlandish claims that they had won the elections!

 When eventually the so-called unity government was incepted, it also served as confirmation that ZANU PF had completely lost their grip on power because they had to wait that long for a reluctant MDC to join them in that government before they could move an inch. There had been a lot of rubble-rousing by ZANU PF with childish threats that they would go it alone without the MDC, but these remained as such, childish threats.

Pressure had being exerted on ZANU PF from left, right and centre and there was no breathing space whatsoever for that dying party. So-called influential people like Gideon Gono were begging the MDC to sanitise and accept them as part of this new internationally recognised arrangement. Even Jonathan Moyo was on bended knees pleading with the leadership to enlist his services. The newly installed Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai would be mobbed by ZANU PF “stalwarts” who were falling head over heels to endear themselves with the most acceptable face of the new-look Zimbabwean government.

Even Mugabe himself had completely capitulated. He had reclined from the routinely tongue-lashing despot to an unusually quiet but unsurprisingly confused ceremonial Presidential who for the first time learned to use vocabulary that had been unpalatable and unthinkable to a tough talking, hard-line revolutionary turned ideologue. Mugabe learned to speak unity albeit so tersely but it was a sombre experience to many Zimbabweans who had become use to hearing their president speak of degrees in violence.

 But who was to prematurely deflate that pressure and proffer undue relief to ZANU PF? It was none other than the MDC itself through its inept leadership disappointing naivety. The process of turning on the oxygen taps for ZANU PF’s undeserving airways has been the hallmark of MDC failure but post March 2008 that process was kick-started earnestly soon after the very tragic and untimely death of Tsvangirai’s wife Susan.
Although this may very well have been just any other private family affair that should be left to the immediate family to deal with in respected privacy, not so much can that be when it is the death of the wife of a national leader of the calibre of Tsvangirai. It ceases to be an ordinary death and neither can any analysis of the circumstances leading to, or involving it remain the preserve of that family alone.

It becomes an issue of national relevancy that warrants to be looked at from a national perspective. Yes it may have been a natural death because we all die at some point or another and in very different circumstances. But it did not have to take Tsvangirai himself to declare as emphatically as he went on to do that it was an accident. Tsvangirai’s surprising declaration also completely wiped the ash off Mugabe’s face because even he (Mugabe) had been startled by the death. The entire ZANU PF political establishment were, and no wonder the high turn out to the funeral.

All the hype that had been created by that unfortunate development died a natural death and with it vanished all the questions, a lot of them for that matter that also went unanswered. But did it have to be Tsvangirai to make that pathological conclusion? Why did he not just leave it to the nation to grieve for their mother and at the same time piece things our own way?

A great opportunity was lost to put ZANU PF to account and to most importantly, to sustain the pressure on them. Too many lives have been lost at the hands of this regime and yet they are still governing our country. Can anyone imaging all those people who were very unjustifiably and horrifically killed to come back to life and find their party at the table with usurpers of squanderers of lives. There can never be national healing without sincerity and admission of guilt. That is just another very essential aspect that the MDC is simply politicking with and that will backfire spectacularly.

Tsvangirai’s much avowed but misconceived tour of Europe and America in June this year, his first official outing as Prime Minister was climax of the process of resuscitating Mugabe and ZANU PF. Again the question must be paused to Tsvangirai. Did it have to be him singing praises about Mugabe? and very vainly trying to persuade the whole world that he (Mugabe) had undergone a complete political metamorphosis when the stark reality on the ground was to the contrary. Mugabe was, and still is, as bad as ever if not worse.

Tsvangirai was sworn-in with great ceremony and pomp and vowed to ensure that all the activists who were in prison at that time would never spend a “week longer” in prison. Yet by the time he was visiting Europe and America, not only had he failed to secure the release of those people, but very puzzlingly, Roy Bennett the MDC Treasurer who had been picked for the Agriculture Deputy ministerial post had actually become the high profile addition to that long list of people who were being jailed on politically motivated charges!

The whole international community was actually put on their back foot. Even Diaspora Zimbabweans could have none it and they booed Tsvangiari off stage when he addressed some of them in UK. Nobody could actually believe what they were hearing and most intriguingly, who the messenger of that word of Mugabe’s reformation was! That is when real space was actually created for Mugabe. Although it was as usual, ignited by the so-called hardliners in ZANU PF regrouping, but these never act without Mugabe knowing what they are doing and he actually blesses their actions.

 The MDC started to be really undermined by ZANU PF and the campaign to vilify Finance Minister Tendai Biti intensified climaxing with the “bullet-in-the-envelope-threat”. Mugabe then went on to declare that neither Gono nor Tomana would lose their jobs! That was one of the grossest violations of the GNU that Mugabe personally conducted because the reversal of Gono and Tomana’s appointments was one of the most pertinent issues that had been causing the rift among the GNU parties.

ZANU PF did not stop there. They have been carrying on as normal and one such disturbing act of ZANU PF emboldening itself is the re-calling of the vitriolic and poison minded Jonathan Moyo the most dangerous information minister of our time. The so-called re-admission of Moyo into ZANU PF ranks (because he never left that party) is a very deliberate indication of where things are heading to in Zimbabwean politics. That is akin to making three modest steps towards progressive politics only to make five leaps back into oblivion.

It was Moyo who literary and single-handedly destroyed democracy in Zimbabwe and nothing more accurate could be said to describe him. He introduced the kind of vociferous and fire breathing politics that we had never witnessed before and the likes of George Charamba who used to be just an ardent Presidential spokesperson usurped it with vigour. During Shamuyarira’s tenure as information minister, there were never all these kind of arrogant and dragonfly rebuttals and real threats to life at the heart of government. It was pure political propaganda. Now Moyo has a few scores to settle and a few losses to make up for, and Zimbabweans should suffer in the process?
Silence Chihuri writes from the UK – email:silencechihuri@googlemail.com