Nkosana Moyo – To Run or Not to Run

By Masimba Mhondiwa

A few months ago I authored an article titled “Zimbabwe needs Donald Trump” and I return to hammer the point upon reading Nkosana Moyo’s interview with Daily News.

I read with delight that NM seems to not only understand the problems Zimbabwe is facing but also has pragmatic solutions. Essentially, he agrees that what Zimbabwe needs is an apolitical dispensation to cure it of its ills. We need to arise above party politics in order to see the road more clearly.

To all those taking a jab at Moyo and bringing up all possible reasons he will not win and should not run, you need to read his interview again. First and foremost, he never said he wants to run against the two leading candidates Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

On the contrary, He understands that running on a unified platform is needed to fight the incumbent but once one is in power, his only allegiance is to the nation, not any political party. This is exactly where Morgan Tsvangirai or Joice Mujuru’s biggest achilles heel is.

There is no way they are going to discard all the loyalists who have been with him/her over all these years. Those people will be a baggage too heavy for the Executive to carry along. They may very well be good people, but good is not enough. The country needs excellent artisans to curate and sculpture a fine piece work that can be used as a model for future generations.

Don’t accuse me of being a Zanu apologist because PF is already discounted in this model. The arena to fight party politics is in the legislature where MT can have all the leverage he wants with this party. We need a political knight to guard against Zanu’s re-entry into a majority for years to come.

Once we take our eyes off that because one is too busy with economic matters, you know what happens. The Zanu way of doing things has to be obliterated from our system. Take for example the Ministers’ incessant undermining of parliament and the habitual rape of constitutional laws.

Kasukuwere successfully gave himself powers to suspend and fire mayors and councils under the amended Rural District and Urban Councils Acts. Just last week, VP Mnangagwa railroaded the amendment for the President to unilaterally appoint the Chief Justice without public hearings as stated in the current constitution.

Too many times ministers skip parliamentary question and answer sessions, especially the VPs, but they never miss party rallies or politburo meetings which shows their loyalty to the party and not the nation. South Africa is giving us a case to study right now where no matter how much a President screws up, parliamentarians are not able to vote him out as they need to toe the party line, letting the country burn.

They have it worse because the President is elected through the party and not by public vote but you get the point. I know this issue split MDC right down the middle but can a nation as small as ours afford a lower House and Senate? I bet you if MDC takes over they will keep the Senate, which was essentially created to dilute power of the lower House due to Zanu paranoia.

Which brings me here. If I were NM, I would start a studiously ferocious relentless campaign in the urban areas. We know this is where MDC heavily counts on for support. The end goal is to amass enough critical mass mobilization that the MDC cannot ignore. My slogan will be “Vote me and I will make Morgan Tsvangirai my VP. The job at hand is much bigger than party politics”.

This message has to be repeated so much and embedded in everyone’s mind that it’s nothing personal against MT but in fact a promise to deliver a better nation, bigger than the MDC.

The result, as selfish as it may seem, will give the MDC coalition a tough choice to either incorporate him on the ticket or risk splitting the urban vote and make it the second coming of Simba Makoni. If they are not willing to play game, NM will just play spoiler and return to his successful corporate life. The beauty of all this is that he is not a career politician beholden to Zimbabwe’s patronage politics.

If Tsvangirai has the nation at heart, he need not become the country’s President. For the umpteenth time, we recognize, appreciate and applaud his selfless acts in keeping a vibrant opposition over the years but unity government showed us his capabilities or lack thereof. There is no way MDC lost that badly in the 2013 elections, Nikuv or not.

By then, he should have set up his eyes and ears in all structures of government to know exactly what was going on. 2013 took them and us by surprise and that is where he dropped the ball my dear countrymen. Now image giving him the task of taking the country out of its current state, when he couldn’t stay focused for just 5 years, in a situation he knew very well to be temporary.

If the coalition is successful in wrestling seats back from Zanu, they will need a full time person to manage inter-party conflicts that will arise and Tsvangirai as VP is made for that. We cannot afford to make that same person the President of the country. Remember these guys’ only unity of purpose is to dislodge Zanu but then what after that.

Their ideologies are as varied as the personalities themselves. As much as Mai Mujuru wants to sanitize her time in Zanu now, we know very well if she had not been kicked out she would still be there. That is not to say the opposition cannot work with her, we just have to make it unequivocally clear that in itself makes her lack the vision of a better Zimbabwe, her decisions were guided by her stomach and not nation’s interests.

You see, the obsession to remove Mugabe has blinded us from thinking beyond that. I totally empathize with the infuriation of seeing your President chartering a whole 767 across the Atlantic to attend an Oceans Summit or flying all the way to Cancun only to make a u-turn because he wasn’t allowed to speak. I get that. I’m mad about it too but just not any alternative is good.

Remember this coalition has the likes of Didymus Mutasa, a grown man who once made a statement that his ambition is to become a Vice President, not the President. What a coward and ooh….wait for it….diesel anyone!

All the guys have to be catered to in the new era of Tsvangirai and guess what, we’ll go back to recycling Mugabe’s old cabinet. Most of MT’s people were in the unity government and what did they achieve, besides getting 4X4 loans. So do you really want these guys back in?

Instead of mounting a spirited campaign of deregulating all the laws Zanu used against them they just sat back and enjoyed the ride only to wake up when they were being evicted. I know it’s not an easy task going against the Zanu monster as it has entrenched itself in every part of our lives but man, at least show me some fight in you. It doesn’t matter how many blueprints the government comes up with ESAP, ZIMPREST, NERP, MERP, STERP, ZIMASSET, and for MDC, JUICE, SMART etc.

Implementation and execution is what counts and many of these guys have never been involved with any turnaround strategies let alone steer one. Leave that job to handpicked people around the world to do that and Zimbabwe can be back on its feet in record time. This country’s dire straits are nothing new to the world, if only politics can get out of the way.

To those who question Moyo’s intentions, well he didn’t want to be associated with Zanu’s bankrupt policies back then so why would he now with more to lose on his reputation. Here is a man who has been in the hallways of international multilateral institutions and found his way fundraising billions of dollars from sovereign wealth funds, private individuals, dealing with State institutions, dignitaries etc. I know his biggest task is to convince the nation of his idealistic experiment and to that I say desperate times call for desperate measures.

Guerrilla warfare against the MDC coalition is the way to go, force the opposition machinery to work with him. Going to Tsvangirai bowel in hand pleading for inclusion will not work. We can’t afford to play nice Zimbabwe, we don’t have another 5 years to waste. We are tired of sending or begging for diaspora funds to survive and need a fresh crew to turn this ship around. Waiting until 2023, for what!!

Hate me now, thank me later.