Will Zanu PF give Mwonzora delegates to the extraordinary congress?

By Sibanengi Dube

If there is anything that Zanu PF is good at, is diverting attention from real issues, by fooling Zimbabweans to chase a wrong enemy.

All of a sudden, President of MDC A Nelson Chamisa is paraded as a ‘public enemy’, who hijacked the leadership of the party from the saintly Thokozani Khupe, a ‘thunderously popular madam.’

Coronavirus pandemic and the maddening suffering of Zimbabweans have all been banished to the back seat as prominence is being given to Khupe, Douglas Mwonzora and Morgen Komichi.

What has this trio achieved? Have they found the cure for Coronavirus? Newspapers are devoting acres of space analyzing MDC constitutions and Chamisa’s rise to power in the Party.

Social media is abuzz with MDC this and Chamisa that. Is this more important than the illegitimacy of the occupant of the state presidency?

Is this more imperative than the impact of coronavirus to Zimbabwe, whose testing kits are outdated and only managing to test 13 people a day?

So all of a sudden the hierarchy of MDC leadership is more significant and urgent to an extent that the crushing poverty which Zimbabwe was sentenced to by the ruling Zanu PF elements is no longer paramount.

The recent vague and moot Supreme Court judgement is now being exhibited as the panacea to an impending disaster. What disaster are we being alerted to, which the Komichi, Mwonzora and Khupe are fixing?

Now Chamisa, an undisputed darling of the masses of Zimbabwe is now being strutted as the source of national disaster? Aah! Sakunatsa ndiye sakubaiwa?

What is manifesting here is an unmitigated ED backlash on Chamisa for successfully contesting the state Presidency against him. What is increasingly irritating ED is Chamisa’s consistent claim to the cathedral and refusal to cut corners and covenants?

Anyone who is reading Zimbabwe’s political developments outside this line of thinking is clearly sabotaging reality. The action packed drama witnessed at the court where Komichi publicly entered the fray signaled a turning point in the script as a supposed MDC A leader was thrown in the plot at a strategic moment to openly mallet the agenda of the cornered crocodile.

The script writers however failed to conceal enough the hand of the sponsor of the whole drama. Komichi, Mwonzora and Khupe are mere political apparatus for use and abuse by the Croc.

The Croc is taking advantage of the unbridled ambitions of the apparatus who are duped into believing that they are resuscitating their political objectives. It is sad.

Where have you seen a fisherman sharing the same agenda and objectives with fish in a river? VaKomichi vangu baba wee! Kwanzi muredzi auya kuzopa chikafu hove mururwizi kuti dzigute?

Even those fish fed by ED and Khupe ‘KwaHunyani’ will soon find themselves in a frying pot before heading to bellies of the croc’s family members and guests for digestion.

A state presidency contest between Chamisa and ED is playing itself out as an MDC leadership wrangle. The nation has been plunged into a wrong and useless debate.

It is evidently clear that a genuine contested chalice has been moved from the state house to Harvest House. The idea is to suck people into removing their eyes from the ball to concentrate on side shows. Erudite Zimbabweans are refusing to fall into this snare.

The devious Ngwena is fighting Nero directly through Khupe, Komichi and Mwonzora expecting Chamisa to focus on these apparatus leaving him to enjoy the ball unmarked.

But the young Advocate and his MDC A team are not having any of that. Instead they fixing their focus on the meaty issue and refused chase hovers. Nero has never uttered a word since the drama emerged, preferring to observe the lockdown before continuing with his demand for chinyu chake.

The Chamisa-Khupe contest for MDC T leadership does exist except in the minds of few who are at pain to accept reality. How can Nero who polled 2.6 million votes be in competition with ‘Madam’ who got 45 000? Even in soccer, a team that is still in division two can’t play against a Premier soccer league squad.

Only a Chamisa-Ed contest is unfolding in courts, Harvest House, streets and villages of Zimbabwe. Saka zvimwe zvese zvinotaugwa izvi, hapana zviripo makumbo enyoka

The judgement which raised the dust concealing what is really under contest will soon settle down. It is impossible for Khupe to implement the judgement because she no longer has the MDC structures to convene a legitimate congress.

Since 1999 the MDC has undergone the metamorphosis processes, to which by 2018, radical and rapid profound changes happened.

The formation of the MDC Alliance was a transformation into something new which cannot be reversed back to MDC T or even to the original MDC of 1999. The evolution, rebirth, alterations, changeover, mutations, transfigurations and transformations are so profound and irreversible.

How do you hold an extraordinary congress without attendants?

Majority of the original Standing Committee members of the MDC T will not yield to Mwonzora’s invitation to a meeting except for Khupe, Komichi, Obert Gutu and probably Elias Mudzuri.

Will Zanu PF supply them with Zupco buses and members to form a quorum? All former and current members of the MDC T are known and covers of spooks will be easily blown off.

What complicates implantation of this judgement is the fact that MDC T constitution requires that the notice of an extraordinary congress be given by the National Council. Komichi and Mwonzora do not even have the support of a fraction of the members of a national council.

So how will they cause that national council to give the requisite notice convening the extraordinary congress given that the order of the Supreme Court cannot be a license to disregard the MDC T constitution? Zanu PF spooks might take chances and masquerade as members of the MDC-T national council but that will further discredit the façade extraordinary congress.

This judgement seeks to address a vacancy that no long exists. An extraordinary congress can only fill in the post of the President to finish the remainder of a term. In this case the challenge is that the late President Tsvangirai’s term expired on 1 November 2019.

So what will be the term of office of the President the Supreme Court ordered them to elect within the next three months? Komichi and Mwonzora’s own terms expired on 1 November 2019, so what will happen to their expired terms of office?

The MDC T constitution has no provision for the election of any other office bearer other than the President at an extraordinary congress.

Sibanengi Dube is a Zimbabwean journalist based in South Africa