The Sunday Mail
The Sharp Shooter Vukani Madoda
“Come General, the affair is over, we have lost the day,” Napoleon told one of his officers.
“Let us be off.”
The day was 18 June 1815.
By about 2000hrs, the Emperor of France knew he had been decisively defeated at a village called Waterloo, and he was now keen to escape from his enemies, some of whom — such as the Prussians — had sworn to execute him.
The Empire of the opposition is crumbling like a deck of cards.
It is falling flat on its face ahead of the Waterloo 2018 elections.
Unfortunately, unlike Napoleon, they are too obstinate and too adamant to admit that they now face very real prospects of a decisive extinction next year.
The 2018 Zimbabwe general elections are around the corner and so is the Waterloo for the disjointed opposition miasma.
They have become spectators as the ruling Zanu-PF determines the governance of this country for the foreseeable future. They talk of a coalition, which they barely believe in.
Day-in, day-out, the “coalition” is crumbling as power gluttony consumes the so-called 15 “serious” opposition leaders.
Those that constantly indicate right while turning left manifest the conflicted political pendulum within the opposition ranks. Joice, the “Queen Bee”, is on an onslaught, globetrotting while campaigning for a gender-biased vote while at the same time denigrating MDC-T spent-force leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
“Mujuru and her colleagues have shown contempt for our leader. They are not sincere and we cannot allow this to go on,” fumed MDC-T youth assembly secretary-general Lovemore Chinoputsa last week, arguing that “Queen Bee” and her lieutenant drones were a threat to the pipe-dream of a coalition.
“Bullets and grapeshots left the road strewn with dead and wounded,” recalled a French eyewitness during Waterloo.
The guard stopped, staggered and fell back.
A shocked — indeed, astounded — cry went up from the rest of the French Army, one unheard on any European battlefield in the unit’s 16-year history: “La garderecule! (The guard recoils!).”
Yes, it’s Waterloo for MDC-T, NPP and those other MDC’s that make up the congress of political clowns called NERA. I can vividly picture the opposition running in all directions shouting “La garde de l’oppositionrecule” (“The opposition guard recoils!”). There is no one to sympathise with Morgan, Joice, Biti, or Welshman anymore because it’s Waterloo for subversive and divisive opposition mantra that has haunted this nation for almost two decades.
And the next cry spelled disaster for any hopes Napoleon might have had for an orderly retreat: “Sauve qui peut! (Save yourselves!).”
So also will the opposition, heavily defeated and heavily divided, call upon each other to ransack the remnants of any wealth it may have accumulated over its disruptive years.
By the end of next year, we will be recalling how history was shaped when the so-called “grand coalition” of opposition parties added up to the big fat zero that was predicted by President Mugabe.
We will reminisce about the general panic that set in as the Waterloo elections drew closer and what transpired soon after the painful defeat of the opposition stooges that stood in the way of Zimbabwe’s sovereignty and emancipation.
“The whole French army was in the most appalling disorder,” recalled General Jean-Martin Petit.
“Infantry, cavalry, artillery — everybody was fleeing in all directions.”
Napoleon had ordered two squares of the Imperial Guard to form up on both sides of the highway to cover such a rout, and he took refuge within one of them as his army collapsed.
“The enemy was close at our heels,” wrote Petit, who commanded the squares, “and, fearing that he might penetrate the squares, we were obliged to fire at the men who were being pursued.”
Indeed, the likes of Arthur Mutambara will savour the opportunity to pen another novel quite unlike the subjective dustbin novel he recently published.
It will not be about a dream but about a pipedream.
This time he will no longer be searching but instead he will be: “Finding the disturbing nightmare of the opposition betrayal.”
The Emperor was “so overcome by fatigue and the exertion of the preceding days that several times he was unable to resist the sleepiness which overcame him, and if I had not been there to uphold him, he would have fallen from his horse,” one of Napoleon’s entourage, the Comte de Flahaut, wrote later.
We will certainly write about how the opposition grand coalition jostled for elusive positions, how they were divided and subdivided amongst each other.
We will pen interesting pieces about their greed, squabbles, violence, insincerity and Uncle Tom monkey-see, monkey-do house nigger mentality that almost cost us our sovereignty, dignity and integrity.
While retreating into exile, as Napoleon warmed by a fire some of his soldiers had made in a meadow, he said to one of his Generals, “Eh bien, monsieur, nous avons bien réussi (Well sir, we have done a fine thing).”
Surely, in that extraordinary self-assured moment of the opposition party’s grand coalition’s heavy defeat, we will be able to joke about how Joice, Morgan, Welshman, Biti and Co. managed to bring Zimbabweans together to fight for a worthy cause.
A cause of sovereignty and constitutional freedom.
Of course, others still do not understand the grand cause of defeating the opposition next year.
Some such as United States envoy Carol O’Connel who is reported to have said, “We are not happy with the political and human rights situation (in Zimbabwe), but hope there will be changes.
We have hope that there will be a peaceful environment in the pre- and post-election period.”
Well, it will be a cause that she would only understand when she realises that the only reform Zimbabwe needed was driving the opposition to their Waterloo; kicking screaming and gnashing their teeth. — Dubulaizitha!
