The Sunday Mail
The die is cast! On Saturday, voters will once again exercise their democratic right to elect 28 “new” National Assembly members and 108 councillors.
The by-elections, however, are far from a mini-general election, as some excitable politicians would like us to believe, as they represent but a very small fraction of the 270 seats that make up the August House.
Nor do they materially indicate how the 2023 general election will likely pan out.
Instead, Saturday’s elections must be taken for what they really are — a sequel of the unending factional brawls and turf wars by egotistic and overly ambitious belligerents in the opposition.
It has to be remembered that 21 of the 28 National Assembly seats that will be contested this week are largely urban constituencies that were controlled by the opposition.
In fact, 18 constituencies — Pumula, Nkulumane, Epworth, Glen Norah, Harare Central, Highfield East, Highfield West, Kuwadzana East, Mufakose, St Mary’s, Kambuzuma, Harare East, Dangamvura-Chikanga, Mutasa South, Marondera Central, Binga North, Mkoba and Mbizo — only became vacant after Douglas Mwonzora, as the new MDC-Alliance leader, decided to flex his new-found political muscle by recalling MPs that had publicly thrown in their lot with another factional leader, Nelson Chamisa.
Seats in three other opposition-controlled constituencies — Kuwadzana, Glen View North and Kwekwe —became vacant after their representatives died.
Ominously, in Kwekwe, the only National Assembly member of Cde Robert Mugabe’s 2018 pet political project, the National Patriotic Front (NPF), Masango Matambanadzo, who was known as Blackman by his peers on account of his burnished black skin, passed on in July 2020.
It’s fair to say the NPF was buried together with Blackman.
The Grim Reaper was also very unkind to ZANU PF by creating vacancies in five constituencies: Marondera East, Murehwa South, Mwenezi East, Tsholotsho South and Mberengwa South.
Well, Gokwe Central is up for grabs because Cde Victor Matemadanda was assigned Zimbabwe’s top envoy to Mozambique.
So, essentially, from where Bishop Lazi stands, this is just another exercise that will determine which opposition variant might possibly emerge as the dominant one.
As much as they might want to deny it, the new variant, Citizens’ Coalition for Change (CCC), which is led by Nelson Chamisa, is MDC in form, shape, outlook, character and substance.
For the time being, a disillusioned Thokozani Khupe, who claims control of another faction of the MDC-Alliance but has suddenly developed a yellow heart, will sit this one out.
Overall, whatever happens at the weekend, one thing is certain: The opposition will emerge weaker — and not stronger — as their rifts will become more institutionalised and pronounced, confirming one more new name on the ballot next year and split allegiances.
Conversely, all that ZANU PF needs to do is retain its six seats to consolidate its two-thirds majority in Parliament and effortlessly push its legislative agenda for the remainder of the Ninth Parliament.
It also has the opportunity to flip Kwekwe, where it has made considerable headway in winning over key activists that used to be in the opposition camp, including gauging progress in spreading its influence in urban constituencies, the majority of which have been rotting away under an inept MDC for the past 21 years.
Seismic Forces
Next year’s election, however, will be a very different proposition altogether, for it will be a battle for the ultimate control of levers of power.
The ZANU PF the opposition will face in 2023 is quite a different ZANU PF than the one it faced in 2018.
Back then, the ruling party was trying to regain its gait after internal tectonic shifts in power.
The intrigue during the transition period of 2017, especially when aggrieved forces sympathetic to Cde Mugabe tried to raise a new political movement (NPF) to scupper ZANU PF’s campaign, also meant the revolutionary party was not as strong as it could have been at the polls.
Yet, notwithstanding these huge encumbrances, it still managed to triumph, bagging an impressive two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
How things have changed since then!
The realignment in the party has been quite noticeable while the co-option of seasoned senior officials from the opposition will be quite telling.
But, the most consequential seismic forces that will resoundingly shape and decide the 2023 elections are the transformative and impactful projects that are being driven by President ED.
As an indefatigable operator and doer, he has really productively used every hour of the 1 302 days he has been in power since being sworn in on August 26, 2018.
It reminds the Bishop of the Parable of the Talents, where two servants who were entrusted with five and two talents respectively by their master worked to double them while he was away, while the one who was only given one talent dug it into the ground and returned exactly the same amount when the master returned.
The moral of the story is summarised in Matthew 25:29-30: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance.
But from the one who has not, even what he had will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Despite being buffeted by relentless sanctions, the worst drought in four decades (2018/2019), Cyclone Idai in March 2019 (considered the worst-ever weather-related disaster to affect the Southern Hemisphere) and a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, ED’s administration has managed to sort out its finances against extraordinary odds and bankroll one of the most ambitious infrastructure development projects in recent times.
By the time his name is put on the ballot again next year, ED’s candidature will be boosted by an inexhaustible list of remarkable accomplishments that have changed the face of our teapot-shaped Republic.
All things being equal, the Harare-Beitbridge road, which is a major thoroughfare in the North-South corridor, will have been completed after decades of being used as a rousing campaign rhetoric.
The modernisation of Beitbridge Border Post will also have been completed, while the scheduled completion of Lake Gwayi-Shangani, which even the colonialists and a sanction-free First Republic failed to accomplish, will have materially transformed Bulawayo from a wretched parched land.
Need the Bishop also talk about Chivhu, as it will be enjoying fresh water from Chivhu Dam and the new treatment plant.
Nearby Mvuma is presently witnessing the birth of a steel behemoth whose impact will be felt for generations to come.
Up north, the Hwange Power Station expansion project will be feeding 600 megawatts (MW) into the grid by next year, helping the country become energy-secure and better able to meet demand from a growing industry.
A lot of resources and effort have also been invested in agriculture to boost household incomes and guarantee food security.
For most of our rural folk, this is immeasurably life-changing.
Everywhere one cares to look, there is progress, albeit not at a pace most people would want.
But development is not a sprint, but a marathon; a process, and not an event.
A very impressive catalogue of achievements will obviously give ZANU PF the much-needed tailwinds and oomph that will make it formidable.
While the opposition routinely pooh-poohs the progress and reforms currently underway, it is the people who are impacted who will be the ultimate arbiters.
Meanwhile, the opposition has been behaving like the worthless servant by unashamedly squandering voters’ goodwill.
We find ourselves in the situation that we are in this week because of the unproductive eternal feuds in the opposition.
They have absolutely nothing to show for all the years they have been superintending over our local authorities, but they nonetheless count on being given chances time and again by a captive electorate.
But there are limits to that patience and voters are not foolish.
This is why the Bishop told you that come 2023, there will be fierce contests for urban constituencies, particularly in Bulawayo.
You see, next year it will be conceivably easier for ZANU PF to eat into the opposition’s territory than for the opposition to get a nibble at the ruling party’s territory.
2023 will definitely be full of surprises.
Bishop out!
