Chamisa losing control of MDC

By Jasper Hloka

If ever there is going to be leadership failure in the history of Zimbabwe, it has to be that of the MDC Alliance under the stewardship of Nelson Chamisa, whose youthful exuberance is proving futile at the hands of his equally ‘ambitious’ deputies, Tendai Biti and Professor Welshman Ncube.

Basic definitions of a friend and enemy have lost meaning if one tries to make heads or tails of what could be happening in the not so glorious Alliance. Literary everyone is fighting everyone at that party’s presidium particularly over the past week.

Chamisa has been grappling to contain pressure from his western handlers and his supporters at MDC Alliance over the best foot forward to frog march Government to the negotiating table. The west is pressing on Chamisa to go the dialogue way at a time his deputy Biti in collaboration with the Youth Assembly are advocating for a militant approach.

Over the past month, Chamisa has been dilly dallying buying time to delay his restless youths from taking to the streets in protest of allegedly heightening levels of poverty for the generality of Zimbabweans. Holding his supporters at bay is proving too much of a heavy load for Chamisa who has gone on to establish a Chaplain’s department at MDC Alliance which he hopes would superintend over the national prayer running from the 31st of July 2019 to 3 August 2019.

All these efforts by Chamisa are designed to delay his ‘yobs’ from taking to the streets in protest against Government in appeasement of some of his western principals.

However, Chamisa’s laxity bore him enemies particularly when he moved to stamp authority on his dislike to take to the streets by directing Luke Tamborinyoka to issue a statement ‘castigating  and disowning’ that party’s ‘motor-mouth’ legislator, Job Sikhala, for uttering treasonous statements which led to his incarceration.

While Chamisa was moving to set Sikhala as an example, Biti and that party’s Secretary for International Affairs, Douglas Mwonzora, were busy organizing a team of lawyers to extricate him from the troubles he had created for himself and the party.

MDC Alliance Vice President, Lynette Karenyi-Kore on her part, took to twitter sympathizing with Sikhala. This literary drew the first elaborate battle lines amongst the Alliance’s leadership.

The unrepentant Sikhala was however, to be seen again, at an Epworth rally after being granted bail, defying Chamisa again by continuing his chorus of taking to the streets and abandon the dialogue calls by the cornered opposition leader.

A week later, the MDC Alliance Youth Assembly Chairperson, Obey Sithole, Secretary General, Gift Siziba; Organising Secretary, Godfrey Kurauone, Bulawayo Provincial Youth Assembly Chairperson, Tinashe Kambarami among other unidentified individuals attended a secret meeting in Bulawayo which deliberated on the details that seeks to create commotion in Zimbabwe.

The elaborate plan hatched by the youths is to carry out terror attacks on businesses of prominent ZANU PF sympathizers as well as torching the Party’s vehicles to decimate its fleet. The move is designed to force ZANU PF onto the negotiating table at the same time attracting the attention of the international community as well as sending a message that Zimbabwe is now a failed State.

Boldly, Chamisa’s calls for dialogue is thus failing to hold substance in his political party. Resultantly, the militant Biti has managed to grab a significant following from the opposition leader.

On his part, Prof Ncube twisted the knife into Chamisa making his entry point in the ‘royal rumble’ riding on a tribal card. The former MDC-N leader, succeeded in bringing the Alliance’s presidium to Bulawayo on 27 July 2019 after engineering a tribal war at Bulawayo City Council (BCC). Prof Ncube organized Mthwakazi Republic (MRP) to demonstrate against Shona Councillors at BCC to an extent that they pitched outside Holiday Inn Hotel in Bulawayo where Chamisa was addressing BCC officials. They chanted obscenities throughout the meeting leaving an exasperated Chamisa declaring that authorities at BCC were ‘City boys’ not ‘City Fathers’ owing to their tribal tendencies.

Prof Ncube did not stop at that, word has it that he has been clandestinely meeting MDC Alliance officials from Bulawayo, Matabeleland North and South Provinces at his old MDC-N offices under the pretext of strategizing for the Malongwe and Lupane East by-elections. All hell broke loose when he failed to give feedback to Chamisa who in return investigated and found out that Prof Ncube is canvassing regional support to consolidate his political ambitions.

Chamisa was to learn that Prof Ncube held a meeting on 27 July 2019, the day he was busy firefighting another bombshell of the professor’s making. Chamisa was irked by this revelation such that he tasked MDC Alliance National Chairperson, Thabitha Khumalo, to collect all incriminating information on the Professor to facilitate his recall using that party constitution particularly Section 5 Paragraph 11 which states that “the National Council (by a 2/3 majority of all its members is of the opinion that his/her continued membership would be seriously detrimental to the interests of the party.”

Summarily, the MDC Alliance’s house is literary on fire. It is a ‘dog eat dog’ that is threatening Chamisa’s reins worse still a split. The Biti faction is so far on the offensive scoring big on team Chamisa whilst the Prof Ncube’s tribal antics are brewing an equally perilous political storm for Chamisa.