Innocent Mujeri
Had someone said a year ago that Lilian Timveous, Blessing Chebundo, Tracy Mutinhiri and Obert Gutu would don the ZANU PF regalia before 2023, the person would have been dismissed as a mentally challenged person who should be taken to Ingutsheni Hospital.
This is so because these people were not just ordinary card carrying members of the opposition parties but were people who held influential positions within the opposition movement. These comrades had spent much of their energy and time denouncing the Government as well as the ruling party. But within a short space of time, the former opposition heavy weights trooped back to ZANU PF after realising that the opposition was just a dead horse that was not taking them anywhere.
The defections of the opposition members to the ruling party showed that cracks have emerged in the opposition movements and it’s only a matter of time before the same crumples to the ground. It seems people in the opposition have realised that the opposition is not for the people but was pushing a selfish agenda of reversing the gains of the liberation struggle. According to Tracy Mutinhiri, the opposition only exists to push the agenda of its Western handlers and does not care about the majority of Zimbabweans
“When I was an MDC official, I discovered that it is a white man’s party which will destroy the gains of the liberation struggle, if given a chance. There is nothing in the MDC. It’s a white man’s agenda where blacks are just used to serve the interests of white people without benefiting anything,” said Mutinhiri when she defected to ZANU PF.
By saying this, Mutinhiri, who was a candidate for the MDC-A vice president post in 2018, confirmed the widely believed notion that the opposition leaders are on a white man’s payroll to effect regime change in Zimbabwe and reverse the gains of the liberation struggle.
The defections of the former opposition leaders should also not be dismissed as a minor political event as the MDC-A is trying to do. These defections clearly show that there is no unity of purpose within the opposition ranks. Recently, Timveous said that the MDC-A meetings are always explosive with members tearing each other apart. Surely such a party with a divided people cannot provide political direction to the generality of the people.
The defections also helped the world to know that, besides being violent, the opposition leadership is not tolerant to other views except those that satisfy their ego.
“The MDC senior leadership’s intolerance to divergent views and power-hungry tendencies have caused serious divisions and disintegration of the party. Similarly, the party’s retrogressive confrontational approach and violent tendencies have led to the unnecessary destruction of property, injury to innocent civilians and destabilisation of the economy,” said Timveous when she dumped the MDC Alliance.
Surely the current defections means a lot to those with a sober mind. First, they meant that many people in the opposition have come to a conclusion that the opposition would not give them satisfaction for the purposes of revolutionarily contributing to the construction, growth and modernisation of Zimbabwe and charting the destination of the people of this country. Secondly, they might have realized that ZANU PF has policies such as the empowerment policy that resonate well with the masses. They might also have realized that ZANU PF is not a monster as wrongly perceived by its detractors but is actually an all-encompassing party that has people’s interests at heart.
The opposition should be worried by these defections as they are a sign that people have lost confidence in them. The defections are also an endorsement to ZANU PF as a better political alternative than the opposition. The defections are also a sign that it’s only a matter of time before the political obituary of the opposition is written.
If the opposition still harbors ambitions of winning elections in Zimbabwe, they should take a serious introspection on why people are running away from it to join ZANU PF. They should start engaging in constructive politics that resonate well with the people of Zimbabwe. They should start to learn from ZANU PF on how to charm the masses. Failure to do that, then in 2023, I foresee the opposition being thrown to the political dustbins by the voters.
