Good morning, 2013!

couple of years, politicians, commentators and analysts have uncannily predicted “watershed” moments — which have really not come to pass.
Yet 2013 could be special.

Maybe so, if you are not a triskaidekaphobiac, someone who has an unreasoned fear for the number 13.

Many people are, including in Zimbabwe.
Across the world a lot of predictions have been made of 2013 by people and authorities of various persuasions and inclinations, from religion to technology.

According to the Chinese Zodiac, and many predictions have been referring to it, 2013 is the Year of the Snake, beginning February 10 to January 30, 2014.

The Snake is the sixth sign of the Chinese Zodiac, which consists of 12 Animal Signs. It is said ancient Chinese wisdom says a Snake in the house is a good omen because it means that your family will not starve and that people born in the Year of the Snake are keen and cunning, quite intelligent and wise.

Authorities tie good luck and omen in the Year of the Snake. On the other hand, a Costa Rican astrologer has put it this way: the opening months “will be much like the opening act of a new play, no one is quite certain what the plot line is and it seems that the major actors and actresses are still learning their lines”, then comes global posturing which will see the world “hanging in a kind of suspense” and then, mid-year, “transformative energy” and “widespread rejection of the status quo and a push towards something new”.

Predictions for the year are as variegated as the purposes they are meant to serve or their geographical peculiarities. 2013 is definitely (betting my bottom dollar on it) an electoral year in Zimbabwe: there have been significant pointers to that effect.

Talk of the increasing political temperatures, budgetary allocation by the Fiscus and the inexorable momentum of other political forces such as the civil society some of whom we heard asking for more money from their external benefactors so that they would make sure the one party they support wins the forthcoming poll.

As an electoral year, 2013 is bound to bring a lot of emotions and developments. The last time Zimbabwe went to the polls in 2008, things were really bad socio-economically.
The situation had been bad in the previous year, but when the great electoral year came, Zimbabwe wallowed in more want for food, medicine, fuel and money.

It was a year that inflation further surged to even obscener levels than the millions (or even billions) that it had notoriously achieved the previous year.

It was a year that cholera ravaged the country claiming 4 000 of its precious people. It was a year that people are now freely described to have voted by their stomachs — meaning they had to change the status quo via a protest vote.

They nearly did as Zanu-PF marginally lost its parliamentary majority. The suffering continued in 2008: from the indecisive vote to negotiations that led to the curiously named Global Political Agreement that September.

GPA brought together Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations that went on to form what has been known as the inclusive Government.

Some call it the Government of National Unity; some, the coalition Government, all for their understanding of the nature and significance of the pact.

We were to learn that the people’s suffering in 2008 was not unintentional.
There is, of course, Zidera, that piece of legislation made in the United States in 2001 “to make the economy scream” and whose cruel effects, including pushing up inflation by denying Zimbabwe trade and offshore lines of credit, have been euphemistically described as “putting pressure on the regime”.

Some call it “tightening the screws” or “flexing the muscle”.
The European Union, Australia and Canada have their own measures against Zimbabwe.
We were to learn the full import of the cruel electoral year when MDC-T policy advisor Eddie Cross wrote on January 4, 2009, that the bus called Zimbabwe should have been left to “crash and burn” so the MDC-T would pick up the pieces.

Which meant, just as the sanctions are meant to do, that there should have been a humanitarian, civil and political disaster which would force regime change in Zimbabwe — for the benefit of Cross and his ilk home and abroad.

But it will be useful to situate Cross.
Cross was speaking on the impeding “coalition” government in which his party leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, would somewhat share power with President Mugabe.
Cross would rather Tsvangirai take charge.

So he wrote: “But you cannot drive a bus with two drivers trying to do so at the same time. The GPA says the MDC is in charge of the bus and MT is the driver. We just need to make sure, absolutely sure that there are no dual controls in the front of the bus — they remain where they were designed to be — further back in the hands of the Prime Minister.

“What the people at the bus stop are saying is ‘we will not get on the bus until we are satisfied that the driver is our man and not Mugabe’. And that is not negotiable. If Mugabe is anywhere near the wheel, we would rather let the bus crash and burn.”
This analogy was pregnant of, and with meaning.

People understood — and the piece, still on Cross’ blog, has remained a big shaming finger on Cross, the MDC-T and the cruel, manipulative and sadistic politics that is their brand.

There is reason enough to believe that it was the intention of the MDC-T and its backers to see the people suffer.

Cast aside Cross: did Nelson Chamisa only recently not say something to the effect that the MDC-T could walk over dead bodies to State House?

In an article published on New Zimbabwe on September 9, 2012, Chamisa, commemorating his party’s 13th anniversary writes thus: “Forming the inclusive government was a very painful decision, but we had to do so to save the people and stop the bleeding. People were dying of cholera, bread was being bought from South Africa, prices were changing every second and we had no food in the shops.

“We had a choice between saving the people on one hand and pursuit of political power even if it means walking on dead bodies to State House on the other. We chose the people.”

Buses crashing and burning and dead bodies littering the countryside quite mean the same thing, don’t they? Getting into the electoral year can thus be scary business, if such tricks were to be employed again.

Or has the script changed? Are people wiser as to see through hunger; hunger man-made?
If people are wiser, will they give a chance to their tormentor who masqueraded as Saviour — a man called Morgan Tsvangirai?

Tsvangirai has been increasingly foreboding about 2013, apparently with the difficulty of the absence of buses to crash or dead bodies to walk on.

He has said some politicians will be sent back to the villages to herd cattle. Has said if he does not win in 2013 it will be “difficult”.

He fears the number 13.
We hear some ambitious politicians in his camp would make him lose the forthcoming elections such that his third-time failure will condemn him during the party’s congress in 2016.
The plot, we hear, has been dubbed “Project 2016”.

One can bet the same bottom dollar that it is not the last we are hearing of the project.
Meanwhile, what, how, will Zanu-PF do in the year of the Snake? Hope for luck, a good omen?

A repeat of 2008 will not be a good present for the party. So how is it going to tackle the issues of factionalism and corruption, as raised the party conference in December and how will it solidify the cogency of its empowering agenda?

All said and done, Zimbabwe deserves a new, transformative path for the better of its people — and it does not have to come via walking on dead bodies or crashing buses.