MDC-T’s mother of all disappointments

Tichaona Zindoga Political Editor
Dear reader, you must be having some huge morning-after feeling today, are you not? If not, you can be forgiven – and you are not alone. Nothing really exciting or earth-shattering took place yesterday (or last night for that matter).

Yesterday, by the way, was supposed to be the day when we were supposed to witness what the opposition MDC-T party dubbed the “Mother of All Demonstrations” as the party took to the streets of Harare protesting against Government.

The “march against poverty” had been in the works and the opposition party got permission to stage the demonstration, with the High Court ensuring that the event went ahead when police had appeared to give an excuse to bar the same.

But the date on which the march was supposed to be held remained intact.

In the morning many people woke up to screaming headlines from the opposition media hyping the demonstration.

One newspaper told us,“Harare tense as MDC toyi toyis” and that Morgan Tsvangirai was to lead the mass demonstration.

In its typical excited fashion, the paper told us that “all eyes” would be on the opposition leader and his party as they mounted the “mother of all mass demonstrations”.

We were told that this was “the first serious mass action that Tsvangirai and the MDC are embarking on in a decade”.

The opposition was expecting 10 000 people “to pour into the streets of Harare”.

Said the paper: “Today’s demo is a replay of 2007 mass prayer that was violently disrupted by the police – with the indefatigable Tsvangirai a living victim of the law enforcement agents’ heavy handedness again taking the main role to lead the mass action.”

Another opposition paper trumpeted that the High Court had “okayed” the MDC-T demo and quoted the party’s secretary general, Douglas Mwonzora, urging supporters to “come in our numbers to assert the people’s right to demonstrate”.

The march came.

It went.

It was a modest affair. You could not see a mass demonstration in it, less so a “mother of all mass demonstrations”.

It wasn’t a flop, to be fair.

However, if the MDC-T expected it to be a mother of all demonstrations, it was the mother of all disappointments for them not least because it passed without any incidents which would have caught the attention of the world.

Some 800, or slightly under turned up for this hoped for “mother rally” and those who have followed the opposition party and its attempts at mass action will tell you this was an ordinary and usual crowd.

In fact, the crowd for this wished-for mother of all demos was actually smaller than the rallies that the party holds in venues around Harare – and Harare is its stronghold.

It will be useful to note that the rally that Kuwadzana East Member of the House of Assembly Hon Nelson Chamisa held a fortnight ago at his report-back meeting was comparable to yesterday’s numbers where his boss was “leading from the front”.

At some point MDC-T drew huge, bumper crowds at such places as Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfield which overzealous estimates put at close to 50 000.

Even the last rally that the party held before the July 2013 elections – which was dubbed the Crossover Rally – drew a good crowd that could be called a mass.

But that was then.

The MDC-T lost those elections, dismally, and has been on the wane ever since.

The party has held many rallies and demonstrations over the past three years but the result has always been the same: fewer and fewer numbers are attending.

There are several reasons that this is so.

First, even the most ardent supporters of the party have realised that it is going nowhere.

Secondly, and closely connected to this is the fact that, the leader of that party, Morgan Tsvangirai, has split the party on two major occasions.

People do not want to identify with losers – and Tsvangirai is a perpetual loser.

He has reached his ceiling and no amount of him “leading from the front” will galvanise people behind his losing back.

MDC-T supporters are looking for a fresh impetus which may yet come from a new leader, and that is why there is growing interest in the likes of Nelson Chamisa who now is capable of mustering a bigger crowd than his boss.

Thirdly, the MDC-T has run out of both strategy and message.

The strategy of mass demonstrations – which masses the party can no longer bring together – has long lost its currency in Zimbabwe.

It is so 1997-ish.

That is, it lost its currency two decades ago.

But then the MDC-T is blinded to this reality from what we see on TV about things like the Arab Spring which is of a different making in their own political and social milieu.

We must hasten to re-emphasise that although people are suffering economically, they not only know that MDC itself is the architect of their misery because of sanctions that it invited from the West; they have also learnt to live with, and under, the sanctions.

They will not waste their time toyi-toying for, and being an accessory to, the machinations of their real enemy.

Connected to this, the MDC-T has no message for the people of Zimbabwe and that is why it is difficult for the party to find takers during elections or in between the seasons.

A cursory look at yesterday’s marching points will reveal that the so-called demands are anything from stale to outright spurious.

The MDC-T said it was “marching against poverty” which is a woefully inadequate and abstract message, especially from a party whose leader stays in a $4 million Government mansion and drives a top of the range vehicle.

The party has marched before about two million jobs allegedly promised by the ruling party – even so without credibility because it is known that the said promise was premised on Zimbabwe working normally including having normalised relations with the West which has however continued to maintain sanctions against the country.

The party said it was demanding the whereabouts of “our $15 billion”, which is an issue that is largely founded on a misinterpretation by the media of President Mugabe’s view of how Zimbabwe may have made that potential figure in diamond mining but ended up getting only $2 billion.

The money was not made or lost, in material terms, and therefore there is no real basis for going to town about it.

To all intents and purposes, the issue of “lost” $15 billion is a non-issue that makes good for lazy social media speculation and bar talk.

When it is seriously interrogated, it finds no takers.

Another issue that has been a rallying point for the MDC-T is the Itai Dzamara “disappearance” but it is now clear to everyone that it has been milked dry, not least because the alleged disappearance of Dzamara, a journalist-turned-MDC-activist is fishy, and sounds a not-so-clever contrivance.

Lastly, the MDC-T has surprised all of us by purporting to be siding with war veterans, which is a laughable and pathetic attempt to find new supporters – which they won’t get.

On the basis of the above, one can actually tell that the MDC-T had nothing by way of message and used a tired strategy to sell the same non-message and non-issues.

This is how yesterday passed as just another day in the capital save for a brief interruption of traffic.

This is why this morning it doesn’t feel like we had a supposed “mother of all demos” yesterday.