Why Mugabe will win

 

It is these human frailties that often lend the seemingly obvious to imaginative interpretations. It’s a cruel world for the objective man, or woman.
There is much more comfort in taking sides. “Robert Mugabe is a demon”. “Morgan Tsvangirai is Mandela”. “Welshman Ncube is a CIO”.

I suffer the incurable curse of a scientific mind. So much so I must always call it as it is, however, inconvenient. Robert Mugabe will certainly win the next election.
Let’s quickly touch on the Freedom House Sur­vey. In 2010, they surveyed the Zimbabwean gen­erality and found that the majority wanted Mugabe to go. I will remind you that Freedom House is a Washington-based NGO that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights. If Tsvangirai stood a chance of impregnating anyone, it would be these guys. They are in love with our good Prime Minister.

It is with this view of their favourable inclination toward the MDC-T that the results of the same survey in 2012 surprised many by offering quite a different and unexpected set of results. Mugabe’s support was surging, far outpacing Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai’s MDC had shed 18 percentage points while Mugabe’s party had shot up a comfortable 14 points. If facts are stubborn, then numbers are pure evil.
The MDC-T spin machine went into overdrive offering all manner of explanations. Some more absurd than others. One that gave me a chuckle was the assertion by one MDC-T man claiming that Freedom

House was misrepresenting the elec­torate, this in an effort to assist the MDC-T.
The reasoning offered was that if Zanu-PF imag­ined victory was certain, they would then “go to sleep”, leaving the MDC to victoriously march into  State House. Zanu-PF would never see it coming. As you can imagine, Jonathan Moyo took great pleasure in dismissing this for the nonsense that it was. Another desperate argument offered in an effort to contradict these troubling numbers was the fact that 40 percent of respondents had not dis­closed their intentions.

The MDC-T immediately pounced on this claiming that this 40 percent was made up exclu­sively of MDC-T supporters who feared expressing their views to the Freedom House interviewers for fear of being beaten up by those nasty Zanu-PF hoodlums.
That has a semblance of surface plausibility. But take a closer look and see. What about the 2010 survey that found enormous support for Tsvangi­rai? Were these MDC-T supporters not afraid to express their views back then?

Given the country was just coming out of the 2008 political violence, can we be so credulous as to believe that MDC-T supporters felt safer then than they do now under the coalition Govern­ment? Facts are stubborn things.

The productive political question is not if the MDC is losing support, but why.
To fully grasp the current political dynamic, it is important to recognise that the MDC-T electoral base is largely in the urban areas. I do not suggest that they have a vice grip on all us city dwellers, but the fact of it is that they previously far outpaced Zanu-PF.

At the same time, Zanu-PF has tended to do well with the rural vote. These are crucial points. We will come back to this.
When the MDC-T campaigned against Zanu-PF before joining Government, they had an arse­nal of effective ammunition. Zanu-PF personified corruption! Zanu-PF officials were living in luxury at our

expense!

We will be a government of the people that cares not for ourselves, but for the peo­ple! We are differ­ent. We will be different. And we will certainly have different results! These were impressively elo­quent and seductive slogans. The MDC-T’s sup­port soared. Herein lies the problem. The MDC-T is in Government and the potency of these attacks has been considerably diminished.
For example, let’s all offer a quick appreciation for David Coltart. He refused to accept a ministe­rial top-of-the-range Mercedes Benz. He is the only minister to have taken this principled posi­tion. Other MDC ministers jumped into those cars headfirst. They couldn’t wait. Such was the acquisi­tion frenzy that the MDC nearly tore itself apart over some used doublecab trucks that a sympa­thetic RBZ governor

Gideon Gono had offered them to use in their daily activities.
Tendai Biti ordered MDC-T MPs to return the vehicles. The hungry MDC-T MPs showed him the middle finger. It was their time to eat. Imagine a poor man who wins a modest US$50 000 in the lottery.

His children have no clothes, no shoes, no bed and no food. If this man immediately buys himself 12 suits and a US$34 000 truck before see­ing to the needs of his children, we would most certainly curse him to his grave.

In 2009 the Zimbabwean condition was simi­larly dire. It was a moment when the intelligentsia expected the MDC-T to assert its values and embarrass the “greedy Zanu-PF looters” it had pre­viously condemned by refusing to drive luxury vehicles while raw sewage flowed. Give us Mazda B1800s, they would have said, much to the delight of a relieved electorate. But no, they jumped in head first.

Should I speak of the corruption within the MDC ranks? Councillors who had taken position immediately set out extensive corruption syndi­cates, dishing out stands to friends and relatives. Some are currently languishing in prison. Is this the change that Tsvangirai had preached to the point of deafening us?

What of sanctions?
All these years the MDC told us there were no sanctions on Zimbabwe and that the only sanc­tions that existed were targeted at Zanu-PF elites. I wonder why Tendai Biti wrote a letter to the US treasury secretary, Charles Collyns, begging him to remove sanctions. What sanctions? I thought the MDC position was that these do not exist? The electorate is not blind to all this. They can see very clearly that they were lied to. Sanctions were and are real. If only it ended on the policy front.

Tsvangirai himself caused a great deal of damage to the MDC through his repeated sexual indiscre­tions. Let’s begin in Matabeleland. The 60-year-old bedded 21-year-old Loretha Nyathi without using protection. The child fell pregnant. Fearing for his political career, Tsvangirai sent her to South Africa and demanded she abort. She quietly kept the child.

When the baby was born, Tsvangirai refused to support it although it was his child. It was only after the lawyers were called in that he gave in and agreed to pay monthly support. If ever there was an example of a man lacking in personal integrity, Tsvangirai is that man.

I am not the one who made Tsvangirai do these things. I am simply putting the facts to paper. Those not happy with me writing these things should rightly direct their wrath at Tsvangirai who committed these shameful acts.

Then Locardia Karimatsenga came along. The Prime Minister swore to us that she was a home wrecker and he had never married her, but simply paid damages. ZBC got its hands on footage of the event showing Tsvangirai’s emissaries in great joy and indeed paying a bride price, while asking for the woman’s hand in marriage. It was broadcast on national television.

Tsvangirai, in his signature flip-flop, performed a quick position shift and claimed his emissaries had misrepresented him. Apparently, he had sim­ply instructed them to pay damages, but they had taken it upon themselves to take a wife for him. Tsvangirai can be childish at times. It was a weak argument and the courts — after taking in all the evidence — sided with the soon to be jilted wife.
Locardia was his wife and he dumped her through a newspaper Press statement. Those are the facts. If he expects the dignified women of Zimbabwe to support him all the same, then he is clearly duller than he lets on.

I could go on about his other sexual exploits, but that is needless. Even Grade Seven kids know everything about Tsvangirai’s sex life. The one time celebrated democrat is now the butt of dirty jokes. What is important is that all this was playing out through the media.
It draws us back to the MDC-T’s strong urban base who are all in close contact with television, radio, the Internet and print media.

Tsvangirai and the MDC-T were destroying the MDC brand right before the television cameras. All this while his most ardent urban supporters watched in dismay. Many were disappointed. Some were angry. Others were ashamed. A few blamed the CIO — all too familiar an excuse.

The effect is that many MDC-T supporters have lost faith in the party they previously believed in. Many cannot bring themselves to vote for Zanu-PF and will instead stay at home on election day, while Zanu-PF romps to victory. Others have been posi­tively converted and now see the MDC-T as shameless hypocrites, especially with regards to sanctions. These few will vote for Zanu-PF.

The rural folk remain a steadfast bastion of patriotism and can be counted on to deliver votes for Zanu-PF, come the next election. In 2008, the March elections gave the MDC-T control of Parlia­ment. The MDC-T called this election free and fair. They won Parliament.
But most Zimbabweans do not know one very important fact. The BBC and CNN do not want you to know this. Although the MDC-T won more seats in Parliament, they lost the popular vote.

In the widely considered free and fair March Parliamentary poll, Zanu-PF actually had more votes than the MDC-T. Specifically, Zanu-PF secured 1 110 649 and the MDC-T came second with 1 041 176 votes.

Imagine the economic desperation at the time, yet Zanu-PF got more votes than the MDC-T. What more now with an improved economy and a self-impaling Tsvangirai limping into the election with sperm on his hands? Robert Mugabe’s victory is certain, Tsvangirai’s friends at Freedom House think so too.

• Mai Jukwa is a loving mother of three. She respects President Mugabe, is amused by Tsvangi­rai and feels sorry for Mutambara. This article first appeared on the New Zimbabwe Forums website.