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It's not about Nikuv, it's about leadership in the presence of Nikuv, dummy!
Leonard Matsa
August 07, 2013

I have noticed that there are people out there who do not think the MDC leadership should be fingered in the party's 2013 election loss. They have been swift to label anyone who has dared to suggest culpability of the MDC leadership in the 2013 electoral loss as unprincipled sell outs or ingrates who were all the while in hiding while only the MDC leadership, alone, fought bloody selfless battles for the same people's independence from Zanu PF.

In some cases, MDC sympathisers have even had the cheek to blame the people for the loss accusing them of apathy, and as such architects of Zanu PF victory! Such is the arrogance and disdain pervading the democratic movement that it has lost the decency to locate fault within - even for clearly inherent mistakes. What they accuse Zanu PF, they are now perfecting.

My point is, stop gagging people in expressing their frustrations over the election loss. People cannot have a similar mono way of grieving. People deal with grief variously, and when you feel you are within your right to want to regulate expression of grief then you are equally within your right in deserving the term intolerant.

MDC die-hards need to wake up to the fact that the bulk of their supporters are a product of a protest awakening to Zanu PF insensitivities of the 2008 period. MDC supporters moved to MDC in search of a caring and delivering leadership, which would distinguish itself in the unfair conditions prevailing. Not a leadership that masters the art of crying citing unfair electoral conditions in Zimbabwe! The MDC knew on day one that the jungle had Zanu PF and what that meant. Yet it would appear they carried lipstick and tears in their hunt pack.

The people are irate at MDC not Zanu PF and its rigging because they feel MDC leaders slept on the job and trivialised the task at hand.

The people are irate at MDC not Zanu PF rigging because the elections has made them wonder that, if MDC can be conned a whole election they knew about for the past four years, are they a pair of safe hands with a country endowed with riches in this dog eat dog global world?

The people are irate that they did their part fully by registering and voting while the MDC leadership strategy was hoping Zanu PF would bring the presidency and parliamentary majority in a golden foil to Harvest House.

The people are angry because the MDC approached the elections with a 2008 mindset when they themselves had spent 4 years dismantling the same 2008 conditions that gave them the protest vote victory.

The people are angry that because of the inability of the leadership to think on their feet - rather than on their nostalgic assumptions. All the people’s sacrifices over the years have now been rubbished by this 2013 MDC master of all disasters.

You cannot expect the people not to be angry when they lost a huge chunk of their lives to a political game the MDC was so suicidally ill-prepared for, and took to with shocking casualness.

The people gave the MDC 13 years of their lives - eating bulgur, drinking sewage, marriages breaking, families splitting, some now are living amongst strangers speaking strange languages. People endured bank queues; some sold their bodies for meals, had chunks on xmas, black markets, died of cholera and political violence. All this in the sacrifice and belief that the MDC promises of deliverance were anchored in a logical plan and serious appreciation of the demands of the task at hand.

People feel abused and cheated by those that made them think they had the capacity to match Zanu PF free or unfair. Imagine how they are feeling on learning that central to the MDC response strategy to Zanu PF "rigging" is approaching Zanu PF newly and hastily appointed court judges! Seriously!?

The people deserve to be angry with MDC and not Zanu PF rigging because the MDC took the job, the people and their adversaries for granted in spite of countless warnings that 2013 is not 2008. I mean how many blunders did the MDC leadership do and still the people turned a blind eye? There is not enough space here to list them.

It is not like Zimbabweans were oblivious of MDC culpability to our crisis. Our crisis we know was borne out of Zanu PF mismanaging the economy and its foreign policy then, but we all know it was accentuated by MDC's invited brutalising sanctions.

But what did the people do? Instead of making MDC accountable they instead voted for them. All in the spirit of the bigger picture of getting Zanu PF’s long hands away from national coffers and citizens rights.

Unfortunately MDC misread that public tolerance and understanding for their divine right to rule. And the Zanu PF election machine proved them wrong; in the process breaking millions of Zimbabwean hearts in, and especially outside, Zimbabwe.

The people are angry at MDC not Zanu PF rigging because MDC surrendered the whole fight to Baba Jukwa who could only do so much as he could not be on all battle fronts.

The people are angry at the MDC not Zanu PF rigging because the MDC disregarded all the laws of combat - including even basic ones. They were like below average army generals they marched into a battle on the singular reason, on the conviction of their adversary’s weakness of 2008.

They found the enemy had restocked, restrategised and had become more cunning. The MDC mistook these elections for church cell treasurership elections. They went camping with a thief and took an overdose of sleeping tablets. The people are angry because of that, and it is unfair for those who had been promised government posts to turn their anger into gag material against the people so betrayed by the MDC leadership.

The MDC failed to understand that 2/3 of Zimbabwean voters are neither Zanu PF nor MDC and as such will not follow blindly and sympathise with a leadership that sleeps on national duty.

The people are angry with MDC not Zanu PF rigging because the MDC leadership still does not see nor believe that maybe they are the raison d’etre they lost and Zanu PF is the chief reason it won. The MDC must question their inability to domesticate fault. This inability to understand and be honest with themselves on exactly why people gave them support, is the reason why 89 year old Mugabe is going to be sworn in as president and not Morgan.

Those that surrounded Morgan were busy buying properties from coins he threw for praise singing instead of advising him appropriately. They failed to remind him that this was an election against the battle hardened wily Mugabe. And worse, 2013 elections were finding Mugabe wounded and very desperate.

It is now clear to the people, who between Morgan and Mugabe, understood the seriousness of the task and wanted the victory more. For that, they are disappointed with Morgan. And they will be even more angry if they are gagged.

It’s not about Nikuv, it’s about leadership in the presence of Nikuv dummy!

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