Umm, Morgan? Morgan who?

Umm, Morgan? Morgan who?

BRAVE: Makoni is challenging for President in the March 29 elections

• Makoni says Zimbabwe needs national healing

• Trudy Stevenson: A nation locked in victim mode

• Kagoro: Judge Makoni on substance

• 'I am nobody's tool,' says Makoni

• Courage Shumba: If you want change, Makoni is your man

• Makoni has expelled himself - Mnangagwa

• War veterans to 'deal harshly' with Makoni

• Zimbabwe's state media attacks Makoni

• Cometh the hour, cometh the Mak

• Major Mbudzi warns CIO against dirty tricks

• Makoni guns for Mugabe's job

• Makoni humiliated as Zanu PF rejects bid for MP

• Makoni's bid for MP riles ministers

• Makoni files papers to stand for MP

• Zanu PF politburo meets over looming split

• Mugabe's fury as Nkomo, Sibanda clash at congress

By Rangarirai Mberi

THESE are really strange times, especially if you are Morgan Tsvangirai.

One day you are coasting along just fine, nose in the air lest the unwashed masses offend the royal nostrils.

You are bathed in the glow of the lucrative "Zimbabwe opposition leader" prefix, showing everybody the scars of March 2007, which you wear like a gleaming badge.

Then, suddenly, some fresh-faced upstart arrives, out of Zanu PF, of all places, to suddenly grab the spotlight.

Even the state media are reserving their choicest abuse for this new guy, only mentioning you when you throw your own barbs at the new kid on the block.

Now, your already tenuous relevance looks decidedly wobbly. What do you do?
"I am the leader of the MDC," Tsvangirai told reporters last Sunday, just to make sure they knew exactly who he was.

"(Simba) Makoni is nothing more than old wine in a new bottle," he said.

On the roll, Tsvangirai continued: "Dr Makoni has been part of the establishment for the last 30 years and has witnessed our country deteriorate to this unprecedented level. He is equally accountable as (President) Robert Mugabe for the omissions of Zanu PF."

Tsvangirai is well within his rights to take digs at his opponents; it's all part of the game. And indeed, Makoni still has many questions hanging over his candidacy and strategy. He may yet even do poorly at the polls.

But Tsvangirai fails to do one important thing for himself -- a bit of self-examination.

Evidently, Tsvangirai is so deep up to his eyeballs in self adoration he hasn't found the time to come back up to the real world, look in the mirror, and ask himself some hard, honest questions.

Tsvangirai needs to ask why there has been so much public excitement -- justified or not -- over this "old wine".

Why are people looking right past his MDC, and gobbling up every scrap of news they find on Makoni?

"Voters have scanned the existing field and found that, increasingly, the two options previously available differed only in the depth of their depravity"

RANGARIRAI MBERI

Have people suddenly become mindless ingrates who forget the personal sacrifices Tsvangirai has made?

For the answer, Tsvangirai need not look further than the utter bankruptcy of his own leadership.

In 2000 and 2002, on a wave of anger against President Mugabe's dismal administration, Tsvangirai had Zanu PF on the ropes, getting nearly half of the seats at the general election and 43 percent of the vote in 2002.

Then came 2005, and this motley band of interests came apart.

When a vote of Tsvangirai's top executive on the senate election went against him, that whole model democrat façade fell.

Next thing we knew, Zanu-type thugs were being sent out to whack those who dared oppose "the president".

Zanu-style bigotry took root; just as Zanu PF saw a grubby old British hand behind every critic, so did the MDC see shifty CIO agents behind every door.
Tsvangirai was reading from the Zanu PF rule-book; the thugs, the refusal to accept criticism, the bands of sycophants, each rewarded only in proportion to how low they were prepared to stoop for their leader.

Now, see how even all that "Gushungo" tribal baloney has been carried to the MDC rallies, where Tsvangirai comically sways to fawning odes to his clan name.
As Welshman Ncube candidly conceded last year, "in the course of fighting the monster, there was the danger of becoming the monster".

Many had looked past the many indiscretions of the MDC, arguing that the bigger job at hand was to get rid of President Mugabe and his Zanu PF. These were times when voters simply put their "X" on the MDC and ignored the quality of the candidate.

And so the MDC began to talk of "safe" constituencies, signs of complacency. The MDC began to put on an air of entitlement.

Roy Bennett, a Tsvangirai ally, wrote in a letter to a South African newspaper at the weekend that Zimbabweans knew that the genuine opposition was only that whose leaders had "suffered with the people".

In other words, Tsvangirai alone is entitled to challenge Zanu PF. Not because he has any competence, but because he has scars.

Rather like President Mugabe's belief that his own sacrifice in the liberation struggle entitles him to do as he pleases. As for the rest of us, well, we should all be grateful for their sacrifices, keep quiet, and let these two owners of our struggles be.

So how are we to tell the MDC from Zanu PF?

Many -- outside the diehard fringe of the MDC of course -- had been patient, defending the MDC, hoping sense would one day prevail. But the final straw was the MDC's failure to unite, especially because the reason for that failure was not some grand ideological dispute, but because there were petty chieftainships to be protected.

Tellingly, listening to MDC activists speak over the past two weeks, it is Makoni they now want to beat. Tsvangirai just has to keep his "Zimbabwe opposition leader" mantle. Beating President Mugabe is a secondary priority.

None of Tsvangirai's people have stopped to ask why their man, with nine years in the trenches, is having to fight for attention with a man who, up to only three weeks ago, sat in the Zanu PF politburo.

Tsvangirai's groveling "kitchen cabinet" will not tell him this, but this excitement over Makoni -- some of it, admittedly, over the top -- is because voters have scanned the existing field and found that, increasingly, the two options previously available differed only in the depth of their depravity.

Mberi is the news editor of the Financial Gazette newspaper
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com