Freeman Chari Says Zimbabwe’s Opposition Overrun By Fortune Hunters

US-based Zimbabwean pro-democracy campaigner Freeman Chari says the opposition has lost direction since the formation of the MDC in 1999, resulting in a fragmented grouping lacking a clear ideology.

The MDC was the first opposition party to mount a serious challenge to ZANU-PF’s long-standing hold on power, reaching its peak in the 2008 elections when Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of the presidential vote, and the party secured the largest number of parliamentary seats.

Since then, the opposition has been weakened by repeated splits, largely driven by personality clashes and individual ambitions rather than ideological differences.

Posting on X, Chari warned that Nelson Chamisa’s approach, which places greater emphasis on prayer than political action, was not sustainable.

Wrote Chari: “Unfortunately, folks will rewrite history and fail to be accountable for the issues we are witnessing today.

“Over the years, people rose through the ranks of MDC through stepping on others and smearing genuine cadres until the bulk of them chose to walk away and live their lives away from the toxicity of the ‘struggle’.

“By the time we got to the GNU, a lot of genuine cadres who had given their all were cleared.

“Most of them became academics or left for the Diaspora. The gaps they left were filled by untested people – some good, some horrible.

“By the time we got to 2018, most of the cdes I had worked with since 2001 were on the sidelines, which meant the base of MDC-18 was relatively a coalition of the old-of-2008 and the post-2013 crop with different views on how the struggle is executed.

“The Khupe incident remains a very bad chapter in MDC’s history. It set a very bad base for the MDC-2018.

“But again, it was an opportunity not only for NC but for a lot of people to rise on the back of stepping on other people or outmanoeuvring others.

“Again, when Mwonzora left (Which I still think was avoidable if egos were not the primary factor), it was an opportunity for people to rise.

“All this meant, the opportunities fell on untested people, most of whom were mere opportunists with little commitment to the real struggle for change.

“By 2022, the mantra was – The NEW! CCC was born. The pre-2018 MDC remnants existed mostly at the benevolence of NC. There was a new crop.

“A crop that generally had no understanding of the historical non-commercial execution of the struggle. The struggle shifted from being radically ideological to purely theological. The struggle lost its bearings!

“By the time Tshabangu erupted, there was really nothing to defend in CCC. There were no stockholders. CCC had sympathisers, not members.

“Most of those who viewed themselves as stakeholders were folks born and bred in environments that believe God will intervene; all they needed to do was kneel/pamabvi/emadolweni.

“The crew that were deployed in councils and parliament via berekamwana, most of them had zero history in the previous struggles that actually had a resistance factor in them.

“It was an opportunity for survival. They had no issue licking the side where their bread is buttered.”