The majority of the opposition activists are caught up in ecstasy of the looming split in the MDC-T and the much-hyped grand coalition.
Sam Sipepa Nkomo is emerging as the senior leader of the splinter MDC-T faction called to MDC-Team by virtue of being a former member of the party’s guardian council.
Nkomo has been all over town clamouring for unity with the Welshman Ncube-led MDC and “other stakeholders”. It is at this moment that I think the people of Zimbabwe need to know the “real” hypocritical Nkomo.
The united MDC split into two formations, the pro-senate and anti-senate, in 2005 over the party’s participation in the senatorial elections.
Sipepa Nkomo momentarily went with the pro-senate formation but when he realised that he was not going to get any powerful position he later changed and joined the anti-senate formation.
Towards the 2008 harmonised election the pro-senate and anti-senate MDC formations had drafted a coalition document that spelled out how they were going to contest the elections under a united front.
The document was negotiated by Welshman Ncube and Tendai Biti. Just hours before the signing of the document at a Harare hotel, the anti-senate faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai called for an emergency national council meeting.
During the council, Nkomo-led a group of Matabeleland counciliors to vehemently reject the document as it would deprive them of their chance of getting to parliament because it would mean relinquishing their ambitions and paving way for candidates from the Arthur Mutambara-led pro-senate faction that was perceived to be stronger in Matabeleland.
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The talks collapsed at the eleventh hour. It should be noted at this moment that the majority of Mashonaland counciliors had no problem with the coalition document.
During the 2008 election campaign Sipepa Nkomo led a team of high profile MDC-T leaders including former minister Godern Moyo and Thokozani Khupe to a campaign rally for Thamsanqa Mahlangu held at Nkulumane hall.
Sipepa stood up in a fully packed hall and denigrated the MDC led by Mutambara raising his two hands in to the air one with clenched fist and the other with an open palm saying in Ndebele: “OGibson sebetshade leZANU. Sebebambene lo (Simba) Makoni umntane ZANU. Sebefumbatha ngapha bavule isandla ngapha, libaqaphele bazingozi.”
The whole audience clapped in unison. Fasttrack to 2013. History has a tendency of storing words for future reference.
The 2013 elections came and surprisingly to some of us, Nkomo was part of the national council that endorsed the electoral pact between Makoni’s MKD party with the MDC-T .
At this point, we wonder whether is this not the Nkomo of 2008 the fiery hater of ‘umntane Zanu’? The same Makoni was clothed with MDC-T branding and made a certified candidate of the party.
Backtrack to 2011. Nkomo addressing a campaign rally in Lobengula lambasted Ncube for being a “fool for saying Tsvangirai is uneducated and calling him a habitual liar”.
Nkomo was gun blazing scattering bombs all over to an extent that he licked the boots of Tsvangirai more than anyone in Matabeleland.
He likened Tsvangirai to the great Ndebele King Lobengula. One wonders what had Nkomo drank to have courage to insult our great King Lobengula this way by likening him to Tsvangirai? Fasttrack to May 2014, Nkomo was invited by a civic society organisation Bulawayo Agenda to be a panelist.
Surprisingly, he said in Tsvangirai they “actually had created a monster” and they needed to detach the party from that monster.
That monster has no iota of democracy and believed in violence as a means of disciplining dissenting voices within the party.
Nkomo, so your King Lobengula lookalike is now a monster? Now Sipepa has joined or formed (whatever is applicable) to MDC-Team. Any sane person can see that his presence is pushed by the realisation that Biti and Mangoma hold keys to party assets and are touted as blue eyed boys of the donor agencies. The pastures are seemingly green Sipepa.
Perhaps we need to take a leaf from what an American life coach Anthony Robbins said: “It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.” Sipepa needs to understand that consistency is the measure of every leader.
His leadership tracks are marred with deception, changing goalposts, greediness and worst of all gullibility. He is a hungry jackal who sniffs where there is money and power then creeps towards the prey at night like the biblical Nicodemus.
Inconsistency is his totem.
The people of Zimbabwe should not be misled by people who do not have the plight of the people at heart, are pathologically programmed with dictatorial and greedy tendencies within their DNA.
The change project will not succeed as long as it is led by power hungry people like Nkomo. The much hyped grand coalition will not be grand at all if the fore-runners are tainted people like Nkomo.
Let me proffer that the people of Lobengula, Bulawayo and the rest of Zimbabwe need to rethink about their challenges and locate the very causes of them and work towards a solution because some of the political leaders seek to use the people’s challenges for mileage and satisfy their insatiable greed.
•Prince Khumbulani Malinga is the co-ordinator of Southern Stars Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity. He can be contacted at [email protected]/ +263 774 208 375.
