OPPOSITION politician Nelson Chamisa has returned to Zimbabwe’s political scene, and with that return comes renewed speculation, cautious hope, and inevitable scepticism.
He promises a fresh strategy, a new political vehicle, and a rekindled fight for the people.
But the Zimbabwe he has re-entered in 2025 is far grimmer, far harsher, and far less forgiving than the one he tried to lead in 2023.
The country has undergone significant changes since the last election — and not for the better.
Daily life has become an exhausting battle for millions of Zimbabweans.
Jobs, already scarce, have all but disappeared.
Company closures have pushed thousands onto the streets, swelling the ranks of informal workers barely getting by in a collapsing economy.
For most, there are no formal wages, no contracts, no certainty — just hustling from day to day in a nation that seems to have abandoned its own.
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Amid this economic despair, the State has doubled down on authoritarianism.
Corruption in the public sector, long a cancer on national development, has metastasized.
Basic public services are failing, while the political elite continue to live in excess.
Instead of addressing the suffering of citizens, the so-called second republic has turned its attention to muzzling the truth-tellers.
Independent journalists — those still brave enough to speak truth to power — are increasingly under siege.
Figures like Blessed Mhlanga and Faith Zaba have found themselves targeted simply for doing their jobs, caught in the crosshairs of a regime that cannot stand scrutiny and seeks to dominate the media narrative to mask its incompetence.
This isn’t a democracy under pressure — it’s a government allergic to accountability.
This is not the Zimbabwe Chamisa faced in 2023.
It is meaner, more broken and more desperate.
And so, it demands more than Bible verses and borrowed lines from former United States President Barack Obama.
It demands more than charismatic speeches and symbolic appearances at funerals.
It requires a leader willing to get in the mud, take real political risks, and fight relentlessly for the voiceless — the unemployed, the disenfranchised, the youth robbed of their futures.
Chamisa has said the Citizens Coalition for Change was just a vehicle, and that he stepped out to build a “better, cleaner, fit-for-purpose” one.
That sounds good. But vehicles don’t win revolutions — movements do. Leadership does. Grit does.
He says the people “won in numbers” in 2018 and 2023, and that their votes were an investment in hope.
But hope without action — without strategic, organised, and unflinching action — is a currency that loses value quickly in a country that eats its dreamers alive.
Zimbabwe doesn’t need another saviour figure.
It needs a coalition builder, a strategist, a fighter who can resist both Zanu PF’s tyranny and the temptation of personal glory.
The stakes are too high for nostalgia or theatrics.
So Chamisa must now prove whether he is truly ready to lead in this new Zimbabwe — not from the pulpit, not from behind social media posts or poetic declarations, but from the front lines of a hard, often ugly political battle.
If he cannot do that — if he is not prepared to confront the brutal realities with equal force — then perhaps he should return to the political hibernation he emerged from.
The people of Zimbabwe have sacrificed too much to endure more hollow promises.
They don’t need a preacher. They need a champion.
