ZIMBABWE’S political landscape is so littered with all manner of wreckage from past deadly and bloody battles that for someone to then try and make sense of how all this mess came about is akin to slogging hard into a very dark and boggy wilderness. But, because Zimbabwe is one hell of a country, there are always some who are prepared to sweat it out and try to salvage something from the wreckage.

NewsDay Comment

One such individual is Thokozani Khupe, the very sulky leader of the MDC-T political outfit, who was crudely outmanoeuvred from leading the country’s largest opposition movement. Khupe was so outfoxed that she still cannot believe that the deed was real; so tangible that she was left holding on to a mere name of a political party whose supporters have long moved on with the “shrewd robber”, Nelson Chamisa, who refined the old maxim: “Politics is a dirty game.” So ruthlessly crude was the “robber” that he covered his tracks very well and current efforts by hapless Khupe to try and pin him down through the courts and hiring “snippers” to take him out is proving to be a useless sideshow and a spent exercise in futility.

Us, being just innocent bystanders, who have been watching the events from the terraces, wish to advise our dearest Madam Khupe to simply pick up the pieces, re-strategise and move on because the battle she is fighting is a lost cause, unless she is being paid to act as an albatross around Chamisa’s neck.

Only recently, the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court reserved judgment on her other of the many overt and covert challenges on Chamisa’s leadership of the opposition party. On Wednesday, the Constitutional Court left Khupe clutching at straws after dismissing her attempt to nullify her 2018 recall by the MDC from Parliament as Makokoba legislator.

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“The court holds that the question of whether or not Parliament failed to fulfil its constitutional obligations with regard to the circumstances in which the seat occupied by the first applicant (Khupe) became vacant has been rendered moot by the occurrence of events subsequent to the making of the court application. The matter no longer presents a live dispute between the parties requiring the court to hear and determine in accordance with the principle of justifiability. In the result, the application is dismissed with no order as to costs,” the ConCourt ruled.

We hope that Khupe, having managed to walk away with no costs, this should help her to carefully reconsider her next moves regarding her bitter fight against Chamisa. Not that we hold any brief for Chamisa, but her continued hunt for Chamisa’s scalp will only serve to destroy her otherwise salvageable political career. Having managed to stand in the past election and field candidates should be her foundation’s building blocks for a self-created political career. That Chamisa has since moved on should nudge her into also moving on and make the best of the situation. Her perpetual moaning will not build her political career, unless someone is busy using her to spoil Chamisa’s own political career. If that is the case, she may have nothing to lose, but being a pioneering example to other women, we hope she is not allowing herself to be used because this would be a very sad indictment to the women’s struggle for equality. The fact that she was hard-done by a man should give her the resolve to stand up and fight completely new political battles which include the 2023 elections. Dwelling on the past will not help build her political career.