Is Chamisa making the same mistakes he made in 2013?

He has upped this is his own campaign. He and his leadership are fasting three days a week. And indeed, people have been flocking to his rallies, huge crowds that must be shaking ZANU-PF.

But as Zamchiya noted “most of Tsvangirai’s campaign rallies were vibrant, exciting and well attended; they were electrifying confidence boosters”.

The same applies to Chamisa’s rallies at the moment.

However, Zamchiya also noted: “Behind the ecstatic and well organised MDC-T rallies – events that were ‘more like weddings’ – there were also simmering divisions within the MDC-T over primary elections and the internal distribution of campaign resources.

These divisions cost the party dearly as some 28 candidates left the party at the last minute to contest as independent candidates thus splitting the vote.

Already Chamisa has failed to solve the simmering differences with former vice-president Thokozani Khupe. The party has now split. Though are 90 days or so away both factions are going by the same name though Chamisa also head the MDC Alliance.

It has happened before and the faction that finally bore Tsvangirai’s name won. Can Chamisa do the same?  

In the 17 years that Tsvangirai was at the helm of the party, he was more popular than the party itself and he walked away with more supporters at every split and garnered more votes in three major presidential elections than all his legislators combined even in 2008 when the MDC-T won more seats than ZANU-PF.

Chamisa’s party and his supporters have written off Khupe but what should be disturbing about the Khupe case, is how many people within the Chamisa faction really support her but have stuck with Chamisa because of the numbers behind him?

The other simmering division is the one that will be caused by the insistence on keeping the women’s and youth quotas coupled with the accommodation of candidates from the Alliance partners.

Masvingo provincial chair James Gumbi has already fired the warning shot. Gumbi warned Chamisa not to field Alliance candidates in some constituencies like Bikita but Chamisa did not address the issue. Instead, he dictated the solution. Did Gumbi and the people he leads accept the arbitrary ruling?

Indeed, Chamisa is not the only one facing a possible backlash. His main opponent Emmerson Mnangagwa is also facing stiff resistance from former colleagues mainly Joice Mujuru and the recently formed National Patriotic Front which even argues that he does not qualify to contest because he is not a citizen of Zimbabwe, while his “sister” also from the same party says he is unelectable and will have to stage another “coup” after losing the coming elections.

But Mnangagwa has one big advantage- incumbency. His party also seems well-oiled financially, so well-funded that it afforded to exhibit at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair and conducted mock elections country-wide for its primary elections. There were hiccups indeed, but the fact that it managed to organise something of that magnitude as a party says something.

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