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Three years before the next election, a think-tank based in an unlikely country has foretold what many serious minds already know — that Zanu-PF will win the 2023 elections.

Only by sabotaging the reform agenda being championed by the Zanu-PF Government will MDC Alliance, the main opposition party, stand a chance of preventing the ruling party from once again retaining power.

Titled “A New Zimbabwe: Assessing Continuity and Change After Mugabe”, a report published by the US organisation, Rand Corporation on Thursday last week tips President Emmerson Mnangagwa to “resoundingly win the 2023 elections.” 

President Mnangagwa and his party’s victory, the report explains, will be predicated on a “rebound of the economy”, which is presently being held back by the El Nino-induced drought and the strangling effects of the illegal US-led Western sanctions against Zimbabwe.

It is very revealing, as our sister paper The Sunday Mail reported yesterday, that the Rand Corporation is very close to MDC Alliance, with one of the party’s leaders, Mr Tendai Biti said to be a member of the Zimbabwe Working Group whose dominant members are former American diplomats who previously served at various missions in Africa.  Mr Alex Noyes, a member of the working group wrote the report in question.

Given the traditional popularity of the ruling party, its ability to rise above adversity and its rejuvenation since the Second Republic came into office in November 2017 versus a fast regressing opposition, a Zanu-PF victory in 2023 is assured.    

However, it is most revealing when such a prediction is made by an organisation so close to the MDC Alliance and so close to the US government which continues to harden its position against the Zanu-PF Government.  It means that even the most strident critics and opponents of the ruling party acknowledge its electoral strength.    

We foresee, as the Rand Corporation does, that Zanu-PF will further improve its two thirds majority in Parliament while widening the winning margin in the presidential election from 300 000 or so votes that President Mnangagwa achieved over MDC Alliance candidate Mr Nelson Chamisa in 2018.

Even the most vocal critics and opponents of Zanu-PF are acknowledging as the Rand Corporation does, that despite the challenges the country is facing, the economy is actually on a rebound after two years of building a strong foundation for that to happen.  Such recovery is imperceptible at this early stage, imperceptible to the untrained eye but those who know will acknowledge that signs for the economic rebound are there and the foundational infrastructure for that to happen is now there.   

Indeed, the reforms that the Government has undertaken are starting to bear fruit.  

For example, after years of excessive spending and the resulting budget deficits, Government expenditure has for the past year, been lower than revenues, resulting in budget surpluses.  The national currency is now in place and is beginning to find its true value.  We are seeing billions being invested in the mining sector, particularly in platinum and diamond.  Laws to attract and retain investment are being enacted, chief among them the Zimbabwe Investment Development Act.  Inflation is slowing down and is projected to be down to single digit by the end of this year.        

Seeing that the Rand Corporation says that the only way through which the opposition can stand in the way of a resounding Zanu-PF electoral victory in 2023 is through sabotaging the implementation of the reforms, the ruling party and its Government must not only intensify the reform agenda but also strongly defend it.  Citizens must also defend the reform agenda because the reforms are for their good.  

While Zanu-PF is hard at work and set for a crushing victory in the next elections, MDC-T is, in our view, actually wasting their time.  They are busy making empty noises attacking the ruling party and its Government, attacking its pro-people policies mostly social media while not doing anything on the ground.    

In addition, the opposition party is failing to deliver services in urban councils it controls, among them Harare, Gweru and Chitungwiza.  There MDC Alliance-led councils cannot provide water to residents’ homes.  Where and when they are able to, they are pumping fecal water to the properties.  Desperate residents are digging shallow wells from which to fetch water, while the better resourced are sinking boreholes.  Since urban boreholes and shallow wells yield water of suspect potability, basically all residents of Harare and Chitungwiza are buying bottled water for household consumption.  The councils are also failing to come up with strategies to collect refuse or to dispose of it safely.   

Corruption is rife in the MDC Alliance.  Chitungwiza is a case in point.  And just a few days ago, it was reported that $2 million just disappeared from the party.  

In rural areas, MDC-Alliance is just absent.  In our view, that party in its various names over the years, has never been as shambolic and directionless as it has been under Mr Chamisa.

The electorate knows that Messrs Chamisa and Biti boast about their role in inviting Western sanctions to the country, measures that have wrought immense suffering on the masses and are frustrating the country’s access to up of lines of credit and foreign direct investment.  The electorate will decide, once again in 2023, whether to vote for a party that defends that ruinous embargo or one that is fighting against it.