You are very right, my brother, but many opposition supporters will attack you for stating this self-evident truth. The crisis of the opposition did not start yesterday. It started in 2005 and 2006 when Morgan Tsvangirai refused to abide by a vote of his National Executive on the issue of participating in the Senate elections. As is often the case in Zimbabwean politics, many supporters chose to back the individual rather than the institution. They supported Morgan Tsvangirai the personality instead of respecting a democratic decision that had been reached through a vote. That culture persists today. Whether it is Nelson Chamisa or Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabweans often rally behind personalities rather than ideas, principles and institutions. That is one of the reasons why we remain a dysfunctional country. In 2016, Morgan Tsvangirai again made appointments that were challenged as being inconsistent with the MDC constitution when he elevated Nelson Chamisa and Elias Mudzuri to vice-presidential positions. He was advised by lawyers against it, including Advocate Eric Matinenga, a former Minister of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs during the Government of National Unity and an MDC Member of Parliament. That advice was ignored. Once again, supporters defended the individual rather than the constitution of the party and were prepared to attack anyone who questioned the process. When Morgan Tsvangirai died on 14 February 2018, the leadership succession dispute exposed the same constitutional weaknesses. According to the MDC constitution, Thokozani Khupe was the elected vice-president. Yet Nelson Chamisa assumed leadership under circumstances that remain controversial to this day. Some of us criticised what was happening because we could see the dangers that lay ahead. I remember former United States ambassador Harry Thomas asking why the party was not following its own constitution. The same pattern repeated itself with the formation of CCC in 2022. The party had no publicly available constitution and no formal structures. One of its friends and supporters, the late Dr. Alex Magaisa, publicly advised that a constitution and proper structures were essential. That advice was ignored. I also privately advised the leader that institutions matter. They did not listen. When Sengezo Tshabangu emerged and the CCC crisis unfolded, many supporters acted as though it had come out of nowhere. It did not. The seeds had been planted years earlier. If a movement does not build institutions, does not respect constitutionalism and does not establish clear leadership structures, it creates vulnerabilities that others can exploit. The tragedy is that many supporters still refuse to acknowledge the lessons of 2006, 2016, 2018 and 2022. They do not want to admit that the culture of constitutional shortcuts within the opposition helped create the conditions for later crises. They are quick to condemn unconstitutional conduct by ZANUPF, yet often excuse similar conduct when it comes from leaders they support. That contradiction is at the heart of the problem. If your struggle is against unconstitutionalism, then constitutionalism must begin with you. You cannot build a democratic alternative by ignoring your own rules whenever it is politically convenient. If you do, then you become vulnerable to the very practices you claim to oppose. Some people argue that ZANUPF would have done what it did regardless. That is a weak argument. It is like leaving your front door unlocked and then saying thieves would have broken in anyway. Of course a thief may still attempt to break in, but you do not make their job easier by leaving the door wide open. Institutions, constitutions and structures exist precisely to protect organisations from internal and external threats. ZANUPF owes the opposition nothing. Its political objective is to defeat and weaken its opponents. To expect it to behave differently is to misunderstand politics. The responsibility of the opposition is therefore to build strong institutions, respect its own rules and close every loophole that can be exploited. Until opposition supporters embrace constitutionalism as a principle rather than a slogan, the cycle will continue. The saddest part is that even some so-called public intellectuals and lawyers continue to write lengthy defences for the absence of constitutions, structures and institutional accountability. Instead of confronting the mistakes that have weakened the opposition, they try to justify them. That is why the same problems keep repeating themselves, and why meaningful change remains elusive. They even lie by dragging our names into their arguments simply to generate engagement. They claim that people like myself supported Sengezo Tshabangu. I never supported Tshabangu. There is no record of such support because it never happened. But they lie because deceit has become part of their politics. They lie because they support personalities rather than principles. They lie because they work for those personalities and have little interest in democracy itself. The same problem we see in ZANUPF today is the same problem we have witnessed in sections of the opposition, the desire to bypass constitutional arrangements whenever they become inconvenient. That is exactly the issue at the heart of Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3 under Emmerson Mnangagwa. If you want to understand this problem properly, you have to go back to what two public intellectuals have said about Zimbabwe. The first is Dr Solomon Guramatunhu. He has argued that Zimbabwe’s problem is not simply ZANUPF, but the Zimbabwean mindset itself. ZANUPF is a product of Zimbabwean society. Its leaders come from the same communities as everyone else. That is why the behaviour we condemn in ZANUPF is often mirrored in the opposition. Until that mindset changes, until people stop worshipping individuals, defending unconstitutional conduct and treating leaders as if they are above rules, very little will change. You even have lawyers defending unconstitutionalism, writing long essays and lengthy emails trying to justify what should never be justified in the first place. The second observation came from Dr. Nkosana Moyo. He argued that much of Zimbabwe’s opposition is not fighting for genuine change, but for access to the same privileges and benefits enjoyed by those already in power. In his view, many are not fighting to dismantle a corrupt system, they are fighting to be accommodated within it. We saw elements of that during the vote on Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3, when opposition MPs, many of whom did not belong to Sengezo Tshabangu and had entered Parliament through Nelson Chamisa’s political movement, voted in support of the amendment. Their actions reinforced the argument made by Dr. Nkosana Moyo that some politicians are more interested in being co-opted into the system than changing it. We saw similar tendencies during the Government of National Unity. There were opposition figures who became involved in corruption and questionable conduct. The difference was that much of the media was reluctant to scrutinise them with the same intensity because they were viewed as the preferred alternative. The lesson is simple. Zimbabwe will not be transformed merely by changing faces. It will only change when principles matter more than personalities, when constitutions matter more than individuals, and when leaders are judged by the same standards regardless of whether they sit in ZANUPF or in the opposition. Until then, we will continue reproducing the same political culture under different banners. The opposition did not lose its way when ZANUPF attacked it. It lost its way the moment it began excusing in itself the very unconstitutional behaviour it condemns in ZANUPF. The central foundation of the opposition in Zimbabwe from 2000 onwards was constitutionalism. That is precisely why the modern opposition emerged through the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA). The struggle was never simply about removing ZANUPF from power. It was about building a constitutional democracy governed by rules, institutions and accountability. Until the opposition returns to the principles of constitutionalism that gave birth to its existence, ZANUPF will continue to rule for a very long time. That is why, today, the most significant challenge to Emmerson Mnangagwa is not necessarily coming from Zimbabwe’s traditional opposition, but increasingly from within ZANUPF itself. That is a painful reality that many opposition sycophants and bootlickers will refuse to accept, and we do not expect them to accept it. As the saying goes, a foolish person often does not know that they are foolish. They believe they are being clever while remaining blind to the consequences of their own actions. The tragedy is that many of the people who should be defending constitutionalism have instead become defenders of personalities. They excuse in their preferred leaders the very conduct they condemn in their opponents. In doing so, they weaken the democratic cause they claim to support. Until journalists, lawyers, academics and other public intellectuals find the courage to speak truth to power and hold leaders accountable, regardless of whether those leaders are in ZANUPF or the opposition, nothing meaningful will change in Zimbabwe. Constitutionalism cannot be selective. The rule of law cannot apply only to your opponents. The standards you demand of ZANUPF must also be demanded of those who seek to replace it. That is the lesson Zimbabwe has refused to learn for more than two decades, and until it does, the cycle will continue.

Well done @DougColtart for providing leadership👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿

The richest black man in the world and Nigerian entrepreneur and businessman, Aliko Dangote, was asked on a podcast which African countries are currently the most promising for doing business. He mentioned 10 countries, and Zimbabwe was not on that list, despite the fact that Dangote was recently in Zimbabwe. What this should teach Zimbabwe’s government, particularly ZANUPF and President Emmerson Mnangagwa, is that propaganda does not build confidence. Propaganda does not attract serious investors. Serious business people like Dangote are not moved by slogans, political speeches, or staged public relations exercises. They are moved by policy consistency, transparency, stability, infrastructure, rule of law and an environment where business can operate without corruption and uncertainty. No amount of propaganda can hide corruption, bad policies, policy inconsistencies, collapsing infrastructure and economic instability. The world’s serious investors look beyond headlines and political praise singing. They study the fundamentals. That is the reality of global business. You cannot cheat your way into economic success.

Today, Britain’s King Charles III was not pulling punches as he delivered a scathing and carefully coded, indictment of Donald Trump’s politics, hitting hard with a velvet glove, invoking shared history, alliances, and the rule of law to challenge a worldview built on Trump’s toxic nationalism and unchecked executive power being used recklessly. What King Charles III did there was not accidental, it was a well calibrated political message wrapped in diplomacy. He invoked the September 11 attacks, NATO Article 5, and the shared history of alliance to remind Donald Trump’s United States of something deeper than any one administration, that its global leadership has always been tied to collective security, rule of law, and multilateral cooperation. Something that the Orange Man has literally destroyed in 17 months of his chaotic second term, defined by deranged insults against long-term transatlantic partners and even at home, breaking a historic bond with Canada. King Charles’ speech was more pointed when placed against the politics associated with Donald Trump. Trump’s warped worldview has consistently leaned towards toxic nationalism, scepticism, and the constant irrational berating of NATO, and a more transactional approach to alliances. So when King Charles spoke about standing “shoulder to shoulder” and linked that history to Ukraine, he was, in effect, reinforcing the opposite philosophy, that alliances are not optional and that leadership carries important obligations. The reference to Magna Carta is even sharper than it looks. He was not only referring to history, it was a constitutional signal. He was underscoring that executive power must be constrained by law and institutions. In the context of American politics, where there are ongoing debates about presidential power, court authority, and constitutional limits, that line landed as a quiet but unmistakable reminder of checks and balances contrary to Trump’s abuse of power and processes. The speech did two things at once. Publicly, it was respectful, commemorative, and aligned with American values. Subtextually, it was a clear nudge, almost a warning, about the American and global direction of travel under Donald Trump. He was saying that the strength of the West has always come from restraint, institutions, and alliances, not from personality driven cultic politics or Trump’s unilateralism. It was classic statecraft without direct criticism, no names mentioned or calling, but the message was clear to anyone paying attention, and it landed where it needed to be heard. I could not help but notice the joy, the enthusiasm, and the ecstatic enjoyment on the Democratic benches. It was as if, suddenly, a Messiah had arrived to redeem them and rescue them from the Orange Man’s terrible political grip, which has not only shaken America, but turned the whole world upside down with wars, creating inflation, disorder, and disgruntlement, where airplanes are not even assured that they will fly within a few weeks because of the global chaos created by Donald Trump. I could hear Comrade Chinx singing, “Mukoma Charlie, take our message to Donald Trump, Mukoma Charlie.” 🤣🤣