As the countdown to year-end begins lest we forget the bumpy road we traveled throughout the year in 2013.

We are now in December, it’s summer, and the heat is unbearable but political tensions have cooled down. There’s been a lot to write home about but very little to be proud of. The year ends under a dark cloud of poor service delivery. We spend most of the day without electricity while condemned to consume unsafe rations of water from local authorities.

In 2013 we saw the sailing in of a new constitution but questions still remain unanswered on whether to decentralize or to go the devolution path. The year was full of drama especially coming from the August House as some of the elected legislators were caught with their hands in the cookie jar of the Community Development Fund. This didn’t come as a surprise as their intentions were clear from the first day that they took office. And for their efforts spent on heckling and trading insults in Parliament, they were rewarded with hefty ‘sitting allowances’; very expensive cars and some even demanded residential stands as exit packages.

It was a competition to break the world record in flying hours as political parties in the inclusive government globetrotted to drum up support for their different causes at the expense of the ordinary taxpayer.

As the political game turned out to be nasty in 2013 we were subjected to hurling of insults and obscenities. Fellow countrymen and women especially from the Civil Society were accused of unpatriotic behavior and prison became a second home for human rights defenders.

We endured threats of election every day during the life span of the inclusive government and by grace the year 2013 brought an end to these threats. In politics its either you win or lose and the most difficult part is moving on. Up to now the debate on “credible” or “free and fair” rages on but a few still have the energy to engage.

A new government took office but the challenges have remained the same.

The announcement of the national budget was postponed owing to the liquidity crunch and as if that was not enough to kick start a new five-year term in office we got a taste of another Operation Murambatsvina some urban dwellers bracing for government’s clamp down on the so-called illegal structures.

I am one of the people who believe that the 31 July 2013 election in Zimbabwe was stolen. First, by the obvious facts that all the SADC prescribed reforms have not taken place and for a simple reason that the electronic voters’ roll cannot by now be made available to the general public. The MDC-T leadership has taken the fore front in the fight for justice to capture back the looted vote that was taken from the people. People in return have taken a back seat on the issue and therefore continuously ask the question of ‘what is the way forward’. The MDC to my own understanding does not have the answer to that question; on Saturday during their anniversary rally they failed to answer that question. I was listening to ‘Your Talk’ by Temba Hove on 1st TV and the same question today is being asked by people.

On 3 September when Morgan Tsvangirai visited the Glenview 29 at Chikurubi, he failed to answer that question and said, “We will be visiting them, we will be visiting the chairman of the SADC, the chairman of the Troika, the Facilitator. Just to say perhaps you arrived at this conclusion erroneously. Whether they are going to review it that’s neither here nor there but what I want to do is to engage SADC, we can’t avoid engaging SADC about the facts on the ground. Whether that will have an effect, that’s a different matter.” This response to me meant that his party is not sure of what they will be lobbying for with the SADC bodies. In fact he has a conviction that their presentations to the SADC arms will be rather persuasive to alter any position that has so far been endorsed by the head of states.

On the way forward by the people in Zimbabwe, a reporter asked if people could expect an Egypt and he said, “Why should we have an Egypt and why should the MDC craft an Egypt style revolution? I have said it before that you don’t act in emotion, you act with conviction. That’s a more sustainable basis than to act with emotion. I believe further consultation with the people will reveal that the struggle has to continue but it has to continue with more conviction. People want instant coffee; they want instant solution to their plight … But unfortunately in the nature of a struggle where we are fighting a dictator using democratic means is not as instant as they expect. And I’m sure that they have to budget for even for a long haul.” The reporter quickly picked it up that there is no tangible plan that the people of Zimbabwe should anticipate from the MDC-T that can stand as indemnity to their lost cause and asked if the people should now wait for the 2018 elections for his party to bounce back with a plan and h said, ” No, no, no, we don’t plan for 2018, we plan for every eventuality.”

I am personally of the feeling that the people of Zimbabwe are all alone in their battles and there is no other way to take what rightfully belongs to them but to just wait for the hand of God to remember the land. The least thing that the MDC should have done is to organise people in the most peaceful way (not the Egypt) like they did on the 14th anniversary and make public illustrations loud enough to reach all SADC countries to show that the people of Zimbabwe are in great mourning.

Politics is for the people, of course they have got leaders but the biggest conveyors of any kind of message in the movement are the people. If the leadership, like the MDC-T’s says they can go it alone without the people like they did, it’s either that they have to have a concrete and fruitful plan or risk to lose the people.

The MDC is over. Ran three times. Their leader lost every time. They took power last time, became the ruling party, and managed to do nothing for democracy (plenty for themselves as individuals). They took the major cities every time – and again failed to make a serious democratic change every time.

And they deserved to lose. Not that the real loss is by as much as the reported margin. But they failed to campaign. Throughout their time as Ruling Party. Shocking loss of focus on the big picture. They deserved to lose.

They lost when they became a political party. Changed form being a ‘movement’ for democratic change, to the political party ‘Movement for Democratic Change’. A movement is a broad based, social, economic, cultural opinion. A voice, capable of saying all things, including all points of view, embracing all methods, being all things to all people. A Movement. A movement can be anti. E.g. the anti-apartheid movement. The anti-poaching movement. The anti gender violence movement. A political party is an organisation whose aim is to take and retain power. It does need discipline. And it needs an objective. What to do with the power it takes. The MDC had none of that. No discipline. No objective (and ‘anti’ is not an objective, it must be ‘for’). And it lost it’s broad base of support – although it did have massive support.

However, the struggle for democracy has thrown up many organisations. And they have all moved further along the road to democracy than the organisation that came before it. The Forum, and ZUM, both got further towards democracy (real democracy) than those previously. There is a wave effect. Started small, and each succeeding opposition movement goes further towards unseating the one party state than the one before it.

So maybe the next one…

Zimbabweans share their views on the election and the whether the MDC should boycott Parliament and Council:

I think boycotting will never change anything. They should accept the seats for the benefit of the party or else it will tear the party into shreds  like the previous senatorial predicament of 2008. Right now the winning  candidates are adamant about the issue. So let the fight go on whilst they are within.

I think the voters role has been tempered with, why is it most people in urban areas their name were either struck off on the role or their names interchanged from their wards. Was that not rigging?

Its a tough choice bakithi…if they boycott zanu pf will gladly run the country to the ground and juss ignore them..so I say join…we voted you into those offices.

I think they should boycott and give Zanu PF chance to do on their own.

Good day, No need to go into this shame government, let these devils rule on their own, they rigged the elections but can’t rig the economy. The precarious economic jigsaw of this country will soon bring them down, they won’t go anyway with this indigenization, the leadership is so obsolete and rusty and devoid of articulate ideas to steer this nation forward. To our soldiers who won, we ask you not to board this gravy train, let them perish with it, after all, they have a 2/3rd stolen majority in parliament.

I think MDC should take their seats in parliament and they should not contribute anything, they should just go there and sit so that they will have an insight on what Zanu PF will be planning.

Political parties in Zimbabwe win elections in two ways: by mobilizing their own supporters and suppressing the opposition vote. With its origins as an armed guerrilla insurgency, Zanu-PF has always used both approaches, combining force and patronage to build a political base of “no-go” zones in the country’s rural northeast where the MDC cannot campaign. Absent deep roots in either the labour movement or business community, Zanu-PF long ago lost the allegiance of most urban voters. For its part, however, the MDC, with its undisciplined performance in the coalition government, failed to consolidate its early support among these same groups. It also neglected the need to rebuild its own organization and consummate a grand coalition with minor opposition parties.

More from Michael Bratton writing for Foreign Affairs here

Being in the capital city, the seat of government, does provide one with an opportunity to listen in on political conversations at a very close level, and with what I have seen, the mood could well be different from my past experiences elsewhere not only with elections but the general political atmosphere and conversations centred around politics.

It is true that while political activism in places such as Bulawayo has been very much animated by the rise of Welshman Ncube, people one meets have not been the garrulous type eager to strike political conversation with total strangers, especially in pubs!

In the country’s south-western parts, the sentiment has long been, “you never know who might be listening,” and some commentators have actually opined that this has a historical context dating back to the early 1980s Gukurahundi where government spooks infiltrated neighbourhoods to listen in on conversations that would mention Gayigusu, Thambolenyoka, Gwesela and other notorious “dissidents” of the time.

Yet in the past weeks, I have interacted with all sorts of characters in Harare who seem very emboldened by the prospect of a new beginning for Zimbabwe such that “speaking their mind” is apparently only being realised today as their democratic right.

I listened to young men the other day speak about the future of the country, that it was time the country moved on from the chaos of the past 13 or more years.

An off-duty soldier who sat among us said it wasn’t his style to speak politics as he already knew how he would vote, and this was the same guy who every weekend sits with the lads who complain about virtually everything, it is tempting to say it would be strange if he held views contrary to those of his circle of friends.

We always accepted that people speak in hushed tones when discussing politics in public places, yet one does get the sense that while many anticipate these public spaces to be more open after tomorrow’s election with the much-expected coming in of a new government, the opposite can also be true: the repression could be upped with the victory of the same party many are predicting its demise. It’s a strange scenario.

I spoke with a young man whom I asked if he was going to vote and he replied in the negative, I asked him why, and he said “I’m just not into politics.”

Yet I see him all the time sitting around the same circles with the soldier who listens to his buddies cursing the founding fathers!

Still I replied that voting is not about liking or hating politics. His reply? “I already know the party I support, I support the old man’s party,” he said, further explaining as if to make sense not to me but to himself: both my parents are war veterans! How’s that!

In fact that should have been reason enough for him to go and register and vote for his parents’ party! Wouldn’t that make sense?

But then like many things here, everything ain’t what it seems.

Could be he knew if he registered, he would ultimately vote against his parents’ party, and because some people look for religious sensibilities everywhere, that would betray one of the greatest Commandments humankind has ever lived by: “Honour your mother and father so that your days may be long!” And hasn’t Mugabe said in the past that young people are rebelling against their parents by voting for the MDC-T?

Yet I did get a sense that in Harare, being the MDC-T backyard as it were, some folks have had no heebie- jeebies actually betraying their political loyalty despite all talk about your vote being your secret!