NELSON Chamisa, long-positioned as Zimbabwe’s youthful face of opposition politics, has increasingly become the embodiment of its contradictions.
His leadership is marked by opportunism, a chronic lack of strategy and an inflated personal ego, with repeated failures to build an enduring opposition political institution or articulate clear positions on national and global crises.
He has curiously made a habit of surfacing only during election cycles, neglecting grassroots structures and the aspirations of the very people he claims to champion, while fostering a personality-driven politics that undermines collective opposition.
In essence, Chamisa confuses visibility for viability: his politics are rich in symbolism but poor in substance, leaving Zimbabwe’s opposition trapped in cycles of hope and disappointment.
Agenda 2026, his latest offering, arrives wrapped in the language of renewal but is less a roadmap than a mirage. After years of retreat from active politics, Chamisa re-emerges with promises of a “fresh start,” yet the substance is conspicuously absent.
Meanwhile, Zimbabweans remain battered by unemployment, economic hardship and political stagnation. Their ambitions are expansive, rooted in empowerment, innovation, and inclusion, but they deserve more than slogans.
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They deserve leadership with courage, clarity and conviction. Chamisa has consistently failed to provide that, and his Agenda 2026 shows no sign of breaking the pattern.
Habit of opportunism
Chamisa has cultivated a troubling habit where he resurfaces before elections not to advance a coherent strategy or strengthen institutions, but to replenish his relevance, refill his pockets, and once again take the hopes and aspirations of an entire nation for a ride.
His politics follow a predictable cycle, vanishing during civic crises, reappearing in the heat of electoral seasons and retreating when the arduous work of institution building demands consistency and courage.
This pattern exposes a leader more invested in massaging his own ego and inflating his delusions of grandeur than in nurturing collective agency. He seems convinced that he alone embodies the aspirations of those yearning for an alternative, when in truth such a burden should never rest on one man but on a disciplined, collective movement.
Opposition politics is not a theatre for personal validation; instead, it is the hard discipline of statecraft that requires fluency in institutions, negotiation with entrenched power brokers, and the courage to confront authoritarian machinery head-on.
Chamisa has shown little appetite for this discipline. His politics remain reactive, rhetorical, and hollow, rich in symbolism but barren of substance, leaving Zimbabwe’s opposition trapped in cycles of hope and disappointment rather than charting a credible path to transformation.
Record of abdication
Since 2018, Chamisa’s brand of opposition politics has been defined less by decisive leadership than by a pattern of abdication. Time and again, he has mistaken silence for strategy, neutrality for wisdom and rhetoric for renewal.
Faced with contested elections, he offered outrage without a coherent plan to defend the vote. When confronted with state repression, he retreated into religious ambiguity rather than mobilising principled resistance, and now, in the face of Russia’s war in Ukraine, a conflict that has ensnared African youth through trafficking and deception, Chamisa remains conspicuously mute.
Neutrality in such moments is not wisdom; it is complicity. His refusal to articulate Zimbabwe’s position on global crises mirrors the cowardice of the very establishment he claims to oppose.
Agenda 2026, presented as a fresh start, is instead a hollow document that is silent on sovereignty, silent on exploitation and silent on the trafficking of African youth into foreign wars.
This is not leadership, but evasion dressed up as renewal, a politics of illusion that leaves Zimbabwe’s opposition supporters trapped in familiar cycles of hope and betrayal.
Betrayal of the youth
The most damning indictment of Chamisa’s politics is his betrayal of Zimbabwe’s youth, the very constituency he claims to embody. Across Africa, young people have been lured into Russia’s war machine under false pretences, promised jobs, education, or stability, only to find themselves thrust into combat or conscripted into drone factories such as Alabuga.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry estimates that more than 1 400 Africans from 36 countries are now fighting under Russian military contracts, a chilling testament to how desperation can be weaponised.
Zimbabwe’s youth are not immune. With unemployment soaring and governance failures multiplying, their vulnerability becomes fertile ground for exploitation, yet Chamisa’s Agenda 2026 offers no substantive plan to shield them from such manipulation, no strategy to anchor dignity at home, no vision to transform their despair into opportunity.
This neglect mirrors the failures of the ruling establishment he claims to oppose, reducing his rhetoric to hollow theatre. In the end, Chamisa’s politics betray the very generation whose courage, clarity and conviction should be the foundation of Zimbabwe’s renewal.
Opposition without opposition
Since 2018, Chamisa’s opposition politics have been marked by a dangerous and recurring pattern where he positions himself as the alternative yet consistently fails to oppose in any meaningful way.
Rather than setting the agenda, he has allowed the ruling Zanu PF establishment to dictate the terms of debate, while his own interventions remain reactive, rhetorical and ultimately hollow.
Agenda 2026 is a continuation of this “follower” malaise, gesturing at renewal, but shirking responsibility, cloaking itself in citizen-driven language yet refusing to confront the defining crises of Zimbabwe’s present: rampant youth unemployment, institutional decay, and external manipulation.
What emerges is not a politics of resistance but a politics of performance. Opposition without opposition is theatre and Chamisa has perfected the art of grandstanding without substance, slogans without strategy and promises without delivery.
His politics, rich in spectacle but barren of substance, leave Zimbabwe trapped in cycles of hope and disappointment, a nation yearning for transformation but offered only illusion.
Continental pattern of failure
Chamisa’s opportunism is hardly an anomaly; it is emblematic of a deeper malaise afflicting Africa’s opposition movements. Raila Odinga in Kenya, despite decades of mass mobilisation, repeatedly misread the architecture of power, confusing the roar of crowds for control and outrage for leverage.
Morgan Tsvangirai, Chamisa’s mentor, won the vote in 2008 in Zimbabwe but lost the election, blindsided by Zanu PF’s counter-offensive and coerced into capitulation.
Julius Malema in South Africa, once a radical firebrand, now stands accused of living off questionable funds and personalising the movement he leads.
Bobi Wine in Uganda, initially heralded as a youthful disruptor, increasingly mirrors Chamisa’s trajectory of surfacing during election cycles only to vanish during civic crises, leaving supporters leaderless and disillusioned, a pattern Wine has repeated in the aftermath of the contested elections in Uganda in January 2026.
At the heart of Chamisa’s feebleness lies his reliance on personality politics, cyclical opportunism and a chronic failure to craft institutional strategy.
He thrives on spectacle but neglects the slow, disciplined work of embedding opposition within the machinery of governance.
In contrast, movements such as Tanzania’s Chadema, South Africa’s Democratic Alliance and Botswana’s opposition coalitions have demonstrated that institutional leverage, not charisma alone, is the true currency of political influence.
By cultivating parliamentary presence, legal strategies and continuity beyond electoral seasons, they have managed to sustain relevance and pressure ruling establishments in ways Chamisa has conspicuously failed to emulate.
Across the continent, opposition leaders conflate visibility with viability, mistaking the virality of slogans and the electricity of rallies for genuine traction within the architecture of statecraft. They dominate discourse but not decision-making.
They win applause, but lose the country. Chamisa’s Agenda 2026 fits seamlessly into this continental pattern: a politics of illusion, rich in symbolism but impoverished in substance, offering Zimbabwe not renewal but another cycle of hope deferred.
Part of Chamisa’s complacency springs from the vacuum created by the absence of credible, fearless and valiant alternative leaders willing to challenge his leadership.
Zimbabwe’s opposition has been steadily cannibalised by petty rivalries, donor dependency, and the corrosive lure of personal branding.
Leadership contests are driven less by ideology than by ego, while civic engagement is routinely sacrificed for the sake of optics and spectacle. Yet history teaches that factions within political movements, far from being destructive, can be profoundly healthy.
Competition sharpens leaders, forces accountability and compels organisations to reveal their best selves. In the absence of such internal contestation, Chamisa has grown dangerously complacent, convinced of his indispensability and insulated from critique.
This unchecked dominance is not strength but fragility; it poses a grave risk to the health of Zimbabwe’s democracy, which depends on fearless alternatives and principled rivalry to sustain its vitality.
Politics of illusion
Without the youth at the centre stage, particularly the restless and ambitious Gen Z, Chamisa’s Agenda 2026 collapses into a politics of illusion.
Although it promises transformation, it is destined to deliver only slogans because it gestures at renewal yet evades responsibility; it claims to be citizen-driven while refusing to directly confront the real crises that define Zimbabwe’s present.
Chamisa’s return is less an act of courage than a performance of relevance, a bid to re-enter the political stage without the substance to sustain it. Zimbabwe’s youth deserve far more. They deserve leadership that confronts exploitation, defends sovereignty and builds credible futures.
If Agenda 2026 were truly a roadmap for renewal, it would have gone far beyond slogans and tackled Zimbabwe’s most urgent structural crises head-on. It would have been a covenant with the youth and tackled Zimbabwe’s most urgent structural crises head-on.
Instead, it has become yet another chapter in the politics of the nation based on the same tired script, not a performance of relevance. Zimbabwe’s future cannot be built on shadows anymore; instead, it demands leaders who embody their conviction through action, not spectacle. Chamisa must return to parliament.
Muzengeza is an independent journalist, political risk analyst and urban strategist offering incisive insight on urban planning, infrastructure, leadership succession and governance reform across Africa’s evolving post-liberation and urban landscapes.