AG Tomana plans to humiliate Tsvangirai

By Denford Magora

The disputed Attorney General of Zimbabwe, Johannes Tomana, is now on a mission to openly show contempt for Morgan Tsvangirai and to utterly humiliate him in the eyes of his followers and the world at large.

The renewed assault also explains Tsvangirai’s statement yesterday in Bulawayo that his party members are being victimised.

Here’s the deal:

As you know, I am in court tomorrow with Dr Makoni to answer charges under the Public Order and Security Act. But it does not end there.

The Attorney General has now revived hordes of cases against mostly MDC Tsvangirai MPs and members under the same draconian. Hundreds of people will be dragged to court in the next few weeks to face these charges, paralysing the grassroots structures of the opposition in Zimbabwe.

I am told that the Attorney General, when he was confronted with this, said that he is going ahead with the cases in order to “close the files”!

That is an excuse and a half, do you not think?

If he wanted to close the files, he could have just dropped the charges, to reflect the new dispensation.

The actual design is to ensure that Morgan Tsvangirai is utterly humiliated, as he has no power to do anything at all about all this. He will see his party officials in court, charged with addressing their own supporters.

He will have to find money to hire lawyers and defend these people in courts all over the country.

Apart from this, the move is also designed, as one journalist friend put it to me today, “to ensure that this Inclusive Government does not work.”

It all just goes to confirm to you what I have been saying since last week, that Mugabe can not understand why Morgan Tsvangirai remains in government. His thinking is that he has not humiliated the Prime Minister enough.

So the pressure I spoke of last week is now being rolled out. Having refused outright to swear in Governors (Tsvangirai was paying what the state media called “courtesy calls” on ZANU PF Governors all over Matabeleland last week), Roy Bennett and also the MDC ambassadors, Mugabe is now taking the fight to the next level.

Johannes Tomana, the Attorney General, although he is taking his orders from Robert “The Solution” Mugabe, also has a personal axe to grind and the zeal with which he will be launching the latest round of the persecution of MDC supporters will be evidence enough.

The fight has now been taken to Tsvangirai, with the hope that he will throw his hands in the air and walk away.

This is unlikely, as the MDC leader is now virtually alone in the region, having lost his last steadfast friend, Botswana, who are now openly saying that there is no other option in Zimbabwe apart from the Inclusive Government.

On the “outstanding issues”, Botswana is also said to have told Tsvangirai that they did not think these serious enough to warrant abandoning the Inclusive Government.

So, Tsvangirai is here to stay.

Remember you heard it here first. You will soon see a roll-out of prosecutions (persecutions, really) all over the country as Mugabe’s Attorney General hauls MPs and activists before the courts in order “to close the files.”

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