Response to Jonathan Moyo and Nathaniel Manheru

By Makusha Mugabe

Yes it’s a coup. No. Zanu (PF) politicians are not treacherously quite; they are tired of Jonathan Moyo, Nathaniel Manheru et al’s games; Tsvangirai is not embattled; he is the centre to which all rational people are gravitating.

Yes Zimbabwe is at war (one sided and undeclared); and yes Tsvangirai is a threat, not to national security, but to Jonathan Moyo’s ambitions and his attempt to realise them by subverting the SADC Peace Process using rogue elements in the security forces.

Zimbabweans do not need Jonathan Moyo (l) to tell them what their national security needs are; they know the precipice to which Zanu (PF) took them and how the MDC, in pursuit of national security, saved the country. National security means food, development, peace and freedom, freedom to remove governments that fail and replace them with those that have attractive policies – and to continue like that in perpetuity.

The fact that Moyo finds all the multinational corporations that are employing the few Zimbabweans who are still working, that he finds the political parties that were formed because of Zanu (PF)’s failure to govern, the NGOs and churches that are sustaining a semblance of normal life among starved villages, the journalists and academics who are trying to tell the truth, the fact that he finds them all as threats to national security who are targeting the foundational values, institutional backbone and cultural pillars of Zimbabwe, can only suggest that the he and whoever he represents, have arrogated to themselves the custodianship of national interest.

What Moyo called the benchmarks of the regime change agenda – the fact that independent media and NGOs are anti-Zanu-PF- has nothing to do with their being against the foundational values and aspirations of the Zimbabwe State, but against the selfish interests of self-appointed custodians of the State. Zimbabwe is defined by our Constitution which Zanu (PF) has done its best to subvert, but which has thankfully held up, so far. And Zimbabweans have said, again in 2008, and constitutionally so, that Zanu (PF) cannot continue on its path to destroy our motherland.

We are also saying Moyo and Nathaniel Manheru can no longer continue to lie to Zimbabweans, for example that the so-called ex-combatants who demonstrated at Minister of Finance Tendai Biti’s office had a police permit which allowed them to enter the Minister’s office and hold his staff hostage.

This is what turned them into “thugs” in the media’s eyes. If they demonstrated peacefully as all other Zimbabweans do, instead of threatening and beating up those who disagree with them, they would not be called thugs – it has nothing to do with undermining the legacy of the liberation struggle, which legacy they have abandoned any, thus pitting themselves against the people.

The fact that Moyo is encouraging the likes of Brigadier General Douglas Nyikayaramba to continue using their access to the State’s armories to undermine democracy makes Jonathan Moyo a serious threat to national security, one that should be pursued and charged, because he is trying to plant a coup mentality in the hitherto disciplined Zimbabwe Defense Forces.

As for Manheru’s puerile assertion that there cannot be a coup against a “mere senior minister”, let him be educated that Zimbabweans are now clear that is a coup by subversion of a democratic process, but unfortunately for him, a process that is already part of the current constitutional order – thanks to the historic signing of the Global Political Agreement.

The evidence of this coup is clear in Moyo’s statement that Nyikayaramba’s treasonous statements are justified by the fact that, to quote from the statement: “it is crystal obvious that the politicians who should be regularly making the point are treacherously silent but the compelling fact that what Nyikayaramba said about Tsvangirai is unimpeachably true and therefore right.”

The roguishness of Nyikayaramba and the other generals who subscribe to the same thinking is clear in that nobody, except the Moyo and Manheru who are following them, or leading them – Moyo said Tsvangirai was a national security threat and they followed; he said Timba should be arrested and he was – unfortunately the judges did not agree. Our calling them rogue generals is therefore not name-calling, but arises from their own actions and pronouncements in relation to their constitutional responsibilities. 

Moyo’s threats to name and shame journalists whom he claims are receiving brown envelopes to sell their country, is a welcome one, because, besides being custodians of the truth, journalists also have the ethical responsibility to tell the national story as it is, and not to be influenced by brown envelopes.

Things have already come to a head, in fact a month ago at Livingston, and they are still at a head, which is the roadmap in the next two weeks, the constitution, elections, and oblivion for Jonathan Moyo and Manheru, whoever he is. So the sooner Moyo names the cheque-book journalists the sooner he can make his frivolous point, though it will not stop MDC Juggernaut.

US Ambassador Charles Ray said, removing President Robert Mugabe alone from power was not a solution for Zimbabwe, that Mugabe was likely to face a revolt by discontented youths and employed youths and that the Zanu (PF) sanctions mantra is a ruse.

The only national security implications of that are that democratic forces who want to ensure the national security of Zimbabwe should look beyond the removal of Mugabe, to supplanting the corrupt system which the securocrats have put in place through appointments at key institutions and allocations of mining concessions through which they hope to retain power, with or without the political backing of Zanu (PF).

Moyo seeks to ascribe some illegal regime change agenda to Ambassador Ray’s statement when in fact it is a statement of the reality on the ground in Zimbabwe; that it is we, the Zimbabweans who seek regime change, not just the removal of Mugabe, not just the government in terms of who is in elected office and the executive, but also to uproot the corrupt system of patronage that has got us all working to pay to sustain an insolvent airline as an ambulance for the dictator, which also provides jobs for his boys.

To seek to remove this system is not a threat to national security, but it is a direct and very serious threat to Jonathan Moyo and Nathaniel Manheru who want to ride into a new and dictatorial Zimbabwe on the coat-tails of rogue generals that are now betraying the very Liberation Struggle that they claim to be upholding.

They are trying to lead the nation to a future of strife and poverty instead of allowing the nation to take its shape and defend it from the real threats to our national security, poverty, sectarianism, corruption, and lawlessness. Allow the nation to lead the gun, not the other way round, as it was said very well recently by Wilfred Mhanda.

No wonder the Central Intelligence Organisation sent Deputy Intelligence Officer Simon Chisorochengwe after Dzinashe Machingura (Wilfred Mhanda’s Chimurenga name) and his Zimbabwe Liberators’ Platform (ZLP). What Third Chimurenga principle was the CIO following there, if this is an ideological battle within Zanla?

No wonder Jonathan Moyo finds it very convenient to claim that the Americans have designs on Zimbabwe, just to create and external enemy to rally around, while ignoring the hunger and disease that are snapping at our people, from Tsholotsho to Muzarabani. If Zimbabwe does not have rabies then it certainly has another communicable disease that is festering and threatens to break out in the whole region.

Jonathan Moyo, no matter on what hilltop he decides to shout from, cannot rewrite the history of Zimbabwe to say that the country has enjoyed “unparalleled peace” in the last decade. Comparisons with the violence in South Africa is facetious. What violence there is in South Africa is the result criminal gangs operating in that country and cannot be equated to the State-sponsored violence that has seen Zimbabweans scatter all over the world and fill our jails and remand centres with political prisoners.

The formation of the MDC had nothing to do with the British, but the result of Zimbabweans who came together under the Working People’s Convention, having become convinced of Zanu (PF)’s loss of direction, and its proclivity to maintain power against the people’s will. Zanu (PF) was indicted by the people for this and remains indicted – an indictment which rang from every polling station in the land again in 2008.

This being a Constitutional Democracy, Zanu (PF) must accept this indictment and allow a free and fair election to take place as soon possible so that our people can speak freely and the country might stabilise and we might start seeing the fruits of our independence.

Security sector reform, media reform and the reform of electoral institutions are not new things being sneaked into the GPA by Tsvangirai, but issues that Zanu (PF) has been refusing to implement, just as they refused to appoint the MDC’s nominee for deputy Minister of Agriculture, but which SADC has now said must be resolved in the next few weeks.

Jonathan Moyo and Nathaniel Manheru’s shenanigans are nothing but attempts to wriggle out of this last part of what has been an unnecessarily long process, but one which had to be undertaken so that the facts could be laid bare and the lies exposed – as they have now been.

Makusha Mugabe is the editor of Change Zimbabwe.com