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18 June 2008
By Tanonoka Whande
IT IS interesting to see Dumiso Dabengwa now jumping ship to support MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai. ZANU-PF’s orphans are coming to the people.
Taking a stance at this point is the right thing for everyone to do, especially at this stage when the most important item on the agenda is to get rid of the dinosaur called Robert Mugabe.
I believe that even Tsvangirai knows that after winning, he cannot go it alone and I know for certain there are people from outside the MDC that he will want to take on board.
Dabengwa’s open support (did he have any choice?) is quite welcome if taken in the context of what Zimbabweans currently need to achieve.
I know Dabengwa has his differences with the MDC but he is, at least, clever enough to realize that his hopes stand a better chance of fulfillment after getting rid of Mugabe. His support for Tsvangirai, however humble, is therefore important and I hope it bears fruit.
And this brings me to that other politician, Simba Makoni, the one who is so blinded by the zeal for ascendancy that he does not realise he encourages himself to remain in quicksand by going around campaigning for the discarding of elections.
In early April, only a few days after being sworn in as president of Botswana, Ian Khama simply picked up the phone and called SADC Chairman, Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa. “We have a problem,” Khama said and demanded that the crisis in Zimbabwe be discussed.
They gathered in Lusaka to try to solve the crisis in Zimbabwe without circumventing the democratic process that had seen an incumbent president losing to the opposition.
Robert Mugabe refused to attend the Lusaka ‘extra-ordinary’ summit, prompting his ally, South African President Thabo Mbeki, to fly to Lusaka via Harare.
When Mbeki arrived in Lusaka and uttered the infamous ‘there is no crisis in Zimbabwe’ nonsense, he found the winner of the Zimbabwe plebiscite, Morgan Tsvangirai, in attendance.
Tsvangirai asked for SADC’s intervention since Mugabe was refusing to divulge the results of the presidential election although ZANU-PF had lost its parliamentary majority to the MDC.
At that same summit, another losing candidate, Simba Makoni, who came in third, reportedly with a paltry 8 percent of the presidential vote and no parliamentary seat, was also in attendance but for a different reason.
While everybody was worried about the circumvention of electoral democracy in Zimbabwe, Simba Makoni’s reason for attending the summit was to offer himself as a compromise. He tried to entice the gathered heads of state into ditching the election and appointing him president of a government of national unity.
Makoni was campaigning against the election.
Of cause, SADC leaders paid no attention to Makoni. Elections are an important undertaking and the leaders could not collectively accept a proposal to wilfully disregard the wish of the people of Zimbabwe. But just last week, Makoni was in South Africa where he told a media briefing that Zimbabwe’s presidential election run-off should be scrapped “to prevent further bloodshed”.
Makoni is still campaigning for a government of national unity hoping that this arrangement not only will accommodate him but might consider him as “a compromise” between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
“We are convinced that the last thing our country and its people need is another election,” Makoni said on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum meeting in Cape Town. “Besides, the violence now gripping the country bodes ill for a free and fair election.”
While that might be true, his solution is what is disturbing.
It is no surprise, however, that a person who only campaigned once in his life and lost should declare that the last thing Zimbabwe needs is another election. Clearly, he has no respect for elections at all. Makoni should be using the little influence and credibility he may still have left to campaign for the total removal of Robert Mugabe, his mentor, so that democracy can be left to run unhindered.
What is at stake here, what is wrong here is the behaviour of Mugabe and his security chiefs, not the conduct of the elections.
“There’s no way you can underrate the impact of this violence, especially in the rural areas,” conceded Tsvangirai late last week. “But we are really encouraged and inspired by the will of the people to finish off what they started on March 29. Were it not for the will of the people and the claim by the people that we can’t look back, one could have said, ‘What’s the point of continuing this campaign?’ But for the sake of those who have died and been traumatized, I think it’s the fulfillment of their wish to have this change that has kept us in the field and that will keep us fighting.”
I find myself agreeing with Tsvangirai because this is the wish of the people, the very ones who are being subjected to murder and mayhem. They want their voices heard and wishes fulfilled.
We cannot ditch a process, as Simba Makoni wishes us to do for his own selfish intentions, because some rogue citizens and a spent, unwanted and desperate Mugabe are fighting hard to tarnish a system that is clearly beneficial to the nation.
When a snake slithers into a hut, you do not burn the hut down. You seek out the serpent and deal with it. Mugabe is tarnishing democracy; he is defiling elections and is killing people because people voted against him. We criticize Mugabe, not the electoral process.
And Makoni is saying since Mugabe having people killed because they voted against him, we should do away with elections and just form a government of national unity that will, so he hopes, include him and Mugabe. Makoni is showing the same disregard for people’s rights and hinterests as his mentor Mugabe does.
As the people indicated at the polls, Makoni is hardly a player in Zimbabwean politics right now and to take someone who could not even be supported by 10 percent of the population and make him president is the highest insult we can hurl at our citizens. People died and continue to die for their convictions. To circumvent an electoral process, which they are prepared to die for, just to appease a losing candidate, would be highly immoral.
There is a lot yet that Simba Makoni can do for Zimbabwe if he can just stop thinking of personal gains for himself. The country is headed for a run-off election and the 8 percent that voted for Makoni need their leader to say something to help them choose between the two current contestants. Instead he is unrealistically trying to become President through the back door.
And at the end of last week, Makoni said that it was inappropriate at this time to show support for either candidate. Instead, he still harps on a transitional government and will not denounce Zanu-PF for its behaviour towards innocent citizens. But Dabengwa, his former most prominent supporter disagrees.
“Personally,” says Dabengwa, “I am saying it is better to prepare for the run-off by going back to our pledge to the people not to support Mugabe, no matter what,” said Dabengwa. Makoni should be playing his part too to help isolate Mugabe.
Makoni should be aware that both Mugabe and Tsvangirai have paid heavy dues to be where they are and for him to expect a free ride into State House is a dream that needs no interpretation. Makoni must know that Zimbabwe needs, and will have, an elected president not an appointed one.-The Zimbabwe Times.
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