Morgan Tsvangirai Catching a Falling Knife
By Dr Paul Mutuzu
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s world tour that sought to financially reintegrate Zimbabwe into the international community finally came to a close last week. Whether the mission was successful or not depends on your political persuasion per se. While the Prime Minister carefully nuanced positions on the status of the Inclusive Government in Zimbabwe and what the future might (positively) hold, the facts on the ground indicate a disturbing pattern. To the informed, there is no disagreement that the perfidious game of political correctness which is now threatening to diminish the PM’s political capital has just begun. For the new PM, this is not the most enviable of times ‘to be king’.
Contrary to many critics, it must be noted that it was indeed a successful trip. It could have been more successful if Zanu PF had stopped undercutting the PM’s mission by inciting more farm invasions, wanton arrest of lawyers and journalists as well as engaging in all sorts of vituperation of the West. Those who celebrate the booing of PM Tsvangirai also forgot to tell us that the “Mugabe Must Go” sloganeering was even more rapturous and enduring at that venue.
Inside Zanu PF there is an embittered lunatic fringe that is eternally opposed to the inclusive government and all forms of progressiveness. These die-hards are hard-wired to think that whatever US or UK says is tantamount to imperial hubris. They will never learn that it is not ‘cool’ to spit into the wind or to lie to your doctor.
More conspicuously, Zanu PF’s handyman, Jonathan Moyo again opened a new chapter speaking contemptuously of the Prime Minister branding him a ‘slave’ because President Obama had graciously welcomed him at the White House. To this present day, no other man is as skilled as Jonathan Moyo at doing Zanu PF’s odd jobs. Remember his first odd job as the architect and director of the “Yes Campaign” of a fraudulently re-written Constitution of 2000, resoundingly defeated by the people of Zimbabwe. For some reason that got him promoted to the Ministry of Information.
It was the same Jonathan Moyo, who told a pack of lies profusely and shamelessly when he was Mugabe’s Minister of (mis)information. He publicly told the nation that he considered the Daily News to be a national security threat that needed to be dealt with “once and for all” a day before the newspaper’s printing press was savagely bombed on January 28, 2001.
On one hand Mugabe is begging while on the other he is brazenly promoting violence and lawlessness as his lieutenants wantonly locked up innocents, mainly from the opposition MDC and harassing journalists. While the PM is working hard to rebuild burnt bridges and alliances, Mugabe is busy wining and dining with dictators such as Omar al Bashir who massacred hundreds of thousands of black Africans in Sudan. There is a disconnect between begging and arrogance. Then they complain that PM Tsvangirai’s mission was a disaster. It is an uphill task for PM Tsvangirai especially given Mugabe’s double standards.
What is there to contest when the PM says “”We have a real chance to turn Zimbabwe into a success story in partnership with the international community”? The tribal thinking purveyed by Mugabe and his ideologues that Zimbabwe was somehow going to survive as a pariah state, was primitive, destructive and became the quickest road to economic hell. Jonathan Moyo underscored that mentality when he recently said “We are entitled to elect nincompoops and suffer them for the duration of their tenure.” Zanu PF nincompoops were never elected, they imposed themselves on us!
In addition, the so-called war veterans are still on the rampage, roving and raiding in search of plunder mostly sponsored by Mugabe and his men. Most of those “war veterans,” are nothing more than a bunch of rented thugs, unemployed (unemployable, to be precise!) and too young to have fought in the liberation war that ended nearly 30 years ago, most of them were not even born! In any case who cares about useless war credentials, even though most of them are concocted. We are for democracy and economic prosperity.
What we are seeing in Zimbabwe at the moment is the epitome of chaos theory of politics. We hear Gono must go by MDC vs Gono ain’t going nowhere by Mugabe, Mugabe for Kariba Draft Constitution vs Tsvangirai rejects Kariba Draft Constitution, no more farm invasions vs more farm invasions, US dollar here to stay by Tsvangirai vs Mugabe urges return of Zimbabwe dollar, rule of law restored vs journalists and activists arrested , Attorney General to formally charge Biti with treason (again), MDC Director General still locked up, Tsvangirai is Mugabe’s puppet vs I am not Mugabe’s puppet, by Tsvangirai, the litany of dichotomies goes on and on. The rhetoric has also been ratcheting up week after week.
At the same time, buyer’s remorse for the Inclusive Government has already kicked in. Ordinary Zimbabweans are worried about Zanu PF’s wanton violations of Global Political Agreement (GPA) terms while MDC appears to be unperturbed. The base is becoming increasingly anxious about the fate of the Inclusive Government. The dream for hope and change seems to be slipping away by the day.
The same is happening here in the US with the Obama administration. President Obama has capitulated on a number of campaign promises: whether it relates to prosecuting war crimes allegedly committed by Bush and company, habeas corpus with regard to Obama’s restoration of Bush’s military tribunals for Guantanamo prisoners indefinitely held there, cosmetic Wall Street reforms, disenchantment with the way the wars are going particularly in Afghanistan as well as frustrations with a fast dwindling economy are some of the pertinent issues.
The major source of my personal misgivings and current buyer’s remorse has been the bloated size of the bankrupt Zimbabwe government which is chockfull of redundant ministries. For instance, it is retarded to have a Minister of Education, Minister of AND Higher Education; Minister of Agriculture, Minister of AND Lands, Minister of AND Water; Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of AND Home Affairs (two of them) and of course there are several ministers of State in the Ministers of state’s offices (sic).
In Zimbabwean politics Zanu PF feeds and burgeons on organized chaos while the MDC continues to play ‘the nice guy’. To gain a perspective, Mugabe thrives when things are fractious with a prevailing war-like situation that breeds animosity and paranoia. To this present day Mugabe has created for himself extremely messy situations that even saw hundreds of people dying yet for him it served a sinister purpose as he is always the progenitor of such chaos. Some of the situations seemed to indicate that the dictator was cornered and finally going but only to see him emerging more viciously entrenched than before. There is no better definition of a dictator than someone who has been in power by hook and crook for 29 years and still counting,
Mugabe and his Zanu PF party know fully well that they will never win any free and fair election in Zimbabwe. For that reason, their political machinations are light years ahead of the MDC, no wonder they are already talking about the Kariba Draft which they are gearing to exploit in order to circumvent the constitutional reform process. Mugabe believes that Zimbabwe’s politics is in his possession and under his dominion. MDC politicians have to be strong enough to stand up to Zanu PF’s cunning schemes.
When Prime Minister Tsvangirai says Mugabe is part of the and solution, he ‘ain’t kiddin’. For the faint-hearted, like me, I pray for the Prime Minister’s safety occasionally as he is surrounded by brigands. The problem is that the Inclusive Government has ensured safety for thugs, murderers and rapists whose atrocious human rights records are a ‘public secret’. As a result they have been given tacit approval to continue with those crimes against humanity with impunity.
If more MDC-affiliated ministers were as fearless and tenacious as Tendai Biti, half the GNU’s problems would have been solved by now. Their docility has huge political consequences for the people of Zimbabwe and for the PM himself. Take the Home Affairs Minister, Giles Mutsekwa for instance, wherever he has been hibernating all these months is quite a mystery. What a waste of an appointment!
In what seemed like a brewing class warfare, we also learnt that the Zimbabwean Diaspora community in the UK was extremely hostile to the Prime Minister because he had appealed to them about the need to return home arguing that Zimbabwe has become more stable than before the inclusive government was instituted.
The notion that the Prime Minister was deliberately attempting to mislead Zimbabweans in the Diaspora is political naiveté at its worst. We met him in Washington DC and he said exactly the same words that he repeated in the UK. We found no offense in his remarks, instead we saw a patriot whose sole objective ( at least for now) is to ensure that the Diaspora urgently re-engages with the homeland. If the people in the Diaspora want to hear a false diagnosis of what Zimbabwe needs in order for it to move forward, then the PM was certainly not the harbinger of such falsehoods. He was forthright on that issue. What the brothers and sisters in the UK might have missed is that the economic realities of the Zimbabwe situation require a massive brain gain to reverse the brain drain that occurred.
On the other hand, it would be unfair to entirely blame the Diaspora for not cordially welcoming the Prime Minister. Relations between Zimbabwean politicians and those in the Diaspora have always been rocky. Mugabe himself started the animosity with his regular diatribes that ridiculed and demeaned the people in the Diaspora.
I can understand the Zimbabwean Diaspora’s frustrations. As reported in the Herald of September 4, 2004 Mugabe’s chronic bellicose rhetoric took him to another level when he castigated the Diaspora saying: “Vanoenda kunaBlair (Tony, British Prime Minister) vosvika ikoko basa ravanopiwa nderekuchengeta tuchembere vachitukwenya misana. Aiwaka regai kutinyadzisa kudaro,” (scoffing at the trashy jobs that the Diasporans sometimes settle for, such as working in nursing homes)
Ironically, Mugabe’s money-printing economy was literally sustained by Diaspora remittances. According to his own admission, the Minister of Economic Planning Elton Mangoma, admitted recently that the Diaspora remits up to US$1 billion a year to Zimbabwe. Surprisingly, there is no deliberate strategy to harness this tremendous financial resource.
The mere fact that PM Tsvangirai teamed up with Mugabe and his ilk, the very embodiments of violence, cruelty and moral ugliness is a source of convulsions to many in the Diaspora. However there was no other way out of this political quagmire except through the inclusive government. In any case the Diaspora takes portion of the blame for deserting the struggle and leaving it to MDC alone. Whoever mentioned that the people of Zimbabwe were experiencing ‘struggle fatigue’ was right. It was not the first time Mugabe had stolen an election yet nothing was done about that.
The general populace that the Diaspora left in Zimbabwe after the mass exodus was incapable of waging a formidable civil disobedience (the magnitude of recent Iranian uprising or Ukraine’s Orange Revolution) that was needed to topple Mugabe. The international community had given up on Zimbabwe only to resurface last year with an inclusive government-type deal. Probably if Zimbabwe and Sudan had weapons of mass destruction, that would have been a different story as more and appropriate international attention would have been invested in both countries.
In that regard, the Diaspora has not been included in the leadership of the inclusive government regardless of the role it played (and continues to play) in the Zimbabwean economy. Understandably so, previously the Diaspora was not allowed to vote hence it was politically insignificant. Politicians want power and votes. There is no doubt that the impending new constitution will include the Diaspora vote hence resurrecting its role. Going forward, who does not want part of the ‘four million people’ cake which is almost half the entire electorate?
The Diaspora is suddenly becoming a strong force to reckon with even though its true role continues to be bastardized by paranoid politicians. As a way of illustration, let’s do some fuzzy math here: There is no disagreement that the four million people who left Zimbabwe are economically active. Assuming that the inclusive government embarks on a ‘US$100 per Diasporan’ fund raising campaign in exchange of stock ownership in a stable publicly traded company, total revenue will be $400 million easily. Compare that with the current pathetic monthly national revenues of US$6 million.
This donor/aid syndrome has blinded the Biti’s and the Mangoma’s of our time who are responsible for economic recovery strategy. Home-grown solutions work, but it starts by proactively engaging and appreciating the role that the Diaspora can play. Things have to be done differently this time around. It is sad to note that the Diaspora has been taken for granted yet it has the potential to kick-start the economy in an enormous way.
Let us also remember that the battle to clean up Zimbabwe requires all of us, each one playing his or her part and not just the MDC. Who said it is safe out there (in Zimbabwe) for the PM and the MDC? Dr. Martin L. King once said: “Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right.”
In the contemporary context, for the PM, it was also a question of a flawed communication strategy. The Diaspora in various parts of the world has developed its own cultures, norms and sensitivities over the past decade. There has to be a deliberate effort to politically and economically engage the Diaspora. In all his speeches and interviews, the PM has at least five competing audiences that have to be addressed, unfortunately simultaneously most of the time: the international/donor community, the Diaspora, Zanu PF machinery, MDC followers and the general Zimbabwean populace.
At this point the PM needs wordsmiths. His communications department should be more than a mere spinning apparatus but a robust team that engages these audiences on a regular basis churning out intelligent stuff. When we hear that the PM has embarked on a newsletter it comes as no surprise. The question still remains as to how far the MDC has taken issue with the Herald. The MDC must demand its fair share of airtime as well as a complete reform of the Herald to include firing partisan journalists. There has to be a revolt because Zanu PF is getting away with too many crimes.
However that is not to say the PM must be allowed to manipulate people into a tacit acceptance of many of the policies that he campaigned against and that the MDC stands for. For instance it was inappropriate for him to say that there is no violence in Zimbabwe (if reports are authenticated). For those of us in MDC, we know fully well that there has to be strong loyal opposition and self-criticism for our leadership, lack of which will be self-destructive. Zanu PF regime successfully produced the Mugabe monster. By now Mugabe should have been comfortably and fully retired as an elderly patriarch like Nelson Mandela.
In the world of stock market investments, it is a taboo to attempt to catch a falling knife. It is considered suicidal to try and invest in a freefalling stock like Zimbabwe, not until it bottoms out. For the PM, trying to rescue Zimbabwe is like attempting to catch a falling knife. It is lethal. It is this heroic dedication that should see men and women rallying around the cause for reform and change in Zimbabwe. The journey is full of several obstacles and treacheries.
In carrying out his duties of helping to rebuild Zimbabwe, we have to remember that Mr Morgan Tsvangirai has also morphed from being a mere leader of an opposition party to a leader of a country. It is also very easy to judge the Prime Minister against a resume of five months yet we have a failed Mugabe with a useless resume of nearly 30 years.
PM has a difficult task of trying to plug holes that were created by the Mugabe’s regime for so long. At the same time no one quite knows what exactly the future holds. PM is in a battle to win for “hearts and minds” of the international community. The Jonathan Moyo notion that somehow USA and UK will just pour money into Zimbabwe is delusional. They are frustrated and envious of the fact that the PM is proving to be a nimble politician, surprisingly to them, contrary to many warped and preconceived notions such as the one which Mugabe desperately promoted when he occasionally branded Tsvangirai as an ‘ignoramus’ that will ‘never ever rule Zimbabwe!’
