Mugabe publicly lectures Tsvangirai
By Denford Magora
Robert “The Soltuion” Mugabe announced at a press conference yesterday that he has now finally signed the mandates that will allow MDC-Tsvangirai and MDC (Mutambara) ambassadors to take up their posts in the new year.
You will recall that this blog was the first media in the world to reveal to you that the announcement by the Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai that his ambassadors would be posted in August 2009 was wrong and that Mugabe was refusing to post them until Tsvangirai called for the lifting of sanctions.
We were also the first to reveal to you that Trudy Stevenson had been nominated by Deputy PM Arthur Mutambara to become Ambassador to Senegal.
Yesterday’s pres conference was addressed by Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara together.
The appointment of ambassadors, however, is a non-event, because these have no impact on the performance of this inclusive givernment. It is a smokescreen from Mugabe, so that he can claim that he has started implementing the Global Political Agreement in full.
Mugabe pointedly used the press conference to confirm his intransigence on the sticky issues of the appointment of Gideon Gono and Johannes Tomana.
“This huge Government of three parties can not be derailed by Tomana (the Attorney General of Zimbabwe, whom the MDC says was appointed irregularly and is vindictively pursuing MDC-Tsvangirai officials and activists in the courts).”
Condescending as ever, Mugabe also used the press conference to lecture Morgan Tsvangirai on the meaning and art of negotiations:
“When you negotiate, you negotiate with a mind that must accept two dimensions of outcomes. One outcome is of the gains you get; and another one is of the gains the other party will get and that is your losses,” said Mugabe.
“We have made a lot of gains all of us in terms of gains to the inclusive Government. We have fulfilled a much greater area than that remains to be fulfilled.”
Tsvangirai himself, sitting besides Mugabe as the lecture was delivered, appeared happy enough with these crumbs from Mugabe’s high table:
“Let us give our negotiators the time to conclude, but I hope that it won’t be long that we put this one aside,” he said, adding that the fact that “everyone” has accepted the Inclusive Government is an indication that he, Mugabe and Mutambara “were doing their job.”
Of course, as I have mentioned before, he ignored the fact that the real issues that led him to pull out of the government temporarily on 16 October 2009.
Mugabe still refuses to swear in Roy Bennett, to fire Tomana or Gideon Gono. He still maintains his private army our in the rural areas, which is going around telling people that next time, it will be a bullet in the head for Morgan Tsvangirai and not a beating on the buttocks like in the June 2008 presidential election run-off.
The year ends with Mugabe firmly in control, refusing to stick to the spirit of the Inclusive Government and outwitting Tsvangirai on everything that matters.
Mugabe revealed his mindset, which is that of pretending that the problems in the Inclusive Government of Zimbabwe do not exist:
“It (the year 2009) was about our trying to work together, ignore the political differences of the parties, submerge those differences and elevate the areas we agree on,” he revealed. Which means he is admitting that he is simply ignoring the problems in the hope that they go away.
Tsvangirai appears content with this approach.
So it is not yet Uhuru by any stretch of the imagination. This government continues to preside over a huge unemployment problem and low productivity in our industries.
Mugabe is now eyeing elections and has, as a result agreed to the speeding up of the making of a new constitution, with Tsvangirai and Mutambara having agreed with him that the process will not be people-driven but driven by the politicians and that funds for the process will not be accepted unless they are channeled through the government (to allow them to skim some of it off the top!)
This circus can not end soon enough.
