TANONOKA JOSEPH WHANDE

The years 2007 and 2008 were saturated with talks between political parties in Zimbabwe.
Nothing came out of those talks.
People continue to die and to disappear.
The country has no government. There are food shortages and hunger. The people continue to suffer.

This is 2009 and the MDC’s addiction to talks and negotiations continues.
The MDC leadership is, once again, in South Africa for some kind of talks, but this time amongst themselves.
They are congregating to decide what to do; they want to decide what to talk about with Robert Mugabe, if they decide to continue talking to him and join him in a government of national unity.
The MDC has become synonymous with talks, negotiations and agreements that have led to nowhere in the last two years and more.
The other alternative is for the MDC to walk away and refuse to be part of Mug Abe’s government.

It really does not appear to me as if the MDC has any other alternatives at all. They rely on talks, talks and more talks.
I, like so many people I have talked to, feel that the MDC has now doused my expectations and I am now slowly beginning to lose faith in the MDC.
Is this their best strategy?
Is this the way they intend to run the country?
The MDC leadership and their presidential advisors are mediocre, failing to advise their leader and unable to offer the Zimbabwean people meaningful alternatives.
I am getting disenchanted now; my spirits are low.
This can’t be all that we have been waiting for through deaths, disease, hunger, kidnappings, rape and murder.
Did people get killed for supporting the MDC so that the survivors would end up with only two choices: join Mugabe in government or walk away from him?

A frequent reader of my blog and fervent listener to my SWRadioAfrica broadcasts wrote to me and said: “I have decided that there is no point in inchoate anger and words used against parties that do not listen and who do not care and are not affected by the anger. I don't know why the media keeps on urging the MDC to reach an agreement with Zanu-PF. Mugabe is the true political Helen Keller of Africa. Blind, deaf, dumb – and, unlike Ms Keller, with no sense of touch or pain. Why talk to someone who is deaf, write to someone who is blind, listen for responses from someone who is dumb, why poke someone who can't feel?”
The MDC should offer the people more. They should be much more resourceful than they have been to date.
They frequently fall into traps of their own making and it is always difficult for them to extricate themselves. When they finally do, they will have lost a sizable number of followers.

Meanwhile, the opportunist Arthur Mutambara is shamelessly lapping up Mugabe’s verbal vomit and regurgitating it to the media like a man possessed.
No one owes him anything yet he desperately wants something from us. His pathetic behavior is testimony to his lack of leadership qualities.
He is mudding the waters because he has nothing to lose, except his president Robert Mugabe. And he is playing his part to prevent that from happening.
Zimbabwean politicians are cursed with mediocrity.

In December, I attended a news conference by Mr Tsvangirai in Gaborone at which he shoved himself into a corner by giving Mugabe an ultimatum that if the kidnapped activists were not released by January 1, 2009, the MDC would consider pulling out of talks on forming a government of national unity.
Yet there have not been any talks to pull out of for months; the MDC, instead, embarked on “a diplomatic offensive” to gunner support and to agitate for more pressure to be applied on Mugabe.

The MDC is also shopping for a mediator who is a little more sympathetic to their cause. They don’t want Thabo Mbeki because of being a little sympathetic to Mugabe’s cause.
Additionally, I wonder, however, if the MDC ever stopped and thought about what is meant by “government of national unity”.
Can they pull it off, ‘uniting’ with a person who holds them in such contempt and who continues to find ways of tripping them, kidnapping, arresting and beating up MDC supporters?

At the same news conference, Mr Tsvangirai also said he could not return home because he had no passport. That was one thing he could do without a passport, if he had wanted to.
As if Zimbabwe does not have an embassy in Gaborone, Tsvangirai’s passport was, instead, hand-delivered to him by the South African High Commissioner to Botswana on Christmas Day, of all days.
Is there something to be read in this act? An ambassador delivering a passport on a holiday; there must have been some urgency. What was it?

However, 2009 is more than a week old now and the MDC activists are still in custody, prompting this MDC meeting in South Africa (not in Zimbabwe).
As of today, at least 30 of the 42 political detainees that Tsvangirai had demanded that be produced before New Year’s Day had been brought to court but all still remain in custody, with the twelve others still being held incommunicado at unknown locations.
In effect, Mugabe has not responded to the ultimatum.

The MDC loves too much talk.
It’s too much of a familiar pattern now and it’s becoming rather irritating that this is all they can do for the people who are under siege for supporting them.
The MDC should be thinking on our behalf, offering alternatives instead of relying on getting Mugabe to sit down and talk to them.
Even if he agreed to talk, they would still hope he keeps any promise he makes.
There is just too much talk. And MDC strategy relies too heavily on Mugabe.

Meanwhile, Mr Tsvangirai is desperately pushing South African President Kgalema Motlanthe to arrange a one-on-one meeting with Mugabe for him. The winner wants to talk to the loser.
Talks and more talks!
It’s all too familiar and it has never produced any results.

They say familiarity breeds contempt.
Some say a prophet is without honour in his own country, this might happen to Mr Tsvangirai sooner than people realize.
Yes, familiarity does breed contempt. And familiarity, as some zoo keepers have found out, is dangerous.
No person or animal should be taken for granted.
Mr Tsvangirai and the MDC leadership better sit up and take note. The people of Zimbabwe have been patient with them for a long time and yet nothing has come their way except these unproductive talks which the MDC appears to want to be using again in 2009.

The MDC is being outfoxed by Mugabe and ZANU-PF and are better advised to offer people another alternative than these endless and expensive talks which, clearly, the participants enjoy tremendously.
I fear some enterprising politician might read the situation and the people clearer than the MDC does and form another party, capitalizing on dissatisfied MDC supporters, much like the MDC itself capitalized on disgruntled ZANU-PF supporters.
And that is one thing that Zimbabweans do not need right now and yet the MDC is clearly leaving a void uncovered. A leadership void.
Granted, the MDC has shown a lot of patience with Mugabe and ZANU-PF but the MDC should work much harder for the mantle given it by the people. If at all they are trying, they have to try harder.

The heart of the matter is that the MDC should not expect the people of Zimbabwe to give them another year of pursuing these futile negotiations; another year of always reacting to Mugabe and not seizing the initiative; always being defensive and not being on the offensive; and always carefully picking their way around Mugabe’s carefully laid traps.
I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande saying that the MDC must discard of political mediocrity and come up with something better for the nation this year otherwise the MDC will find itself being considered the stumbling block in the battle for the emancipation of the people.
And that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today January 8, 2009.