TANONOKA JOSEPH WHANDE
15 January, 2009

There are many responsibilities that come with being a leader. One of them is simply availing oneself at all times and to supply and maintain continuity within an organization.

The MDC announced that its leader Morgan Tsvangirai will be returning home the day after tomorrow, January 17, 2009.
He is scheduled to chair his party’s National Executive Council meeting the very next day.

Mr Tsvangirai’s courage and fearlessness is a matter of public record.
I have always admired his courage and his ability and willingness to absorb all of dictator Robert Mugabe’s malicious and murderous punches.
Many times before, I have applauded Mr Tsvangirai for his resolve to walk in front of the people as they advance towards police cordons and road blocks.
I have always applauded his unselfishness for he has shown to be generous with self for the sake of the people and the nation.
Tsvangirai believes in his crusade and he, clearly, has, over the years, shown that he puts the people before himself. He puts the party before himself.

More than two months ago, he left Zimbabwe to attend a SADC sponsored meeting in South Africa where the cowardly Thabo Mbeki, with the conniving of the dopey, sleepy SADC, tried to make a last stand and force the MDC to, once again, agree to a faulty deal of betrayal.
Mbeki and SADC’s biggest success is their continued oppression of the Zimbabwean people.

Mr Tsvangirai then spent some time in Botswana without returning home. Now he is under pressure from all angles, Mugabe included, to return home and take his place among those who are able to do something about the tragedy that Mugabe created.
Nothing can be achieved and no solution can be agreed to or implemented without Tsvangirai agreeing to it. That is a fact.

And frustration is building up not only among by-standers but also among party supporters.
Mugabe has never been cornered to the extent of needing his adversary to justify his own existence. Mugabe needs Tsvangirai more than Tsvangirai needs Mugabe.
And, judging by past instances, this is not good at all. It is dangerous for Tsvangirai.

So I now appeal to Mr Tsvangirai to reconsider his decision to go home. There are many factors that prompt me to make this appeal, least of which is Mugabe’s evil, which knows no bounds.
Mugabe hates to lose and losing to Tsvangirai is the ultimate humiliation for him yet we know what he has done in the past to avoid losing.

Tsvangirai kept people guessing for too long after the SA meeting. For more that two months, he did not declare his intention until the media and the people put pressure on him. His prolonged and unexplained stay in Botswana was quite understandable at first because of the recognition of the danger that he faced and the harassment always directed at him, including the withholding of his passport and the physical abuse he has suffered at the hands of Robert Mugabe.

I have written much about Tsvangirai’s need to be home with the people, urging him to choose and declare his intentions, but I failed to make him do what I almost was certain he would do: stay in Botswana or somewhere outside Zimbabwe and form a government in exile.
That could have drawn a lot of attention to the cause given the triumph the MDC has scored on the diplomatic front and the very bad view many countries now have of Mugabe.
Additionally, such a move could also have relatively guaranteed his own personal security to a certain minimum. He is obviously safer outside Zimbabwe than inside.

Now he is going home. Walking straight into the lion’s den and, like Daniel, hopes to pacify the lion therein.
I don’t want to think that Tsvangirai is abusing his courage. I don’t want to think he is being reckless but I need to remind him that he owes the people of Zimbabwe at least his safety.

In terms of safety, I do think this is an unnecessary trip right now. His party and the people need him, and so does his adversary Mugabe, a vindictive, cruel man who has killed so many who got in his way.
While Mugabe can put up a false display of bravado, he knows his game is up and no one is going to take him seriously except South Africa, which has surprisingly become as limp as a wet noodle in the face of Mugabe; the South Africans have become too willing to compromise with the wrong side.
Except for the neutered SADC, meaningful foreign countries do not appear willing to embrace anything that does not include Tsvangirai and his main-stream MDC party.
Mugabe is watching as his impotence is being exposed by both Tsvangirai’s presence and absence. Mugabe does not like it that he has to depend on Tsvangirai for legitimacy. This is not a good scenario. Mugabe hates Tsvangirai with a passion.
Mugabe can pick a government full of all those disgraceful long serving under-achievers but their recognition outside Zimbabwe, or even within Zimbabwe itself, will be difficult to acquire.

I do not feel encouraged by this journey back home, not only because of Mugabe’s menacing evil but also because of his blind, over-zealous supporters.

There are many people like me who feel uncomfortable about this journey back home. Some give the analogy of the liberation war which was successfully fought when the executive was not in Rhodesia.
Some people have written saying that they believe that MDC-T should seriously consider forming a government in exile, adding that fighting the junta from within the country does not help.
“They will just end up at Chikurubi,” she said.
The writer rightly asks what it is that the MDC executive can effectively do whilst they are in Zimbabwe that they cannot do while in exile.
“There has been so much capture and torture of the leaders and we may suffer opposition leadership crisis soon.”
Another one concurred saying that Tsvangirai’s presence in Zimbabwe will not stop the abductions and charges against civil society and leaders of the opposition.
“It’s time to re-strategise and Zimbabwe is the worst place for MDC T to operate from. The GNU is dead,” he said.

The heart of the matter is that we are at a critical juncture in this struggle and we cannot deny that Tsvangirai made a very large contribution even surviving a betrayal by his own colleagues and party leaders.

Ironically, like Mugabe is to ZANU-PF, it cannot be denied that Tsvangirai is the MDC’s greatest strength. Our politics and politics in Africa have always made the party leader more important than the party; a player becoming greater than the game that gave him fame.

What Mr Tsvangirai should do is to stay away for now and make it public that he is forming a government in exile.

How effective such a government in exile would be remains to be seen but the safety of a leader should be paramount.

What do you say? Send me your comments at tano@swradioafrica.com. I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, January 15, 2009.