Tanonoka Joseph Whande

I am very concerned with the way both the Movement for Democratic Change and ZANU-PF are behaving.
They are a ‘unity’ government at least that is what they told us and the world they had agreed to be.
We knew; they knew; SADC knew, the United Nations knew, the African Union knew and so did everybody else that they had totally different agendas and, more importantly, we knew that they did not get along at all.
We have corpses littering our countryside as evidence of their not getting along.

But they agreed to come together, supposedly to save our nation from the disaster that had been caused by one of them, ZANU-PF.

Today, they are our representatives in our march towards normalcy.
They stand as beacons of hope in a ravaged nation, a collapsed economy, a decimated people, a ruined and demoralised populace.

Because they agreed, we agreed.

They are the supposed engineers of peace, forgiveness, reconciliation and unity.
But they are not showing us any of these.
Violence on the farms continues.
Innocent people remain in jails.
And Mugabe has started ‘firing’ and trimming ‘opposition’ cabinet ministers’ portfolios. Bad faith indeed!

They continue to display the same discord and acrimony that caused so many of us to die and that sent millions of our brethren into foreign lands where they continue to be treated with disdain, with no protection from their government, their own government of national unity.

Today, we waste time debating and scolding each other over their differences, differences we have always known existed.
And instead of bandaging each other’s wounds, we try to search who amongst us is a moron for supporting that side or the other.
We scold each other in their name as if they listen or care.

What should we make of this chaos that was born from an effort to bring order?

It does not seem to me that these two groups care about the issues and people at all but are more concerned with their own survival at the expense of the majority.
They are spending all their time getting into each other’s way and discrediting each other, not to mention ambushing national policies in an effort to derail the other’s intentions.

We, the people, now come second to their desires and wishes because our concerns and hopes are only addressed after they have fought their own battles of supremacy over each other.

The people have suffered for too long and can no longer be expected to continue being cheerleaders to this suspicious so-called Government of National Unity (GNU).

Disappearances and arrests have not stopped. Has the rule of law been restored?

The words “civil society” used to be the MDC’s anthem. They wanted the people to be involved in everything they did. Whenever Robert Mugabe and his army and police were abusing the people and the workers, the MDC always called upon the people to resist, to demonstrate and, in effect, to show Mugabe that he no longer enjoyed the support of the majority.
And the people always obliged, but the responses to the MDC’s calls were always peppered with deaths and injuries. But the people soldiered on.

The people gave the MDC all the support it needed.
But for some time now, I have watched as the MDC slowly sidelined the people and “civil society”.
Even during the fateful talks that brought about this government, civil society was sidelined.
People were consulted less and less and today, people cannot honestly believe that this is what they wanted. They have a problem believing this is the solution.

Today, the MDC appears happy with both its own and ZANU-PF parliamentarians that they do not want to involve civil society in the researching and the drafting of a new constitution. They feel they and ZANU-PF can do it by themselves.
Oh, no! Power does not corrupt; corruption empowers people to corrupt governments and society.

Granted, the shelves reportedly have food and there are US dollars, Rands and Pulas available to some people.
Even inflation is reported to be going down. How can it not be down; we are using other people’s money.
Worse still, we are not producing anything to offset what we are reportedly importing.
We are not using our own money to buy what we sell in foreign currencies.
Zimbabwe is one huge flea market. We sell what we do not produce.

At this point, the so-called revival that is filling up the shelves in ZANU-PF owned supermarkets is artificial and has nothing to do with us and production but has everything to do with charity.
It will end dismally unless we start producing and we won’t do that soon since there are no property rights in our country.

And now the very same people who messed up the country, and literally presided over the deaths of so many of our compatriots, are venomously sitting on our backs demanding more from a nation they destroyed.

General Constantine Chiwenga, Air Marshall Perence Shiri, Police Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri and Paradzai Zimondi, are poking around and trying to force the MDC to grant them amnesty.
The MDC has no authority to do that. Let them try it.
Besides, to my knowledge, none of them has admitted or confessed to any wrongdoing so how can any amnesty be granted?
Worse still, before amnesty can be granted, we need to talk; they need to talk.

And then there are those outdated war veterans who soiled their own stature and importance with greed.
These people are asking for more and more money for the work they did for Mugabe in destroying the nation.
Mugabe has referred these shameless blood-suckers to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, first, because Mugabe has no money and, second, to tarnish Tsvangirai as much as Mugabe tarnished himself.
My advice to the prime minister is that war veterans must just stay on the farms they seized and make a living selling what they produce to local and international markets. They must form their cooperatives and work for once.
They should not be given a penny more.

After independence, the war veterans were given demobilisation money.
Some years later, they demanded lump cash payments and Mugabe ignorantly acquiesced. That extravagant payout signalled the beginning of the decline of the Zimbabwean dollar, which today sits suspended because nobody, not even the war veterans themselves, want to touch it.

The war veterans further demanded pensions and received them.
They were still not satisfied so they went on and invaded farms which they shared amongst themselves and their ZANU-PF bosses, resulting in severe shortages of food, starvation, malnutrition and hunger across the country. Thousands lost their jobs because of this.
When the international community intervened to feed the starving Zimbabweans, the war veterans were in the forefront again to either receive food aid or channel it to their own families and political allies.

Just a few weeks ago, Mugabe came out in support of new farm invasions that caused so much violence on the farms during this Easter Holiday.
Mugabe accepted SADC’s support that resulted in this pathetic government of national unity but Mugabe will not accept SADC’s Tribunal that judged that the farm invasions were illegal.

If the prime minister’s mission is to appease Mugabe and his destructive war veterans he can go ahead and placate them. These are the very same people who once tried to throw him out of his 10th floor office window.

No this government of national unity is not working. Even Mugabe’s lawless war veterans want him to pull out of it.
This government of national unity does not seem to have any direction other than to please Mugabe and his goons.
The little money that has trickled in is going to betray us and make us believe there is an economic revolution going on.
The MDC must stop being a supporting act to ZANU-PF’s continuing destruction of the country.
This is the time the MDC should take its lawmakers to the Victoria Falls for a retreat. They must go there and talk about how they are NOT betraying the people. How they should quit this charade.
What is the way forward?

Send me your comments on tano@swradioafrica.com

I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Thursday April 16, 2009.