16 July, 2009

Leadership is now stumbling block to Zimbabwe’s revival

The last several weeks have shown that the so-called Government of National unity in Zimbabwe is under a lot of strain.

In the last couple of months, the problems, insincerity and bungling by members of the government have promoted the widespread thinking that this government is a charade.
Indeed, only last week, Frank Chikane, who served under both former president Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma as Director General in the office of the President of South Africa, resigned from his post and immediately admitted that the SADC-brokered Global Political Agreement was not the best solution to Zimbabwe’s political crisis.
This is obscene.

Chikane is one of the notorious architects of this agreement.
Now he admits what everyone said before, during and after the consummation of the agreement.
“It is a transitional government,” Chikane said, “it’s not perfect. There is no perfect political solution, there is no perfect way of solving a problem but it gives Zimbabwe political parties the possibility to resolve their problems.”
If Chikane knew this to be an imperfect agreement, why did he let Mbeki impose it on SADC so as to impose it on Zimbabweans?
And Chikane is a man of the cloth!
Now, after so much mayhem, Chikane resigns from his post and immediately admits that it was not the best solution, adding that the agreement gave Zimbabweans the possibility of solving their problems.
Utter rubbish.
Do we call what is happening in Zimbabwe today a solution?
A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Tsvangirai was booed by Zimbabwean exiles in the UK when he told them that all was now well in the government of national unity.
This week, I felt insulted that Mugabe was more honest than Tsvangirai.
Mugabe admitted that there were difficulties within the government of national unity and that he had serious differences with Tsvangirai.
Last Saturday, Mugabe told people at a funeral that they still had differences on policy matters with the Movement for Democratic Change.
“Are we truly one in the inclusive government? Are we united? Let’s show that we are united and speak with one voice,” Mugabe said.

Of course, they are not one. They are definitely not united and they cannot speak with one voice because this government was the result of regional leaders’ annulling Zimbabwean people’s rights at the polls.
Unlike in South Africa, where the international community intervened and made the biggest difference in bringing about majority rule, in Zimbabwe, the international community did the very opposite and look what is happening now.
A black president and his murderous party have recolonised the country with the assistance of SADC.
Now Mugabe is doing what he has always been doing and South Africa and SADC are nowhere to be seen as Mugabe violates most aspects of that agreement.
And Tsvangirai’s bumbling only helps to highlight the pathetic chaos the nation of Zimbabwe finds itself in.
During his tour of Europe and America, he said that farm invasions were being exaggerated and blown out of proportion yet non-governmental groups and affected people were giving reports of widespread violence and invasion of farms by ZANU-PF supporters and cabinet ministers.
Last Tuesday, a white commercial farmer in his late 70s, was axed to death by a ZANU-PF mob in Gweru.
Sporadic farm invasions have slowly increased since the formation of the all-inclusive government in February and yet the country’s Prime minister says reports by victims are exaggerated and that all is well.
The day after Vaughan-Evans was murdered, hordes of Zanu-PF supporters invaded and disrupted mining operations at Bikita Minerals, a major producer of lithium in Zimbabwe, with reports that Mugabe’s bigwigs were behind the mine invasion as they position themselves to take it over.
Amidst all this, last Thursday, Mugabe and Tsvangirai had the audacity to host what they called an investors’ conference attended by leading international financiers “invited by government in a bid to revive the country’s unstable economy”.
At that conference, investors raised concerns that real reforms had yet to take root in the country.
“Others felt Zimbabwe was still a place where property rights are not respected.”
This is said to have prompted a response from Mugabe, “who repeated his stance that former colonial ruler Britain was responsible for paying owners who were stripped of their farms”.
Tsvangirai could only say that all parties in the country recognised that land reform was needed, but differed on their approach.
And on Wednesday, in another development that contradicted Tsvangirai’s proclamation that all was well, the Zimbabwean business community added its voice to the process of drafting the country’s new constitution, which was initially disrupted by Mugabe’s supporters earlier in the week.
Business people urged for “the protection of the economic rights of citizens in the new constitution”.
“There should be the sanctity of property rights,” said George Mutendadzamera, a representative of the Business Council of Zimbabwe . “These should fall under the category of immutable rights such as mineral rights, land and other rights.”

It is not inspiring that, in addition to MDC parliamentarians, national organisations are starting to go over the MDC, voicing and demanding their rights from a government that is supposed to be providing such basics for them.
It is not good for the MDC to have individual groupings seizing the opportunity and leading demands that the MDC, as a party nurtured by labour unions, somehow fails to address.
The Business Council of Zimbabwe demanded “the sanctity of property rights”, an issue that is keeping potential investors away.
Where there are no property rights, there are no human rights.
And vice versa.
Business needs both.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to distance Tsvangirai from what is happening in Zimbabwe today.
Tsvangirai’s own MDC Members of parliament have started to criticise him in public.
There is frustration all over and Tsvangirai is now cornered in such a manner that he is unable to please one section without annoying the other.
Euphoria over the availability of food in supermarkets has died down as reality has set in: with 95% unemployment, where does one find the foreign currency to buy the food that is now abundant in stores?
Suddenly in Botswana buses that ply the Zimbabwe/Botswana/Zimbabwe route, which had seen a nose dive in business, following the establishment of the government of national unity, are now under siege as thousands have once again started the cross border trading that has sustained them for decades.

No amount of money will save Tsvangirai and Mugabe’s government. No investors will flock to Zimbabwe where there is still no rule of law, where violence appears legalized and where property rights are non-existent.

The heart of the matter is that unless meaningful, honest change is brought into play, Zimbabwe will continue to languish in despair, corruption, murder, starvation and in human rights abuses.
Mugabe and Tsvangirai appear to be failing each other and people really don’t care who is to blame anymore. People want change and to be left alone to repair and rebuild their dislocated lives.

A black president and his murderous party has recolonised Zimbabwe with the assistance of SADC.
Mugabe has ruined our country and Tsvangirai agreed to work with him but he is failing to control the government or to implement the MDC agenda.
It might be time both these men put the nation first and step aside for new, better, clear minds to bring Zimbabwe back to its glory days.
We cannot continue to watch this endless wrestling match between the two and one which appears to be destined for a draw.
Both must move off the stage.
What do you say?
Send me your comments on tano@swradioafrica.com Pretend as they may, Mugabe and Tsvangirai do not like or trust each other.
These two, intentionally or unintentionally, might now be the stumbling blocks to Zimbabwe’s revival.
I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Thursday, July 16, 2009.