MDC has no business campaigning for Mugabe's re-acceptance

Tanonoka Joseph Whande - Thursday 18 June

There is nothing more dangerous to African people than to see their leader inspecting a Guard of Honour in Europe and being fed wild mushrooms and Russian caviar, not to mention French wines and a string of man-servants and beautiful lasses buzzing around them.

The glitter blinds both the eyes and the mind; ask one Robert Mugabe, whom we lost easily.
He was once considered a guerrilla leader, tired looking and weather beaten, wearing khaki shirts with four deep pockets on the front of his chest and thick Ray Charles type of spectacles but we instantly lost him to Seville Row.

We know what damage these foreign trips, necessary as they may be, can cause.
I must, however, admit that I was deeply touched to see Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai being received by world leaders.

When I saw him standing or sitting side by side with ‘prominent’ leaders, with our Zimbabwean flag in the background, I felt as if my political illegitimacy had come to an end.
It has not, as the prime minister himself can attest.

However, I welcome us back into the family of nations.

It is my hope that Tsvangirai does not misinterpret the honour and respect bestowed on him during these visits as his own personal triumph.

While it might be a culmination of his resilience and bravery to fight for freedom and democracy, it is more important what he does with them after he gets them.

While he is being wined and dined by world leaders, his mission is not even half complete.
Granted, it is his own personal triumph, considering what he went through to get where he is, but he must not forget, like Mugabe did, that without the consent and approval of the people, he is a nobody.

That is the problem with politics; you are somebody only if people say you are.
Tsvangirai must honestly remember that he cannot take short cuts like he is trying to do.
There are extremely important issues that he and his party should have strived to normalise at home before going around the world to beg for money in the company of ZANU-PF apologists who have stolen such monies and national assets before.

The Prime Minister and his party knew from the outset that their decision to join Mugabe was unpopular and unworkable.

They have tried their best to make Mugabe their partner but today, they remain Mugabe’s junior partners.

Now the Prime Minister is embarrassing himself as he gets no for an answer because those countries that have always shown an interest in supporting a new government now consider Tsvangirai in the same pile as Mugabe.

Now it is Tsvangirai who is in the forefront of asking those few nations who still worry about the ordinary Zimbabwean to accept Mugabe when he, Tsvangirai, has no power to stop or effect any change in the country.

Or is it that the bug to dine with royalty has already stung him too?

Yes, Zimbabwe needs financial assistance but that assistance is based on certain factors that do not prolong the people’s suffering.

Mr Tsvangirai should do first things first.

Tsvangirai must remember that he is being saluted not because of himself but because of the millions standing behind him.

He must remember that he can enjoy all this international razzmatazz only as long as he remains with the people.

When one leads a crusade on behalf of the people, they must understand that they are doing so because of the moral support of the people and the strength they bestow and offer him.

In other words, they are leading a struggle that is a people’s crusade, not their own.

Fortunately, I hope, Tsvangirai has his co-leader Mugabe’s history to refer to and, hopefully, he will know what to avoid and not walk in Mugabe’s footsteps.

At independence Mugabe was the darling of the west, of Africa and, indeed, of the world, when he deceptively proclaimed “reconciliation” after a bloody liberation war.

Some people in America and Europe were so overcome with gratitude and euphoria that they actually went as far as putting forward Robert Mugabe’s name for consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Like I have said before, we wish we didn’t know now what we didn’t know then.

Accolades started coming in and Mugabe, who started governing through consensus, forgot his mentors and started thinking he was the brains of the government.

Mugabe milked those wiser than him of all advice, meanwhile entrenching himself so that he could heave all of them away and remain as the sole leader of the nation, going on to abuse the people and those whose existence proved his political and intellectual inadequacy.

So many had to die so that Mugabe could remain as the only possibility to leadership, a chore at which he dismally failed.

He just wanted to get his foot in the door and be able to slam the door closed on anyone else’s fingers and Tsvangirai is a prominent witness to Mugabe’s untrustworthiness and, I dare say, evil.
As that route failed, Mugabe then embarked on a mission to turn the state of Zimbabwe into a one party state.

His mounting desperation culminated in most of his close confidants and advisors being pushed away, resulting in unavoidable confrontation with the Zimbabwean electorate.

Mugabe’s inability to accept his own limitations and inabilities caused mayhem when, in 2000, he failed to persuade the nation to accept a faulty draft constitution heavily skewed in his favour.
He took the people’s rejection of the draft constitution personally and retaliated by going all out to destroy the nation, using land as an excuse to murder our own people and those compatriots who happened to be white and “owned” farms.

We lost so many of our compatriots because Mugabe refused to accept that he did not own Zimbabwe and its people; he failed to understand that he was a servant, not a master. He sacrificed the lives of so many just to feed his malevolent ego.

All this intolerance occurred after his notorious escapades of random killings of civilians in Matabeleland and the Midlands provinces.

And today, I really would like to know how many would like to forgive Mugabe.

Because he wanted to hold on to what we had given him as our leader, he castrated our judiciary and corrupted fellow citizens.

National coffers were empted and national assets were sold to his personal foreign friends at the blink of an eye.

We cultivated his ego and, without noticing it, we slowly lost control. Mugabe took advantage of that and used it against the people of Zimbabwe.

So here we are, with an emerging leader to possibly replace Robert Mugabe, the only leader we have known in almost 30 years.

We worry because we do not want history to repeat itself.

In Zimbabwe, history appears to also be dynamic and, believe it or not, does not wish to repeat itself.

We worry because these grandiose trappings of international etiquette, protocol and exaggerated importance of ordinary national leaders has corrupted our African leaders to the extent that they ended up killing for an opportunity to have dinner at 10 Downing Street.

I am saying this because I believe we do not have the luxury to see a repeat of what happened to us with Robert Mugabe.

The heart of the matter is that it is still not yet time for the MDC to campaign for Mugabe’s acceptance back into the international arena. He has not done anything to warrant that but actually continues pulling in a destructive direction.

The MDC must use the little clout they have to deal with Mugabe and make him stop all the nonsense he continues to do and get on with resuscitating the nation which he destroyed single-handedly.

We are saying this so that the freshman Prime Minister sets his parameters right and continue to remind himself that the people do not belong to him but that he belongs to the people.

‘Moghiza’ must not get so overwhelmed as to forget that he and his party have hardly made much difference even in parliament, let alone in the country.

Mugabe must yield much more to the MDC than he has done so far.

What do you say? Send me your comments on tano@swradioafrica.com The availability in Zimbabwe of foodstuffs that people cannot afford is no achievement.

False promises must cease and real action must begin.

It is time for action, not rhetoric.

If we can cheer our Prime Minister as he inspects a Guard of Honour in Germany, we can certainly boo him when he flounders in parliament and fails to give the people meaningful change, a mandate they gave him to deliver.

I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Thursday June 18, 2009.