September 24, 2009

Zimbabwe’s problems are sheltering Mugabe

The MDC is now in a quandary.

They neither consulted the people nor listened to us before joining the government of national unity.

Now they are being humiliated and want us to order them to vacate.

The MDC appears to have helped cement Mugabe’s authority than to rattle his power base.

Today, the MDC is nowhere nearer to governing the nation than they were years ago.

They have been used and they have been used very well.

Events in Zimbabwe during the last several weeks should have opened our eyes to see the scantly camouflaged GNU road signpost leading to a quicksand.
Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF have not only shrewdly survived people power but continue to outfox their comrades-in-government.
The GNU saved Mugabe now we have a growing, malignant problem.
To make it worse, both MDC formations actually believe that they are sharing power with Mugabe, despite the unrelenting humiliation!
Home Affairs co-Minister Giles Mutsekwa’s admission that he made a blunder when he appended his signature on a document that effectively seized a large company is no consolation.
Is the MDC now into forced farm and company acquisitions too?
The MDC never told us under what circumstances they would “approve” the acquisition of property but they are busy inviting investors into the country.
The international community has tried to push Zimbabwe’s lethargic and cantankerous government of national unity to move forward and fully implement the misnamed Global Political Agreement.
Global my foot!
It’s not even Zimbabwean.
As usual, SADC was a big disappointment as it failed to stamp its authority.
Many times, SADC’s silence or pronouncements on Zimbabwe stopped nations outside Africa from doing something about the situation in Zimbabwe.
South Africa, during the days of disgraced former president Thabo Mbeki, also acted as a buffer for Robert Mugabe by blocking any attempts to table and discuss the problems in Zimbabwe.
Although Mugabe’s excesses and human rights violations were there for everyone to see, South Africa’s behaviour at the United Nations succeeded in giving the false impression that Zimbabwe was a victim of both Britain and the United States.
Meanwhile, African nations continue to behave as if they do not know what the real problem in Zimbabwe is.
SADC and South Africa continue to shield Mugabe, who is at the center of all that is wrong in Zimbabwe today.
Zimbabwe has always prided itself of belonging to many organizations, including SADC and the Commonwealth, but resisted complying with any of their protocols.
For what it’s worth, in November last year, 79 white commercial farmers rightfully took their case to the SADC Tribunal and won an order “barring the government from compulsorily acquiring their land without paying compensation”.
The court further ordered the government to compensate those who had lost their land under Zimbabwe’s land reform programme.
Mugabe steadfastly refused to abide by the rulings of an organization of which our country was a member, saying the rulings are in conflict with the country’s land acquisition laws.
Early this month, Zimbabwe formally withdrew from the jurisdiction of the SADC Tribunal, to blunt and avoid being held accountable for the two judgments.
One would have hoped that problems of law and order, human rights, and instability in a member state, such as Zimbabwe is going through, would be of paramount importance when SADC Summits are convened but in their last summit a few weeks ago, SADC did not even mention the issue of a member state refusing to adhere to agreed protocols.
In fact, they spent time trying to avoid discussing the Zimbabwean issue all together.
Mugabe has done it before.
He refused to implement the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, something he continues to do to this day.
In 2002, Zimbabwe was suspended by the Commonwealth and the following year, Mugabe, to avoid humiliation, decided to withdraw Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth.
Because of human rights abuses, violence, corruption, economic plunder and other transgressions, the international community, minus Africa, of course, imposed travel bans on Mugabe and his close aides.
During the recent SADC Summit, African leaders had the audacity to ask for the removal of those sanctions as if things are back to normal.
“Significant progress has been made under the auspices of the inclusive government,” President Jacob Zuma told fellow leaders. “We are all encouraged by how the three parties put their differences aside.”
Really?
Tsvangirai, a pivotal partner in this GNU, had a mouthful to say and complain about, only to be shut out by SADC.
As Zuma was saying this, farms were being set on fire in renewed bids to grab them.
It was also a period that witnessed the murder of at least three MDC activists.
Continued Zuma: “These achievements signaled to the people of Zimbabwe, the region and the world, that the Zimbabwean political leadership was ready to collectively tackle the political and the socio-economic challenges facing that country.”
Really?
The MDC then reported that yet another of its activists had been murdered in an incident linked to renewed political violence.
It identified the deceased as Godknows Mtshakazi, who was reportedly beaten to death by four soldiers at a township outside Shurugwi.
His crime: playing a popular MDC song in a bar.
Edwin Chingami, who had fled Zimbabwe to South Africa for protection during last June’s violence, was murdered by ZANU-PF supporters upon his return home.
MDC activist, Joseph Munyuki, died at Masvingo Hospital where he had been receiving treatment for injuries sustained from a brutal attack by a known ZANU-PF supporter.
There was also a marked increase in farm invasions as members of the GNU went into overdrive, encouraging investors into the country.
Mugabe’s inflammatory speech to the ZANU-PF Youth League conference does not help matters.
A white farmer, Murray Pott, from Mugabe’s home province of Mashonaland West, is recovering from serious injuries after a brutal beating by invaders on his farm last Tuesday.
“Once people have offer letters and they are valid, that’s it. The farm is not yours anymore,” said Mugabe to the youth congress. “Please don’t resist. If we hear about any resistance, we will stop pleading. I will just send the police to drive them away. If they thought they would be saved by the inclusive Government (then) they were lied to.”
On Wednesday, less than a week after making this statement, Mugabe is reported to have told businessmen at a mining investment forum that potential investments would be safe in the country. He claimed this was because his government respected “the sanctity of property rights and the rule of law in all its dimensions”.
“Meanwhile 115 kilometers from where Mugabe was delivering his speech, South African farmer, Louis Fick, was watching his 4 000 pigs, 14 000 crocodiles and several hundreds of beef cattle starve to death in Chinhoyi, as he tries to fight off a deputy Reserve Bank governor who is trying to grab the farm and whose hired thugs are preventing workers from feeding the animals,” said a news report.
The very next day, Tsvangirai reportedly told the investors that the coalition government would implement rational mining royalties and taxes and deregulate mineral marketing, to attract as much as US$16 billion in investment by 2018.
But this was just six days after the government had used an extra-ordinary gazette to seize the assets of the Meikles Group, to which Mutsekwa had appended his signature.
Just how does anyone help Zimbabwe, except by dislodging Mugabe?
Mugabe is single-handedly blackmailing the world using innocent citizens as ransom.
The heart of the matter is that solutions to Zimbabwe’s problems are not in Mugabe’s interest. This man does not care to solve our problems because he is being kept alive by the problems in the country. A Zimbabwe without problems leaves the nation concentrating on Mugabe and his fellow thieves. For now, he is contented to abuse the nation, keeping us busy trying to survive instead of trying to improve the lives of our families.

And Mugabe is unwittingly getting a lot of support from the MDC, a party that is increasingly exposing their shallowness and bankruptcy in ideas.

What do you think?

Send me your comments on tano@swradioafrica.com

The MDC is frustrated now and want to consult the people on whether or not to pull out of the government of national unity. Why did they not consult the people about whether or not to join this government of national unity?

Now they are being humiliated and know that their greedy experiment has failed they want a way of saying “the people want us out of the GNU.”

The people did not want them in this government of national unity.

I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Thursday, September 24, 2009.