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The MDC must quit GNU and just start afresh
Like every Zimbabwean, I was once overwhelmed by an over abundance of optimism and expectation.
I was a hopeful man who always believed and thought evil can only last for so long before it is overtaken by good.
I have heard that the good die young and I thought it meant that the young are more loved than the sinful old goats.
I can’t continue like this.
I am older now and, hopefully, wiser and have discovered that optimism is nothing but an attempt to ward off the inevitable.
It is what some people call denial.
I have since proved that, in this day and age, evil appears to have an upper hand as compared to good.
I know now that the only reason the good die young is for the evil old men to sustain an upper hand over a nation and its people.
If not ailing, good presidents and leaders either just quit or die just when the impact of their goodness is beginning to be felt.
Evil presidents, meanwhile, become life presidents, are always in good health and seem to live forever, as if death and the gods have forgotten them as they wreak havoc on innocent people.
It is now very difficult for me to understand, let alone accept, what the Movement for Democratic Change is doing.
We have been had.
The good died young and the old timers are having an unbelievable time of bliss, doing as they please at the expense of the people.
Only last week did I express my fear that Morgan Tsvangirai might not be afforded expected advice from his party advisors; I thought he was not being given relevant advice by the so-called MDC think-tank.
I was concerned that Tsvangirai was being arm-twisted into campaigning for the removal of sanctions while nothing was promised him in terms of the implementation of the Global Political Agreement.
It was, and still is, clear to all of us that the MDC is undoubtedly being used by Robert Mugabe. It is unmistakably obvious that senior MDC people are using Tsvangirai so that together they benefit at the expense of Tsvangirai’s credibility.
Unfortunately Tsvangirai’s credibility is taking a knock although, to the generality of the people, he has managed to come across as an honest man with the best of intentions.
For Tsvangirai’s sake, I was pleased silly when ZANU-PF supporters who had gathered in Chiredzi to receive farming inputs booed their ZANU-PF politburo benefactors for nauseatingly and repeatedly shouting the outdated and silly “Down with Tsvangirai” slogans.
It was unbelievable; it was cool; it was not an accident because the people went on to articulate reasons for audibly mumbling their displeasure, saying that ZANU-PF leaders should understand that Tsvangirai is now a part of the unity government and deserved more respect.
The people of Chiredzi know better than their ZANU-PF leaders and they led the leaders by example.
What I do not understand, however, is what ZANU-PF, let alone the nation, still expects from now useless spent forces such as former governor Dzikamai Mavhaire, who still goes around shouting retrogressive slogans instead of wishing the nation well.
That Vice President Joyce Mujuru had to travel all the way from Harare to Chiredzi to listen to slogans degenerating members of her own government is telling, indeed.
Back to our subject.
I now can see that Tsvangirai, along with his so-called advisors, are enjoying themselves and now do not want the issue of sanctions to disturb their frequent publicly-funded excursions and trinkets.
They are all having a good time.
The MDC top hierarchy is in this together with ZANU-PF.
The MDC is spending less and less time on people’s concerns. They think they deserve the opportunity to also do to Zimbabwe what ZANU-PF has done to our nation and will not let the issue of sanctions disturb their celebrations and newly-found bottomless pit of honey.
By their own admission, and like we have always been telling them, their talks with ZANU-PF have failed and Biti went as far as asking to be relieved of their negotiating responsibilities.
“We are going nowhere on the dialogue and therefore it is very important for President Zuma and South Africa to step in and step in quickly,” Biti said.
“We as negotiators have reached our ceiling. It should be taken out of our hands. Continuing to let us negotiate we are wasting time because we have tried. We have been negotiating since the 14th of May 2007. I think we have reached where our human capabilities can take us as negotiators. Therefore we need a bigger brain – that of President Zuma and more wisdom, that of SADC.”
The negotiations must really have taken their toll on Biti if he honestly has to refer to Zuma as “a bigger brain” and allude to SADC as having “more wisdom”.
But the point is that they are aware that Mugabe is not going to budge. They have been aware of this for a long time but they just wanted to get closer to the corridors of power and hoped things would turn in their farvour later.
Now they are accepting defeat.
Surprisingly though, they continue protecting ZANU-PF and Mugabe, going as far as setting up a committee to lobby for the removal of sanctions.
They say that they maintain that all parties in the inclusive government should participate equally in a combined effort to force the lifting of western imposed targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Apart from sanctions, the MDC never really had a good advantage over ZANU-PF. Every time they had an advantage, they gave it away. Now they have none but have been so brainwashed as to go on a campaign to benefit ZANU-PF.
Biti told journalists on Wednesday that the only feasible way to end the blight of recurrent sanctions on Zimbabwe was to make operational a cabinet committee formed last year to reengage the west.
“As a government, we have set up a re-engagement committee,” said Biti, who is Finance Minister in the government of national unity.
“The challenge on us is to make sure that as a re-engagement committee, we engage the EU as a matter of urgency to ensure that we deal with this issue once and for all.”
Meanwhile, ZANU-PF and Mugabe continue to refuse to follow through on their part of the bargain as per Global Political Agreement.
The Gideon Gono and Johannes Tomana issues remain unresolved because Mugabe simply won’t do it.
There is no commitment on the part of Zanu-PF to restore the rule of law in Zimbabwe and the reformation of key government institutions and security services, which continue to discharge their duties with bias.
The MDC sought and failed for the speedy liberalization of the media landscape which is still firmly under the control of Mugabe loyalists.
ZANU-PF has declared that they will not be making any more concessions to MDC, falsely claiming that they had fulfilled everything expected of them under the GPA.
Having been denied power, with their officials and supporters continuing to be arrested wily hilly, and with hardly any part of the GPA being respected, the MDC is once again submitting itself as a willing tool of Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Why else would they be denied what’s theirs but then go on to do those things that strengthen ZANU-PF at their expense.
I just don’t understand.
The heart of the matter is that the MDC has completely lost direction and we are in danger of being pushed back into the same pond we have tried to escape from.
The MDC does not seem to have an answer to what ZANU-PF is doing. People warned them about ZANU-PF. People tried to tell them about Robert Mugabe.
Now they are being humiliated at the same time their credibility is being strained.
ZANU-PF has even gone as far as blaming the MDC for the sanctions and has pushed the MDC into a corner, with ZANU-PF youths, disrupting MDC rallies at will, giving the MDC an ultimatum of a month to have sanctions lifted.
The MDC has lost direction and its leadership has exposed its own inadequacies.
What do you think?
Send me your comments on tano@swradioafrica.com
The MDC has to retreat and plan anew. They messed up things and are now mired in poisonous mud. They will not find solutions within this fiasco of a fake unity government.
They better start on a new strategy right away because they are basking in Mugabe’s territory and can only remain there at Mugabe’s will.
The MDC better start listening to the people.
They must just quit the unity government and start afresh.
I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Thursday, February 25, 2010.
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