Mr Prime Minister, Zimbabweans need to be handled with care!
 
TANONOKA JOSEPH WHANDE

I was quite embarrassed to see, on the BBC, Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai being heckled and booed off the stage while in the process of trying to sell Robert Mugabe to Zimbabwean exiles in the UK.

I felt a little chill when Tsvangirai, faced with an unabating chorus of disapproval, looked into the packed cathedral and boldly intoned to his Zimbabwean audience, “You better listen to me.”
 
That statement was a threat and Zimbabweans responded in understandable anger.
Tsvangirai does not need such language. He needs the people more than the people need him.
Elections are looming already and he better gather and employ good advisers, not relatives and friends who want to pick a few scraps off his high table and blind him with information that does not do him any good.
 
While I understand that this European and American tour was particularly hard on him and was not as productive as he had hoped, Tsvangirai should not let his frustrations get the better of him. He should have remembered to whom he was talking and why those Zimbabweans are in exile in the UK in the first place.

They are the same people who, over the years, took away some of the money meant for their starving relatives in Zimbabwe and diverted it to the MDC. Whether they are political or economic refugees, their government failed them and they had to leave so as to afford their families.
 
I have always said that the MDC was too much in a hurry to be in government, to be part of a government that they were never promised to control.

It is unforgivable that Tsvangirai could honestly undertake such a trip to beg for money in Europe and America by saying that all was well at home when he knows full-well that it is just not true.
As he was saying that in the UK, his parliamentarians back home were slowly concluding a new against-the-media bill; his high ranking officers, including the MDC’s so-called Chief Executive Officer, were being shunted around by prison guards; farms continued to be invaded by members of ZANU-PF while some members of his own party, instead of fighting to stop the land grab and urge everyone to be at their best behaviour for the sake of attracting support, believability, investments and even cash loans, drooled at the possibility of being allocated farms in conservancies south east of Zimbabwe.
 
Every day, none other than the MDC itself proves to all and sundry that there was absolutely no planning, consultation or contingent plans considered before joining Mugabe’s ZANU-PF government.

It seems to us all that the decision to join Mugabe was based on personal, not national, considerations.

As I have said many times before, this is not a unity government but a ZANU-PF government in which the MDC is also participating.
 
Every day, the MDC is shamed as they are shown to be junior partners yet they tour the world passing themselves as equal members within the government of Zimbabwe, asking for money to take to a home where they are more of servants than equals with the landlord.
 
The MDC is slowly realising what they got themselves into but it gets late by the day for them to do anything about it.

They now realise that things are not as easy as they thought and they are making wrong moves and saying the wrong things.

The MDC is slowly finding out that support is not permanent but that support is fed by performance, not promises.

Now the party leadership is struggling and cannot say or do anything without including the “all inclusive government”, meaning Mugabe.
 
With their own consent, they were ensnared and now they stand to pay and lose more than Mugabe and his ZANU-PF.
 
Being stuck in the mud is one thing but sinking in the mud having abandoned any will to fight for survival is another.
 
In the UK, Tsvangirai tried to cox people who ran away from political, economic and social problems brought upon the nation by Mugabe, his partner in government.

They ran away from joblessness, from injustice; from violence; from the absence of the rule of law; from hunger; from victimisation.

Zimbabweans went scattering around the world, sacrificed their own lives and professions just for an opportunity to assist their families with whatever meagre salaries they could get.

In terms of violence, law and order, oppression and all the terrible ills we do not deserve, Zimbabwe today is the same as it was over a decade ago and getting worse. Tsvangirai wants people to return home. Fine, but return home to what?
 
He says he needs Zimbabweans in the Diaspora to help revive the nation, adding that he also needs their money which, in all fairness, made the biggest difference not only for his party but also for ZANU-PF as Diasporians tried to maintain their families back home.
 
In the meantime, Tsvangirai’s children, like those of the top people in both the MDC and ZANU-PF are all abroad.
 
If things are really as rosy as Tsvangirai told Zimbabwean exiles and those governments he imposed himself on, why does he and Mugabe not bring their children back to Zimbabwe where Tsvangirai said schools are now open?

Or is it that other people’s children are always the ones to be asked to make sacrifices?
 
Mugabe regales in poking fun at our engineers, doctors, pilots, nurses, technicians and other professionals who fled the country and are forced to accept menial jobs because such jobs offer them little enough to share with relatives being starved silly by Mugabe back home.

And yet, in spite of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF, our country is the best in Africa. And we know it.
 
It is the classic political stand-off, such as one where an impala wants to drink from a water hole that is surrounded by predators.

Oh, yes, we will drink, alright, but after Mugabe moves off the stage. Because we can see that Mugabe has total control over Tsvangirai in such a way that the MDC’s presence in this government has turned out to be a fraud.

A disgraceful fraud.
The MDC is allowing itself to be used as bait to catch those who decided the welfare of their families comes before a party card and meaningless slogans.
 
Today, as we speak, the MDC’s once popular slogan, Chinja Maitiro, applies as much to Tsvangirai as it does to Mugabe. None is prepared to change.
 
The heart of the matter is that the MDC has clearly shifted its priorities and outsiders are now trying to protect us from both Tsvangirai and Mugabe since the inclusive government, of which Tsvangirai is part of, is not prioritising or addressing human rights concerns. They are not even upholding the rule of law.
 
There was absolutely nothing wrong with Tsvangirai’s call to Zimbabweans to return home. The problem is that the call came riding on Mugabe’s lie that things are okay back home. And Tsvangirai was talking to people who underwent severe suffering and who had to run away from a man who still controls Tsvangirai in government.

Tsvangirai’s suffering and ill-treatment at the hands of Mugabe does not give him exceptional status; there are numerous compatriots who suffered more but they are unknown because they are not prominent.

What do you say? Send me your comment on tano@swradioafrica.com
 
What happened to Tsvangirai in that Cathedral is going to be repeated in Zimbabwe because the gap is already widening between the MDC leadership and its supporters; because of too many unfulfilled promises.

And the reason Tsvangirai will continue to be booed is that he is becoming too much like ZANU-PF and has suddenly forgotten a slogan that has always been synonymous with him and his party, Chinja Maitiro.
 
You better listen to me! So said the Prime Minister. And if we don’t?
 
Unless Tsvangirai stops trying to assimilate into Mugabe’s ways, the booing will continue. And that is a promise, not a threat.

I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Thursday June 25, 2009.