TANONOKA JOSEPH WHANDE

I hope Morgan Tsvangirai understands how much strength the people sniff in his frequent refusals to submit himself to Robert Mugabe’s shenanigans.
I hope Mr. Tsvangirai understands how much hope the people place in his now almost habitual rebuffs of Mugabe’s childish but deadly pranks.
Granted, the agreement was a bad idea, concluded by the wrong people at the wrong time, but I am most heartened by Tsvangirai’s intransigence and his now uncompromising attitude and refusal to agree to any further of Mugabe’s retrogressive and deep rooted deceptions.
Mugabe acts out the fantasy of being on a stage, causing and watching people die. He appears willing and amused to watch fellow citizens die unnecessarily, even if those deaths are blamed on him as, indeed, they are.

Tsvangirai has come from the brink and is running away from demons he met in Mugabe’s dreams.
But he now means business.
Tsvangirai’s humiliation at the hands of Mugabe pains me very much for he has personally and physically suffered more at the hands of Mugabe than Mugabe personally suffered under Ian Smith.
Would Mugabe have withstood the beatings and humiliation were the roles reversed? Not a chance!

Mugabe has always hidden behind other people’s sons since ZANU-PF was formed and I can understand his loathing of men who are strong in both body and mind.
He is not a founding father of ZANU-PF; he had skipped bail and was holed up in Tanzania when the party was formed by other men of substance.
Since the beginning, Mugabe’s strength has always been in exploiting loopholes and upstaging others; he has never been an originator of ideas or philosopher.
Mugabe deems himself as the nation and any that disagree with him are committing treason as can be evidenced in the way he abused past opposition figures.

And, as for Mr. Tsvangirai…well I acknowledge the bravery and the resilience.
I recall the photographs of Tsvangirai with a bandaged head after being assaulted by Mugabe’s thugs, then deliberately identified as ‘war veterans’, while he was still the Secretary General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
That, and numerous other violence committed against his person, established Tsvangirai as a brave man who was prepared to lose his own life to protect his beliefs.
Could Mugabe, who was never assaulted like this by the colonial masters, have withstood the kind of violence he unleashed on Tsvangirai’s person?
Not a chance.
Like the Wizard of Oz, Mugabe’s strength lies behind the curtain and in not being found out, which is why he behaves in this manner. He has been found out now.

However, nothing gives me and millions of other people more admiration and hope than seeing Tsvangirai wearing a torn shirt with missing buttons, with fresh wounds on his head, eyes puffed almost shut and with a swollen head, jumping out of an open police lorry and, like any other law-abiding citizen, compliantly submitting himself to the law and humbly walking into the courtroom to answer to charges of what amounts to behaving like a Zimbabwean should: free and independent.
He appeared the epitome of a fearless man on a mission. That picture and his ensuing defiance and willingness to use Mugabe’s skewed laws to defend himself endeared him to so many compatriots.
And Mugabe did not like that. He immediately went to work on Tsvangirai on another front as he capitalized on the worthlessness of SADC and the AU.
Tsvangirai, the once fearless man, has been turned into a marshmallow because of bad advice and the failure of his “think tank” to second guess the ZANU-PF goons who had nothing to lose except the influence they wanted to maintain to safeguard their tomorrows.

Marshmallow, I said, but look at him now! Tsvangirai is fighting back.
Ironically, his greatest strength lies in saying no to whatever Mugabe suggests outside whatever it is they agreed to in that infamous agreement that had aroused so much hope in many Zimbabweans.
Now Tsvangirai appears to be cool headed, unlike his so-called advisors and opposite negotiators, most of whom rushed to South Africa en route to Swaziland for a meeting they knew their ‘prime minister designate’ would not be attending.

Tendai Biti found himself in South Africa telling the media that he would not be proceeding to Swaziland in the absence of “our president”.
Is it possible that the Secretary General of the MDC actually did not know that his president did not have a passport and a visa for this all important summit? It’s not like this is the first time Mr. Tsvangirai has faced problems with passports and I would have hoped Mr. Biti, of all people, was aware of this.
Then there is that unnecessary appendage, Arthur Mutambara, who represents no one except himself. He appears to have arrived in Swaziland ahead of everyone else after telling the media that there was not going to be any talks without Tsvangirai.

Who really cares about this agreement to succeed?
I think millions do, except Mugabe.
He appears to be the only free person in Zimbabwe and one who is not affected, economically and politically, by what is going on in the country.
I wish all those who say we should compromise with Mugabe realize that it is Mugabe who is causing all the misery the country is going through.
And he is even standing in the way of honest efforts to resolve Zimbabwe’s problems.
Mugabe’s strength comes from perpetuating Zimbabwe’s problems because that makes him a player who should otherwise have been discarded a long time ago.

I hope people also realize that Tsvangirai has shown a lot of patience and goodwill yet Mugabe continues to toy around with a very serious situation indeed.
If Mugabe meant well, why is Tsvangirai without a passport? Why did they all leave Harare without the central figure in all these goings-on?
Mugabe cannot achieve anything on his own. Neither can Mutambara and Tendai Biti.
So why did all those who gave passports to each other rush out to be at a table whose center of contention was Mr. Tsvangirai whom they all knew had no passport and was not coming?
Was Biti leading an advance team? But he knew his president was not coming because he had no passport? Or, maybe, the Secretary General and the President do not communicate.
If Biti knew about his president’s passport issue, where was he going? If he didn’t know, what kind of Secretary General is he, or was he trying to look the other way on purpose?

Once again, Mr. Tsvangirai’s advisors and handlers do not seem to worry about priorities. If the MDC can agree to continue these crucial talks outside Zimbabwe when they know that their leader has problems with travel documents then they should have told Mbeki about it.
Even Mswati sent his plane to pick up Tsvangirai when he knew that Tsvangirai did not have a passport. Did Mswati say anything to Mugabe since he was not only the host of the talks but the SADC chair dealing with defense and security?
Like all dictators, Mswati thinks that Tsvangirai should break immigration laws and leave the country without proper documents just because Mswati had sent his personal plane. What a shame!

The heart of the matter is that Morgan Tsvangirai holds the key to any progress to be made in Zimbabwe.
Not Robert Mugabe.
Not Tendai Biti.
Not Arthur Mutambara.
Not SADC or the African Union.
That is why Mugabe and his supporters in and outside Zimbabwe, along with some of Tsvangirai’s closest advisors, in and outside Zimbabwe, are falling over themselves to reach the place where legitimacy, and even legality, can be found. And the get on those planes without the man who holds the answer.
Mugabe, Mutambara, Biti, SADC and all the rest better wake up to the reality that it is Tsvangirai who, at this moment, holds the key to the legitimacy of any deal or agreement to be reached. That is what Zimbabweans decreed and there is not going to be any shortcut.
I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, October 23, 2008.