The Herald: Wednesday 12/11/08

Tsvangirai overplayed his hand

Political and Features Editor Mabasa Sasa

WHEN Welshman Ncube walked out of the Sandton Convention Centre committee room where Sadc leaders had gathered to discuss Zimbabwe’s Cabinet stand-off on Sunday, he had very few words for the media personnel eagerly waiting for any form of news from behind the closed door.

It is always an interesting encounter when journalists and lawyers are put in the same room.

The professions make up two-thirds of that breed of the human species that loves to hear the sound of its own voice and sincerely believes there is no melody more pleasing to the ear (the other third are politicians).

And after half a day of waiting for anything that can excite the readership, the journalists were almost bursting with anticipation that Ncube, the MDC secretary-general, would shoot his mouth off.

Instead, he had very few words for the media practitioners present.

"Tsvangirai must realise that he has reached the end of the road. The game is up," Ncube said before walking away.

And this perhaps best sums up the climax

of the saga that has been playing itself out in Zimbabwe since President Mugabe’s landslide June 27 election win and his magnanimous offer to

enter into negotiations with the parties he had vanquished.

Normally, in a war situation the victor decapitates the enemy so that he does not have to face the same problem again.

President Mugabe chose, rather, to rehabilitate the opposition and present them with the

opportunity to become part of the nation-building agenda.

And maybe it was at this point that Morgan Tsvangirai started overplaying his hand. Or maybe still, he started overplaying his hand on that day he tried to pull out of the June 27 run-off.

The West, who have for years advised and funded the opposition, thought President Mugabe was in a weak position and his offer to enter into dialogue meant he was ready to negotiate himself and the revolution out of political existence.

That is why they felt they could demand anything and everything and Cde Mugabe would obsequiously deliver it to them on a silver platter.

Buoyed by the loud noises coming from little people in Gaborone, Tsvangirai started to swell with expectation and began assuming the posture of a very powerful figure.

The ill-advised posturing came to a head when a few weeks ago Tsvangirai refused to travel to Swaziland for meeting of the Sadc Organ Troika because he did not want to use an emergency travel document.

No mistake should be made about this issue.

Our leaders are human and it is highly unlikely that they took too kindly to being made to run around like that by an opposition politician who has never held elected office and who even as Prime Minister will still be unelected.

It was a wonder that the Troika even agreed to reschedule the meeting for Tsvangirai’s convenience and perhaps this only served to give him an even bigger impression of his status in Sadc.

As is known, that meeting failed to put a full stop on Zimbabwe’s political impasse and Tsvangirai must have grown in self-esteem when his push for a full Sadc summit was acquiesced to.

But already, he had badly overplayed his hand.

When Zanu-PF told the Troika that they were not comfortable with Tsvangirai getting sole control of the Ministry of Home Affairs because of the alleged training of militias, the opposition leader should have counted his losses.

Political negotiations are much like gambling at a casino table with a set of players you do not really know much about.

And every gambler knows that the secret to survival is knowing when to walk away and knowing when to run.

Tsvangirai should have deduced that with the allegations on the table it was not in his best interests for the matter to be referred to a full summit.

And with memories of Renamo and Unita still fresh (and with the present instability in the DRC), Sadc would not be amused with him.

It could have been a case of reckless advice from his buddies in the West, a matter of sheer

ignorance or the reception of false assurances from Gaborone.

Whatever it was, Tsvangirai went to Sandton, South Africa, believing Sadc would ignore the allegations, label President Mugabe an unreasonable negotiator, declare a deadlock and refer the matter to the AU and on to the UN Security Council.

It is obvious that for Tsvangirai the issue at stake is not the Ministry of Home Affairs.

MDC-T was actively pursuing a collapse of the talks hoping that an engineered sequence of events would lead to the staging of a fresh poll that would install Tsvangirai in State House and confine Cde Mugabe to Zvimba, or, better still for them, The Hague.

It was a serious gamble and he lost it badly.

On Saturday evening, Tsvangirai is said to have sought a meeting with President Mugabe in Sandton (he did after all travel with that much-reviled ETD, unless someone across the border issued him with another means of travelling).

Information available indicates that Tsvangirai wanted to explore ways in which the matter of militias could be withdrawn from the table.

President Mugabe reportedly declined to this meeting, pointing out that Tsvangirai himself is the one who had pressed for a full summit and he should find the spine somewhere to face regional leaders and look them in the eye.

Then on Sunday morning, just before the summit officially opened, a curious sight greeted onlookers as US Ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee sought out Tsvangirai’s advisors and reportedly gave them assurances that everything would be okay if they stuck to their guns (no pun intended).

And somewhere in that milieu of American and other Western diplomats and British MI6 agents milling around the venue and posing as journalists, briefly emerged a character called Christopher Dell.

At the official opening, Sadc chair President Kgalema Montlanthe of South Africa made it clear that the bloc would not tolerate any more pussyfooting.

Tsvangirai should have realised then that the summit would not entertain any reopening of negotiations and would not look favourably at the allegations on the table.

Though party officials from the three sides

will not speak on record about what was said

about the militia issue during the closed door sessions, it is understood that the matter was discussed at length, reports were tabled and tough decisions were made.

Politicians being politicians, they acted as if the issue was never mentioned, but a single line in the final communiqué hints otherwise.

"The Extraordinary Summit considered the political and security situation in Zimbabwe . . ."

This conclusive decision by summit came after much persuasion by a number of regional leaders after realising that the opposition was angling for a collapse of the talks.

Namibia, for one, was consistent in its view that Tsvangirai was trying to widen the agenda to include ministries other than the Home Affairs brief and yet the summit was specifically called to address this one outstanding issue.

In the end, even Botswana failed to give Tsvangirai the surcease he had wanted and now the attempt to take up a matter with the AU and UN is nothing more than face-saving antics of a gambler who has overplayed his hand.

Tsvangirai essentially has two options: to comply with Sadc or to pursue the reckless agenda set for him in far-away Western capitals