No more doubts about who’s calling the shots

Reports say the two MDC leaders, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara have agreed that charges against the 18 be pursued only insisting that they be granted bail. If this is true it is yet another example of the two MDC leaders selling out to keep their jobs in government.
Tsvangirai travelled the painful road of trumped-up charges before but it seems he has now forgotten. Nothing including issues of basic justice and human rights matters to the man from Buhera. The premiership is the only game in town.
Consider the injustice of it all. Last year, following the March 29 elections which ZANU-PF and President Mugabe lost, a plot was hatched to unleash savage violence against the people to prevent an inevitable loss in the presidential run-off.
About 200 MDC members were murdered in cold blood. Thousands more were brutally assaulted, tortured and driven from their homes. Livelihoods were lost with many condemned to destitution.
After the signing of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) in September last year the violence continued. Abductions became the favoured method of dealing with opponents of the regime. That was the time this group of 18 were abducted and later produced to face spurious charges. Three of them are still in hospital recovering from torture wounds. No one now including Tsvangirai and the garrulous Tendai Biti talks about the seven MDC-T members abducted last year, who are still missing. They are an inconvenient subject to raise.
Yet no one has been charged with any of these crimes which were actually committed. There is not a single victim of the crimes the 18 are accused of but they must be persecuted to show the MDC who the boss is in this so-called inclusive government. The people who committed crimes to save ZANU-PF are known but freely roam the streets, ready to be deployed to do the same thing when orders are issued.
Those who gave the orders for last year’s orgy of murder and violence are Tsvangirai’s new friends in government. It does not end there. Those who committed economic crimes which plunged the economy deeper into a ditch also have seats at the high table of President Mugabe’s government. They will go unpunished.
In the light of all of this it is unpardonable that the Prime Minister watches helplessly as innocent people are persecuted. His only concern is that they should be granted bail. When Tsvangirai was holed up in Botswana worried about his own security, he undertook to have charges against all these people and others withdrawn. This was one of his conditions for joining the so-called inclusive government. It just became one of many broken promises.
Talks between President Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara to address a number of violations of the GPA are going nowhere. Predictably President Mugabe remains intransigent. Tsvangirai’s MDC-T released a strongly worded statement last week which only served to underscore its impotence.
The statement presented to the media by Biti gave a meaningless deadline of May 11 for the resolution of these outstanding issues. If this was not done the MDC-T national executive council would meet on May 17 to discuss the matter. But Biti stressed that pulling out of the government was not an option.
He simply cannot see himself not being Minister of Finance. So there is absolutely no pressure on President Mugabe to concede anything.
Some analysts have speculated that at the May 17 meeting the MDC-T will instruct its leaders to declare a deadlock and invite SADC as guarantor of the GPA to intervene. This will amount to just kicking the can further down the road.
The SADC mediator Thabo Mbeki will fly to Harare to meet all three principals after which a statement will be issued calling on all parties to work together. It will re-affirm SADC’s support for the inclusive government and call for financial aid and the lifting of sanctions. The matter will end there. It will be back to square one with the two MDC-T leaders pleading in vain for President Mugabe to honour the agreement.
If the MDC-T does not see pulling out as an option then it must not waste time on these futile talks. It must tell people that it will do its best within the realities that are there. It should admit it has failed to get President Mugabe to do what parties agreed to in the GPA.
It must tell Nelson Chamisa that telecommunications will not fall under his ministry. It must also accept that while those in ZANU-PF are above the law MDC-T and civil society activists will be relentlessly pursued. There will be no need for Biti to issue patently false statements like “these issues are not negotiable, they will be resolved,” when he knows President Mugabe will not move an inch.
There is no point trying to make out a case for the MDC-T to pull out. It will simply not happen. The comforts and status of office are too attractive to resist. No price is too high to keep them.
They have convinced themselves that it is in the best interests of Zimbabwe and the world for them to swallow whatever President Mugabe shoves down their throats. They should therefore stop pretending that they are still fighting for the full implementation of the GPA and concentrate on what their boss President Mugabe wants them to do. This is to raise money and get sanctions lifted.
Tsvangirai, excited beyond measure by his status as Prime Minister, has exceeded his brief by sanitising the person of President Mugabe. Pleased as punch that he was also invited to Jacob Zuma’s inauguration as South Africa’s president last Saturday, Tsvangirai called on the media and others not to dwell too much on President Mugabe.
In other words leave the fellow alone. He is not the monster you portray him to be. In fact, he and I are getting along just fine. He is much misunderstood and maligned. His only crime is that he loves his people and country too much. Just give his government money and allow him to visit the Eurozone and North America and you will see what a splendid fellow he is.
If Tsvangirai goes on like this, President Mugabe may allow him to speak on behalf on Zimbabwe at the next UN General Assembly meeting early next year, This will give him a truly global platform to sing President Mugabe’s praises.
There is a naïve belief in the MDC-T that all this appeasement and sucking up to President Mugabe will have a happy and victorious ending. Whatever progress the inclusive government makes will be credited to the MDC-T. When President Mugabe calls for elections at a time of his choosing out of gratitude to the MDC-T for its reasonable behaviour he will allow a free and fair process to take place that will see it romp to victory. A question the MDC-T leadership must ask is why President Mugabe is so unwilling, as is demanded by the GPA, to democratise Zimbabwe. Why is he reluctant to make Zimbabwe a free society? Why does he stubbornly refuse to break with the past?
The answer is simple. While MDC-T leaders are flying all over the place begging for money and lobbying for the removal of sanctions, President Mugabe is planning for the day the country goes to the polls. When that day comes the MDC-T will find that nothing has changed. The militia will still be in place. The police CIO and defence forces will still be wings of ZANU-PF. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission or whatever body replaces it will be under ZANU-PF’s commissariat. The ZBC will still enjoy a monopoly and be staffed by ZANU-PF apparatchiks. Certain magistrates and judges will be on standby to deal with cases assigned to them by the Minister of Justice. Filthy prisons and CIO jails will still be there to welcome opponents of ZANU-PF deemed dangerous. If all this fails ZANU-PF will not accept the results and the MDC-T will go crying to SADC for intervention. Enter another inclusive government under President Mugabe as head.
It is all so predictable and depressing.