A frosty year draws to an end

SADC imposed Zimbabwe President Robert Gabriel Mugabe did everything to dampen spirits for Zimbabweans in a promising year 2009

For most Zimbabweans the year 2009 ended in as bad a mood as it started. This is not to say they did not get anything out of it but merely to state that what they realised fell far short of what they had anticipated following the signing of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) on 15 September 2008.

The stalled implementation of the GPA as subscribers haggled over allotment of Cabinet posts, Provincial Governors allotments, unilateral appointments of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor and the Attorney General (AG) by President Mugabe as well as the abductions and harassment of MDC and Civic Society activists by Intelligence and Law enforcement agencies.


The gloom that engulfed the nation’s raised and then dashed hopes was to become the
subject of a crucial SADC meeting in Pretoria on 26 and 27 January 2009 where it was resolved that;

I. The parties shall endeavour to cause Parliament to pass the Constitutional Amendment 19 by 5 February 2009.
II. The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Ministers shall be sworn in by 11 February 2009;
III. The Ministers and Deputy Ministers shall be sworn in on 13 February 2009, which will conclude the process of the formation of the inclusive government.
IV. The Joint-Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC), provided for in the Global Political Agreement, shall be activated immediately. The first meeting of JOMIC shall be convened by the facilitator on 30 January 2009 and shall, among other things, elect the chairpersons;
V. The allocation of ministerial portfolios endorsed by the SADC Extraordinary Summit held on 9 November 2008 shall be reviewed six (6) months after the inauguration of the inclusive government.
VI. The appointments of the Reserve Bank Governor and the Attorney General will be dealt with by the inclusive government after its formation
VII. The negotiators of the parties shall meet immediately to consider the National Security Bill submitted by the MDC-T as well as the formula for the distribution of governors.

Poor ordinary Zimbabweans who by now had resigned the fight to have their votes in the March 2008 harmonised elections count after the interventions by SADC and AU had resulted in the GPA and imposed and legitimized a President most of them loathed and felt had outlived his usefulness could only watch haplessly as political events in the country slipped further out of their control and became the prerogative of SADC and the political leadership in the country.

The resolutions by SADC were received with skepticism among the generality of the populace but still carried the day as the populace was too weak to fight ravaged by years of economic deprivation at the hands of Zanu PF misrule which they wanted curtailed by whatever means no matter how flawed.

The fears of the ordinary Zimbabweans over SADC resolutions were soon to be confirmed when the President decreed that the appointments of the RBZ Governor and AG were fait accompli and would not be revisited let alone reversed.

The persecution of the MDC and Civic activists through abductions and torture perpetrated by supposedly National Law and Security enforcement and maintenance agents was escalated when the AG joined the fray by invoking section 121 of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act (CPEA) at every turn where politically motivated felons were granted bail to keep them in detention a bit longer than would otherwise be the case if bail was not opposed.

It is instructive that in the more that 20 instances when the section was invoked the AG appeals to the Supreme Court failed and the decisions of the lower courts were upheld leading to the widely held view that the AG was abusing this well intended section of our laws because of his self proclaimed Zanu PF allegiance.

An MDC-T member or reputed anti Zanu PF Civic Society activist was involved in every single instance the now notorious section 121 of CPEA was invoked while it has never been imposed in instances where renowned Zanu PF loyalists are granted bail regardless of the severity of allegations they face.

Any hope the nation had that political repression through judicial persecution would recede were dashed when instead of him being sworn into Government the following day as Deputy Agriculture Minister Roy Bennett was arrested and detained in disregard of undertakings he had from SADC and MDC that he would not be persecuted on his return from exile.

His case is still before the Courts and more alarmingly he is the only prospective coalition Government official denied swearing into office by President Mugabe on allegations he is facing criminal prosecution when there are numerous others in the same government who were sworn into office while facing criminal charges of a similar nature and or had them withdrawn before plea by the AG signaling behind the scenes political horse trading behind the dropping of the cases.

No doubt all the fears that had been erased in the minds of the quick to buy in hopefuls that political abuse and impunity that characterized Zanu PF misrule had been reined in by the consummation of the coalition government were dashed forever by these acts of the AG.

One other hope that the nation had was the abolition of politically motivated inter party violence on commercial farms and the return of normal business environment so desperately necessary for economic stabilization and growth.

A fresh wave of farm occupations by Zanu PF activists and the cold shoulder that greeted the Deputy Premier when he rightly tried to verify the accuracy of claims of renewed farm invasions in Chegutu as well as the silence that followed his visit only confirmed what Zimbabweans had feared would ensue from the flawed SADC resolutions compelling formation of the coalition government where the Home Affairs
ministry was to be co-ministered by a Zanu PPF and MDC-T appointee.

The experiment has failed dismally to cause a swift paradigm shift in the manner in which policing is carried out in the country.

While MDC-T co-Minister Gilles Mutseyekwa has been frothing at the mouth about what will happen his Zanu PF counterpart Kembo Mohadi has been silently solidifying relations between the Police, Army and Central Intelligence Organisation and facilitating their access to the AG and Minister of Justice to ensure minimal glitches in the political judicial persecution so vital in instilling fear within opponents of Zanu PF imposition in the government after the party lost in the March elections to the MDC-T.

The result has been a sustained trumped legal onslaught on Zanu PF opponents and unprecedented arrogance from the Zanu PF contingent in the Coalition government in disregarding court verdicts and arbitration resolutions from SADC and international political blocs.

The problems now causing a gloomy political end for the year 2009 are because SADC realized too late that Zanu PF was allowed too much free play with security forces and that power in its control is being abused to derail progression of the coalition government to the attainment of its formative objectives.

The belated flurry of activity directed towards resolution of outstanding GPA issues could have been avoided had the resolutions of the SADC meeting in January 2009 stuck to the GPA and allocated the Home Affairs Ministry to the sole control of the MDC-T.

If Zanu PF activists were unsure of Police reaction to impunity they would desist from committing crimes and most of the acts currently encouraging them to disregard laws resulting in breaches of agreements to end the practice of selective justice would have set the framework for expeditious implementation of the GPA.

The coalition government has managed to breathe some life into the hitherto economically besieged ordinary Zimbabweans.

Despite all the mantra about sanctions reverberating from the Zanu PF contingent in government the country has managed to arrest rampant hyperinflation through the adoption of a multi currency economic policy, curtailment of RBZ quasi-fiscal indulgence and restocked retail shops that had been emptied by the Junta’s price wars.

While there is political stagnation in the implementation of the GPA the ordinary people in the country are no longer as threatened from hunger, disease and shortages of the past decade.

Even on the political front there have been immense benefits derived from the formation of the coalition government as the political playing field has been freed slightly and the stringent embargo on political association has been relaxed to allow for non Zanu PF politicking without undue political interference although some sporadic overzealous incidences have been recorded.

As we welcome 2010 with Mugabe still the President as he wished when his party sided with the then opposition MDC and forced him to use the current route that has embarrassed him with a defeat at the hands of Tsvangirai instead of his preferred route of extending his term to 2010 and then holding harmonised elections, we hope the shadow of gloom cast by outstanding GPA issues will be removed and progress recorded towards;

Freeing the Zanu PF monopolized airwaves;
Implementation of the National healing and reconciliation initiative;
Restoration of the impartial rule of law;
Abolition of lawlessness on the farms, commercial enterprises and in churches as well as within communities;
Improvement of national productivity;
Prosecution of the corrupt and deviants;

Fresh compilation of the Voters Roll and or at the very least thorough data integrity audit of the current one;

Introduction of legislation to curtail electoral fraud, theft and thuggery;
Completion of the current Constitution making process and the holding of internationally supervised and monitored elections by the 3rd quarter of 2011 or at the very latest the last quarter of that year.

There is an urgent need for the introduction of the Human Rights Act and the amendment of the AIPPA laws to bring them into line with best practice internationally and to legislate and accommodate the role of the Media commission.

We wish our readers and leaders a more prosperous 2010.

Saviour Kasukuwere and Joseph Made impose belated sanctions on Zimbabwe

Gushungo Holdings proprietor and President Mugabe's second wife Grace enlisted cousin in Law and Youth Minister Saviour Kasukuwere to drive Nestle Zimbabwe into closing shop over the company's refusal to buy milk from a farm she expropriated without paying a single cent to previous owners resulting in the company hitting back by closing shop and living 200 employees jobless. Thanks to Kasukuwere and Made we now know who is sanctioning our country-Zanu PF and its President's wife

At a delicate time when most well meaning Zimbabwean political leaders are spending sleepless nights trying to find avenues to revive the country’s battered economy and their efforts are showing positive turnaround signs dim-witted Zanu PF ministers Joseph Made (Agriculture) and Saviour Kasukuwere (Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment) have chosen to swim against the tide and impose sanctions on the very country they claim is burdened by illegal sanctions imposed by the US and its EU allies.
Saviour Kasukuwere and Joseph Made accompanied by senior Police officers, Chief Superintendent Chrispen Makedenge and ...
Detective Inspector Henry Sostein Dowa and Affirmative Action Group vice President paid the Swiss owned Zimbabwe food processing company Nestlé following failed attempted forced delivery of a tanker full of milk from Gushungo Holdings by six employees of the company owned by President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace.

According to the state owned Herald newspaper that many now consider a Zanu PF mouthpiece rather than the Public Media enterprise it was established to be, Kasukuwere accused the West of using Nestlé “to impose further sanctions on the country.”

While indeed Gushungo Holdings is an indigenously owned company seeing as it belongs to the First family that alone does not entitle it to secure contracts with any entity doing business in the country at gunpoint.

Like any other company Gushungo Holdings must attract customers for its products through ethical and competitive marketing of its products without using political and national law enforcement agents and Ministers to coerce sales.

Minister Kasukuwere must know the difference between Gushungo Holdings and the country he serves in government well enough to avoid embarrassing himself, if at all he knows of the existence of the word, by making such foolish public statements.

There are numerous Zimbabwe establishments in dire need of milk such as Dairibord, Government Hospitals, Schools and other food manufactures too numerous to list here that it is curious why Gushungo Holdings appears determined to force Nestle to buy its product if not to push a political agenda that has lost favour with most Zimbabweans.

Be that as it may it would appear that its employees having failed to convince a potential customer to buy the Gushungo Holdings milk delivery they abused the office of the President by roping in Ministers and Police Officers to compel Nestlé to buy the President’s milk.

The justification for this high handed action appears to have stemmed from the fact that Nestlé had previously bought Gushungo holdings milk until October 2009 when it suspended dealings with the company following a public outcry and threatened customer boycott of its products after it was accused of dealing directly with a Zimbabwean company owned by people specified in EU sanctions for Human Rights abuses in the country.

To a certain degree then it appears minister Kasukuwere’s reasoning has logic that the company was complying with a sanctions regime that the country is attempting to smash at any cost.

But on further examination it becomes apparent that the reasoning is flawed and imposes more severe sanctions on the country than would be the case if it was left to operate without associating with Gushungo Holdings.

As a consequence of the political marketing strategy employed by Gushungo Holdings in its dealings with Nestlé, the Swiss owned company has closed shop and with that act the country has lost no less than 200 direct jobs in the company but will now have to import the products the company used to manufacture locally.
Downstream jobs in suppliers and customers of Nestlé Zimbabwe have not even been taken into account and it is safe to estimate than 100 000 jobs will be affected by this transaction alone.

When Nestlé refused to buy Gushungo Holdings milk no more than 1000 direct and indirect jobs were threatened.

Next time Zanu PF complaints that it is the MDC that caused the imposition of sanctions on the country they need to be reminded of the consequences of their ill conceived retributive actions against companies they believe are pushing a political agenda that is against their political agenda like Nestlé.

By forcing the premature closure of the Swiss based country in Zimbabwe at a time there is concerted regional and internal efforts to get the Swiss Government to rethink its participation in the sanctions regime against the country the ministers have not done the efforts any favours.

The Swiss government will simply hit back hard by imposing more stringent restrictions against the country bearing in mind that the country is a giant in world supplies of telecommunications and electronics equipment which the country desperately needs for its economic turnaround efforts to succeed.

But then the reputation of those that participated in the Nestlé closure is there for all to see.

Saviour Kasukuwere is a cousin to President Mugabe who made his fortune as a CIO operative in Mutare and is the proud owner of Comoil a company that racked in billions from fuel shortages in Mugabe and Zanu PF misruled Zimbabwe.

He was alleged to have led the disruptions of the all stakeholders constitution making process at the Rainbow Towers Hotel in July where he ended up embroiled in the Chinotimba/mahlangu mobile phone theft fiasco.

Joseph Made is the Minister of Agriculture who is reputed for accusing monkeys for fertilizer shortages and making flawed grain intake estimates from helicopter flights over Zimbabwe’s vast agricultural regions.

Of late he has been exposed as the minister of Agriculture who spends most of his time on Gushungo Holdings farms and Dr Gideon Gono’s poultry farm in Norton.
Chief Superintendent Chrispen Makedenge and Detective Inspector Henry Sostein Dowa are from the notorious ZRP Law and order section that has close links with the CIO and are the AG’s foot soldiers in persecuting MDC and Civic Society activists. They were there when Jestina Mukoko was abducted and we now know what the legal position is about their law enforcement methods.

As for Farai Mutamangira of the AAG it is important to know that this group is not regulated and much as it has noble intentions its methods are known to have been overboard and in many instances corruption tainted.

These are the people who Zanu PF must bring to book and whip into line if it entertains any lifting of travel restrictions and sanctions it says are suffocating the country and the party’s leadership.

It will be asking too much for the Swiss to open their doors for free entry by Zanu PF adherents symbolised by Kasukuwere and Made when the same people are closing down its investments in their country because they do not wish to deal with political leadership owned enterprises in Zimbabwe.

The politics of outstanding GPA issues

President Mugabe and Premier Tsvangirai now actively addressing issues threatening the coalition government

Before the SADC troika met on 5 November and resolved that the subscribers to the Zimbabwe Global Political Agreement must forthwith apply themselves to resolving the outstanding issues that had resulted in the MDC-T resorting to a partial pullout to emphasise the importance of it attached to the resolution of the issues we had been fed a nauseating overdose of Zanu PF mantra to the effect that there are no more outstanding issues to talk about from the implementation of the GPA.
But in a short 45 day period after the Mozambique meeting of the SADC Troika...

we now have the Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet announcing the appointment of three critical Commissions whose interviews had been concluded in September but outcomes had been kept under wraps in the office of the octogenarian Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.

The GPA principals have agreed on the names of Commissioners to serve on the Human Rights, Media and Independent Electoral Commissions and announced them as follows;
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission [ZEC] 8 Members: Daniel Chigaru, Geoff Feltoe, Theophilus Gambe, Joyce Kazembe, Petty Makoni, Sibongile Ndhlovu, Bessie Nhandara, Mukuni Nyathi

Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission [ZHRC] 8 Members: Kwanele Jirira, Carol Khombe, Joseph Kurebwa, Jacob Mudenda, Elasto Mugwadi, Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube, Neseni Nomathemba, Ellen Sithole.

Zimbabwe Media Commission [ZMC] Chairperson Godfrey Majonga, Deputy Chairperson Nqubile Nyathi and 7 other members: Lawton Hikwa, Miriam Madziwa, Chris Mhike, Millicent Mombeshora, Henry Muradzikwa, Chris Mutsvangwa, Matthew Takaona.

Even then the appointments were incomplete as the Electoral and Human rights Commissions were announced without disclosure on the names of the persons who will chair them as was agreed in the GPA that the Parliament’s Standing Rules and Orders would make recommendations to the President on who to appoint in the Commissions and the President would in turn and in consultation with the Premier appoint the incumbents and designate one among them as chairperson of the respective Commission.

But perhaps as MDC-T’s Elton Mangoma sheepishly told the nation in justifying the ongoing negotiating process this is because during the initial negotiations that led to the GPA there was agreement in principle on what the coalition government had to achieve but not on the how it will do so which is now what justifies the ongoing negotiations.

We can only hope that as the negotiators deal with the how part of the GPA they will also not forget to address the when, why, where and by who aspect so critical in holding performers accountable for successful performance.

But then lest we get carried away was this announcement not an outstanding announcement from the GPA when Zanu PF was dishing out the lies that President Mugabe had lived by his part in the agreement and it was now left to the MDC-T to fulfill its obligations to have sanctions lifted, dismantle pirate radio stations and as an offshoot dismantle parallel government structures in the Premier’s office?
And for it to happen so soon as the blind folded Zanu PF Congress had just resolved that;
“On the GPA and the Inclusive Government
Congress has noted that the Inclusive Government brings the Party into partnership with ideologically incompatible MDC Formations from which it must extricate itself in order to retain its mantle as the only dominant and ascendant political party that is truly representative and determined to safeguard the aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe.

Congress, therefore:

Castigates the continuance of the illegal declared and undeclared Western sanctions which remain a paramount and decisive outstanding issue in the Inter-Party dialogue on which the nation must speak with one voice and challenges the MDC Formations to undergo fundamental mind frame change (KUCHINJA PFUNGWA) in calling for their immediate and unconditional removal.

Expresses confidence that the new Facilitation Team will continue with the same diligence, patience and understanding that the Zimbabwe issue has delicate, sensitive and fundamental concerns on both sides that cannot be resolved overnight.
Instructs Mugabe and negotiators to ensure that all outstanding issues, once agreed, must be implemented concurrently.

This means there should be no movement on the concerns of the MDC Formations without corresponding and simultaneous redress of Zanu PF’s concerns such as the illegal Western sanctions, Western Funded pirate radio broadcasts and Western interference in Zimbabwe’s internal politics through the funding of parallel government structures and the sponsoring of political activities of NGOs as a force multiplier for the MDC Formations.

Negotiators should not countenance introduction or inclusion of provisions or agreements which seek to reverse or undermine the gains of the Liberation Struggle.
Congress instructs the party to signals that it will reject any outcome of the Constitution-making process that is not home grown.

An acceptable outcome would be a Constitution made by Zimbabweans for Zimbabwe, which entrenches the ethos and gains of the Liberation Struggle and is not the product of any external interference.

No foreigners, individual, corporate or national in whatever capacity they may from time to time find themselves involved in aspects of Zimbabwe’s bilateral dispute with Britain, have the right to dictate or impose a Constitutional order on Zimbabwe.

Declares that Security Forces an inalienable right of every sovereign state, and more so Zimbabwe’s

Security Forces are a product of the National Liberation Struggle, and therefore belong to the people and are mandated to defend the country’s territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty. Zanu PF, as the Party of revolution and the people’s vanguard, shall not allow the Security Forces of Zimbabwe to be the subject of any negotiation for a so called ‘security sector reform’ that is based on patent misrepresentations of Zimbabwe’s heroic history and for the mere purpose of weakening the state so that it can be easily overthrown.

Directs all Party members and organs to fully participate in the constitution making process in order to prevent it from being hijacked by those who wish to effect regime change or to undermine the gains of the Liberation Struggle,” shows how critical the Zanu PF Congress is in directing party policies and programmes.

This bunch of beneficiaries of Mugabe’s largesse with little or no influence whatsoever on the direction of the party which resides with security forces they purport to own and control was never consulted when Mugabe was forced to negotiate the GPA and will not be of material consequence in directing the party when it comes to the GPA and the coalition government.

The good thing about is they know how ineffective they are in matters related to the GPA because their President reminded them that they are a disjointed lot on factional lines and are only kept together by his largesse.

That is why he has scoffed their GPA resolutions and announced a new Electoral Commission to replace the one he arm twisted to declare a Presidential runoff election after his routing at the hands of Morgan Tsvangirai in the initial March 29 segment of the harmonized election.

The parasites attending the Zanu PF Congress blindly ordered their President and
Negotiators to extricate their party from its relationship with the MDC formations in the coalition government and Mugabe stoked their pleasure by announcing he is ready for fresh elections because the coalition government had outlived its usefulness.

He did not tell his captive fools that he will not commit any such foolishness of extricating himself from the political arrangement that legitimizes his tenure of office and condemn his party into political oblivion.

Because of their advanced ages the Zanu PF Congress delegates can be pardoned for exhibiting bouts of amnesia commensurate with their ages.

They have not only forgotten that Mugabe is only a President of the coalition government and the minute he dismantles that government he will revert to the illegitimacy that haunted him over the period April 2008 to 12 February 2009.

But Mugabe has not forgotten the pain of illegitimacy and is aware where his problems in the coalition government are being coordinated from.

Sadly his blind followers missed his hint when he went on the offensive against
MDC-T Secretary General and Finance Minister Tendai Biti who vowed when he took appointment that he would be no one’s junior partner in the coalition government.
Mugabe has had long enough to realize that Finance Minister Biti is a sore in the Zanu PF politics of patronage and corruption.

He accused the Minister of scuttling the Party’s renowned inputs for political allegiance programmes by refusing to release the IMF drawing rights for the party functionaries he has allocated farms to squander on luxurious lifestyles they had become accustomed to.

The few who got his message are now pushing that the finance Minister is responsible for cash shortages in Banks forgetting that they have hitherto insisted that the Governor of the Reserve Bank whom they endorse is responsible for fiscal management and has been caught napping.

The same congress resolved that the disputed appointments of Provincial Governors, the Reserve Bank Governor and Attorney General were historically justified and should not be revisited by the Party negotiators and in any event whatever will be agreed upon which they obviously had no clue they directed that implementation be done simultaneously when all the party wishes were attained.

They will be disappointed with the appointment of Commissioners ahead of their wishes of the shutting down of pirate radio stations, the lifting of sanctions and the dismantling of so called parallel government structures in the Premier’s office if at all they will realize that it has happened in utter disregard of their resolutions.

And it appears they are in for more surprises after the same people they barred from negotiating further concessions have agreed to meet again and thrash out the remaining outstanding issues that had hitherto been dismissed as non issues.

Despite prolonged delays in posting the MDC nominated Ambassadors to their work stations it appears the game is up as the Registrar General has confirmed issuing the Diplomatic Passports for the designate Ambassadors and it can only be a matter of weeks before they are dispatched to their stations.

The real work that remains is for Legislators to work on giving the appointed commissions real teeth to deal with political misdemeanors.

Apart from the Electoral Commission that is regulated by the Electoral Act the other two Commissions have no legal framework in which to operate and enforce compliance and this must be addressed with speed before they are manipulated and abused.

It is not enough that they are established in terms of Constitutional Amendment No 19 because there is need to give them an enabling Act which will guide their operations and close loopholes that can be exploited to mislead them politically.

Even the electoral Act needs to be tightened up to close the loose language that allowed the previous Commission to delay announcement of results in order to find means and ways to manipulate them.

Equally important is the need to set specific deadlines on when after receipt of returns from polling stations the Chief elections Officer must announce the results as given and leave contestants to resort to the Electoral Courts to dispute figures returned from constituency registrars.

Parliament must never allow the situation where Patrick Chinamasa usurped its power to amend the Act through a statutory instrument to recur.

While we welcome the appointment of the Commissions we implore Legislators to be alert to these loopholes and close them well in advance of the conclusion of the constitution making process such that by the time elections are staged there will be no room for Commissioners to be abused by the President, Justice Minister and or the Military Commanders as happened after the March 2008 elections.

The magic of disengagement

Professor Jonathan Moyo shamed by developments of the "dumpest" MDC-T disengagement resolution

In politics scientific prediction of consequences of an initiative are near impossible and a best mere conjecture.

Zanu PF propagandist and democracy champions who went to town about the futility of the MDC-T partial disengagement from the coalition government in October 2009 have once again been confounded by the political ingenuity that is abundant in the party.

If it was not that they have long lost any modicum of shame two decades ago they would be burying their faces in their bloodstained hands in shame as to how they could have got it so wrong about the initiative they all nonchalantly dismissed as a non event soon after the party announced its resolution to disengage.


“As Zanu PF we are not surprised by this decision. The MDC has done it several times boycotting parliament and many other important national events so we are not surprised by this.

The MDC has its own problems and wants to make these problems national problems. They are only doing this to please a white man, they have always shifted goals posts but we will not lose sleep over that as Zanu PF we will continue working for the people of Zimbabwe,” bleated Ephraim Masawi on behalf of Zanu PF at the time the MDC-T disengaged.

But ever since the Sadc Troika met in Maputo on5 November and resolved that the parties in the coalition government must address all the outstanding implementation issues from the GPA signed on 15 September 2008 as well as the issues that the Sadc resolved on 27 January 2009 in Pretoria he has gone into hibernation out of shame.

Before that meeting a self professed former ZIPRA terrorist who did not fire a single shot or kill so much as a fly but now purports to have fought and defeated Rhodesian Selous Scouts and their colonial masters had waxed lyrical abut the need for Sadc to dismiss the GPA and replace it with the Zanu PF policies that have ravaged the country into a basket case over three decades.

Among the ludicrous arguments he advanced were the central issues that inform Zanu PF not to live by the GPA the party wilfully and consciously entered into with the MDC formations on 15 September 2008 to legitimise Mugabe’s disputed claim to election to president of the country on 28 June 2008.

Falsely reputed as the most incisive political analyst and scientist in the country despite a catalogue of failed predictions about the Zimbabwe political environment over the past decade Professor Moyo laid bare his deficient analytical skills when he labelled the MDC-T partial disengagement resolve its dumbest political initiative of all-time.

In his lack of political wisdom the vocal and controversial Zanu PF MP for Tsholotsho North exposed his and Zanu PF’s political blindness on issues material to Zimbabweans that the MDC-T was and is pushing for by insisting on full implementation of the GPA.

For a politician with his chequered history it is not surprising that he got it totally wrong because he really and truly lacks credibility as a trusted and objective analyst to the extent he mesmerises with eloquence in arguing wrong concepts convincingly.

Professor Moyo and the entire Zanu PF think-tank lost it on the disengagement initiative when they blindly fooled themselves into believing that the MDC-T disengagement resolution was motivated by;
 The indictment to trial and re-detention of the party’s nominee for Deputy Minister of Agriculture one Roy Bennett whom Zanu PF believes is undeserving of the position due to his history as a former Rhodesian army man whose nomination was intended to provoke the ire of Zanu PF instead of addressing the need to revive the country’s ailing yet key economic driver the agricultural sector
 The partial disengagement resolution was at variance with provisions of Constitutional amendment No 19 upon which the coalition government is premised and
 Disengagement would not yield any results in the changed economic environment stabilised by the intervention of multi-currency usage in place of the discredited and discarded Zim-dollar whose usage had benefited the party through the days of hyperinflation when every MDC-T cough used to cause the economy to sneeze.
 Zanu PF’s acting Junta Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa had on January 29, 2009, crafted the multicurrency usage policy that had given the country immunity against hyperinflation and taken the advantage from the MDC-T’s cheap politics of any kind.

“The multi-currency macroeconomic response to the MDC-T’s treacherous boycott of the coalition government is very loud and clear: While your boycott political antics previously caused havoc in the hyperinflationary Zim-dollar days, this time haurume in the dollarisation days!” bragged Zanu PF through the garrulous Professor Moyo.

Prof Moyo disclosed that the multi-currency usage dynamic’s hedging effects against inflation were beyond the comprehension f the MDC-T and its foreign strategists who were still playing around hyperinflation politics to cause disenchantment with Zanu PF among the populace while promoting MCDC-T’s unwarranted popularity.

As a consequence he predicted that disengagement from the coalition government would condemn MDC-T to the peril of political irrelevance which as we now know has not happened but to the contrary has strengthened the party’s grip in the coalition government.

The outrage of this kind of political reasoning within Zanu PF was premised on the fallacious belief in the party that it is people centred and will for that reason gain political momentum from economic stability brought about by multi currency fiscal policies which unbeknown to the party a largely and rightly credited to the entry of the MDC-T into government.

Rightly credited to the MDC-T entry, because the multi currency intervention only became possible when the GPA had been signed when it had been resisted by successive Zanu PF regimes for over 2 decades being labelled unworkable bookish economics by the Zanu PF party leader President Mugabe and RBZ Governor Gideon Gono.
Notwithstanding those realities on the ground Prof Moyo could not resist the temptation to credit economic stabilisation to the discredited Zanu PF.

“Put differently, what this means is that whereas Zanu PF has remained resolutely focused on people-centred policies in the context of the GPA and against the backdrop of the now irreversible multi-currency macro-economic environment, the MDC-T has remained a whimsical western proxy for regime change, which continues to see the GPA as a treacherous opportunity for getting a few posts for a few well connected individuals,” he bragged

The reality though is that the converse of what he said is true given the hard to dispute evidence that it was Zanu PF that perilously hanged the country’s economy on the worthless Zim-dollar for 2 decades arguing that it was a symbol of sovereignty worthy of retention at any cost despite its worthlessness only to capitulate when it realised that the Finance Ministry had fallen in the hands of an MDC appointee who would never countenance such ridiculous uneconomic arguments to formulate fiscal policies of his crucial Ministry.

It was therefore not surprisingly that Prof Moyo reserved his parting shot for the Finance Minister Tendai Biti he predicted at the time he was appointed would be a catastrophic failure but has proven him wrong in every facet of political economic and social management to date.

“For Minister Biti and indeed for the MDC-T itself, the price of disengagement from the government is certain to be a traumatic movement from kiya-kiya economics to sewer economics,” he closed his ill advised plea to SADC.
But back to economic stabilisation Professor Moyo conceded that the Finance Minister had held his own by maintaining the multi-currency usage fiscal policies.

“Supermarket shelves remain full with more of the same on offer as the power of the so-called mighty dollar continues to reign supreme. In other words, the economy has ignored the MDC-T boycott by treating it as non event” he admitted to which we must add thanks to Finance Minister Tendai Biti’s resistance of desperate Zanu PF attempts to reintroduce the discarded and discredited Zanu PF symbol of sovereignty the worthless Zim-dollar.

“In view of the foregoing, if the MDC-T thinks its latest boycott stunt will find political traction by precipitating a political crisis of national, regional, continental or international proportions, then it is in for a rude shock,” the Professor erred.

We all now don’t we how shell shocked Zanu PF has been ever since the 5November SADC Troika resolutions were pronounced.

The party argument that Zimbabweans were prepared to sacrifice their all in defence of their sovereignty has changed to something like;

“What the people of Zimbabwe are waiting for are jobs, economic stability, affordable education, a reliable health delivery system, food security, safe and reliable water supplies across the country, sufficient electricity, safe and reliable roads, an efficient transport system, and a reliable social welfare system after retirement,” Zanu PF apologist Reason Wafawarova writing in the party mouthpiece the Herald or more succinctly;

“Indeed, it is very instructive to note that during the GPA negotiations, and over the last eight months since the formation of the coalition government, the MDC-T’s exclusive preoccupation has been about “posts” over “policies”- Professor Moyo justifying the need for Zanu PF to retain Provincial Governorships, the position of Attorney General and that of RBZ governor it expropriated in the coalition government in contravention of the GPA as well as the need to avoid the suffering it had caused the people over 3 decades of uninterrupted misrule and impunity in defense of sovereignty.

This dramatic shift only because its wish for SADC to write off the GA failed dismally in Maputo on 5 November 2009.

Now Zanu PF argues without any rationality that Provincial Governorships are an extension of the President’s Office which are to be manned at the President’s discretion by his trusted Zanu PF cadres and not some MDC-T functionaries loved by the localities where they are established.

“For example, it is unreasonable and treacherous to expect President Mugabe to accept the dilution and subversion of his office as Head of State and Government and the Commander in Chief of the Defence Forces by allowing 60 percent of it to be given to some other political parties or offices that are not loyal to him as President. There is no precedent for such a thing anywhere in the civilised and democratic world governed by the rule of law,” bleated Prof Moyo on behalf of Zanu PF.

Little did he realise that in so saying he was reducing the office of National President to the Zanu PF presidency equivalent. For indeed if President Mugabe is truly a President of the people of Zimbabwe he should be guided by people’s preferences of they want to be led by politically and appoint the most popular people to represent his offices at Provincial level.

But because the unpopular boys and girls in Zanu PF are in search of jobs whose scarcity they have exacerbated through unbridled political impunity over three decades President Mugabe must force them to preside over the governance of unwilling provinces who prefer the leadership option offered by other political parties and the erudite and “politically astute” Professor Moyo will applaud such a move as a show of how people cantered the President of the country and his party is.

But such has been the wit behind the MDC-T disengagement initiative that self acclaimed political scientists that attempt to rubbish it end up entangling themselves in a web of political stupidity.

That is why all who have advanced the argument that MDC-T is fighting for scarce jobs for its people have not been taken seriously. The reason is because a job can’t be a job for the boys and girls only when an MDC-T adherent eyes it and not when it is offered a Zanu PF cadre trusted by the President but unpopular with the general populace in a locality.

Which argument extents to the ridiculous demands that the Premier must dismantle parallel government structures in his office whatever that means.
To show how concocted the Zanu PF demand was, is and will always be Professor Moyo tried to clarify it but only further muddled it as follows;

“During the GPA negotiations the issue of central concern to the MDC-T was Cabinet posts. Later, the focus shifted to MDC-T demands for posts for the positions of Attorney General, the Governor of the Central Bank, ambassadors and provincial governors. Since then, the MDC-T quest has been only about posts in the Prime Minister’s office with special reference to the filling of illegal positions in the party’s parallel government structures whose civil servants earn top up salaries ranging from US$700 to US$7,000.

Parenthetically, there is new and incontrovertible evidence that some but not yet all MDC-T Cabinet Ministers are earning top up salaries pegged on the Kenyan cabinet salaries reported to be around US$15,000 a month. Otherwise, and as a matter of fact, all MDC-T Cabinet Ministers and civil servants are receiving top up salaries and their evil pecuniary interest explains why MDC-T Cabinet Ministers who do not agree with the disengagement decision have nevertheless succumbed to it.”

In as much as Constitutional Amendment No 17 revived the Senate as part of our political institutions Constitutional Amendment No 19 revived the office of the Prime Minister as an institution of our political governance and in the spirit of GNU reassigned leadership of government to that office from the office of the President where I had been escalated during the days period when the post of Premier was abolished.

This is the inconvenient truth that Zanu PF has to accept that the president is no longer the Head of Government but rather the Premier.

By insisting that the President is the Head of State and Government as well as Commander in Chief of the Defense Forces and Supreme Leader of Zanu PF the party and Prof Moyo in particular are actually attempting to justify the parallel government structures in the Premier’s Office by arguing that government structures devolve from structures in the President’s office which structures if there at all are well and truly the parallel structures that must be reassigned to the Premier’s office.

The absurdity of a Prime Minister duplicating government structures of the government he leads is difficult to comprehend unless the argument that the President remains Head of Government notwithstanding that his position as President was ratified when he signed a n agreement wherein he accepted the revival of the Premier’s office to head the government.

If such an argument carries the day it means the coalition government is thus nullified and both the President and the Premier are running governments and the Premier’s wing seems to be outperforming that of the President as it is paying its Ministers and workers better.

If that is the case then it was the smartest decision by the MDC-T to openly declare its dissociation with the president’s structures and thereby trigger SADC intervention as guarantors of the GPA which under such circumstances would have been a hoax agreement.

Nothing exposes Zanu PF inconsistencies in the coalition government than the attempt by Prof Moyo to hoodwink SADC into believing that the GPA has been fully implemented in terms below.

“Furthermore, SADC should take note of the fact that the other issues that the MDC T says are outstanding, such as the posts of the Attorney General, Governor of the Central Bank and provincial governors, are not mentioned anywhere in the GPA and were only raised in some SADC press statement and have since been dealt with in government as promised in that press statement.”

The same issues almost caused the failure of the signing ceremony of the GPA as MDC-T sought to have them agreed upon before putting pen to paper. The party only assigned the GPA after getting irrevocable assurances from the SADC mediator that they would be revisited and to his credit they were revisited and resolved by SADC resolutions of 27 January 2007 when due to Zanu PF intransigence they were referred to the guarantors of the GPA as formation of the government stalled over the same issues and disputed allotment of Ministerial portfolios.

It was at the same meeting that SADC authorised the first departure from the signed GPA when it resolved that the Ministry of Home Affairs will be Co ministered by a Zanu PF and MDC-T nominee meaning government Ministers were increased by one over and above the 37 parties had signed for.

The departure triggered further horse trading of Ministers of State portfolios resulting in a Government of a bloated 76 Ministers and Deputies instead of the 57 they had signed for in the GPA.

For Zanu PF and Prof Moyo to now argue that Resolutions of the SADC meeting on 27 January 2009 are not part of the GPA but a mere press statement that has since been attended o anywhere was the height of mischief and disrespect of the intelligence in SADC leadership as well as our national intelligence.

No wonder way SADC were tough on the feuding parties and prescribed deadlines on when action to resolve the disputed issues was to take place and be concluded. They were irked by the condescending attitude displayed by Prof Moyo on behalf of Zanu PF which was reverberating in the State owned media.

Such was the power of the so dubbed dumbest MDC-T political initiative to disengage from the GNU that it forced Professor Moyo and Zanu PF to expose their true colours and political intentions to sidestep the GPA and rule the country through an exclusive Zanu PF cartel disguised as the coalition government endorsed by SADC on 15 September 2008.

The folly of Zanu PF’s contention that the MDC-T disengagement was in protest to the lawful arrest, indictment and detention of Roy Bennett and its other MPs for felons became apparent when the 5 November 2009 SADC Troika summit held in its resolutions that continued refusal of his swearing into office by President Mugabe was an aberration from the GPA that required urgent resolution.

“The MDC-T decision to boycott the coalition government to protest the lawful indictment of Bennett by a court of law is a gross intimidation of the court and a scandalous interference with the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law specifically intended to make our courts part of the external US and EU project of illegal and undemocratic regime change.

In the same vein, the notion that the rule of law is what the MDC-T or its Western backers say it is, has gone too far and must now be stopped. Whenever an MDC-T person is arrested or prosecuted on whatever allegation, including cases of rape or obvious mobile phone theft, the response is always political under the self-serving claim of persecution or the so-called selective application of the law,” Prof Moyo had attempted to mislead SADC that the coalition government was upholding the rule of law through its relentless prosecution or is it persecution of MDC –T criminals in vain.

We now know what became of the cases against the alleged MDC-T mobile phone thieves and rapists when they went for trial don’t we? Yet Prof Moyo still holds them in negativity. They were acquitted of any wrongdoing.

“Of course, Bennett remains innocent until found guilty by a court of law, but he does face very serious criminal charges and the shocking evidence in support of those charges has been placed before the court for the attention of his lawyers following his indictment. That is what must now be addressed through the judiciary,” Professor Moyo declared authoritatively.

But Zanu PF had advised him to write the Bennett judgement before the courts hear his case so that they will have no reason o acquit hi even if the case against him was not proved.

Here is the “judgement” by “Justice” Professor Jonathan Moyo that should be reproduced by Justice Chinembiri Bhunu after presiding over the Ro Bennett case verbatim not withstanding his pretence that Bennett must be presumed innocent yet denied the right to take up appointment in the coalition government.

Whereupon after reading evidence of record and listening to the arguments by both the State and Defense Counsels I find that:-

“It is preposterous for anyone to say that Bennett should not have been charged or that, having been charged last February, he should not have been indicted simply because he is a white person or a former Rhodesian infantryman with the blood of freedom fighters on his hands.

Nobody is above the law, and that particularly goes for former Rhodesians who brutally massacred our freedom fighters and the innocent peasants who supported them or Zimbabwean children who were in refugee camps in Mozambique and Zambia.

The culprits must be brought to book and they will never ever be allowed to now masquerade as latter day champions of human rights. Never!

It is not okay for the very same Bennett who fought and massacred our liberation forces to be a Minister in the government of Zimbabwe 29 years after our hard-won independence. That is just not acceptable.

Although the media-connected Rhodesian network behind the MDC-T has whitewashed Bennett’s curriculum vitae to make it appear as if it starts from 2000, the year which Rhodies and their American and European backers say is when the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe started after the start of the historic land reform programme, even fools know that Bennett was a notorious member of the Rhodesian killer machine before 1980.

Given that reclaiming our priceless land from British colonialists who brutally and illegally stole it from our ancestors was the single most important driver of our national liberation struggle, the MDC-T’s treacherous nomination of Bennett who served in the Rhodesian infantry for the post of Deputy Minister of Agriculture is morally equivalent, and therefore as insulting as, having a former Nazi infantryman serving as a deputy minister of justice in Israel today.

If Israel would not accept that under any circumstance, including that of fake reconciliation, why should Zimbabwe accept the monstrosity?

There is no amount of the abuse of press freedom that can justify the rewriting of Zimbabwe’s history. Bennett’s hands have the blood of Zimbabwe’s liberation fighters including that of Zimbabwean children who were in various refugee camps in Mozambique during the liberation struggle.”

In the premise I find the accused………?

With that judgement will end the Bennett nomination issue and what Professor Moyo describes as:-

“In the vain hope of finding a SADC solution in Maputo, Pretoria, Kinshasa, Gaborone or Luanda, Prime Minister Tsvangirai is once again behaving like a nauseating drunkard who loses his car keys on the dark side of the street only to hopelessly look for them on the side with light.”


It appears Zanu PF after loosing the same car keys in similar circumstances have chosen not only to look for them in the dark side where they were lost but send blind political drunkards like Prof Moyo to find which is the dark side of the car and then the lost keys.