Dr Simba Makoni, Mr Job Sikhala, Mr Dumiso Dabengwa, Prof Arthur Mutambara and Pastor Timothy Chiguvare show that Zimbabwe poised for another election

By Hatirebwi Nathaniel Masikati

MDC99 interim leader Job Sikhala and PPP leader Pastor Timothy Chiguvare. Are these the latest ponies in the Zimbabwe political landscape willing to further divide the democratic movement against the conservative Zanu PF party?


It is easy to determine the imminence of an election in Zimbabwe. The panic behaviours of political weasels and opportunists is the most consistent barometer on which to measure when elections are likely in the country.

Current and prospective leaders of the minor political formations that often mushroom or are resuscitated at each election only to vanish into obscurity immediately thereafter, indicate when elections are likely in the country.

It appears Zimbabwe is closer to elections than most of us suspect if the scramble for publicity in the minor parties and the emergence of new political formations is anything to go by.

The more resilient and most fortunate of the mediocre formations has been the MDC-M led by Professor Arthur Mutambara.

Following the split of the MDC national council on 12 October 2005 a faction loyal to then MDC Secretary General (SG) Professor Welshman Ncube felt it was academically and ideologically more sophisticated to be led by founding Party President Morgan Tsvangirai now Prime Minister and broke away.

The renegade faction invited Professor Mutambara who hitherto was not even a member of the party to take over its leadership and retained the name, emblem, regalia and slogan of the original party promising to rebrand after consolidating its position in the disputed Senate elections.

Unfortunately it did not perform as well as it thought it would and the rebranding initiative was shelved to until after the next general elections where the renegades leadership felt the formation had a better chance of gauging its strength and consolidate its grassroots support and lay claim of owning the goodwill of the divided party.

They were humiliated by the faction that remained behind the founding President’s leadership and all talk of rebranding was shelved as it became evident that without the name MDC the faction was a nonentity.

Despite the humiliating defeat it suffered in the March 2008 the faction of renegades now referred to as the MDC-M or MDC- PF to link it to its leader and its alliances and reliance on Zanu PF for political relevance, the formation remained visible courtesy of its invitation to the inter-party talks that produced the coalition government that over rewarded the faction with Ministerial positions and the 2nd Deputy Premiership now occupied by its leader.

With his insider knowledge of the coalition government Deputy Premier and MDC-PF leader Professor Mutambara was the first to panic at the realisation that both Zanu PF and MDC-T were in advanced preparedness for the elections to foreclose the coalition government tenure of office.

He slammed both the MDC-T and Zanu PF leaders for embarking on the elections course to wind up the coalition government citing continued existence of the un-conducive and uneven political and electoral landscape as well as opinion polls pointing to a landslide 88% victory for MDC-T if free and fair elections are staged.

He was forced to recoil and announce his formation’s preparedness for the elections by a barrage of accusations that he was bent on prolonging the lifespan of the coalition government for political expediency as he realised his formation had no chance of winning any seats in the next Parliament.

Taking a cue from that revived Zapu interim leader Dumiso Dabengwa joined the fray and demanded the holding of elections to wind up the Sadc and AU imposed coalition government that he accused of failing to deliver on its agreed targets and endless power bickering within its ranks.

The Zapu message resonates well with public sentiment in the country where hopes
that were raised by the reduction to near cessation of violence and stabilisation of the economy following the formation of the coalition government have been dampened by the failure to improve the economy and living standards due to unfulfilled GPA promises.

But the same public is all too aware that Zapu has no chance whatsoever of winning the elections and is just there as a spoiler party.

Mavambo Kusile Dawn (MKD) formation that has been dogged by its leader’s failure to make a clean break with his Zanu PF origins and the squabbles for control of party assets that saw Dabengwa withdrawing his crucial support for the formation and crossing over to revive Zapu as well as the delay in the party’s launch has also come out with guns blazing.

Like the Zapu leader Dumiso Dabengwa, the disputed MKD leader Dr Simba Makoni has added his overrated political voice to the call for the winding up of the coalition government and the holding of elections to allow the Zimbabwe electorate to settle the leadership paralysis in the coalition government once and for all.

He even went further to suggest that people must engage in orange style protest marches against the coalition government for its failure to address bread and butter issues confronting the generality of the populace while the parties involved concentrate on fights for power consolidation.

The MKD and Zapu leadership has a long association with Zanu PF at very senior levels and deeply mistrusted by the majority of impoverished Zimbabweans who are at a loss as to why they never stood up for the ordinary people when their former party went on a rampage against innocent citizens.

The duo is also remembered for voting in favour of draconian legislation that centralised power in the Presidency and criminalised economic entrepreneurship, freedom of expression and association and the rights to demonstrate against government excesses.

It is this reputation that makes them sound disingenuous and hard to believe when they attack the MDC-T for being power mongers when they are known to have abused power in the past.

But perhaps more telling about how close the country is to the next elections is the emergence of two rag tag political formations MDC99 and People’s progressive
Party (PPP) led by Job Sikhala and Pastor Timothy Chiguvare respectively.

Most Zimbabweans are used to the mushrooming of these hazy political outfits whenever elections are about to be staged and are not surprised at the development and even expect more to emerge shortly.

The problem these fly by night opportunistic political formations face is that the Zimbabwe electorate is no longer that easy to dupe and confuse as MDC-PF and MKD will vouch.

The Zanu PF strategy of sponsoring new parties to split the opposition vote which has always exceeded the Zanu PF popularity vote is nothing new to the electorate and the scramble for visibility gripping the obscure party formations is indicative of the intense competition for Zanu PF support in the fringe parties.

The more they denounce Zanu PF the greater their chance of receiving gagging funding from the party to tone down and direct opposition at the MDC-T to split its vote.

Announcing the formation of a new political formation in Zimbabwe at this time is ill advised and naive.

The next election is unlikely to be fought so much over issues and ideologies as it is going to be a dogfight for survival by Zanu PF.

Zanu PF refused to accept the verdict of the people in the last election and bulldozed itself into a commanding role in the coalition government none of the other two partners wanted to share with it.

After that the party has consistently thumped its nose at the electorate by deliberately refusing to implement crucial clauses of the GPA and grabbing whatever power it could even when such power was logically supposed to be under MDC-T nominees to the cabinet to exercise.

Zanu PF will have to find new methods of compelling people to vote for it given its intransigence in the coalition government and the likelihood that traditional reliance on violence may be curtailed by the restructured electoral commission, re-oriented Police Force whose loyalties may have shifted away from Zanu PF invincibility and an electorate that is better prepared to deal with the violence.

Added to this the fact that the other parties that will contest the elections have been in government during which time they have developed acquaintances with key law enforcers and will have a real say in the management of the electoral system may just prove disadvantageous for Zanu PF used to monopolising the electoral system and rigging it unsupervised.

The issues that have dominated the past elections like sanctions, national sovereignty, economic meltdown, land ownership, constitutional reforms have been significantly reconfigured by developments during the tenure of the coalition government and will not feature as highly as they did in last elections.

One issue that will come to the fore is the indigenisation of the economy and it is a battle Zanu PF is unlikely to win given its performance on the land question.

Whenever the election will be held which appears not to be in the not too distant future Zanu PF appear to have a steeper slope to climb than the MDC-T.
As for the mushrooming opportunistic formations the crumps from the main political table will be too little to give them any significant gains.

Certainly none will fare any better than the MDC-PF did in the March 2008 elections and most will not even salvage their deposits.

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The lamentations of Professor Jonathan Moyo and George Charamba

By Hatirebwi Nathaniel Masikati

Media information and Publicity Secretary George Charamba and Zanu PF Thsolotsho North  MP Jonathan Moyo trying their best to justify  lost causes.

IF there is one thing that is going to seal the fate of the Zanu PF, it is the association it has with egghead Professor Jonathan Moyo and Presidential Spokesman and Information and Publicity Secretary George Charamba aka Nathaniel Manheru.

For some unknown reason Professor Moyo still behaves as the Zanu PF national spokesman. For all we know Professor Moyo is the Zanu PF (MP) for Tsholotsho North Constituency by default and Central Committee Member by adoption following his decision to rejoin the Party that had parted ways with him in 2005.

Since rejoining Zanu PF Professor Moyo has been given the insurmountable task of proving his loyalty to the Party he left in acrimonious circumstances that saw him throwing brickbats at the Presidium which require some form of restitution on his part for him to be pardoned.

Professor Moyo’s readmission to the Zanu PF ranks was made conditional on him undertaking never to show public disrespect or opposition to the Party elders and delivering the promised split of the MDC-T before the next elections.

The second test is proving much harder to overcome for the egghead Professor who thought he had infiltrated the party enough during his stint as a pseudo Independent MP.

He had forged links with MDC-M rebels that had won him their trust to the point of them joining him in a frivolous and vexatious legal petition to nullify the election of MDC-T’s Lovemore Moyo as the Parliamentary Speaker.

He was also in talking terms with several MDC-T MP’s whom he believed he could count on to help him saw seeds of disunity in the MDC-T that would result in the 2005 style split that rocked the MDC following infiltration by the CIO.

That support has not been forthcoming. Unrestrained access to the State Media that he prioritized as the only tool he required to divide the MDC-T was granted and has given him all the space he requires to execute his task of dismantling the MDC-T unity to no avail.

Professor Moyo’s obsession with media propaganda as a tool for political power acquisition and consolidation is legendary and knows no bounds.

As Information and Publicity Minister from 2000 to 2005 he managed to abuse his authority and shut down several privately owned and foreign media houses from broadcasting from the country.

He also crafted the most repressive laws and regulatory infrastructure that the State has and is still using to gag free dissemination of information.
The one person professor Moyo failed to get the better of through the raft of laws and vitriolic propaganda he churned on State Media was Roy Bennett’s Legal Counsel Beatrice Mtetwa.

The duo clashed in courts and on the streets of Harare with Professor Moyo intending to silence the Humana Rights defender and at each turn coming a cropper.

Professor Moyo’s political debauchery always came to nothing each time he came face to face with Mtetwa and as if fate had it, Beatrice Mtetwa’s and Professor Moyo’s ex-wife were of Swazi origins adding an extra dimension to the duels between the duo.

Instead of openly admitting that he loathes anything that attracts Beatrice Mtetwa’s support or intervention Professor Moyo has always presented his personal vendetta against Mtetwa as political discourse between MDC-T and Zanu PF which is outrageous.

That Professor Moyo’s politics is steeped in the personality syndrome he always accuses the MDC-T of being preoccupied with and not ideology can be gleaned from his obsession with the Mtetwa personality.

Despite his accusations that the MDC-T is preoccupied with personality syndrome and bereft of ‘a coherent and homegrown ideological framework,’ because of as he puts ‘the embattled party’s rather crazy reaction to the appointment of Justice George Chiweshe as Judge President of the High Court of Zimbabwe and its continuing subservience to Roy Bennett and his sickening antics,’ facts on the ground tend to be to the contrary.

Ever since he jumped onto the sinking Zanu PF ship in 1999 Professor Moyo has been on a solo mission to save the political fortunes of one man in Zanu PF that is President Mugabe.

For his personal protection from criminal activities that forced him out of the Ford Foundation in Kenya and the Wits University in South Africa Professor Moyo realised that his last safety enclave was in Zanu PF under the stewardship of President Mugabe and his scorched earth mantra against western nations he had swindled of funds and were baying for his blood.

When Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai led the MDC party to oppose the Zanu PF excesses that had bankrupted the country and impoverished 90% of the citizenry Professor Moyo rallied behind Mugabe’s leadership of Zanu PF and the country notwithstanding the catastrophe the government had caused to the country that even the illiterate were able to see and wanted reversed .

While the MDC was agitating for Mugabe to go as it is still doing to date to pave way for the reconstruction of the country’s democratic governance and economic resuscitation Professor Moyo was and is still crafting legislation to suppress citizens and pushing for Mugabe to remain in office to derail implementation of policy programmes to benefit ordinary people.

It was the MDC-T that in the national interest to stop the economic hemorrhaging that Zanu PF had subjected the nation, decided to surrender an election victory and work with the vanquished Mugabe and Zanu PF in a coalition government that was imposed by SADC and the AU following refusal by Zanu PF apologists to concede electoral defeat.

The MDC-T realised that in order for the country not to slide into military dictatorship and Junta rule it had to accept working with the defacto Junta leader Mugabe and make his involvement part of the solution to avert a bloodbath for political power in the country that was economically ravaged and where the majority of the people were left with no other solution than to fight for survival.

Oblivious of this people centered consideration on the part of the MDC-T, Professor Moyo believes the MDC-T acknowledges Mugabe as a solution to the country’s problems because of his leadership skills when to the contrary he is being acknowledged or his reckless and uncaring vindictiveness that could cause more harm than good if he is excluded from an undeserved political seat.

The pragmatic ideology that guides the MDC-T in accepting to work with a failed President Mugabe in a transitional period such as the coalition government is ample evidence of the political depth in the party as it has managed to weigh consequences of refusing to accommodate the ruthless dictator to the lives of ordinary citizens of the country.

The reason why the majority of MDC-T cabinet ministers now openly admit that it is a privilege that history has been kind to give them the rare opportunity to work under an iconic African dictator with a towering global disrepute of Mugabe is because they now have insider knowledge of how he became a dictator and who is behind his ruthlessness and more importantly how they can push him out without exposing the populace to danger.

After the formation of the coalition Government last year, Zanu PF relying on advice from morons like Professor Moyo’s Patrick Chinamasa, Tofataona Mahoso, Johannes Tomana, Godfrey Chidyausiku, Mariyawanda Nzuwah, George Chiweshe, Godfrey Chidyausiku and George Charamba etal tried everything possible to cause the MDC-T to pull out of the coalition government that was beginning to make a positive difference to the lives of the ordinary citizens by breaching the transitional Constitutional amendments.

President Mugabe has been and is still being ill advised to act unilaterally in making appointments of failed performers like Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono, Attorney General Johannes Tomana and the Provincial Governors notwithstanding that the party entered into an agreement that is tacit and unambiguous on what he should do during the tenure of the coalition to ensure proper winding up of the SADC and AU transitional arrangements for the country.

m ’s negative politics of personalities and positions shifted away from President Mugabe and focused on the positions of the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and the Attorney-General respectively with cacophonic calls that "(Gideon0 Gono must go" which the party alternated with "(Johannes) Tomana must go".

Provincial Governors are not are part of the coalition government President’s office in terms of our Constitution, relevant laws and practice but rather as a result of their inclusion in Constitutional Amendment No 19 which removed their seats from Parliament to the Senate and required the president to make the appointments in terms of the coalition agreement which restricts him to consulting and agreeing with the other principals before effecting such appointments.

But because Professor Moyo is obsessed with the personality that is the President and has a mission to accomplish to achieve total acceptance in Zanu PF he still believes albeit wrongly that the President is above the law and can act unilaterally in such appointments even when the appointments are unconstitutional and there is no precedent coalition government practice to fall back on.


What has reduced outstanding GPA issues, to ‘a pathetic discourse about personalities and positions with nothing in it for the struggling masses,’ is not because they are MDC-T afterthoughts since signing the GPA on 15 September 2008 but rather the distraught the refusal by Zanu PF to live by the spirit and letter of the agreement has caused by delaying realisation of the quick recovery of the economy the population was hoping would accrue from the agreement.

Indeed many elements now regret that they squandered their vote on Prime Minister Tsvangirai and the MDC-T party on March 29, 2008 but not because the Premier and the MDC-T has failed them but rather because they have accommodated an ungrateful and ruthless dictator and Zanu PF to do as he pleases in the coalition government that is supposed to make their lives better but failing because of the Zanu PF intransigency.

That is why many are eagerly waiting for the Constitution reform initiative to be completed and give them a chance to vote against the undeserving Zanu PF delinquents in the coalition government.

Unlike Zanu PF, MDC-T politics is not about prescriptive, unworkable and outmoded Marxist socialist ideologies, policies and like minded personalities and their positions but rather globally compliant democratic practices that permit the citizens to direct the government towards the goals that will benefit the populace.

No wonder that the party has a zero tolerance on unilateralism and rewarding of total and fatal incompetents as epitomized by the scandalous manner in which President Mugabe unconstitutionally appointed George Chiweshe to the position of Judge President of the High Court on the recommendation of the Judicial Services Commission without consulting the two other coalition government principals which is required of him by CA No 19.

Whatever requirements the law imposes on the Judicial Services Commission to discharge its functions without any influence from any authority, they do not override or preclude the amended Constitutional requirement for the President to consult his other principals before effecting such appointments.

As it stands the recent unilateral appointment of Judges by President Mugabe remains unconstitutional regardless of the numbers he so appointed.
Professor Moyo’s obsession with the politics of personalities and not the MDC-T’s becomes evident in the homage he pays President Mugabe for appointing George Chiweshe and the flowery praise he showers on Chiweshe’s suitability for the position of Judge President of the High Court.
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“It’s just personal about Chiweshe in the typical fashion of MDC-T politics of personalities and positions.

The unacceptably ridiculous message from MDC-T is that Justice Chiweshe should not be Judge President because he is a former Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

It is common cause that before serving as Chairperson of ZEC, Justice Chiweshe was a judge of the High Court of Zimbabwe based in Bulawayo and that he served in that capacity with distinction. This means he is a qualified and experienced judge with no blemish on the bench. Full stop.

The record will also show that it is Justice Chiweshe who presided over the March 29, 2008 general election, which arguably stands as the freest and fairest election ever held in Zimbabwe.

There is no serious minded person who can challenge this fact in terms of what happened in the run up, the organisation and the conduct of that election and still hope to be taken seriously.

Yes, there were problems after the March 29, 2008 election but they had nothing to do with ZEC or Justice Chiweshe.

In the main, the post March 29, 2008 election problems emanated from the fact that the founders and funders of the MDC-T wanted ZEC under Justice Chiweshe to unlawfully declare Tsvangirai as the winner of the presidential election when everyone, including idiots, who observed knew only too well that there was no outright winner in terms of the law requiring the victor to have 50 percent plus one; meaning that a runoff election had to be held by law.

The idea that Tsvangirai should have won an election that he did not contest is so absurd that it is better left without any comment.

So what then is the MDC-T’s fuss over Justice Chiweshe’s appointment all about?

Well, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.

As a foreign founded and funded political party, the MDC-T does not want an independent minded judge who is wholly grounded in the Zimbabwean national experience and who is above brown-envelope justice to administer the High Court.

The truth of the matter based on his professional experience is that Justice Chiweshe, whose qualification as a judge is beyond question, is incorruptible and the MDC-T does not like people like that because its British and American founders and funders foolishly believe that their dirty money can buy anything, everything and everyone in Zimbabwe, especially in the judiciary, the media and security organs of the state which have been targeted as brick walls against regime-change.

The fact that Tsvangirai took the advice of the founders and funders of his party to violate our electoral law by ‘‘boycotting’’ the June 27, 2008 presidential runoff election cannot rationally be blamed on Justice Chiweshe or ZEC. There comes a time when we must all carry our own crosses and that applies to Tsvangirai, his MDC-T and its founders and funders.

In the meantime life must go on.

The irreversible reality done without prejudice is that Justice Chiweshe is the Judge President of the High Court of Zimbabwe as an expression of a selection by the Judicial Service Commission, which President Mugabe has accepted and implemented. That is the end of that story, the rest is the future,” eulogized Professor Moyo for a personality called George Chiweshe.

Anyone as good as the egghead Professor projects George Chiweshe would be an asset that the country can ill afford to put to waste and thus deserving the appointment.

So why did the President decide not to take this unrivalled candidate to his co-principals with these arguments and seek their endorsement of his appointment?

George Chiweshe was appointed to his position on the recommendation of a Judicial Services Commission whose neutrality is questionable. What with the likes of self confessed Zanu PF functionaries like AG Johannes Tomana, public Service Commission Chairman Mariyawanda Nzuwah and Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku pulling strings in the Commission that is complimented by two others from the Law Society whose names are not disclosed.

The position he has been appointed to is not about qualifications alone but also his relevant experience in dealing with national issues that require the incumbent to have demonstrated unbiased leadership.

It is that experience that disqualifies Chiweshe regardless of how well academically qualified he was for the position.

The relevance of his experience as an army Brigadier in an army whose commanders relied on his legal advice to pronounce that they will only accept a straight jacket President with Liberation War credentials is a major stain on his reputation.

The admission that under Chiweshe’s stewardship at ZEC Zimbabwe held peaceful elections whose results could not be announced because of a participant party’s foreign handlers interferences is the very reason why he should never be made a crucial gatekeeper of our sovereign institutions like Judge President of the High Court if he cannot make decisions in the face of foreign interferences.

If the election was as peaceful and as well managed as professor Moyo credits George Chiweshe why did it take him and his ZEC 35 days to count less than 5million ballots and announce the outcome?

Why was it not possible to stage the Presidential runoff in the stipulated 21days after the initial election and how legal was the Statutory Instrument that set aside an Act of Parliament that he allowed to be used in staging the June 28 presidential runoff election?

What distinguished him as a Bulawayo High court Judge when it is known that he sentenced MDC political activists for trivial cases while he never sentenced the violent Zanu PF mobsters who assaulted opponents in the 2001 and 2005 elections?

If his distinguished service is measured in terms of selective application of justice then we must agree with Professor Moyo.

But it is obvious that President Mugabe and his advisors were aware of the unsuitability for the key post in the coalition government and decided the best remedy was to ignore the Constitution and appoint thereby creating a constitutional impediment in the coalition government that will buy time for Zanu PF to think ways of regrouping.

That is why Professor Moyo and George Charamba are now in overdrive with propaganda in support of the illegal appointment of George Chiweshe and the other judges and can afford to publish drivel like;

“The irreversible reality done without prejudice is that Justice Chiweshe is the Judge President of the High Court of Zimbabwe as an expression of a selection by the Judicial Service Commission, which President Mugabe has accepted and implemented. That is the end of that story; the rest is the future,”

As for Professor Moyo’s preoccupation with the personality that Roy Bennett is we can only conclude that it is in defence of his friends Chinamasa and Tomana’s source of income as well as his fear of Beatrice Mtetwa that drives him to insanity.

Both Professor Moyo and George Charamba are literate enough to understand the meaning of this preamble to Schedule 8 of our constitution and must stop displaying the kind of public ignorance they are projecting in the name of defending the indefensible.

For the avoidance of doubt we repeat the preamble to schedule 8 hereunder;
“For the avoidance of doubt, the following provisions of the Interparty Political Agreement, being Article XX thereof, shall, during the subsistence of the Interparty Political Agreement, prevail notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Constitution-“

Zanu PF Panic and pandemonium

By Hatirebwi Nathaniel Masikati

The Zanu PF supreme leader has gone to sleep and is implementing dreams he has for his party forgetting he has Constitutional responsibilities to execute

As some of the political gains of the MDC-T’s entry into the coalition government start to bear fruit Zanu PF finds itself in the unenviable position where it has to find a way to avoid an imminent crashing defeat at the polls likely to be held in the next 18 months.

This is no mean task for a party that has hitherto known no other means of winning elections other than through electoral rigging and violence.

The Constitutional reform juggernaut that the party has tried everything possible to derail is likely to roar into action on June 2010.

There will be huge boulders rolled into its path by desperate Zanu PF supporters wishing away the most threatening coalition government initiative to their Party’s 30 year hegemony on power.

Unfortunately regardless of how intense and well coordinated they will be, the Constitutional reform initiative has gathered enough momentum to crush through any resistance that Zanu PF will mount to its completion.

The Zanu PF party leadership has long resigned to that reality as it has been made clear to them that Sadc and AU will not countenance any attempt by Zimbabwean political parties to derail or defer the democratization processes underway in the country aimed at restoring electoral credibility.

This message was made clear and unambiguous at the meeting of former African Liberation Parties held in Dar es Salaam, from 5 - 7 May 2010.

Ever since that meeting Zanu PF has realised that its days in government are numbered unless it mounts a credible and convincing violent free election campaign.

Preferably Zanu PF would like to get to the polls as the sole party in government such that it will have the monopoly of staging elections and advantages of unsupervised rigging thereof.

Zanu PF believes the reconstituted Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) will not be in efficient enough to detect its established and complex election rigging methodologies other than violence and media space denials for opponents.

Zanu PF is not unduly worried about the raft of changes in the Media and Electoral Commissions that are under the ministries headed by its Ministers who will neutralize them if need be.

The Zanu PF focus is on how to weaken the MDC-T structurally and project it as an ideologically bankrupt party in the eyes of its multitudes of supporters.

On the legal side of matters it has been resolved that the Electoral Court must be onside for Zanu PF and the Judge President being the head of that Court will play a crucial role as witnessed in past electoral challenges hence the appointment of Justice George Chiweshe to that position.

Other unilateral appointments and vitiations of Constitutional Amendment No19 are in the grand scheme of the Zanu PF campaign to divert the MDC-T attention from pursuing the democratization agenda as its hands are tied with disputes in the coalition government power sharing modalities.

Zanu PF wants the disputes to cause the MDC-T to pull out of the coalition now that the transitional political arrangement is heading into the home stretch of what it was conceived to achieve and there will be no time to replace it other than through a Zanu PF managed election.

On its part the MDC-T is fully aware of this Zanu PF strategy to exclude it from managing the staging of the next elections and is working behind the scenes to ensure that election rules will not give Zanu PF sole responsibility for staging elections.

The fact that the President is mandated to set the next election date in consultation with the coalition government principals is causing butterflies in Zanu PF who would rather the President retains previous monopoly in fixing election dates.

That is why Zanu PF has now thrown all caution to the wind and is openly breaching the coalition government constitution to test the waters ahead of the planned unilateral election decisions the President will be asked to make.

If the MDC-T is not careful and does not act with speed to stop the current wave of unilateral actions on the part of the President it will be face with the reality that the President will call for an election next year the results of the constitutional reform process notwithstanding.

Forget all these sidelining events emerging from the coalition government because they are Zanu PF political ruse that can be corrected by the next government.

What is critical for now is for the MDC-T to keep Zanu PF as occupied with its decoy politics of unilateralism while the party works hard to craft laws and rules that will govern the conduct of the next elections and close the Zanu PF rigging avenues.

In that regard Gorge Chiweshe’s appointment as Head of the Electoral Court must be fought on every turf available and he should never be allowed to have a role in managing elections again after his failure in 2008.

All the noises about unilateralism are justified from the MDC-T but more importantly it is the action that will show the nation that President Mugabe is not as free to act as he has hitherto portrayed himself to be and there is no better signal than a Parliamentary challenge of his unilateralism of late.

That will exacerbate the panic and pandemonium gripping the party of geriatrics at present.

MDC ministers and MP's stand up and be counted

Elections thief George Chiweshe former ZEC Chairman recently rewarded by Zanu PF with unilateral appointment by president Mugabe as Judge President of the High Court causing the same reactions in MDC-T similar yet still substantive past appointments have stirred in the past. Could this be the one that instructs MDC-T to look elsewhere for remedies to Mugabe's failure to uphold the Constitution?

The MDC-T is once again crying foul as it finds itself short changed by President Mugabe’s unilateralism in the coalition government.

President Mugabe has followed up his unilateral appointment of the Reserve Bank Governor, Attorney General and Provincial Governors and his unconstitutional refusal to swear in Roy Bennett as Deputy Minister of Agriculture with announcement of unilateral appointments of High and Supreme Court judges.

The latest appointments have further riled the MDC-T that is already seething with anger over the blatant refusal by Zanu PF to fully implement the provisions of Constitutional Amendment No 19.

The MDC-T are in the flawed coalition government to try and salvage whatever it can of its political losses following the rigged March 29, 2008 elections the party won a victory that was invalidated by the intervention of the military and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission in favour of Zanu PF.

Bruised and battered by a well oiled and armed violent Zanu PF machinery augmented by a complicit Sadc leadership the MDC-T was forced into accepting a seat in a coalition government negotiated at the behest of the defeated Zanu PF party.

Because Zanu PF forced itself into the coalition government it was always going to be the dominant player despite its unpopularity with the electorate.

President Mugabe did not waste any time in making the most out of the coalition government allocating all the critical Ministries to his Zanu PF adherents many of whom he had to appoint as Senators to qualify for Cabinet posts following their humiliating defeat at the polls.

Next he moved to appoint 10 Provincial Governors, the RBZ Governor and the AG all from Zanu PF ranks notwithstanding the humiliating rejection the party had suffered at the polls and provisions of the GPA his party had entered into with MDC-T and MDC-M requiring consulting first before appointing.

Having realised that the MDC-T and MDC-M had no meaningful means with which to resist his unilateralism in making appointments President Mugabe went on to announce a full line-up of Permanent Secretaries he had appointed without consulting the other coalition principals as required of him by CA No19.

The appointments were later to be ratified by the Premier after President Mugabe had agreed that he would appoint the next set of Ambassadors from MDC nominees until an external representation balance was struck between the coalition partners.

To pacify the restive MDC-T coalition partners who had announced a partial pull out from the coalition government that was threatening to delegitimize President Mugabe , he also added the appointment of Commissions and the reconvening of the National Security Council on a monthly basis as well as the revisiting by inter-party negotiators of all outstanding CA No 19 issues.

No sooner had the tactic to lure back the MDC-T into full participation in the coalition government than President Mugabe was at it again this time reassigning ministerial portfolios to himself and Zanu PF ministries while leaving ministries under MDC nominated ministers without any administrative Acts to superintend.

In all instances the MDC-T in particular has done well to highlight these unconstitutional behaviours to the nation and the guarantours of the coalition agreement but has not come up with effective counter strategies to stop the unconstitutional actions by the President.

The multitudes that have banked their trust in the party to make a difference in their lives have not done themselves any service by concentrating their analysis of events in the coalition government and embarking on a strengths/weakness evaluation of the parties instead of throwing in missiles for the MDC-T to use in countering the Zanu PF onslaught on their rights.

The unilateral appointments remain substantive to date despite the vociferous MDC-T opposition and referral of the illegal appointments to the guarantours and the never-ending negotiations.

To be fair to the MDC-T the party has also scored significant victories in gaining appointments of its nominees as Ambassadors to 5 missions abroad and the appointment of the Zimbabwe media Commission, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the Human rights Commission as well as the regular meetings of the National security Council.

But these gains were made insignificant given the national expectations that are premised on the full and unconditional implementation of the coalition agreements leading to the holding of elections to foreclose the flawed coalition era and replace it with a representative government of the electorate’s choice.

The MDC-T has announced that agreement was reached ages ago on the share of Provincial governors among the coalition parties but all the electorate sees are Zanu PF Governors and no indication as to when the agreed quotas will be put in practice.

The MDC-T has referred the matter to SADC but there is no sign there from that they will enforce the agreement.

President Mugabe argues that provincial governors are his Constitutional prerogative to appoint and not covered by the GPA.

But that argument is preposterous as the GPA has now been integrated as part of the Constitution through CA No19 which overrides any Constitutional and Statutory variances with its spirit and letter during the lifespan of the coalition government.

None other than President Mugabe signed CA No 19 into the Supreme law of the coalition government and annexed the GPA to it.

The MDC-T is right to make all the noises about the failure by the President to uphold CA No 19 in letter and spirit. The MDC-T is equally right to refer the matter to Sadc guarantours of the Supremacy of CA No19 during the tenure of the coalition government.

However if these initiatives are not yielding the desired result the MDC-T needs its supporters to tell it what to do next and all the party is getting is brickbats about it having entered into this untenable position without the approval of its grassroots support which wanted nothing less than the total transfer of power from Zanu PF following the March 2008 electoral defeat of Zanu PF.

The paradox though is that while the coalition was not an expectation of the MDC-T grassroots it was the same grassroots that implored party leadership to do all it could to relieve them of the harsh and hostile burden of Zanu PF retributive violence and the coalition government initiative has done just that.

The MDC-T supporters must now use the freedom from violence they have to demand that their MP’s do something about the violations of the coalition constitution by President Mugabe and Zanu PF in addition to its Jomic and Negotiators and Sadc arbitration initiatives.

The ZCTU has already suggested that a fresh Presidential election be considered in the circumstances, which is not an outrageous proposal at all.

Alternatively the MDC-T must table a motion in Parliament to impeach the President who has willingly of deliberately refused and or failed to uphold the Constitution he swore to defend and uphold at all times during his tenure of office.

IF there is doubt on the interpretation of CA No19 of outstanding in so far as the powers of the President to appoint certain categories of Public Servants as appears to be the case the best place for that to be put to rest would be in the Supreme Court.

In the past the MDC-T has been reluctant to resort to the Supreme Court for adjudication of its political disputes with Zanu PF on the premise that the Supreme Court bench was compromised in favour of the government.

Now that the Party’s leader is also the Head of Government and Premier, why is the party still reluctant to approach the court for redress of a constitutional dispute in the government it is involved in?

The MDC-T must seriously consider approaching the Supreme Court for adjudication on the interpretation of “SCHEDULE 8 (Section 115(2) and (3)) which reads;
“Transitional Amendments and Provisions
Framework for a New Government
1. For the avoidance of doubt, the following provisions of the Interparty Political Agreement, being Article XX thereof, shall, during the subsistence of the Interparty Political Agreement, prevail notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Constitution-
20.1.3 The President
(a) ......
(n) appoints independent Constitutional Commissions in terms of the Constitution;
(o) appoints service/executive Commissions in terms of the Constitution and in consultation with the Prime Minister;
(p) in consultation with the Prime Minister, makes key appointments the President is required to make under and in terms of the Constitution or any Act of Parliament;

The argument that approaching the Supreme Court would automatically suspend political initiatives to settle the dispute may be valid but is defacto flawed because even without the approach the political initiatives are in limbo and as good as suspended.

Once the Supreme Court clarifies the meaning and application of these clauses the disputed appointments in the coalition government can be dealt with accordingly and in compliance with the legal ruling.

That will spare the nation of all the political noses it has been subjected over the past 18 months over the appointments which legally appear to be flawed but are defacto operational.

With specific reference to the refusal by the President to allow Senator Roy Bennett to take up his appointment as Deputy Minister of Agriculture the MDC-T must in addition to efforts and initiatives it has so far undertaken, initiate a parliamentary motion compelling president Mugabe to uphold CA No19 section “23A Political rights which reads;

“(1) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, every Zimbabwean citizen shall have the right to;
(a) free, fair and regular elections for any legislative body, including a local authority, established under this Constitution or any Act of Parliament;
(b) free, fair and regular elections to the office of President and to any other elective office;
(c) free and fair referendums whenever they are called in terms of this Constitution or an Act of Parliament.
(2) Subject to this Constitution, every adult Zimbabwean citizen shall have the right;
a. to vote in referendums and elections for any legislative body established under this Constitution, and to do so in secret; and
b. to stand for public office and, if elected, to hold office.”

By failing to challenge the President legally the MDC-T is complicit in Roy Bennett’s refusal to assume public office for whatever reasons that the President and Zanu PF have so far advanced which are unconstitutional.

It is no use the MDC-T complaining about the unilateral appointment of Retired Brigadier General George Chiweshe as the new High Court Judge President because he was the Chairman of the Electoral Commission that robbed the party of its electoral victory in March 2008 yet on the other hand the Party’s Secretary General in his capacity as Finance Minister appoints Gideon Gono as Chairman of the RBZ board in the full knowledge that the same Gono was the financier in chief of Chiweshe’s electoral rigging.

The complaints become even more ludicrous when the MDC-T is shunning the option to stop President Mugabe from acting unconstitutionally by refusing to table parliamentary initiatives open to the party to counter Presidential excesses and worse refuses to approach the courts for redress preferring to resort to Sadc, Jomic, Inter Party negotiators, ZMC, ZEC, ZHRC and other Commissions for arbitration before the laws they operate under have not been changed.

The results will not change because the rules remain and can only be changed in Parliament where the party seems afraid to hazard radical legislative changes for fear that its slim parliamentary majority may not carry the day.

But the people it claims to represent would rather see attempts to change these regulations fail and know who is against the changes so that they will deal with them come next elections.

As it stands there are many who believe that the MDC-T is shedding crocodile tears over Mugabe and Zanu PF’s refusal to implement the coalition agreement when it is the MDC-T that wants to use the outstanding issues to gain political mileage through accusing Zanu PF of political intransigence.

The noble cause the MDC-T is fighting for of seeing through the Constitution making process will come to nothing if in the process the party loses its grassroots support by failing to address immediate concerns of the electorate on the flawed belief that its economic stabilization and political violence interventions have endeared it to the grassroots in perpetuity.

The fight must continue even after the party wins elections under the new Constitution in the making as the improved conditions that people are enjoying are still way below the ideal.

All the unconstitutional and unilateral appointments and or denials of public office that the President has made or perpetrated must suffer the same treatment and fate without singling out the recent appointment of George Chiweshe.

Chiweshe's recent appointment is not in any way more repugnant than the imposition of people rejected at the polls as Provincial Governors, the appointment of Financier of the violent electioneering by Zanu PF as RBZ Governor, the imposition of a self confessed Zanu PF activist as the AG thereby delaying the prosecution of perpetrators of violence while the innocent victims are persecuted and denied the right to public office.

MDC-T must stop pussycating on these serious issues and take the bull by its horns in Courts, in Parliament, within Sadc and AU as well as in Jomic and other Commissions that are in place through pushing for regulations and laws that will bind the operatives to act constitutionally and judiciously.

What corrective measures have all those Ministers and deputy Ministers from the MDC who are whingeing about being stripped of their powers taken to reclaim their powers other than crying in public about their losses?

Why can’t they raise these unconstitutional acts in Parliament and demand their powers back that way given that these were ministries they were allotted after Zanu PF had chosen those it wished to administer in the first instance?

Is it not time these Ministers take a cue from Roy Bennett’s bravery and grit and start hitting back and very hard too whenever they are lapped in the face by their Zanu PF counterparts.

The Prime Minister can only do so much for them but it is really up to them to show that they are not in government to nursemaid Zanu PF Ministers but to push through the people’s agenda for the country.
.

Professor Moyo exposes Zanu PF unholy agenda against Roy Bennett

Motor mouth Professor Jonathan Moyo (Zanu PF Tsholotsho North MP) may just have provided the MDC-T the ammunition it lacked in fighting the Roy Bennett persecution

Professor Jonathan Moyo the Zanu PF MP for Tsholotsho North has confirmed national sentiment about the ongoing persecution of MDC-T Treasurer General Roy Bennett in unambiguous terms that leave no room for error in interpretation.

Tsholotsho North MP Jonathan Moyo said delays in swearing in Bennett had nothing to do with his trial but “his abominable Rhodesian past”.

“The quandary has never been a legal one but rather a political one. For the record, Roy Bennett must not be part of any government in free Zimbabwe because he represents the unacceptable face of the murderous Rhodesian infantry whose bloodletting during the liberation struggle knew no bounds.

As such, the question whether Bennett should be sworn in as deputy minister of agriculture has absolutely nothing to do with his acquittal but his abominable Rhodesian past.

The MDC-T can have Bennett as their treasurer, agriculture secretary or even their president, but the majority of Zimbabweans simply can’t stomach him as a member of their government in any capacity whatsoever,” disclosed Professor Moyo in an interview with the Herald on 14 May 2010.

The MDC –T has never believed otherwise and now has the confirmation from the persecutor –Zanu PF that has been missing and thus reducing the fears in MDC-T to mere speculation and must act on it.

The swearing in of Roy Bennett as Deputy Minister of Agriculture following his nomination to the post in terms of Constitutional Amendment No 19 has been unilaterally set aside by President Mugabe who is also the First Secretary and President of Zanu PF.

President Mugabe has always highlighted that he would be in dereliction of is constitutional responsibility if he was to appoint Roy Bennett into the government before he was exonerated of serious charges of conspiring to commit acts of banditry, terrorism and insurgency against an elected government that had been preferred against the MDC-T nominee .

Not that there was anything in the constitution allowing him to do so, the nation has grudgingly given the President the benefit of doubt and allowed the president to get away with an obvious breach of the Constitution afraid to be accused of agitating for going against the rule of law that the nation and international community had always vilified Zanu PF of.

That fear no longer has any basis following the acquittal of Roy Bennett by the High Court on Monday 10 May 2010.

Not even in the face of a frivolous and vexatious appeal by the State against the acquittal that has been exposed as a Zanu PF inspired appeal to buttress the real motive of the appeal as disclosed by professor Moyo.

There will be objections that when he disclosed the reason behind the prosecution of Roy Bennett, Professor Moyo was airing his personal views as he holds no position in Zanu PF entitling him to speak for and on behalf of the party and or government.

That would be acceptable if Zanu PF had always distanced itself from the vociferous Professor.

Zanu PF has always identified and supported the vociferous rants of Professor Moyo as a former Minister and Party deputy spokesman and lately as MP for Tsholotsho.

It was the same Professor who as Information and Publicity Minister in the Zanu PF government crafted the draconian legislation like AIPPA and POSA that have caused so much pain and suffering to the nation.

It is the same Professor who is in Court with Zanu PF approval and backing to try and reverse the election of current Parliament Speaker Lovemore Moyo from MDC-T.

As an MP and Member of the Zanu PF Central Committee professor Moyo is no lightweight member of the party and given the history of success his initiatives through Zanu PF have been implemented and the fact that Zanu PF has not officially distanced itself from his disclosures about the reasons behind Bennett’s prosecution, the MDC-T will be within reasonable grounds to consider political initiatives to counter Zanu PF initiatives through abuse of judiciary systems to achieve political ends.

Obviously the MDC-T leader will be meeting the other Principals and taking up the Bennett persecution case to try and get it resolved without the need to wait for the outcome of a dubious and politically motivated appeal whose only chance of success is in delaying the swearing in of Mr. Bennett as Deputy Minister rather than a conviction of Mr. Bennett over the allegations he is accused of.

But that alone is not enough to show the president how a self confessed politically compromised Attorney General is a liability in the Judiciary system of the nation and a source of unhealthy conflict in government.

What is needed is for the MDC-T to roll out a well coordinated political program that will target those that rely on political patronage for jobs to pay the political practice that politicians pay when they fail to serve their constituencies.

A starting point would be a massive protest against the AG at the courts whenever the appeal is set down for hearing.

In tandem with that there must be a parliamentary initiative by the MDC-T that sends an unambiguous message that the party does not condone any breaches of the Constitution from anyone starting with a motion to impeach president Mugabe if he refuses to swear in Roy Bennett on the grounds of an appeal that his party has already said has nothing to do with seeing justice in action but rather a political initiative to stop Bennett access to a seat in government because of his past.

The likelihood that such a motion will not succeed is very high as the MDC-T alone does not command sufficient numbers in parliament to push through the motion on its own.

However there are immense political benefits that will accrue to the party if it risks losing the motion than if it continues to use methods that President Mugabe has scoffed at in the past like discussions with coalition government Principals.

First a motion to impeach President Mugabe for failing to uphold the Constitution will send him the message that he does not enjoy popular support in Parliament in that regard.

Secondly the MDC-T will send a message that the electorate has been waiting for that nobody is above the Constitution and the Party will not stand by and be counted among those that willfully disregard the Constitution.

Finally President Mugabe is not guaranteed success against such a motion given his unpopularity within Zanu PF.

There are several among his lieutenants who would want to see his back out of the party and government but would never publicly voice their intentions for fear of reprisals but would in their secretive factions within the party caucus to support the motion if they believe voting will be in secret and the MDC formations will support it.

It happened when Lovemore Moyo was elected Speaker and it can be repeated against President Mugabe but only if the MDC-T takes the risk.

The risk will not be as politically damaging for the party as would otherwise be the case if the impeachment motion was premised on fabricated political malice against the President at the same time its benefits far outweigh disadvantages be it won or lost.

Professor Jonathan Moyo, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Patrick Chinamasa, Johannes Tomana, Michael Mugabe and Christopher Mutangadura will be in real trouble with Zanu PF over such a motion and the MDC-T will relieve itself of pressures exerted by the Bennett dispute.

Are there any takers in the Party though or are they now risk averse given the personal benefits that are flowing their way from their seats in government.

Whatever the MDC-T party will settle on in respect of the persecution of its Treasurer General it must never forget that political battles are never fought and won in courts but in political institutions like Parliament, through demonstrations and or crisis negotiations.

The imaginary Tsvangirai-Biti rift never stops widening

The two MDC-T leaders Tendai Biti (SG) and Morgan Tsvangirai (President) in whose name proximity seekers and Zanu PF are fuelling rifts and breakup the Party

If there is a Zanu PF political initiative that has failed the test of time none must beat the imaginary rift between MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Secretary General Tendai Biti.

Ever since the infamous 12 October 2005 MDC fallout that saw former MDC Secretary General succumb to Zanu Pf infiltration to lead a tribal breakaway faction now derisively known as MDC-PF because of its leanings on Zanu PF, the Zanu PF spin doctors sheltered at Zimpapers and ZBH have done everything possible to place a wedge between the MDC-T President and his Secretary General in vain.

There appears to be an entrenched belief that the MDC-T is an opportunistic political formation of ideologically bereft gold diggers who can be set on each other by fabricating any sort of lies about any of its leaders’ political ambitions.

The misguided belief is validated by the October 2005 split of the party that Zanu PF infiltrators in the CIO instigated through spreading malice among the leadership of the then nascent movement whose members had not matured as politicians.

Then, some gullible and overambitious, elitist leaders had jumped at the opportunity to lead the Party and set unrealistic timeframes in which they believed the party could wrestle power from Zanu PF reeling from unpopularity fuelled by unbridled corruption, violent political repression of opponents and an ever declining economy.

Tendai Biti was one of the few degreed leaders who refused to join the academic elitists that deserted founding party leader Morgan Tsvangirai to join the faction that had invited Professor Arthur Mutambara to lead the breakaway faction after openly accusing Tsvangirai of lacking academic grounding and strategic capacity to lead them.

It turned out that despite his inferior academic attainments Morgan Tsvangirai was blessed with the magnetic appeal to the party grassroots and with the backing of the sharp brains of Tendai Biti, Elias Mudzuri, Nelson Chamisa and Tapiwa Mashakada to name but a few and the staunch support of the Trade Unionists that were the backbone of the party he managed to attract the attention of other seasoned academics and political strategists like Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, William Bango, Jameson Timba and Ian Makone to name but a few who worked tirelessly to revive the party from the ashes of the split and built it into the formidable political force it now is.

Zanu PF attempted to play the people around Tsvangirai against each other by labeling the advisors Tsvangirai had sought after being deserted by the tribal elitists the Kitchen Cabinet and those that were rallied behind him from the original National Executive the real cabinet.

It was a Zanu PF ploy meant to stifle the revival of the party that had given the ruling Zanu PF its stiffest political challenge since assuming power some 25 years back by creating mistrust between the new and old party Executives and Presidential advisors.

Then it was reported by the Zanu PF mouthpieces ZBH and Zimpapers that there was a serious fallout between Tsvangirai and Biti and Mashakada over the party President’s reliance on the advice from the so called ”Kitchen Cabinet” that was leading to another imminent party split that we are yet to witness.

The collapse of reunification talks between the MDC-T and MDC-M were played out in the monopolistic Zanu PF media mouth pieces as being down to ideological differences between Secretary General Tendai Biti and President Tsvangirai and his kitchen cabinet that was about to cause yet another party split that never materialized.

Joined by the disgruntled MDC-M starring imminent the unsavory prospect of a crushing defeat at the polls acres of press space were devoted to drumming up the rift between Tsvangirai and Biti with suggestions that the former was at the verge of deserting the unstrategic and ignoramus Tsvangirai.

To date the desertion has not occurred.

During the GPA negations there were numerous allegations that Tsvangirai and Biti were at each other’s throat over the decision to join the coalition government and they were about to split. No prize for guessing who was spreading the heresy.

The formation of the coalition government quashed all the rumours that Zanu PF had been spreading and new grounds had to be fabricated to justify the continuation and widening of Tsvangirai/Biti rift.

Attempts to turn the two against each other over the appointment of Gono and Tomana failed as the MDC-T remained adamant that the appointments were unconstitutional and must be reversed.

It was left to the sanctions mantra where the Zanu PF propaganda machinery thought they had finally found the evidence of the rift between Tsvangirai and Biti when they disclosed that Biti had defied Tsvangirai and condemned the continuation of sanctions which no one other than Zanu PF zealots cared to take notice of as the sanctions issue is only emotional for Zanu PF adherents who blindly hero worship anything their party leadership presents to them.

The more amusing episode of the Tsvangirai/Biti rift is the one currently playing out at Zimpapers.

“MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai has come under fire for allegedly backing a Cabinet minister who publicly attacked the party’s Secretary-general Mr. Tendai Biti,” reports the Herald albeit falsely.

The Zanu PF mouthpiece claims that some nameless “Senior MDC-T party officials “are reportedly angered by what they claim is "connivance" by Mr. Tsvangirai and Public Services Minister Eliphas Mukonoweshuro to "publicly ridicule Mr. Biti" without specifying by whom the report was made to the Herald and for what purpose.

The rift has been shifted from party differences between Mr. Tsvangirai and Mr. Biti and been relocated in their roles as Prime Minister and Finance Minister respectively and has been spiced by the inclusion of Public Service Minister Eliphas Mukonoweshuro whom the paper used to ridicule as a member of Tsvangirai’s Kitchen Cabinet prior to his election as an MP in the March 29 2008 harmonized elections.

Save for the exclusion of the use of the derisive kitchen cabinet label the drafting in of Mukonoweshuro is couched from the imaginary competition to curry favour with Party President between Mukonoweshuro and Biti dating back to the dark days of the party split and its revival and reconstitution.

It is a replay of the discredited Kitchen Cabinet smear campaign by Zanu PF that failed to split the party but instead galvanized it to win the 2008 elections from the ashes of the 2005 split.

The MDC-T nominated Cabinet Ministers are serving in a coalition government and accountable for their performance therein to the nation first and party last.

Since Cabinet portfolios are assigned by the coalition Principals namely the President and Premier and Deputy Premier Mutambara why would MDC-T officials at party level be the ones to be offended by a spat in government between 2 Cabinet Ministers in defence of their government portfolio?

Equally intriguing would be the logic behind the Premier who recommended appointed the two Ministers would side with one to the detriment of the other and cause friction in his party?

The Public Service salaries issue is not an exclusive MDC-T issue of concern but that of the cabinet which is made up of appointments from MDC-T, Zanu PF and MDC-M.

Prime Minister Tsvangirai is a leader of that cabinet and has every right to clarify cabinet position on Government business such as payment of salaries.

Finance Minister Biti has an obligation to advise cabinet on the ramifications of awarding pay increments to the fiscus but certainly not to announce such advice to the nation before Cabinet has adopted his recommendations.

Eliphas Mukonoweshuro is the political Functional Head of the Public service Ministry and has every right to defend his leadership space in that ministry if it is invaded or perceived to have been invaded.

The rift if any is in government not MDC-T but even then there is no rift on the salaries issue except that it has been played out at rallies and meetings as opposed to the cabinet Office where it should rightfully be agreed upon and passed onto the Public Service Commission by the relevant Minister for execution.

But not according to the Herald which is doing the Zanu PF divisive bidding and political henchman role.

"Some people believe that Mukonoweshuro’s attack had Mr. Tsvangirai’s full backing and blessings. What has made the situation worse is that Mr. Tsvangirai is yet to react to the fallout," the Herald reported as fact that an unnamed source had informed it about the spat when that is clearly false.


Why is it easy for the Herald to name Biti, Mukonoweshuro and Tsvangirai’s involvement in the spat but not the other senior sources from the same party making the preposterous and baseless accusations against the three Senior party officials they are setting on each other?

There is evidence that there is exasperation in Zanu PF why all their efforts to prise Biti from Tsvangirai are heating a brick wall. It is commonly held that among Zanu PF ranks that Biti is the MDC-T hardliner holding the party together and the minute he falls out with Tsvangirai the party will disintegrate or at least lose most of its appeal.

Zanu PF functionaries used to kneeling before its Supreme Leader to curry favours considers any form of professional difference of opinion big headedness on the part of subordinate ranks that is intolerable and must be punished for.

"How can he challenge the party president and the Prime Minister like that? I am not saying Mr. Tsvangirai ordered the dressing down, but certainly I do not feel any sympathy for Biti," the Herald wonders why it is possible for the MDC-T Secretary General to publicly opine and escape party Presidential reprimand when such behaviour towards the Zanu PF leader will attract s official reprimand from party structures.

Within the MDC-T, President Tsvangirai and Secretary General Biti are much closer to each other in similar fashion to closeness that existed in Zanu PF between Eddison Zvobgo and Robert Mugabe in Zanu PF.

When they disagree in private or public it does not mean they are engaged in power struggle for the control of the party but rather that they enjoy a leadership style they want to permeate the party ranks that allows people to express opinions openly and allow the differences and or consensus to instruct party policy formulation.

But within MDC-T as well as in Zanu PF there are many who do not understand this leadership style having grown up under a leadership style that criminalises disagreement with the leader and where management through the grapevine is practiced by the leader.

The management by the grapevine system allows the leader to acquire unhealthy total control of the organisation by creating conditions where lower ranks compete for rewards from the leader through feeding rumours and fashioning conspiracies against rivals to gain proximity and curry favour the main leader.

The MDC leaders on an average day receives no less than 20 calls and private visits from proximity seekers within party ranks who have some conspiracy theory against his leadership to tell.

In Zanu PF it is even worse as everyone thrives on hero worshipping of leaders at any party level to grow within party ranks and acquire power and influence.

The proximity seekers actually rely on public evaluation of their conspiracy theories before submitting them to the leader and in so doing invite an opportunity for opponents to tap into their intentions and develop counter strategies and in the process of seeking evaluation the enemies of the party find opportunities to craft divisive power conspiracies that create none existent rifts such as those we hear to exist between Biti and Tsvangirai.

Mr. Biti, in his capacity as Finance Minister, has every right to advise Cabinet against awarding unrealistic wage increments to Civil servants but it is not his duty to deliver the bad news to the workers and he knows that.

Is the Herald attempting to tell us that President Mugabe as chairperson of the Cabinet is siding with Biti’s announcement of a wage freeze his cabinet has not endorsed?

The reason why MDC-T spokesman Mr. Nelson Chamisa refused to comment on the matter is not because he is fighting “his own internecine battles for describing MDC-T treasurer-general Mr. Roy Bennett as "an angel".

Rather he is only too aware that there is nothing for him to comment about and give credence to the imaginary allegations emanating from Zanu PF and even if they were true he is not the official Cabinet spokesman to comment on cabinet disagreements.

Bennett Acquittal: State appeal without merit

Roy Bennett and AG Johaness Tomana there is no love lost between the two as they continue to slug it out in court following Bennett's acquittal on 10 May 2010 and Tomana's application for leave to appeal the acquittal to the Supreme court that was forced by Emmerson Mnangagwa and Patrick Chinamasa on behalf of Zanu PF

Controversial Attorney-General Mr. Johannes Tomana has sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court against the High Court’s decision to discharge and acquit MDC-T treasurer-general Mr. Roy Bennett on charges of terrorism, banditry, insurgency and trying to depose a constitutionally-elected Government.

When Justice Chinembiri Bhunu, acquitted Mr. Bennett on Monday 10 May 2010 with a verdict many had expected, the AG indicated that the State would abide by the High Court ruling igniting frenzy among the Zanu PF propagandist to outdo each other in hailing the country’s commitment to upholding the rule of law and Judicial independence.

"It is the High Court and its decision is binding," said Mr. Tomana soon after the judge had delivered his judgement.

That was before the complainant in the matter President Mugabe and Zanu PF had come into the picture.

Zanu PF Secretary for Legal Affairs Emmerson Mnangagwa and his deputy Patrick Chinamasa promptly called in the AG on behalf of their Party Leader President Mugabe and read him the riot act and instructed the compromised AG to file an appeal regardless of how frivolous or vexatious it may sound.

How embarrassed they must now feel internally following the AG’s hopeless application for leave to appeal against a verdict the nation hailed across the political divide as indicative that there was still some hope that the Judiciary in the country had a free hand to apply the laws without fear or favour.

The AG obliged through Chief Law officer Mr. Chris Mutangadura under the AG’s instructions and have since filed an application for leave to appeal Bennett’s acquittal at the Supreme Court.

That is how the upholding of the rule of law is interpreted in Zanu PF.

Politically motivated cases that the courts decide against must be appealed to put spanners in the works and delay the negative political consequences they may have on the Party by suspending operation of the operation of the ruling pending the outcome of the appeal.

In a country where appeals can take years to be heard the frivolous and vexatious appeal that the AG has initiated is as Zanu PF’s Professor Jonathan Moyo has succinctly put it, “the quandary has never been a legal one but rather a political one. For the record, Roy Bennett must not be part of any government in free Zimbabwe."


Independent judiciaries worldwide do not entertain appeals on the grounds of political motive but rather on points of law and merit alone.
That is why the AG’s appeal over Bennett’s acquittal will never succeed even if leave to appeal is granted for political expediency of Zanu PF.

Any objective justice before whom the application would be heard will be required to assess the prospects of success of the dubious appeal in tandem with the merits of the appeal and sadly there can only be one conclusion that the case against Bennett is hopeless.

With regard to the merits of the appeal the AG submitted that Justice Chinembiri Bhunu’s court misdirected itself by failing to consider evidence before it holistically when it acquitted Bennett at the close of the State Case.

This is premised on the warped thinking that a holistic approach to the evidence analysis could only have been achieved if the Court had upheld that evidence of e-mail messages pointing to the funding of firearms acquisition and a Mozambique bank account in the name of Peter Michael Hitschmann that were before the court were a legitimate and indisputable pointers to the existence of a conspiracy between Bennett and Hitschmann to commit the crimes that Bennett was facing.

Nothing can be further from the truth than that.

The bank account and e-mail evidence was but part of the source documents upon which the AG premised his case and they would have been sufficient pointers to the conspiracy if the accused Roy Bennett and or impeached Star State witness Peter Michael Hitschmann had owned up to them.

In circumstances where both distanced themselves from the e-mails and Hitschmann owned up to the Mozambique Bank account but explained why he had opened it which was not disputed by the prosecution, it was not up to the court to make conclusions that the account was opened for purposes other than those the owner had stated.

The AG ought to have proven that the Bank account was opened by Hitschmann in collusion with Bennett to facilitate arms acquisitions for the purposes of committing alleged crimes.

The AG’s case was fatally handicapped in this regard when the Investigating officer conceded that he was yet to establish the finer details of the Mozambique account that was held by Hitschmann like who deposited the funds into it , when , how much and for what purpose.

In the absence of this crucial evidence the court could not make any inferences or link Bennett to the account.

More importantly the court risked setting the bad precedent of criminalizing the opening of foreign accounts by Zimbabweans for purely commercial reasons by giving the State freedom to accuse anyone with such accounts of criminal intends without the imperative need to adduce evidence of how the crime was committed.

Further the fact that the accused and the impeached Star State witness had both distanced themselves from the e-mails before the court placed the burden of proving that they were the originators recipients of the e-mail evidence on the prosecution.

That is why the prosecution was forced to call in the evidence of “IT expert Perekayi Denshad Mutsetse who unfortunately did more harm to the state case than good through his appalling ignorance of the IT world and its technicalities by dismissing commonly known practices in the field such as hacking and forensics.

The State’s IT Expert’s arrogance and contempt of court did not help either.

That is the holistic environment which the court analysed the evidence before it and concluded that it was unsafe to proceed with the matter any further than the close of the state case in circumstances where the accused had not been linked to the commission of the offences.

The averment by the State that the trial court did not even bother to consider circumstances in which the e-mails were discovered in its valuation of evidence and thus misdirected itself in ruling that the authenticity of the e-mails was solely dependent on the credibility of the IT expert instead of the circumstances in which they were discovered, which the court did not, is not only outrageous but also mischievous.

The Court evaluated the circumstances in which the e-mails were discovered and gave the prosecution the benefit of doubt when it admitted the evidence notwithstanding strong and convincing objections from the defence relating to the manner the laptop from which they were downloaded ended up in police custody and how it was secured from abuse.

If the court had not considered that the State case would not have proceeded beyond the point when the defense had applied for the e-mail and statements made by Hitschmann under CIO and Army Interrogators duress to be barred from forming the basis of the State case.

For the avoidance of doubt in that regard the trial court ruled that the statements made by Hitschmann under Interrogators duress were in admissible as evidence in Bennett’s trial but the e-mails whose existence was there before the illegal and torturous interrogations would stand as their formulation was not torture induced.

The trial court had no reason to revisit the circumstances in which the e-mails were discovered in the final determination having disposed of the arguments surrounding that in its preliminary determination which the AG mischievously attempts to pretend was never made in the trial.

The ground of appeal that the trial court failed to make a finding of fact as to where the e-mails originated from is frivolous and vexatious and will be dismissed with the contempt it deserves.

It was the State case that the e-mails were between Bennett and Hitschmann and were downloaded from Hitschmann’s Laptop.

It was the State that cross examined Hitschmann on that allegation following his impeachment as its Star witness and failed to get him to confess to ownership of the e-mails.

They State c even called Nyasha Matare to collaborate its allegations but she wilted under cross examination when she could not confirm to the court if the laptop on exhibit in court was one and the same one that she downloaded the e-mails from and how it had ended up in police custody.

The State then called in the IT “expert” Perekayi Denshad Mutsetse to enlighten the court as to the origins of the e-mail evidence and that they could not have been spam e-mails from anywhere else other than authentic correspondence between Bennett and Hitschmann.

He failed dismally in that regard and worse made a foolish and court hostile witness to a worse extent than Hitschmann whom the court had earlier impeached for similar lack of decorum before the court.

In the absence of proof of authentic origins of the e-mails the State did not and does not seriously expert the courts who are custodians of the right for innocent people to remain innocent until proven otherwise to speculate the origins of its evidence.

It was up to the AG to show that his alleged origins were the only origins of the e-mails but he was let down by the ignoramuses he paraded in court as IT experts but turned out to be rank armatures under cross examination by the defense when they committed fatal errors of authenticating spam email generated before the court as genuine.

With that doubt in its mind the trial court could not be expected to risk proceeding with the case at the closure of the State case and the AG does not seriously expect the Supreme Court to order the High court Judge to proceed with the case before those grey areas have been clarified which is no longer possible other than through a retrial before another court which is not in the appeal’s prayer.

Contrary to the AG’s belief that the Judge accepted that the e-mails were found in the possession of an alleged co-conspirator Hitschmann, the trial Judge only acknowledged the existence of the e-mail evidence from wherever it was sourced and wanted the prosecution to enlighten him as to their origins before determining their authenticity as admissible evidence upon which to proceed with the matter which the AG dismally failed to do.

As a consequence the trial court had no option but to stop the trial as courts do not investigate cases but rather determine the justice to be meted based on facts presented to them by the Investigators, the Prosecution and the Defense.

The AG’s averment that the trial court had misdirected itself when it reasoned that police should have investigated whether Mr. Bennett had a computer carrying the e-mail address used in the recovered e-mails is equally without merit.

The fact that Mr. Bennett had absconded to South Africa had no bearing whatsoever in barring the Police from investigating the serious crimes he was alleged to have committed within the country or wherever he had settled through Interpol.

In like manner the contention on the part of the AG that instructs his appeal to be premised on the assumption that the trial court erred at law when it found the testimony of Mutsetse (Perekayi Denshad) unconvincing because of his acknowledged lack of knowledge of the existence of computer criminals known as hackers without any tested evidence to the effect that the persons who discovered the e-mails on the person of Hitschmann are criminals known as hackers is as outrageous as any appeal ground can be couched.
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To go further and argue that by refusing to be fooled by a bush IT expert like Mutsetse the learned Judge contradicted his earlier finding of fact that the mere fact that e-mails can be faked does not mean that the e-mails before the court as exhibit 13 are also fake, exposes the contradictions that are commonplace in the frivolous appeal.

The averment by the AG that the ultimate finding by the trial Court that the e-mails were not admissible on the basis that they are capable of being faked was consequently outrageous and defied logic is the height of irrationality in the appeal.

Mutsetse was chosen by the AG to testify as an expert in a crucial case where an accused was facing the death sentence if convicted.

In such high stakes cases the presumption would be that the AG would find the best that Zimbabwe has to offer in IT expertise such that when the court relies on the evidence the witness provides it will be comfortable that it is using the most accurate knowledge there is on the subject.

What Mutsetse did in his testimony can be compared to a Surgeon Cardiologist who when assigned by the Medical Superintendent to operate on a heart arrested patient proceeds to remove the patient’s Aorta and sutures the incision wound hoping that the patient would be well after the effects of surgical sedation have elapsed.

The patient will be long dead before the surgeon finishes suturing.

In like manner the State case against Bennett fatally collapsed after the AG risked relying on the expertise of Mutsetse whose expertise induced more doubt in the mind of the court than was the case before he gave his evidence.

The AG does not seriously expect to convince the Supreme Court to order the High Court to continue hearing a case where the expert evidence before it is at variance with the body of evidence that is commonplace among IT users.

For the trial court the issue was never whether or not the persons who discovered the discredited e-mails between Bennett and Hitschmann were themselves hackers but rather how they authenticated that the e-mails were indeed undisputed correspondence between the two given the possibilities that anyone can generate such correspondence in purport.

For the AG to then appeal on the grounds that the trial court ought to have inquired into whether or not the persons who discovered the evidence were themselves hackers or not exposes an alarming level of incompetency within the AG’s office.

Will an authentic e-mail change status if discovered by a hacker or a none hacker for there to be a need for the court to be obliged to authenticate integrity credentials of the discoverer before admitting the e-mail as authentic where its authenticity is not in dispute?

The only time a court would probably be asked to question the integrity of the discoverer of e-mail evidence is if its authenticity is disputed by its alleged initiator and forensic expertise pin it on the accused person disowning the evidence in which case it will be necessary to take the precaution of enquiring into the ability of the supplier of the evidence to frame the accused with such evidence.

The finding by the trial court that Mutsetse was not the IT expert the AG had paraded him to be in court after listening to his evidence did not in any way contradict the court’s earlier finding that because e-mails are open to fabrication by hackers does not mean the e-mails before it were fabricated.

All the trial court did was to act on the side of caution that in the absence of expert confirmation of the authenticity of the e-mails before it by Mutsetse whom the AG had indicated had the expertise to do so it was unsafe to proceed on the basis of that evidence to put the accused on his defence.

By admitting that the trial court had made a finding of fact that the e-mails before it could not be simply dismissed as fabricated evidence the AG makes a mockery of his earlier averment the trial court did not even bother to consider circumstances in which the e-mails were discovered in its valuation of evidence the evidence.

If the court had indeed misdirected itself as alleged by the AG it could then not have held that the e-mail evidence could not be discarded simply because it was prone to manipulation by hackers and went ahead to allow submission of evidence by the prosecution that would authenticate the e-mails which unfortunately the AG failed to provide through its so called expert Mr. Mutsetse.

It is frightening that in the appeal the AG suggests that the ultimate finding by the trial Court that the e-mails were not admissible on the basis that they are capable of being faked was consequently outrageous and defied logic.

Not only did the trial Court take a risk and rule in favour of the case proceeding on the basis of the e-mail evidence when all other basis the AG intended to proceed along had collapsed but it allowed the State uninhibited freedom to prove the authenticity of the e-mails which sadly the AG failed to take advantage of.

For the AG to then suggest that the court ought to have proceeded with the case and put Mr. Bennett on his defence and be cross examined on the e-mail evidence that had not been proved to have originated from him and the existence of a Mozambique Bank account belonging to Peter Michael Hitschmann who was not his co-accused and thus not on trial is chilling prospect of a legal precedent that cannot be allowed by any rational court anywhere in the world.


The AG’s averment that Judge made an error at law when he found that the authenticity of e-mails was predicated upon computer forensics and scientific detection, whereas the printouts were admissible on the credibility of the person who discovers them is to say the least a joke.

In a world where there is a limitless body of knowledge that IT can be used to fabricate anything from e-mails to image graphics the expectation would be that those that are custodians of our laws must be worry about the real possibility that IT could be used to smear innocent and unsuspecting law abiding citizens and criminalize them with the real possibility of them suffering capital injustices.

After all it was the same AG who went ballistic when the defence created fake e-mail evidence linking the office and person of the AG to unacceptable legal malpractices and one wonders why the same office would want the courts to accept evidence it would not want to be associated with its office.

The AG’s appeal like the entire case against Mr. Bennett is devoid of merit and a test on Judiciary independence that is not necessary at this point and time in our history.

If any court will allow such a frivolous and vexatious appeal as that filed by the AG we will not be surprised as it will have confirmed widely held beliefs that the Zimbabwe judiciary is highly compromised.

Even if the AG’s application for leave to appeal is denied which is highly improbable in a country where the right of appeal is a central litigation concept, the confidence in Judiciary freedom that the judgement had somehow ignited has been severely dented and will take a long time to restore thanks to Tomana’s Zanu PF patronage.

The prayer by the AG for the Supreme Court to compel the High Court to proceed with a case the court has already determined to be hopeless will not be easy to grant as the presiding Judge Justice Chinembiri Bhunu has rendered himself functus officio by his acquittal of Mr. Bennett.

The situation would have been different if the AG had applied to Justice Bhunu for a review of his findings whereupon the Prosecution could plead with him to reverse his findings by supplying him with compelling fresh evidence linking Mr. Bennett to the crime.

An Appeal to the Supreme Court will never result in an order as prayed for by the AG that;

"Wherefore the appellant prays for an order setting aside the judgment acquitting the respondent at the end of the State case substituting it with an order putting the respondent on his defence."

Unbelievable!