One of the reasons why Dr Simba Makoni decided to stand as an Independent candidate in the harmonised “elections” held in Zimbabwe was because he had been denied access to contest for the Zanu PF apex post at its Extra Ordinary Congress in mid December 2007 we were told.
He was joined by a coterie of former Zanu PF rejects notably Ibbotson Mandaza, Edgar Tekere, Dumiso Dabengwa, Dzinashe Machingura, Kindness Paradza and Margaret Dongo.
Professor Mutambara in a last minute desperate effort to sabotage Morgan Tsvangirai’s Presidential bid gravitated his formation of former MDC deviants towards supporting Dr Makoni in retaliation for failed intra MDC coalition talks.
Zimbabweans are all familiar with what happened to the Makoni project and its alliance with Professor Mutambara. They were humiliated by the man Professor Mutambara once called an “indecisive political midget.”
To his credit Professor Mutambara and his formation have in the aftermath of the humiliation they suffered swallowed his pride and conceded defeat and declared willingness to support Tsvangirai in the fraudulent Presidential runoff necessitated by Mugabe’s refusal to accept defeat in the face of insurmountable evidence showing he was equally humiliated by the person he once derisively called “tea Boy” and “Chematama”
Dr Makoni who accused Mugabe of refusing to accept his views that Zanu PF needed leadership renewal and failed party leadership has not been wise enough to accept the reality that his Presidential bid has gone up in smoke at least for this election and was in tow at the SADC Emergency Extraordinary meeting in Zambia pushing for a Transitional Authority under his stewardship to lead Zimbabwe for the next two years and remains in that political cocoon to date.
Is it any wonder why Zanu PF blocked his bid to lead their Party? They knew he was worse than Mugabe when it came to dictatorship. And he has proved to be exactly what they feared by his refusal to concede defeat even after managing a paltry 4.6% support generously doubled to above 8% by the cooked up ZEC declaration of results.
Makoni still believes it is possible for him to worm back to the Presidency of the country via the GNU proposition which can be thrashed out between him, Mugabe and Tsvangirai and endorsed by the MDC and Zanu PF party’s
He does not seem to appreciate that his negotiation skills have been tasted when he claims he tried to convince Mugabe to relinquish Party leadership but failed. How he hopes to succeed in forcing Mugabe to step down for him in the more prestigious country Presidency when he could not do the same for the Party presidency remains a mystery only he and naive amateur politicians like him can fathom.
Dumiso Dabengwa, the most prominent ally he secured via defection from Zanu PF equally believes in this supremacist power transfer scheme. Worse he believes he is a better political strategist than Tsvangirai who vanquished all who stood against him on 29 March 2008.
“We have this impossible character [Tsvangirai], and we have to swallow this bitter pill to support this fellow. If he doesn't go back now, he will lose face," Dabengwa is quoted as having said after advising Tsvangirai to seize the offer to negotiate power transfer via the GNU proposal with Robert Mugabe.
If he believes that this was the best way to transfer power in Zimbabwe, why did he not employ it within Zanu PF structures where he was a senior member if we may ask? We are also sure that Dabengwa does not know what it is to “lose face” otherwise he could not have linked up with Makoni after his ordeal with Zanu PF during Gukurahundi nor would he have remained in Zimbabwe after operation Murambatsvina and more lately Operation Dzikisayi Mitengo all of which he willingly supported and participated in. That is what causes losing face if we can tell him.
Calling a leading Presidential candidate a “character whom he has to swallow a bitter pill to support is equally disingenuous and most uncomplimentary especially coming from a person like Dabengwa who was privileged to hold a powerful and influential position which if he had used wisely could have saved him the blushes he complains about.
The embarrassment does not end there for Dabengwa. The outputs of his political astuteness were assessed by his former boss in Zanu PF, Robert Mugabe as follows:
“We went to the elections completely unprepared, unorganised and this against an election-weary voter. Our structures went to sleep, were deep in slumber in circumstances of an all-out war.
They (structures) were passive; they were lethargic, ponderous, divided, diverted, disinterested, demobilised or simply non-existent. It was terrible to see the structures of so embattled a ruling party so enervated.
As leaders, we all share the blame: from the national level to that of the branch chairman. We played truant; we did not lead, we misled; we did not encourage, rather we discouraged; we did not unite, we divided; we did not inspire, we dispirited; we did not mobilise, we demobilised. Hence the dismal result we are landed with."
Why should Tsvangirai take advice from a Dabengwa who presided over this kind of mess and if he should do so how relevant will ne be to the Zimbabweans under the unbearable weight of Zanu PF misrule that he and Dr Makoni scripted and have no clue as to how to resolve it?
Mugabe himself is not to be trusted as his party by his admission is a shambles political outfit that calls for elections it is not prepared for and looses pathetically. His evaluation of the party must be taken with extreme caution as his ability to rationally assess political situations has been questionable since 1997.
It must be borne in mind that it was Mugabe who personally short-circuited Sadc Mediation efforts by bulldozing Constitutional Amendment No 18 and refusing to extent elections to June 2008 to allow for agreements reached with the opposition to take root.
Now we have his self appointed Electoral Commission breaking laws left right and centre to rig elections in his favour via an outdated and unjustified Presidential runoff. ZEC Chairman George Chiweshe said of Mugabe’s legislators who fast tracked the Electoral Act;
“It must be borne in mind that this is the first time that runoff elections are being held in the country and the 21 day period that was legislated as the maximum period in which a runoff Presidential election must be stage if the need arises was arrived at by legislators who do not have an insight in what it takes to stage an election.”
This accusation of Zanu PF legislative ignorance would otherwise pass for a slip of the tongue if it was not repeated elsewhere with increasing recurrence.
Patrick Chinamasa the junta’s defacto Spokesman initially denied reported post election violence on the part of Zanu PF alleging photographic evidence the press was adducing dated back to Land Invasion violence after the 2000 elections only to later capitulate after Sadc and Ambassadorial fact finding missions had established the prevalence of such violence and propose a face saving inter party investigation into the violence.
Meanwhile the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) spokesperson, Major Alphios Makotore denies that the army personnel Chiwenga deployed after learning of Mugabe’s electoral defeat at the hands of Morgan Tsvangirai are committing political violence and repression against MDC supporters.
"…This presence of troops in pursuit of community assistance should never be misconstrued as commitment to political activities. As clearly spelt out in the Defence Act, the ZNA is an apolitical army which should never be used to further political aspirations of any individual political party," he was quoted as having said.
He justified the deployment on the need for Security Forces to spearhead developmental projects as they have always done in the past.
But that does not explain the coincidence of the current deployment following the defeat of Mugabe and Zanu PF at the polls as well as the escalation of violence countrywide.
So Mugabe was forced to make his own explanation as follows:-
“We have disturbing evidence of motorised gangs trained and equipped by the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) and of returning white commercial farmers who have been visiting terror on villages and party supporters. Such acts of banditry must stop forthwith. The MDC and its supporters are playing a very dangerous game. They should know they cannot win that kind of war which they have carried to rural constituencies in the hope of destabilising our supporters," he contradicted his lieutenants and threatened.
But the evidence he talks about is as obscure and mysterious as the diesel find his party claimed in the sacred Chinhoyi caves. Yet his closest remaining supporter and heir apparent to the Zanu PF throne and certainly not country Presidency Emmerson Mnangagwa agrees to that obvious spin of the truth.
Of the 40 plus deaths so far reported and ascribed to post election violence Zanu PF is yet to identify any one who was its supporter.
Junior Junta spokesperson Bright Matonga has defended all the illegal delays in the electoral process with gusto. But it is his denial that Tsvangirai faces imminent assassination if he returns to campaign for the runoff Presidential poll that is as comical as the antics of the Iraq Information Minister during the US led invasion of Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.
“We are not aware of any threat to Tsvangirai’s life if he returns to the country. If he felt threatened and needed State protection he should have approached us as the government and his request would have been considered,” he was heard stating on SW Radio Africa on Monday 19 May 2008.
But given the lack of knowledge in Zanu PF who would believe such hogwash? Bright Matonga has a blighted past over his wife’s claims of negligence and cruelty from him after she had unflinchingly supported him during the Land Invasions and reclaimed her husband’s legitimacy to land ownership from the British notwithstanding she is a British descendant herself and her actions only transferred land ownership from one British national to another -herself.
Further to that he is yet to be exonerated of corruption allegations during his tenure as ZUPCO Chief Executive charges which will die a natural death if he and the junta regime manages to pull through the Presidential poll runoff which appears highly unlikely unless the rigging mechanism becomes so rampant as to claim that each and every registered voter voted.
We are sure that with the kind of amnesia Matonga displays he will deny knowledge of all these accusations in as much as he has forgotten that the Government he claims to represent was dissolved immediately before 28 March 2008 and its Head President Mugabe was beaten into a distant second place in the Presidential poll and thus has no legitimacy.
How Matonga expects a Presidential runoff leading candidate to go begging for protection from the person he has replaced in popularity beats imagination.
But then it is in conformity with the lethargy that epitomises Zanu PF’s desperate attempt to hold onto power after being soundly rejected by the electorate and is understandable in that context.
What is not understandable is for self professed democrats like Dr Lovemore Mabvuku, Dr John Makumbe, and Professor Eldred Masunungure to lead the call for Tsvangirai to throw caution to the wind and return home against mounting evidence that he is a target for assassination by Zanu PF hoodlums.
Masunungure and Makumbe have shouted their voices horse at every opportunity to demand the return of Tsvangirai without telling us what plans they have on the ground to protect him against the claims of assassination plots real or imagined it is neither here nor there.
But Madhuku deserves the trophy for his interview on SW Radio Africa where he among other things stated;
“… some of the guys that are working with him, they want to make it big news that he is coming back to Zimbabwe. That should not be big news at all,” The fact is that there is an election that took place when Tsvangirai was around, people went to vote and they are quite frustrated by what Zanu PF is doing, they expect the leadership to be in the country, to be harassed together with them and to provide the way. And it is even disturbing that the MDC says when he (Tsvangirai) comes back they want to do what they call victory meetings; I don’t know what that means. That is actually out of touch to what is happening in the country.”
“That … seems to suggest that Tsvangirai is in some special class. He is only special to the extent that he is providing leadership. His only role is to be the leader – that is his role – and leadership is not being protected. Leadership is to really take the risks that go with leadership.
“So you shouldn’t say would it make any difference; the point of the matter is that the political struggle is taking place in Zimbabwe and he is leading a struggle in Zimbabwe so he should be in Zimbabwe where the struggle is.
“I don’t think it matters to say ‘will it make a difference or not’ (if he returns) because he is not leading a struggle being waged elsewhere. It’s a struggle being waged in Zimbabwe and those who are involved in it should be here with the risks that go with it,” he pontificated.
I have tremendous respect for Mabvuku Makumbe and Masunungure but am afraid I disagree with them over the return of Tsvangirai unless they have guarantees for his safety in place.
The realisation that now Tsvangirai is a higher priced target of assassination after beating Mugabe into a distant second place during the 29 March election appears lost to these usually reliable political commentators Masunungure aside.
The assassination plot is not imaginary unless they have evidence to the contrary. The realisation of this fact is itself a sign of leadership acumen on the part of the MDC and Tsvangirai in person.
He must tread with caution as the Nation needs him to complete the runoff alive and reclaim power from ZANU PF. While his physical presence at the centre of the campaign is of paramount importance it does not supersede the other imperative of him surviving the campaign period and the announcement of results showing he has won the election. That act of declaring him winner is so critical it cannot be done posthumously with any tangible benefits accruing to his supporters.
As soon as he is declared winner Mugabe ceases to be President and the power transfer matrix sets in and then he will have to be present at whatever cost to take up his appointment.
This by no means is to justify that he has to be away during the entire campaign but if he has to be present to legitimise the election process he must be guaranteed safety by the state to the same extent Mugabe’s safety is guaranteed.
If Mugabe cannot do that then Sadc Must do so and if it equally cannot then the AU and in the event of its failure the UN.
We do not want to suspect that Madhuku is pursuing the agenda Priscilla Musihairambwi speculated and we rejected that he was urging Tsvangirai into self destruct so that after losing the Presidential election he would mobilise for his replacement as leader of the MDC which has not happened.
Our expectations maybe too high but we do not expect democrats to urge one of theirs into political brinkmanship that saw Benazir Bhutto assassinated days before an election she and her party was poised to win with a landslide.
What use is she now that she died heroically? Would we want the same fate to visit our President elect if it can be avoided? Instead of demanding his return why not take the mantle and use his absence and the genocide Zanu PF is committing to whip emotions against Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe.
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