It boggles the mind how all of a sudden MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai has suddenly become a highly sought after political trophy in politically economically and socially tomfooling Zimbabwe.
Up till 27 June 2008 Morgan Tsvangirai was the most reviled politician in State owned and controlled media. Numerous death warrants were signed therein by the Military, Zanu PF bigots and their wives, War veteran hoodlums and State propagandists.
“Tsvangirai will never set foot in State House. Tsvangirai haalume chinhu. Tsvangirai is a puppet. Tsvangirai is a Jonas Savimbi in the making. Tsvangirai is an intellectual midget. Tsvangirai has dug his own political grave by pulling out of the Presidential runoff election and will be buried in it. We are not in a position to guarantee Tsvangirai’s safety. Tsvangirai is responsible for the sanctions. We are prepared to go back to war if Tsvangirai wins and becomes part of the government. The June 27 presidential election runoff results are not negotiable. We will form a government without Tsvangirai. Zanu PF and MDC are like water and oil, they will not mix. Zimbabwe will never be a colony again.”
They chanted in unison. They wished him dead or away from the Zimbabwe political landscape. They transformed their fantasies into imaginary realities. They created sickening jokes about Tsvangirai failing to return to Zimbabwe to campaign for the runoff. They labelled him a weakling coward undeserving of leadership position.
When he braved the threat and returned to campaign they impounded his election materials. They impounded campaign vehicles and buses as well as his human resources. They butchered his supporters in cold blood. They maimed and raped his campaign activists and detained him in remote police stations to derail his campaign.
Unwanted and exposed to immense danger of being assassinated Tsvangirai was pulled out of the illegitimate presidential runoff he had been coerced to participate by Sadc. He took refuge in the Dutch Embassy and Mugabe completed the runoff race a loner and “won” the election with a landslide 85% up from 43% he was said to have garnered in the initial March 29 election.
By any imagination that was some miraculous recovery. It was an electoral Houdini of the century. Except it did not convince the world and his legitimacy remained in question and much more. Mugabe became a true international political despot.
Previously condoned acts of political savagery returned to haunt Mugabe and Zanu PF and it became obvious that the pyrrhic win in the sham June 27 election by Zanu PF octogenarian leader Robert Mugabe was as worthless as it had never occurred.
Mugabe and Zanu PF were compelled to go back to the drawing board and find alternative means to legitimise the government in Zimbabwe by the AU extraordinary general assembly held in Sharm El Shaik Egypt a day after Mugabe had formalised the silent military coup he had fronted in Zimbabwe.
Among the AU recommendations was that Mugabe had to find ways of legitimising his presidency by negotiating equitable power sharing with his main political rivalry Morgan Tsvangirai.
But on his return Mugabe feigned victory and projected an unassailable victory for himself and Zanu PF.
The grandstanding sent the wrong signals to his loyal supporters who interpreted it to mean it was business as usual for Zanu PF when to the contrary it was never the case.
The mediation route Mugabe had ditched in preference of what he and his party thought was the more advantageous route of harmonised elections in conditions attacked heavily against his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai for there was no other credible challenger, was reactivated when Mugabe begged then South Africa President Thabo Mbeki to help him regain lost legitimacy.
The disgraced former South African President, a key Zanu PF and Mugabe ally obliged by reigniting the mediation process as if nothing had happened in between.
Mbeki strategically decided to involve electorally humiliated Professor Mutambara and his rag tag and vanquished MDC renegades into the mediation process over a disputed presidency they did not have a shred of legitimacy be involved in.
They had decided not to run against Mugabe but rather support Dr Simba Makoni, a divisive Zanu PF political rookie masquerading as an Independent Presidential contestant, yet he had been thrown into the race to neutralise urban discontent with Zanu PF misrule.
He came a cropper with a disputed officially crafted 10% of the Presidential vote. Results posted outside Polling Stations immediately after counting showed him with a projected 5% of the vote.
Be that as it may the resuscitation of the mediation process was not without drama of its own. Prof Mutambara who had fired the renegade MDC group national spokesperson Gabriel Chaibva for having attended the June 30 coronation of Mugabe’s disputed sixth consecutive term as head of State was himself and his two most Senior grouping lieutenants caught pants down in Mugabe occupied State House.
They blamed Tsvangirai for having duped them into attending a mediation talks ground breaker with Thabo Mbeki only for him to pull out at the last minute without warning.
It did not wash. The renegades had been exposed for their lack of political strategy an allegation they had previously levelled on Tsvangirai but without tangible evidence.
The elitist political pretenders were back in the political woods they had been dumped by the electorate long before the start of the revived mediation process and they were always going to struggle to shake off the damage the exposure had caused.
Professor Mutambara and his loyalists put up a thick skin and they were there when the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to form an inclusive government was signed and exceeded expectations when they were there at the signing ceremony of the Global Political Agreement thrashed by the feuding political parties under SADC mediation led by Thabo Mbeki.
And much more Prof Mutambara was designated Deputy Prime Minister Designate of the envisaged inclusive government.
For a Parliamentary constituency electoral reject to resurrect as a Deputy Premier designate in the country where the electorate had rejected his parliamentary bid is no mean political achievement by no means.
And Prof Mutambara is not in the mould of persons to take such monumental achievements with humility and silent panache. He was always going to thumb his nose at the illiterate electorate that had failed to recognise his latent potential and has been on a war path to make that point.
Unless he becomes Deputy Premier in the inclusive government there will be no other solution to the political impasse in the country he has religiously preached to whoever cares listen to him.
The problem though is Morgan Tsvangirai. All the Zanu Pf executioners now agree with Prof Mutambara that the impediment to forming government in Zimbabwe at present is none other than Tsvangirai and his MDC Party.
The reasons for consensus maybe at variance but the root cause are common cause. Tsvangirai is shifting goal posts each time consensus is about to be reached on the inclusive government we are told.
That the goalposts were not shifted but uprooted and sent for recycling by Robert Mugabe and the Joint Military Command (JOC) on April 2, 2008 seems to have escaped the shallow memories of these Zanu PF bigots.
If JOC had not intervened to stop the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announcing accurate March 29 electoral outcomes the current problems Tsvangirai and his MDC Party are causing would be of no consequence.
Professor Mutambara would not be yearning to be Deputy Premier and insulting anyone who appears to be in the way of him realising that political milestone.
Targeted travel sanctions against Zanu PF stalwarts and prominent beneficiaries which they have mendaciously tried to sell to the nation as sanctions against Zimbabwe with immediate acceptance from their hard hit followers and beneficiaries would not be an issue.
National sovereignty would have assumed new meaning as national sovereignty with economic benefit and empowerment.
Multiple farm ownership and derelict lands would by now have been addressed and commercial productive venture on farms restored from security of tenure, lawful and equitable land distribution.
Tsvangirai would not be a refugee in Botswana and or South Africa but in Zimbabwe as President and spearheading the country’s economic recovery.
Mugabe and Zanu PF would have no reason to fear political insurrection other than electoral defeat and all the political abductions and passport wrangles of recent would not be headline news.
Government formation was mandated by the electorate in the march elections but the military decided the electorate was in the wrong and imposed Mugabe on an unwilling electorate.
That is why today it is Mugabe’s rabid zealots calling on Tsvangirai to return and join Mugabe in a government the electorate has not voted for.
Are we to assume that by some stroke of magic the Zanu PF propaganda hatchet men have now developed an affinity for the Western stooge Morgan Tsvangirai to come and lead them in an inclusive government regardless of his puppetry?
The truth is somewhere other than in the expressed desire for Tsvangirai to join the inclusive government.
If he does not join the inclusive government will not materialise and Mugabe’s legitimacy will remain a mirage.
With all the talk about Tsvangirai being a Jonas Savimbi and the dossiers on MDC terror bases in Botswana why would Tsvangirai want to walk into a well planned political snare to either join the unity government as a powerless accessory or face treason charges in the dossiers?
The call must be for Mugabe and Zanu PF to drop all unwarranted persecutions of suspected and real MDC party activists, invite SADC to discuss his sixth inauguration with the Speaker of Parliament and the Chief justice with a view to holding a harmonised inauguration ceremony for the inclusive government Presidency and Premiership.
The next logical call would be for Mugabe to accept the principle of genuine and equitable power sharing with the man he snatched the Presidency from in March 2008.
That person is not Prof Mutambara but rather Morgan Tsvangirai.
There are 31 agreed Cabinet positions up for grabs and these are in the way of the formation of the envisaged government unless they are equitably distributed between MDC and Zanu PF.
Yet with all the acrimony their allocation has created they can be easily allotted by simply accepting that the inclusive government will work towards the lifting of real or perceived sanctions, reinforcing the land reforms by restoring farm productivity, restoration of economic viability and restoration of democratic and legal rule in the country.
This system can be extended to cover all key government positions allotment and Tsvangirai will be in the country for swearing in as Prime Minister without the need for current calls for him to do so.
That is what he is waiting for. A signal that Zanu Pf is now ready to share power and genuinely address the country’s social and economic problems rather than its current obsession with political and military power.
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