Taking the oath of office is Right Honourable Morgan Richard Tsvangirai Zimbabwe Prime Minister a change agent
Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has upped the bar for aspiring politicians.
In 2000 he led the nascent Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party to become the most supported Parliamentary opposition party Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF had ever contested since taking power in independent Zimbabwe on 18 April 1980.
Maverick Zanu PF zealot and business mogul Phillip Chiyangwa who contested the election on a Zanu PF ticket and sunk millions into his campaign buying votes heaved...
a huge sigh of relief when he scrapped through with the narrowest of winning margins that was challenged but thrown out by the High Court.
“We were aware that the MDC had support from victims of the economic hardship but our estimation was nowhere near the demolition we faced in towns throughout the country. It was a shocker brewed from nowhere by political nonentities that was most humiliating,2 he remarked after learning the challenge over his election had fallen through.
The 2000 Parliamentary results were highly contested in courts and many were nullified by the High Court but for appeals noted to a reorganised and politicised Supreme Court the declared winners held on perilously as hearings were delayed until the terms expired in 2005.
The deliberate delays in concluding hearings of the challenges by the Supreme Court confirmed beyond doubt suspicions Zimbabweans held that the Patrick Chinamasa led and War veterans inspired reorganisation of the Judiciary were a Zanu PF political initiative to hang on Parliamentary power they had lost to the MDC.
Aware of the extent to which its unpopularity had sunk Zanu PF extended the politics of intimidation it used during the Liberation struggle and had activated to execute the chaotic agricultural farmlands repossession from mainly White commercial farms to electioneering.
Perceived and real MDC opposition party supporters were subjected to the most vicious electioneering period the country had ever witnessed and in rural constituencies they capitulated to violence and voted for Zanu PF candidates in droves.
The MDC lost many of the seats it had won in 2000 back to Zanu Pf notwithstanding that Zanu PF had not done anything to alleviate the suffering that led them to ditch the party in 2000.
The MDC having learned that approaching Zimbabwe Courts with electoral challenges was an exercise in futility challenged a few results in what was clearly an academic intervention while the party was working on a political strategy to counteract the electioneering violence of Zanu PF.
Sadly the loss of seats back to Zanu PF was a setback many political vultures who had wormed into the party could not stomach and Zanu PF pounced on the discontent and deflation the violent electioneering had induced in the opposition to consolidate its gains.
The Senate it had abolished was to be revived to create political accommodation for those of its senior cadres who had contested and lost urban and rural Matabeleland constituencies where violence had failed to change voting patterns.
The Senate political initiative was mooted to cause conflict in the opposition MDC that was ever complaining about the size of government.
Participation in a government expansion programme such as the Senate initiative by an opposition that had campaigned for a smaller government to curb bloated expenditure would induce policy inconsistencies that would discredit the party.
Yet non participation would also mean Zanu PF would find inroads into Parliamentary constituencies it had lost through unopposed Senators who were unlikely to win if opposed.
This catch 22 political situation the opposition MDC was placed in by virtue of a technical two thirds majority Zanu PF had orchestrated from violent electioneering and Presidential appointees to Parliament was to cause irreconcilable strategy differences in the MDC leadership.
Most of its top leaders from the Southern regions where electoral violence does not seem to change voter choices were adamant that allowing unopposed Zanu PF representation through the Senate initiative would translate into unstrategic surrender of gained political space which would damage future electoral performance of the party.
Despite grassroots opposition supporters providing feedback that the Senate project was of little or no significance to them, the opposition party leadership could not agree on whether or not to participate and duly split on 12 October 2005.
Tsvangirai’s leadership of the party was subjected to intense scrutiny and shameful public mudslinging with the deviant former colleagues.
Many sceptics wrote the disjointed opposition off in any future electoral contest with a galvanised Zanu PF which it had failed to dislodge as a united front.
Legal practitioner Misheck Hogwe whose political ambitions were frustrated by Zanu PF said of the split;
“In Africa opposition that wrestles power from colonial Liberation parties do so on the first attempt and if they fail they will never make it into government because of the counterstrategies ruling parties will put in place to deny them access to power after gauging their strengths and identifying the weaknesses.”
Undaunted Tsvangirai re-strategized and re-organised the party around those that remained loyal to his leadership and invited trusted strategists to help him rebuild the party.
Leader of the breakaway faction and former Party Secretary General Professor Welshman Ncube also went on the offensive first attempting to oust Tsvangirai through the Courts and when that failed setting up parallel Party structures to those in the original opposition entity and retaining identical party name, symbol, slogan and regalia.
The only change that was made was the name of the party president after the breakaway faction installed Professor Mutambara as its leader.
Meticulous attention to detail and gelling with party grassroots paid handsome rewards for Tsvangirai as he won the first contest between the fractured party wings.
The losers played the tribal card to explain their dismal showing in a bi-election against a fielding from the leader they had abandoned and accused of leadership ineptitude.
While Mugabe was busy consolidating power through violent initiatives and opposition dividing tactics and Professor was busy on attempts to re-brand the MDC faction he had been invited to lead, Tsvangirai flanked them by seeking SADC intervention in Zimbabwe to add to alliances he had nurtured with the EU and Western democracies.
When the 2008 Presidential election became due Zanu PF was aware its fielding would not win the election because of the deterioration the country’s economy had suffered since 2005 when it consolidated its hegemony on power through the violent elections.
An attempt to buy time by postponing the Presidential election to 2010 so that it could be held in tandem with Parliamentary elections met stiff resistance from within Zanu PF where simmering Mugabe succession battles had reached breakpoint and the opposition MDC that felt conditions were more favourable for it to wrestle the presidency if Mugabe contested without Parliamentary support.
Mugabe’s 2010 extension initiative failed and irked him to a point where he decided he would contest for the Presidency rather than retire as he had intimated in 2001.
In his anger about failure to gain support for the extension from his party he ordered the arrest and thorough beating of Tsvangirai and several opposition leaders campaigning against the initiative.
The entire world was shocked by this action and SADC decided to intervene as the consequences of the political crisis in the country were now burdening the neighbouring countries in the regional political bloc with political and economic refugees.
Mugabe dissolved Parliament prematurely after forcing through a Constitutional Amendment to harmonise the country’s elections in a move many believed was to ensure he retained the loyalty of his Members of Parliament as their jobs were also up for grabs in harmonised elections.
Tsvangirai won the Presidential segment of the harmonised elections on 29 March 2008 but his winning margin was announced after five weeks of dithering by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.
It was widely evident Tsvangirai had won the election by an absolute majority from Polling Station reports but when they were aggregated over 5 weeks by the ZEC somehow he lost the absolute majority and was compelled to face a runoff election with Mugabe.
Violent electioneering that had been severely curtailed in the March elections was reignited by Mugabe’s supporters.
By the time the runoff was staged on 27 June 2008 exactly 90 days after the initial election was held against the prescribed 21 days after the initial election Tsvangirai had lost more than 300 of his supporters killed by Mugabe supporters.
A further estimated 300 000 of his supporters had been displaced by the violence resulting in him pulling out of the runoff to protect the lives of his other supporters.
Mugabe was declared winner of the runoff with a landslide 85% of the vote but the world rejected the outcome and his legitimacy.
This rejection was to trigger suspended negotiations before SADC and culminated in a Tripartite political agreement signed on 15 September wherein it was agreed that an Inclusive Government be formed instead of an elected one.
After he had pulled out of the runoff election the sceptics who have been at the helm of demeaning Tsvangirai’s political acumen wrote him off completely and started preparing the nation for a Zanu PF government for the next five years.
When Mugabe failed to announce the new government it became obvious that something was amiss.
It only became clear that Mugabe was not a legitimate President in the eyes not only of Zimbabweans but the world over and he was trying to legitimise his Presidency through negotiation.
When the agreement was reached on 15 September 2008 those that had written off Tsvangirai were put to shame when he emerged as the Prime Minister designate of Zimbabwe.
But his feat was dwarfed by the emergence of Prof Mutambara as his deputy after he had lost a Parliamentary contest to Tsvangirai’s fielding in the constituency.
Whatever negative comments he attracts Morgan Tsvangirai is an awesome political strategist and leader.
He has survived assassination attempts, trumped up treason charges, intra-party mutinies and rigged elections to emerge as Prime Minister.
Many in Zimbabwe regard him as the legitimate leader of the Inclusive Government despite Mugabe hovering over him.
Now that he is Prime Minister he has made pledges to the nation that the sceptics are already trashing in the same manner they trashed his announcement of the formation of the MDC, the refusal to participate in the 2005 Senatorial elections, his refusal to go into elitist electoral alliances with Prof Mutambara and Dr Simba Makoni and his decision to pull out of the sham runoff election.
There is something in Tsvangirai that convinces me that he will free the detainees he promised to free and he will pay the forex salaries he promised the Civil Service.
Turning around the economy will take some time as he stated but he will again deliver.
Impediments like Dr Gono must not be placed in his way but even then he will push them aside and soldier on.
It is instructive to see how many politicians he has forced to eat humble pie after they had pronounced him ignoramus, unstrategic intellectual midget and a puppet.
I will place my bet against those that advance that by taking up the Inclusive Government seat he has lost the plot and his party will be swallowed by ZANU PF.
If anything Tsvangirai’s entry into government spells doom for Zanu PF and if there is any swallowing to occur it will be Zanu PF that will be swallowed by the MDC.
And here is the rest of it.
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