Indian political icon Mahatma Ghandi dropped this famous line as forewarning for those with inflated political egos.
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
Could Zimbabwe Prime Minister Right Honourable Morgan Tsvangirai be morden day.... vindication of the Ghandi observation?
He has been labelled a Tea Boy, an Intellectual Midget, a Lumped Cheeks Ignoramus (Chematama), an Unstrategic Western Puppet and lately a Spineless self –interested political gold digger and much worse too crude to be put in print.
But is Zimbabwe Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai is the real deal.
There is none better placed to testify to that than seven degreed octogenarian despot Robert Gabriel Mugabe, erudite robotics scientist Professor Arthur Guseni Oliver Mutambara and academic elitist Professors Welshman Ncube, Jonathan Moyo and Doctors Thabo Mbeki, Simba Makoni and Shakespeare Maya.
The affable Zimbabwe Prime Minister has a knack of forcing political humble pie down the throats of detractors and political competitors with exaggerated political egos alike.
One never to be written off even when the chips are down Morgan Richard Tsvangirai has to date displayed spellbinding ability to recover from political setbacks many a politician have succumbed to.
Having failed to go through High School he found himself taking up menial employment as a weaver and later Mine Operative where he developed an interest in Trade Unionism.
He was to mould his political career around Labour politics and rise to become the most popular politician in the country.
But his decision to seek remunerated employment to supplement a pittance Colonial peasant farming family income at a time when many in his age group chose to take up the lethargic occupation of unpaid and poorly armed fighters for liberation from colonialism was to be the Achilles heel of his rise to political popularity.
Right Honourable Tsvangirai has been ever fighting to shrug off the cowardice tag from political competitors in Zanu PF that are formulated on his abscondance of the group he had joined to cross into Mozambique to join the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA).
By some stroke of luck the accusation has failed to discredit him as intended because of a combination of the legacy of Liberation War Veterans and the lethargic misrule of its leadership.
Many level-minded Zimbabweans consider it insulting to be labelled a War Veteran.
Another stain of Right Honourable Tsvangirai’s abscondance of the Liberation War recruits retinue enroute to Mozambique that has tarnished his party has been the accusation of puppetry.
The label is premised on the warped thought process that because he absconded from the recruits group he was frightened of the White Colonists and still regards them highly to date as he did in his youth.
That informs the conclusion that he is a spineless ignoramus only useful as conduit of the Imperial forces hell bent on recolonising the country through illegal regime change that seeks to install him as the head of State and open avenues for the return of former settlers.
The negative sentiment the label is intended to arouse has been severely minimised by the fact that the quality of life for many Blacks the Liberation struggle was waged to liberate has deteriorated under the stewardship of the Liberation Heroes from what it used to be under Colonial oppression.
The first real threat to the Right Honourable Tsvangirai’s political fortunes has been unbridled violence from Zanu PF and State sponsored militia.
The violence has been, as it still is, both physical and psychological.
Treason charges, attempted murder by State agents, ambushes on the campaign trail by State militia, office and home raids by armed militia, arrest and vicious assaults in Police custody, impounding of campaign materials and vehicles, abduction, murder, rape and assault of party activists, separation from family, the Zimbabwe Premier has defied them all.
Awesome!
The second major and maybe most challenging test for his political acumen was the October 2005 split of the MDC.
Fatigued colleagues of the democratic struggle in the MDC who had been frustrated by the length of time it was taking to unseat the entrenched Zanu PF hegemony on power, revolted against his leadership accusing him of lacking in strategic thinking.
The revolt may not have been as scary as the trumped up and Ari Ben Menashe anchored treason allegations but they were a defining moment for his political career.
From them he became a firm believer that there is never a risk free political decision.
With a severely depleted team of mainly lower class workers he worked hard to retain party grassroots support and limit the damage to the Party to within Executive leadership circles.
He moved quickly to replace the deviants and fought off serious and detrimental allegations from former colleagues who were key members of his strategy team.
The public skulduggery degenerated into personal trivialities and name calling.
Right Honourable Tsvangirai emerged from the gruesome fight for control of the party stronger, mature and a bit more conscious about whom and how far to trust.
The intellectual think tank derisively named the “Kitchen Cabinet” by intra party deviants; he had out of political premonition put in place to advise him came in handy and refined the party strategy and cohesion.
By the time the watershed March 2008 harmonised elections were staged the residual effects of the 2005 party split returned to haunt Tsvangirai with his detractors urging him to forge alliances with 2005 party renegades who many felt held sway in the Matabeleland strongholds of the party.
When the Mavambo Movement fronted by Zanu PF long serving Politburo member Dr Simba Makoni was unveiled some 56 days before the election there were mischievously loud calls from the upper middle class aristocrats in and outside Zimbabwe for Right Honourable Tsvangirai to subordinate his MDC to the nascent Movement.
Aware of the grassroots support his party enjoyed the Premier not only refused to be forced into an elitist political marriage of convenience wit deviants leader Professor Mutambara but he also trashed the suggested union with Dr Makoni and decided to fight the election with his trusted party loyalists.
He went on to shatter the 28 year old Zanu PF Parliamentary hegemony and won the Presidential election segment with a magnificent official 5% lead over nearest rival and incumbent President and octogenarian Zanu PF President Robert Mugabe.
His Excellency President Mugabe was to confound all and sundry that he was indeed an Excellency when he connived with the Zimbabwe Military commanders and defeated Zanu PF stalwarts and a few winners aspiring to inherit leadership of the party from him to form a Junta regime from the ashes of the dissolved parliament.
Announcement of the outcome of the Presidential election was deferred by 5 weeks while a strategy to circumvent imminent ascendancy to the Presidency by the real election winner Morgan Tsvangirai.
When the project was rolled out it turned out to be a demand for a presidential runoff election outside prescribed legal limits the campaign period which was to be vicious, murderous and only Mugabe was allowed to canvass for lost votes.
Tsvangirai was forced to pullout of the election days before it was staged on 27 June 2008 some 69 days outside the prescribed limit and by then no less than 300 of his supporters had been murdered in cold blood and over 500 000 displaced by the violence.
Mugabe was proclaimed winner of the one man election with a landslide 85% of the vote the counting and announcement of which took 48hrs against 37 days it took to announce the May 29 election result he lost to Tsvangirai.
While Mugabe and his party were revelling in the euphoria of “electoral victory” Tsvangirai was being vilified for pulling out of the runoff and written off as a politician.
But within a week Mugabe had been given the cold shoulder by the world political blocks and he was back at Tsvangirai’s door begging him to negotiate a way to legitimise his 6th term as Head of State.
Tsvangirai had once again risen from the political grave he had allegedly dug for himself and Mugabe had gratefully buried him in.
Protracted and acrimonious political accommodation talks were to ensue under SADC mediation.
Mugabe retained the coveted Head of State mantle as President and Tsvangirai became the Prime Minister of the undemocratic accommodation pact between Zanu PF and the two MDC formations led By Tsvangirai and Professor Mutambara.
While the makeshift government was being inaugurated Tsvangirai’s nominee for Deputy Minister for the key Agriculture Ministry was arrested over long outstanding warrants for engaging in insurgency and banditry and breach of immigration formalities.
Guarantees given by Mugabe and SADC that he would not fall victim to such charges turned out to have been falsely premised as is evident from the ongoing fiasco.
The daggers are once again for Tsvangirai’s head. And why not?
How can any serious political leader surrender power to the person he has beaten in an election and then suffer silently the humiliation of the same person ordering and or refusing to act on a breach of trust epitomised by the arrest of Roy Bennett?
And worse the foot soldiers on whose back Tsvangirai to Premiership are languishing behind prison bars for crimes allegedly committed in his Party’s service yet Right Honourable Tsvangirai finds sleep in a State House they secured for him.
These misgivings are coming no more than a week of Tsvangirai having taken the perceived most powerful position in government and they are a major blight on his career.
On his part Right Honourable Tsvangirai says the arrest and detentions that run contrary to the spirit and letter of the GPA upon which his office was created are the mischief of disgruntled pockets of resistance from the Zanu PF component of the Government.
We give him that and ask in whose Courts and Prisons are these victims being harassed and detained. If they are in the so called Residual Resistance Courts and Prisons and being prosecuted by the Resistance that resistance must be dismantled forthwith before it entertain any thoughts that it is in charge.
If the Zimbabwe Republic Police can harass arrest and detain people whose safe return was agreed and guaranteed by the Head of State, the State’s Premier and the Guarantor of the basis upon which the government in place is premised then they must be whipped into line unless the Government is now subservient to the ZRP.
Premier Tsvangirai promised in his inauguration that he will be honest with us in his tenure of office as Premier.
We find that hard to believe when he bemoans actions of Residual Resistance in causing his Government’s Public embarrassment.
Why has he not put written directives for the abused to be set free and copied same to the President and if the instruction is disobeyed then take disciplinary action on subordinates that defy him.
Effective Governments have in place Ministers, Prime Ministers and Presidents that upholds Codes of Conduct by their subordinates.
The matter of Bennett’s arrest and the detained so called bandits needs no official escalation to the President or Prime Minister’s Office.
It was ever located at that level and its time someone shows the teeth. If both do not want to stoop to the level of their Functional Heads then they must delegate their Deputies to sort out the injustices pronto.
The tact and strategy to achieve that is none of our business. What we want are immediate results that show that the days of selective application of laws are behind us and the Government does not wish to be burdened with the residual inconsistencies in that regard.
Whether or not the political activists from one party to the Inclusive Government are freed is no mean political test for the PM but he has no option but to take the bull by its horns and either prevail or fail.
Having survived past setbacks we do not doubt the PM’s ability to pull this feat but we must hasten to remind him that if there are known pockets of resistance to his Government he has the mandate to sort that resistance using the powers of his office and the country’s laws.
If there was a breach of trust in Bennett’s case it is no use complaining about it. What is effective is for the PM to invoke his powers and release the abused Deputy Minister designate.
The release of the other detained activists he stated is work in progress and we hope the work is completed in the shortest time possible for it to be meaningful.
The days of complaining in opposition are well and truly over and the sooner the Premier realises that the nation is looking up to him and the President for protection against obvious State abuse by its rogue and disgruntled employees.
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