President Mugabe and Premier Tsvangirai; Who is in charge of Zimbabwe Government?Faced with the prospect of an insurmountable electoral challenge from the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Constitutionally prescribed Presidential election by March 2008 when his term was due for renewal, President Mugabe sought support from within his Zanu PF Party to defer the election to March 2010.
Publicly he argued that synchronising the Presidential election with Parliamentary, Senatorial and Local Authority elections due in that year was financially sensible and prudent.
But within Zanu PF he argued that the..Party was in such leadership disarray it could not mastermind a Presidential electoral win for any candidate other than himself if the prescribed 2008 election was to be staged on due date.
He had evaluated the disunity in Zanu PF exposed by the jockeying for the position left vacant by the death of First Vice President Simon Vengesai Muzenda as epitomised by the infamous Tsholotsho Declaration that claimed the scalp of 6 Zanu PF’s 10 Provincial Chairmen, then Information and Publicity Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo and earned demotions for Emmerson Mnangagwa and a severe reprimand for then Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa.
President Mugabe realised that the rift in the party caused by the elevation of Joyce Teurai Ropa Mujuru to replace the mercurial late Dr Muzenda was too wide and would force some of the disgruntled Zanu PF members of Parliament to de-campaign whoever the party would field in the 2008 Presidential election.
To forge party cohesion he knew he needed time the Constitution did not provide and thus his hope was the Party would support his term extension by a Constitutional amendment harmonising Presidential elections with Legislative and Local Authority elections in 2010.
That would make his party work for each other as their seats were up for grabs if they denounced the party leadership on whose ticket they were contesting.
Spirited opposition from the MDC and Civic society was immaterial as long as the Zanu PF legislators endorsed the Presidential term extension which they would then rubber stamp in a Constitutional Amendment using the technical ⅔ majority the party enjoyed in the legislature.
That amendment would be used to repudiate any likely global accusation of failure to uphold the rule of law by Zanu PF which by then was a central accusation against the Zanu PF government.
But President Mugabe had severely underestimated the swelling aspirations within his top Party leaders to replace him as the Zanu PF party leader in 2008by thinking the jostling for Muzenda’s position had been resolved by Mujuru’s appointment.
When at the 2007 Party congress held at Goromonzi High School Party Congress refused to endorse his 2010 Constitutional Coup proposal he was peeved and decided he was going to stand as Party presidential candidate and use his draconian Party and Country Presidential powers to relinquish those in the party that failed his bid of the comfort they had in being legislators until 2010 even if he lost the Presidency which was highly likely if he contested the election without them contesting for legislative seats.
President Mugabe resolved he was not going to be embarrassed alone in an unwinnable election.
He impulsively conjured harmonisation of elections in 2008 knowing fully well that he had powers to dissolve parliament that his intra party and external competitors had no means to contra.
The SADC mediated process that was focussed on producing a new Constitution that would make it difficult for him to rig the Presidential elections as he had allegedly done in 2002 was a threat he could do without.
He hurriedly formulated Constitutional Amendment No 18 and gave concessions to an array of demands he knew he would not implement prior to the election but would entice the MDC to support the Constitutional Amendment that would help him whip disgruntled party lieutenants into his corner if they had any hope of remaining legislators.
Constitutional Amendment no 18 had irresistible benefits for the MDC in that it removed powers Mugabe had used to appoint Legislators to beef up the Zanu PF contingent in Parliament and retain total dominance of the house which would otherwise have been impossible given the closeness of distribution of contested electoral seats between Zanu PF and the MDC in the 2000 and 2005 Legislative elections.
In addition to that the wave of discontent with Zanu PF misrule and failed economic management were in favour of an opposition triumph in a credible election devoid of violence.
Zanu PF had calculated that economic discontent would be counterbalanced by promises of empowerment through free commercial land parcels for supporters and quasi-fiscal activities to be financed through Reserve bank money printing interventions.
The harmonised elections would also be to the Zanu PF advantage as the MDC had split into two in 2005 and was finding it difficult to bridge the differences that led to the split and weakened the party.
When the Constitutional Amendment was passed Zanu PF ditched the mediated talks and rolled out its election campaign while the split MDC party was whingeing about the insincerity of Zanu PF.
Fortunately the economic hardships people were experiencing had bonded them together in opposition to anything that was Zanu PF driven.
That is why Dr Makoni’s belated challenge for the Presidency failed to gain the support it had potential to gain.
He refused to dissociate himself with Zanu PF and his fate was sealed. He was a Zanu PF project thrown in to confuse Zanu PF opponents it was concluded and rightly so too.
The leader of the 12 October 2005 breakaway faction Professor Arthur Mutambara made two catastrophic miscalculations when first he denounced and belittled Morgan Tsvangirai’s intellect and strategic leadership of the MDC.
In an attempt to recover from the negative repercussions of his academic bravado that caused him to misfire at Tsvangirai he denounced blinded Civic Society support for Tsvangirai and his main MDC party only to seek to coalesce when it dawned on him that his faction would not win significant seats and was facing political humiliation at the harmonised polls.
When he demanded more than his grouping was evaluated to be worth the coalition talks collapsed and he sought refuge from an embarrassing defeat if he contested for the Presidency against a Tsvangirai he had labelled an intellectual midget by endorsing Dr Makoni’s candidature for Presidency.
His faction, hitherto a suspicious tribal Zanu PF appendage had confirmed the fears of the electorate that it was always a Zanu PF sponsored project to weaken the democratic struggle championed by Tsvangirai and his MDC party.
That second miscalculated move cost the faction dearly as many discerning voters from the Matabeleland Provinces it claimed unrivalled support could not risk voting for leaders who were linked to Zanu PF. Not when they were riling from the negative effects of the 1987 unity accord between PF Zapu and Zanu PF.
Zimbabweans simply did not have the time to listen to the repugnant accusations the disgruntled faction hurled at Tsvangirai for the collapse of the coalition talks.
The elections were staged and Tsvangirai trounced Mugabe, Dr Makoni and Langton Toungana in that order in the Presidential election while his MDC smashed the Zanu PF hegemony on Parliament of 28 years and the breakaway faction led by Mutambara was thrown into political quandary when all its top executives were swept aside by the electoral process.
So emphatic was the Tsvangirai led MDC win that the Joint Operations Committee, (JOC) an informal yet most powerful advisory body of Zanu PF intervened and stopped the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission ZEC from announcing the results timeously as it sought means and ways of rigging the result in Mugabe’s favour.
During the electioneering period Movement for Democratic Change Youth chairman Thamsanqa Mahlangu now Hon MP and Deputy Minister for Youth had threatened at a rally in Overspill section of Epworth on 2 September 2007;
"If Mugabe doesn't deliver a free and fair election next year, haaitonge nyika yacho (he will not find peace)."
Mugabe did not deliver the free and fair election but he for the first time delivered a semblance of credible electoral processes until he towed along the JOC idea of tempering with results that the nation already knew had gone against him.
Hon Mahlangu’s threat was to come true when the JOC intervention morphed into a Military Junta that camouflaged its existence through a cohesive and unprocedural Presidential runoff election staged on 27 June 2008 with Mugabe as an uncontested candidate after Tsvangirai was forced to withdraw his Constitutionally mandatory candidature as winner of the first round due to violence that had claimed no less than 300 of his party activists and displaced more than 300 000 of his perceived supporters.
The outcome of the sham runoff was internationally discredited and Mugabe was left clutching a hollow electoral victory.
He was forced to return to negotiations before SADC he had abandoned in favour of an electoral process that humbled him.
The negotiations resulted in agreement on 15 September 2008, to form a coalition government in which Mugabe retained the Presidency deputised by Joyce Mujuru and Joseph Msika while Tsvangirai became Premier deputised by Thokozani Khupe and Professor Arthur Mutambara.
The question that is on the lips of Zimbabweans is who is in charge of the country’s governance at present.
Many believe its Mugabe, a lot others hope it is Tsvangirai while Mugabe believes it is the sanctions and Western former colonialists.
That will be the subject of the next post which will be substantiated with irrefutable evidence.
And here is the rest of it.
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