The SADC Tribunal order allowing the Boers to retain possession of our farms is Nonsensical and of no consequence; President Mugabe
We have taken the trouble to reproduce an article by a Zanu PF apologist Dr Phillip Murombedzi in an effort to show why old dogs are difficult to teach new tricks.
“OPENING old wounds is not honourable, but I think there are lessons that need to be learnt from all the exchanges that have been going on in the media and the statements that have been made by our politicians, some of them who are now Ministers, Deputy Ministers, and whatever other titles they have now or will assume in future,” Murombedzi led his article with ominous premonition.
Barely a month after he lambasted Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Finance Minister Tendai Biti, for carrying a begging bowl to South Africa – the head of the Southern African Development Community, President Mugabe appears to have escaped similar treatment from Murombedzi.
“If I remember very well, Mr Biti was at the forefront of dismissing Sadc, and South Africa, as an important agent of change in Zimbabwe; but is today running to that same country for help,” bemoaned Murombedzi.
Despite declaring his tremendous respect for the two MDC kingpins now in Government he did not have the courtesy to address them with the mention of their government honorariums of Right Honourable Prime Minister and Right Honourable Minister of Finance (MP).
But that is a trivial omission we just mention in passing to show that sometimes it’s not what you declare yourself to be but what others see you to be that matters.
Murombedzi was as is the norm in Zanu PF, albeit without basis, miffed that the Premier and his Finance Minister were now seeking SADC assistance to reconstruct a Zimbabwe they were instrumental in destroying with the aid of their Western masters.
“Former South African President, Thabo Mbeki once reminded the MDC leadership that the West will never share borders with Zimbabwe,” he ranted.
He cited a letter by the deposed South African President wherein he mesmerised Murombedzi by stating;
“Nevertheless, the leaders of the people of Zimbabwe, including you, dear brother, need to bear in mind that the pain your country bears is a pain that is transferred to the masses of our people, who face their own challenges of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment.”
“This particular burden is not carried by the countries of Western Europe and North America, which have benefited especially from the migration of skilled and professional Zimbabweans to the north.
“In the end, when all is said and done, Zimbabwe will have to exist in peace and productive collaboration with its neighbours in Southern Africa and the rest of Africa.
“Realistically, Zimbabwe will never share the same neighbourhood with the countries of Western Europe and North America, and therefore secure its success on the basis of friendship with these, and contempt for the decisions of its immediate African neighbours.”
The ill considered comments by the former South African President officially appointed Chief SADC mediator on the Zimbabwe political impasse infuriated the MDC to a point where they responded by telling him that he was unfit to mediate because of the obvious partiality towards Zanu PF his comments had disclosed.
Zanu PF manufactured the Western puppet tag and successfully inscribed it on the MDC and any sensible mediator between Zanu PF and MDC would have been sensitive to the emotions endorsement of that tag would arouse in the MDC.
The MDC told him in his face that he was out of order and the Sadc order for MDC to accept co-ministering of the disputed Home Affairs Ministry was a nullity because Sadc had no legal right to make declaratory orders on Zimbabwe but rather its role was restricted to facilitation of negotiations between the feuding political formations in Zimbabwe.
By deciding to make South Africa and SADC the first port of call for assistance to reconstruct Zimbabwe Murombedzi reasoned the two MDC leaders who had rubbished the regional bloc’s intervention to resolve the Zimbabwe impasse had vindicated the former South African President’s foresight.
Obviously Murombedzi was being politically mischievous with intent to discredit his “revered” Prime Minister and Finance Minister.
How else can a person at the literate level of a PhD fail to understand that the Global Political Agreement of 15 September 2008 which ushered the duo into government is underwritten by SADC and the AU?
Just like in insurance practice where claims for covered calamities are submitted to the policy issuer who in turn vets the claim for legitimacy and authenticity before accepting it and claiming fro reinsurers the Inclusive government’s port of call for any support for its programmes is SADC who can then escalate the claim to the AU if it overburdens them.
It is that simple really.
But not for Murombedzi who cynically believes the Western “masters” of the MDC who were told to lay their hands off the mediation process must now finance the outcome regardless of whether they agree or disagree with it.
South Africa and SADC must indeed bear the full burden of reconstructing Zimbabwe as they undertook to do by guaranteeing the agreement between the parties who made it clear during negotiations before it that they would require massive external financial support to make the agreement work and produce positive results.
Hon Biti, the Finance Minister of the Government of Zimbabwe, is indeed the new agent who has to face the guarantors on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe whose votes SADC set aside and replaced with the Inclusive government set up.
In that role he is not representing MDC as a political formation and what SADC could not do for the MDC as a party has no bearing whatsoever on what it undertook to do for the people of Zimbabwe through an Inclusive Government.
They were docile and incompetent to resolve real issues the MDC had tabled and now they have to be tested in their undertaking to resolve the Zimbabwean crises if there is a legitimate government which they recognise and they recognise the Inclusive Government don’t they?
“The promise made to Zimbabweans: that they will receive their February salaries in foreign currency has faltered
Mr Biti told us that “Our Prime Minister has friends” and automatically many of us thought he had friends in the West, but alas, we were wrong. He had friends in Sadc, in South Africa, the same leadership that was called docile and that could not stand up to President Mugabe,” ranted Murombedzi.
Pathetic lies! Sadc did not provide any of the funds that were used to pay forex stipends to the Civil Service. They should have though. Zanu PF’s Chinamasa and Gono had budgeted to pay the Civil Servants with none redeemable and none convertible forex denominated vouchers.
They did not want ordinary Civil servants to ever touch the US$. They wanted the dollar circulation to remain a bank to bank transaction so that forex was always firmly under their armpit and could be misappropriated to finance Zanu PF’s political initiatives as and when required.
Allowing the currency to circulate in individual pockets would take the cash out of their control and once that happens it would be difficult to suspend the vouchers if Zanu PF wanted to divert the real cash to its projects.
That is what Minister Biti foiled by authorising banks to redeem the vouchers for cash and boy did the Civil Servants like it!
For once they had a Minister who saw them as responsible adults capable of earning cash and deciding when and when not to use their money.
Non redeemable vouchers as proposed by Zanu PF would have limited their ability to shop around for bargains as there was no mechanism in place for shops to write them change vouchers once they purchased from an outlet.
For a PhD qualified person to celebrate that sort of feudal slavery is pathetic.
Why was it not possible for Zanu PF to introduce the forex stipends in any of the 20 odd years the Zimbabwe dollar was in free fall and inflation went off radar?
The know it all Dr Murombedzi was also embarrassed by the spat between Deputy Prime Minister, Professor Arthur Mutambara and Reserve Bank Governor, Dr. Gideon Gono.
His gripe was firstly that he had not seen and maybe will never see the Deputy Prime Minister’s job description. Secondly he was of the opinion that the DPM was making knee-jerk statements about the “casino economy” whose ramifications the DPM was not competent to comprehend.
But it is clearly Murombedzi who is celebrating knee-jerk budgeting by Chinamasa and Gono rather than Mutambara who is proposing a fiscal policy review in light of the birth of the Inclusive Government that was not in place when the Chinamasa budget was prepared.
Murombedzi warned the MDC politicians now in Government that “the public is watching and certainly the media is watching and listening and we will analyse each statement they make and every move they make with the level of scrutiny they watched the last Cabinet, and ones before that.”
Brilliant except that what Murombedzi is finding out is that he is too compromised to be objective in his assessment of the Inclusive government’s office bearers’ performance. For him those that are not of Zanu PF origin must be watched and those from Zanu PF are angels that have been tried, tested and passed.
They no longer play to the gallery, are not over-enthusiastic and they do not resort to making knee-jerk statements that are meaningless to the material well-being of people which in his considered opinion “should now be a thing of the past.”
We agree with the final assertion. We however disagree with what preceded and followed the assertion.
“The new leadership should give itself time to learn how Governments work and function and not spend time trying to appease supporters by making uninformed statements,”
“Many of us thought the new Deputy PM was merely trying to find relevance in a position, that he probably does not understand the relevance of himself. Otherwise why would he make such a statement before his position, and role in Government has not even been clarified to the Zimbabwean people?
Dr. Gono's role is well understood by everyone,” Murombedzi misrepresented us.
Most of us do not want the new Ministers to learn anything from Zanu PF geriatrics who have been in Government for three decades and all they managed to do was to reduce the majority of us into destitution. Does Murombedzi seriously think most of us want the new Ministers to learn the art of pauperizing us? That would be a sick joke.
Dr Murombedzi must graduate from the trivial political analysis of job descriptions to become a seasoned opinion leader given his esteemed role as Editor of The Zimbabwe Guardian online publication.
Most Zimbabwean have no affinity for Professor Mutambara for various reasons but they accept he is the DPM in the Inclusive Government and his role was defined under the Premier’s Executive role in Article XX of the GPA.
Dr Murombedzi was irked by the MDC reaction to SADC directive that the party was uncomfortable with. The offending part was when MDC Secretary General and current Zimbabwe Minister of Finance wrote to Mbeki and described the 15 December 2008 decision by SADC to endorse co-Ministering of the Home Affairs Ministry which was strictly speaking not part of the agreement reached by the parties when they identified 31 Cabinet positions in the 15 September agreement.
MDC President and current Prime Minister told the SADC Heads of State that the determination was an act of cowardice of Mugabe on their part and his Secretary General followed that up with a letter wherein he stated the determination was a nullity which it was until it was accepted by the MDC.
Giving it to Murombedzi for once that it is unwise to attack and despise the very people one would want assistance from in future, we would be inclined to believe that such a principle should apply across the board least of them the ones at the helm of the country’s political leadership.
In that vein we would expect an impartial Dr Murombedzi to lead the onslaught on leaders who err from that civility.
So we sat back and closely monitored if he was going to rail in the errand Zimbabwe President over remarks he made in Chinhoyi during the 21st February Movement celebrations of his birthday.
“Hapana zvekuti mabhunu akaenda kutribunal yekuNamibia. (That the Boers appealed to the SADC Tribunal in Namibia is neither here nor there.)That’s nonsense, absolute nonsense.
"We have courts here that can determine the rights of the people. Saka nyaya dzeminda yedu hadziongororwe netribunal yekuNamibia. Kwete. Izvo takaramba tikati madhisinyongoro ayo," (The SADC Tribunal in Namibia has no jurisdiction over land disputes in Zimbabwe. We rejected that as disorderly interference.),said the President to deafening applause from the crowd.
When the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister slammed Sadc Heads incompetence Murombedzi led Zanu PF supporters in chiding them to show respect to the Regional grouping leadership.
When the Head of the State of Zimbabwe rubbished the Regional Grouping’s dispute between citizens and State resolution institution as a nonsensical body and received a thunderous round of applause from Zanu PF supporters revelling in celebration of his birthday Murombedzi joined them in that applause by remaining mute.
His silence means he approves of the Head of State trivialising the Regional Court’s decision at a time he has sent his Prime Minister and Finance Minister to beg for assistance to feed Zimbabweans threatened with starvation because he is busy chasing away Commercial Farmers and replacing them with his supporters with neither capacity nor capability to farm commercially and feed the Nation.
If that is not nonsensical enough to be deplored then nothing else is.
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