We have seen enough of your joint public appearances what is lacking is common purpose action Mr President and Mr Premier
After two months and one week of ducking and dodging critical issues needing resolution by president Mugabe and his Zanu PF party during which time he has been extensively consulting with his handlers in the defunct Joint Operations Command (JOC) this week opens with a crucial meeting scheduled between the principal subscribers to the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that ushered the insipid coalition government on 13 February 2009.
The less than satisfactory government arrangement now at the helm of the country’s management has been moving in fits and starts over the period while trying to negotiate its way past a cluster of hurdles thrown in its way by disgruntled opponents who hitherto were immensely benefiting from the status quo that existed before the coalition took to the controls.
The push start from SADC that rolled the coalition government into motion left a few spanners in the works after an imperfect repair job of a government administration that had not been serviced for nearly 3 decades.
The thinking was that after servicing the rusted engine of governance it required a running in period to establish the loose ends that required tightening and the mixture of the retrained and recently qualified governance technicians’ in the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC) needed unsupervised opportunity to practice their newly acquired skills assured of rearguard support of SADC expertise whenever they met serious obstacles.
President Mugabe who missed many of the tutorials given by the SADC mediation team because he believed he had seen it all and was a qualified instructor in governance found that many of the beliefs he held were at variance with management skills required for successful governance in the modern world.
SADC mediators were in a hurry to get the stalled government in the country in motion to avert a looming humanitarian catastrophe that was threatening to implode as Civil Strife between competing political parties in the country whose power bases had been divided into mass approval for the MDC versus military approval for Zanu PF.
In that haste mediators relegated crucial lubrication and functional hygiene matters necessary for the smooth operation of the coalition government to the attention of JOMIC in the misguided belief that the issues were relatively easy and within the capability of the qualified apprentices to resolve.
Having motivated and secured inter party agreement to principles of power distribution at the top of the government and Cabinet level the belief was that the principles learned would be applied to fix power distribution at the Provincial Governorship level.
But President Mugabe had complicated matters at this level by unilaterally appointing loyalists from his party to the crucial grassroots political mobilisation positions ahead of the formation of the coalition Government.
The deliberate and purposeful move by the Zanu PF leader was out of knowledge of the role such positions had played to maintain his party’s grip on power in the past three decades and the potential consequences of loosing that vantage point to political opponents who were ever corroding into his powerbase even without those positions.
After the coalition government was consummated the outstanding allotment of Provincial Governorships was to become the first central point of contest between the coalition partners as expected.
JOMIC drew from its experience before SADC mediation and within a week of the matter being referred to it had agreed and unanimously recommended that the 10 positions in question should be apportioned between the parties to the GPA in tandem with the voting patterns in each of the 10 provinces of the country.
Applying that formula meant MDC-T which had won Parliamentary majorities in 5 of the Provinces would be entitled to appoint 5 Governors and the smaller faction of the Party led by Professor Mutambara would appoint one Provincial Governor for the single Province that gave it its 10 Legislators and the remaining 4 would be appointed by Zanu PF.
President was faced with a major accommodation crisis as he had appointed an elected legislator from Masvingo Province as a Governor thereby making him relinquish his Parliamentary seat as Governors are Senators.
In addition to that President Mugabe had also accommodated key Party members who had lost in Parliamentary elections to the MDC in Manicaland, Harare, Bulawayo, Matabeleland South, Matabeleland North and the Midlands as Provincial Governors and to comply with the JOMIC ruling had to disappoint these and replace them with MDC nominees.
It was no mean task because not only would it expose Mugabe’s weakened power to the nation he dearly wants to remain believing only his Zanu PF party and himself are in charge of but such a move has great potential of alienating him with the disappointed Governors he will have to stand down.
It thus became necessary for him to buy time and find the best way of getting around the problem arising from the JOMIC interpretation of the GPA.
To do so was not easy given the national sentiment and expectation of action on the issue of Governors.
To divert attention President Mugabe extended the contract of discredited Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono by a further 5 years and elevated another self confessed Zanu PF apologist Johannes Tomana to the critical position of Attorney General just in time to beat the imminent consummation of the coalition government.
The political strategy is to load disputed power points such that when Principals eventually get down to discuss the contested implementation issues president Mugabe will appear as having sacrificed some of his confidants and thus compromised when infact he will have given in an inch.
Nothing demonstrates that strategy more than the purported unilateral appointments of Permanent Secretaries and the muted silence on Ambassadorial postings as if there has been no change in government in the country.
That was loaded with the purported stripping of the powers and responsibilities of the ICT Minister nominated by the MDC-T and their relocation in the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure development headed by a trusted Presidential ally Nicholas Goche notwithstanding that there was never agreement between the coalition partners to create a Ministry of Transport, Communication and Infrastructure Development which President Mugabe has unilaterally decreed in utter disregard of the GPA and constitution of the country.
The other side show created in the Zanu PF was the upsurge in commercial farm invasions at the same time the MDC was preoccupied with attempts to get political detainees who included key party activists and Civic Society allies freed from prisons throughout the country.
National attention was focussed on the illegal abductions and detentions of Jestina Mukoko and 14 others when Deputy Agriculture Minister Designate was added to the casualty list at the same time Manacho Mutezo was prosecuting Kurenyi for electoral fraud in a Mutare Magistrate court instead of the Electoral court.
As if that was not enough trouble for the MDC to be concerned with MDC vice President Thokozani Khupe was involved in a Road Traffic Accident enroute to her daughter’s swearing in ceremony as Deputy Premier and later died from injuries sustained in the yet to be explained accident.
This was to be followed by another accident involving MDC leader and current Premier Morgan Tsvangirai wherein his wife was killed resulting in him taking compassionate leave for 3 weeks.
As soon as he returned to work his grandson drowned in a swimming pool at the Premier’s residence and he had to be away from duty for another week.
There were other non fatal accidents involving MDC Legislators Sipepa Nkomo, Gordon Moyo and Giles Mutseyekwa which most believe are coordinated within known cabals of disgruntled opponents of the coalition government that have explicit or implied Presidential approval to buy him time to consolidate his weakened position in the imminent negotiations over GPA implementation oversights on his part.
Most Zimbabweans are disturbed about these delays and in particular those in the diaspora are desperate to see signs of real change on the part of Zanu PF or alternatively a pull out by the MDC from the coalition in protest to the breaches which to them reflect the MDC as a junior partner to Zanu PF in the coalition despite it securing electoral victories over Zanu PF in the 2008 harmonised elections and meriting leading the government.
If the MDC was to take the advice of its diaspora critics and pull out of the government, it would be sweet music for Zanu PF and the pockets of resistance cabals to the coalition governance.
It appears that the farm invasions have been dealt a major blow by the surprise Premiership fact finding visits to affected commercial farms in Chegutu and will henceforth be on the decline as perpetrators risk immediate arrest.
President Mugabe appears ready to confront the MDC on the disputed implementation areas of the GPA after realising that there is substantial aid in the offing if he complies with some key demands on him to show commitment to the GPA.
This week there will be some real movement in some areas of concern but not all are likely to be resolved as some appear will require SADC mediation to be ironed out with finality.
It is possible President Mugabe is holding out for the planned sixth month review of the co-Ministering of Home Affairs compromise to extract further concessions from the MDC over some disputed aspects of the GPA implementation.
Whatever will happen he will carve in on some of the main concerns by the end of the week or by the end of the month at the latest.
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