Premier Tsvangirai at the end of his tether over Zanu PF failure to live by the GPA by persecuting Party Treasurer Roy Bennett announced disengagement from GPA sassociation with Zanu PF creating a monumental constitutional crisis in Zimbabwe.Once again the MDC-T has taken a decisive political position that has caught many unawares just as it did when it pulled out its Presidential contestant from the sham 28 June 2008 Presidential runoff election days before the election was to be staged.
Then, as is the case now, armchair and active analysts were taken by surprise threw around doomsday theories for the MDC-T that we now know to have been miles off the mark.
Zanu PF activist Professor Jonathan Moyo then masquerading as an Independent legislator led the errand way by declaring that MDC-T had dug its own grave and would be buried in it by Zanu PF after the Presidential election results.
His flock of admirers in the party of geriatrics took the cue well and started flogging hypothesis after hypothesis on how the MDC-t burial ceremony would proceed while the octogenarian Zanu PF First Secretary and President Robert Mugabe made swift appointments to acknowledge the plaudits from his blind supporters as a show of newly found power.
Unbeknown to the cheerleaders was that behind the MDC-T President’s humble statement that hitherto the MDC Party had been thrown into political turmoil of similar magnitude and managed to weather the storm as it was going to do in the aftermath of the shambolic and fraudulent Presidential runoff election were serious repercussions awaiting the self imposed Junta regime fronted by Robert Mugabe.
In the euphoria of what later turned out to be a pyrrhic victory old Mugabe rushed to Sharm-El- Shaik in Egypt where African Heads of State were in legitimized his 6th successive term as President.
He returned home disappointed and depressed that none of his former colleagues had tacitly
Instead he was ordered to regularize his continued stay in office through negotiating power sharing with the MDC-T leader he had gone to bury at the funeral attended by all the African Heads of State to dispel any doubts about his Presidency.
With his tail firmly tucked under his legs Mugabe begged then South Africa President Thabo Mbeki to revive mediated negotiations he had dumped in preference of an election where he was humiliated into a distant second place by the MDC-T President Morgan Tsvangirai on 29 March 2008.
Protracted and humiliating negotiations before the SADC mediation team were eventually reactivated culminating in the signing of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) on 15 September 2008 wherein Mugabe conceded to sharing power with Tsvangirai.
In that agreement it now appears the octogenarian Zanu PF leader was forced to relinquish more power than he was prepared to and he made no secret of that fact when he disclosed that there were numerous compromises in the agreement that he was against and likewise the Prime Minister designate.
While Tsvangirai did not dismiss the allegations he nonetheless did not tacitly confirm his displeasure with the agreement and instead told the nation that he was convinced the agreement was the best possible and workable concession his party could extract from the negotiations and he would see to it that it was implemented.
A year after signing the agreement and just over 8 months of the entry of the MDC into the Coalition government that was agreed in the GPA, the MDC-T President has shocked the nation by announcing he and his party had resolved to disengage cooperation in government with Zanu PF.
The resolution has triggered frantic political analysis within and outside the country because of the constitutional implications it carries and likely consequences on the continued existence of the coalition government.
The Jonathan Moyo led Zanu PF cheerleaders wasted no time in condemning the MDC-T move.
Prof Moyo celebrated the opportunity for Zanu PF to consolidate power by appointing an Acting Minister of Finance. Zanu PF ceded the Finance Ministry to MDC-T control after a fervent fight to retain the ministry failed during GPA negotiations.
Charamba dismissed the MDC-T move as a non event “monkey business” grandstanding by the MDC-T without any chance of impacting negatively on the operations of the Government.
Zanu PF Legislator Jorum Gumbo regretted the MDC-T move saying it was out of sync with the MDC-T’s non interference with judicial processes pronouncements in the past.
Another Zanu PF Legislator Eohraim Masawi dismissed the move as a non event which will not cause Zanu PF sleepless nights as the MDC was in the coalition government as a temporary and stopgap measure by Zanu PF akin to a prostitution arrangement which is never intended to be a lasting union.
MKD spokesperson Denford Magora views the initiative as a self inflicted wound on the MDC-T that will land the party in elections that it will not win because of the violence that will be rolled out by Zanu PF whose leader will refuse the UN permission to monitor the election.
MDC-M spokesman Edwin Mushoriwa dismissed the move as being ill advised as it would leave Zanu PF with room to manipulate the systems in its favour such as resuscitating the Zimbabwe dollar-
NCA Chairman Dr Lovemore Madhuku dismissed the move as inconsequential arguing that Zanu PF will simply take charge of governance and leave MDC-T in limbo.
He was supported by Jupiter Punungwe concurred with Dr Madhuku and slammed the MDC-T for trying to revive its waning political fortunes through sabotage due to its lack of a sound ideological or principled foundation.
Other than the Zanu PF Conservatives Gumbo, Masawi, Moyo and Charamba the other three are pro-democracy activists with a burning desire to see Zanu PF dislodged from power but certainly not by Tsvangirai and his MDC.
The crisis gripping the country at present was triggered by the reincarceration of MDC-T Treasurer and Deputy Agriculture Minister Designate Roy “Pachedu” Bennett on terrorism and banditry allegations by a Mutare Magistrate following his indictment for trial in the High Court.
The MDC-T is incensed that the incarceration was a deliberate and vindictive act on the part of the Attorney General as there was no reason for it to revoke his bail conditions that were upheld by the Supreme Court at the time of his arrest.
Zanu PF activists sadly supported by Magora and Punungwe believe that Bennett’s case is a simple and straightforward case where the accused is alleged to have committed a crime against the government and must be tried by the courts.
They forget that before 1980 Zanu PF committed more heinous crimes than those alleged to have been committed by Bennett but when a negotiated settlement was reached that ushered the independence of the country none among them was charged with the offences.
That sadly is the spirit and letter upon which the GPA was agreed upon which only Dr Madhuku appears to have grasped and the persecution of Bennett is out of sync.
Even if Bennett had a case to answer against a regime that has been replaced through negotiations, which is not common cause, the political correctness of him being prosecuted by a successive government in which he has been nominated Deputy Minister is questionable and compromising to his colleagues who were fighting side by side with him but are now in government without facing similar allegations.
Are we to assume Bennett was planning these terrorist and banditry acts outside of the party which wants him in government.
Even if that was the case which appears highly unlikely, why is he not being sworn into his nominated position as per the GPA which has no exclusion clauses whatsoever allowing the president the discretion he claims to be exercising?
That is why it is naïve for any analyst to conclude that Roy Bennett’s case is very simple. On the contrary it is the most significant breach of the GPA in that the formation of the coalition government remains incomplete some 10 months after it was partially consummated.
The assumption that amnesty was not discussed during GPA negotiations is not only mischievous but also politically devious. Amnesty was central in these negotiations to the extent that Tsvangirai was published in the New York Times acknowledging that if amnesty was what it would take to give Mugabe confidence to step down then so be it.
Tendai Biti, Eric Matinenga, Nelson Chamisa, Morgan Tsvangirai to name but a few were all facing similar allegations but in the case of Biti the State withdrew charges while Tsvangirai was never arraigned to the courts.
That was because if that had not happened, the coalition government would not have materialized.
Bennett is simply a victim of political persecution because of his race and Zanu PF is at the centre of this racial persecution not the State because the State is clearly at variance over his continued detention and persecution as evident from the disengagement resolution announced by the Premier.
The reasons why MDC-M are against the disengagement initiative are similar to the reasons why they broke away in 2005 over Senate Elections.
Unfortunately they have not learned anything from the error of trying to defend positions without grassroots support.
Here is a party that signed an agreement which it is failing to enforce claiming that it can defend gains from that agreement.
Surely the first gain in any agreement is in its total implementation. If that cannot be achieved then there is no purpose in entering into another round of negotiations as they will only result in the party failing to realise the gains practically losing those unrealized gains in perpetuity by variation of the initial agreement.
The thinking behind condemnation of the disengagement initiative is flawed in that it assumes that Robert Mugabe has been legitimized for a full term as Zimbabwe’s President.
Far from it. Mugabe is only the legitimate President of the coalition government and if there is a disengagement notice which he does not act quickly to diffuse his legitimacy will come into question.
That is what Constitutional Amendment No 19 Provided for. It was a temporary amendment to diffuse an explosive political climate that was never intended to replace the Constitution sine die.
Those in Zanu PF that have advanced amnesia need to be reminded that the MDC-T is the majority party in Parliament and cannot be excluded from any popular government of the country without creating political chaos.
Zanu PF can disengage from government anytime because they lost the mandate to govern by consent ages ago and are imposing themselves using military force against an unwilling electorate.
The other imperative to note is that MDC-T have improved their popularity rating by stabilizing the economy and bringing some sanity in schools and hospitals.
Only those living outside the country think the contented electorate will opt for Zanu PF ahead of the MDC when the swansong is we will never allow a government to take us back to December 1998 and that government is the Zanu PF Government.
The crux of the matter is that there is an agreement that has not been fully implemented and MDC-T a party to the agreement wants to enforce its rights therein.
If by claiming its rights and taking action to enforce them the MDC-T is violating the agreement, then let the matter be escalated to the guarantours of the GPA.
If Zanu PF is aggrieved that the MDC-T is not living by the spirit and letter of the GPA they are free to take up those concerns to the gurantours.
The MDC_T cannot be held hostage to an agreement that is not being fully implemented because Zanu PF and Mugabe want to show the nation who is in charge.
The only people that are in charge are those that are making a positive difference to ordinary people’s quality of life and Zanu PF is not among those.
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