The magic of disengagement

Professor Jonathan Moyo shamed by developments of the "dumpest" MDC-T disengagement resolution

In politics scientific prediction of consequences of an initiative are near impossible and a best mere conjecture.

Zanu PF propagandist and democracy champions who went to town about the futility of the MDC-T partial disengagement from the coalition government in October 2009 have once again been confounded by the political ingenuity that is abundant in the party.

If it was not that they have long lost any modicum of shame two decades ago they would be burying their faces in their bloodstained hands in shame as to how they could have got it so wrong about the initiative they all nonchalantly dismissed as a non event soon after the party announced its resolution to disengage.


“As Zanu PF we are not surprised by this decision. The MDC has done it several times boycotting parliament and many other important national events so we are not surprised by this.

The MDC has its own problems and wants to make these problems national problems. They are only doing this to please a white man, they have always shifted goals posts but we will not lose sleep over that as Zanu PF we will continue working for the people of Zimbabwe,” bleated Ephraim Masawi on behalf of Zanu PF at the time the MDC-T disengaged.

But ever since the Sadc Troika met in Maputo on5 November and resolved that the parties in the coalition government must address all the outstanding implementation issues from the GPA signed on 15 September 2008 as well as the issues that the Sadc resolved on 27 January 2009 in Pretoria he has gone into hibernation out of shame.

Before that meeting a self professed former ZIPRA terrorist who did not fire a single shot or kill so much as a fly but now purports to have fought and defeated Rhodesian Selous Scouts and their colonial masters had waxed lyrical abut the need for Sadc to dismiss the GPA and replace it with the Zanu PF policies that have ravaged the country into a basket case over three decades.

Among the ludicrous arguments he advanced were the central issues that inform Zanu PF not to live by the GPA the party wilfully and consciously entered into with the MDC formations on 15 September 2008 to legitimise Mugabe’s disputed claim to election to president of the country on 28 June 2008.

Falsely reputed as the most incisive political analyst and scientist in the country despite a catalogue of failed predictions about the Zimbabwe political environment over the past decade Professor Moyo laid bare his deficient analytical skills when he labelled the MDC-T partial disengagement resolve its dumbest political initiative of all-time.

In his lack of political wisdom the vocal and controversial Zanu PF MP for Tsholotsho North exposed his and Zanu PF’s political blindness on issues material to Zimbabweans that the MDC-T was and is pushing for by insisting on full implementation of the GPA.

For a politician with his chequered history it is not surprising that he got it totally wrong because he really and truly lacks credibility as a trusted and objective analyst to the extent he mesmerises with eloquence in arguing wrong concepts convincingly.

Professor Moyo and the entire Zanu PF think-tank lost it on the disengagement initiative when they blindly fooled themselves into believing that the MDC-T disengagement resolution was motivated by;
 The indictment to trial and re-detention of the party’s nominee for Deputy Minister of Agriculture one Roy Bennett whom Zanu PF believes is undeserving of the position due to his history as a former Rhodesian army man whose nomination was intended to provoke the ire of Zanu PF instead of addressing the need to revive the country’s ailing yet key economic driver the agricultural sector
 The partial disengagement resolution was at variance with provisions of Constitutional amendment No 19 upon which the coalition government is premised and
 Disengagement would not yield any results in the changed economic environment stabilised by the intervention of multi-currency usage in place of the discredited and discarded Zim-dollar whose usage had benefited the party through the days of hyperinflation when every MDC-T cough used to cause the economy to sneeze.
 Zanu PF’s acting Junta Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa had on January 29, 2009, crafted the multicurrency usage policy that had given the country immunity against hyperinflation and taken the advantage from the MDC-T’s cheap politics of any kind.

“The multi-currency macroeconomic response to the MDC-T’s treacherous boycott of the coalition government is very loud and clear: While your boycott political antics previously caused havoc in the hyperinflationary Zim-dollar days, this time haurume in the dollarisation days!” bragged Zanu PF through the garrulous Professor Moyo.

Prof Moyo disclosed that the multi-currency usage dynamic’s hedging effects against inflation were beyond the comprehension f the MDC-T and its foreign strategists who were still playing around hyperinflation politics to cause disenchantment with Zanu PF among the populace while promoting MCDC-T’s unwarranted popularity.

As a consequence he predicted that disengagement from the coalition government would condemn MDC-T to the peril of political irrelevance which as we now know has not happened but to the contrary has strengthened the party’s grip in the coalition government.

The outrage of this kind of political reasoning within Zanu PF was premised on the fallacious belief in the party that it is people centred and will for that reason gain political momentum from economic stability brought about by multi currency fiscal policies which unbeknown to the party a largely and rightly credited to the entry of the MDC-T into government.

Rightly credited to the MDC-T entry, because the multi currency intervention only became possible when the GPA had been signed when it had been resisted by successive Zanu PF regimes for over 2 decades being labelled unworkable bookish economics by the Zanu PF party leader President Mugabe and RBZ Governor Gideon Gono.
Notwithstanding those realities on the ground Prof Moyo could not resist the temptation to credit economic stabilisation to the discredited Zanu PF.

“Put differently, what this means is that whereas Zanu PF has remained resolutely focused on people-centred policies in the context of the GPA and against the backdrop of the now irreversible multi-currency macro-economic environment, the MDC-T has remained a whimsical western proxy for regime change, which continues to see the GPA as a treacherous opportunity for getting a few posts for a few well connected individuals,” he bragged

The reality though is that the converse of what he said is true given the hard to dispute evidence that it was Zanu PF that perilously hanged the country’s economy on the worthless Zim-dollar for 2 decades arguing that it was a symbol of sovereignty worthy of retention at any cost despite its worthlessness only to capitulate when it realised that the Finance Ministry had fallen in the hands of an MDC appointee who would never countenance such ridiculous uneconomic arguments to formulate fiscal policies of his crucial Ministry.

It was therefore not surprisingly that Prof Moyo reserved his parting shot for the Finance Minister Tendai Biti he predicted at the time he was appointed would be a catastrophic failure but has proven him wrong in every facet of political economic and social management to date.

“For Minister Biti and indeed for the MDC-T itself, the price of disengagement from the government is certain to be a traumatic movement from kiya-kiya economics to sewer economics,” he closed his ill advised plea to SADC.
But back to economic stabilisation Professor Moyo conceded that the Finance Minister had held his own by maintaining the multi-currency usage fiscal policies.

“Supermarket shelves remain full with more of the same on offer as the power of the so-called mighty dollar continues to reign supreme. In other words, the economy has ignored the MDC-T boycott by treating it as non event” he admitted to which we must add thanks to Finance Minister Tendai Biti’s resistance of desperate Zanu PF attempts to reintroduce the discarded and discredited Zanu PF symbol of sovereignty the worthless Zim-dollar.

“In view of the foregoing, if the MDC-T thinks its latest boycott stunt will find political traction by precipitating a political crisis of national, regional, continental or international proportions, then it is in for a rude shock,” the Professor erred.

We all now don’t we how shell shocked Zanu PF has been ever since the 5November SADC Troika resolutions were pronounced.

The party argument that Zimbabweans were prepared to sacrifice their all in defence of their sovereignty has changed to something like;

“What the people of Zimbabwe are waiting for are jobs, economic stability, affordable education, a reliable health delivery system, food security, safe and reliable water supplies across the country, sufficient electricity, safe and reliable roads, an efficient transport system, and a reliable social welfare system after retirement,” Zanu PF apologist Reason Wafawarova writing in the party mouthpiece the Herald or more succinctly;

“Indeed, it is very instructive to note that during the GPA negotiations, and over the last eight months since the formation of the coalition government, the MDC-T’s exclusive preoccupation has been about “posts” over “policies”- Professor Moyo justifying the need for Zanu PF to retain Provincial Governorships, the position of Attorney General and that of RBZ governor it expropriated in the coalition government in contravention of the GPA as well as the need to avoid the suffering it had caused the people over 3 decades of uninterrupted misrule and impunity in defense of sovereignty.

This dramatic shift only because its wish for SADC to write off the GA failed dismally in Maputo on 5 November 2009.

Now Zanu PF argues without any rationality that Provincial Governorships are an extension of the President’s Office which are to be manned at the President’s discretion by his trusted Zanu PF cadres and not some MDC-T functionaries loved by the localities where they are established.

“For example, it is unreasonable and treacherous to expect President Mugabe to accept the dilution and subversion of his office as Head of State and Government and the Commander in Chief of the Defence Forces by allowing 60 percent of it to be given to some other political parties or offices that are not loyal to him as President. There is no precedent for such a thing anywhere in the civilised and democratic world governed by the rule of law,” bleated Prof Moyo on behalf of Zanu PF.

Little did he realise that in so saying he was reducing the office of National President to the Zanu PF presidency equivalent. For indeed if President Mugabe is truly a President of the people of Zimbabwe he should be guided by people’s preferences of they want to be led by politically and appoint the most popular people to represent his offices at Provincial level.

But because the unpopular boys and girls in Zanu PF are in search of jobs whose scarcity they have exacerbated through unbridled political impunity over three decades President Mugabe must force them to preside over the governance of unwilling provinces who prefer the leadership option offered by other political parties and the erudite and “politically astute” Professor Moyo will applaud such a move as a show of how people cantered the President of the country and his party is.

But such has been the wit behind the MDC-T disengagement initiative that self acclaimed political scientists that attempt to rubbish it end up entangling themselves in a web of political stupidity.

That is why all who have advanced the argument that MDC-T is fighting for scarce jobs for its people have not been taken seriously. The reason is because a job can’t be a job for the boys and girls only when an MDC-T adherent eyes it and not when it is offered a Zanu PF cadre trusted by the President but unpopular with the general populace in a locality.

Which argument extents to the ridiculous demands that the Premier must dismantle parallel government structures in his office whatever that means.
To show how concocted the Zanu PF demand was, is and will always be Professor Moyo tried to clarify it but only further muddled it as follows;

“During the GPA negotiations the issue of central concern to the MDC-T was Cabinet posts. Later, the focus shifted to MDC-T demands for posts for the positions of Attorney General, the Governor of the Central Bank, ambassadors and provincial governors. Since then, the MDC-T quest has been only about posts in the Prime Minister’s office with special reference to the filling of illegal positions in the party’s parallel government structures whose civil servants earn top up salaries ranging from US$700 to US$7,000.

Parenthetically, there is new and incontrovertible evidence that some but not yet all MDC-T Cabinet Ministers are earning top up salaries pegged on the Kenyan cabinet salaries reported to be around US$15,000 a month. Otherwise, and as a matter of fact, all MDC-T Cabinet Ministers and civil servants are receiving top up salaries and their evil pecuniary interest explains why MDC-T Cabinet Ministers who do not agree with the disengagement decision have nevertheless succumbed to it.”

In as much as Constitutional Amendment No 17 revived the Senate as part of our political institutions Constitutional Amendment No 19 revived the office of the Prime Minister as an institution of our political governance and in the spirit of GNU reassigned leadership of government to that office from the office of the President where I had been escalated during the days period when the post of Premier was abolished.

This is the inconvenient truth that Zanu PF has to accept that the president is no longer the Head of Government but rather the Premier.

By insisting that the President is the Head of State and Government as well as Commander in Chief of the Defense Forces and Supreme Leader of Zanu PF the party and Prof Moyo in particular are actually attempting to justify the parallel government structures in the Premier’s Office by arguing that government structures devolve from structures in the President’s office which structures if there at all are well and truly the parallel structures that must be reassigned to the Premier’s office.

The absurdity of a Prime Minister duplicating government structures of the government he leads is difficult to comprehend unless the argument that the President remains Head of Government notwithstanding that his position as President was ratified when he signed a n agreement wherein he accepted the revival of the Premier’s office to head the government.

If such an argument carries the day it means the coalition government is thus nullified and both the President and the Premier are running governments and the Premier’s wing seems to be outperforming that of the President as it is paying its Ministers and workers better.

If that is the case then it was the smartest decision by the MDC-T to openly declare its dissociation with the president’s structures and thereby trigger SADC intervention as guarantors of the GPA which under such circumstances would have been a hoax agreement.

Nothing exposes Zanu PF inconsistencies in the coalition government than the attempt by Prof Moyo to hoodwink SADC into believing that the GPA has been fully implemented in terms below.

“Furthermore, SADC should take note of the fact that the other issues that the MDC T says are outstanding, such as the posts of the Attorney General, Governor of the Central Bank and provincial governors, are not mentioned anywhere in the GPA and were only raised in some SADC press statement and have since been dealt with in government as promised in that press statement.”

The same issues almost caused the failure of the signing ceremony of the GPA as MDC-T sought to have them agreed upon before putting pen to paper. The party only assigned the GPA after getting irrevocable assurances from the SADC mediator that they would be revisited and to his credit they were revisited and resolved by SADC resolutions of 27 January 2007 when due to Zanu PF intransigence they were referred to the guarantors of the GPA as formation of the government stalled over the same issues and disputed allotment of Ministerial portfolios.

It was at the same meeting that SADC authorised the first departure from the signed GPA when it resolved that the Ministry of Home Affairs will be Co ministered by a Zanu PF and MDC-T nominee meaning government Ministers were increased by one over and above the 37 parties had signed for.

The departure triggered further horse trading of Ministers of State portfolios resulting in a Government of a bloated 76 Ministers and Deputies instead of the 57 they had signed for in the GPA.

For Zanu PF and Prof Moyo to now argue that Resolutions of the SADC meeting on 27 January 2009 are not part of the GPA but a mere press statement that has since been attended o anywhere was the height of mischief and disrespect of the intelligence in SADC leadership as well as our national intelligence.

No wonder way SADC were tough on the feuding parties and prescribed deadlines on when action to resolve the disputed issues was to take place and be concluded. They were irked by the condescending attitude displayed by Prof Moyo on behalf of Zanu PF which was reverberating in the State owned media.

Such was the power of the so dubbed dumbest MDC-T political initiative to disengage from the GNU that it forced Professor Moyo and Zanu PF to expose their true colours and political intentions to sidestep the GPA and rule the country through an exclusive Zanu PF cartel disguised as the coalition government endorsed by SADC on 15 September 2008.

The folly of Zanu PF’s contention that the MDC-T disengagement was in protest to the lawful arrest, indictment and detention of Roy Bennett and its other MPs for felons became apparent when the 5 November 2009 SADC Troika summit held in its resolutions that continued refusal of his swearing into office by President Mugabe was an aberration from the GPA that required urgent resolution.

“The MDC-T decision to boycott the coalition government to protest the lawful indictment of Bennett by a court of law is a gross intimidation of the court and a scandalous interference with the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law specifically intended to make our courts part of the external US and EU project of illegal and undemocratic regime change.

In the same vein, the notion that the rule of law is what the MDC-T or its Western backers say it is, has gone too far and must now be stopped. Whenever an MDC-T person is arrested or prosecuted on whatever allegation, including cases of rape or obvious mobile phone theft, the response is always political under the self-serving claim of persecution or the so-called selective application of the law,” Prof Moyo had attempted to mislead SADC that the coalition government was upholding the rule of law through its relentless prosecution or is it persecution of MDC –T criminals in vain.

We now know what became of the cases against the alleged MDC-T mobile phone thieves and rapists when they went for trial don’t we? Yet Prof Moyo still holds them in negativity. They were acquitted of any wrongdoing.

“Of course, Bennett remains innocent until found guilty by a court of law, but he does face very serious criminal charges and the shocking evidence in support of those charges has been placed before the court for the attention of his lawyers following his indictment. That is what must now be addressed through the judiciary,” Professor Moyo declared authoritatively.

But Zanu PF had advised him to write the Bennett judgement before the courts hear his case so that they will have no reason o acquit hi even if the case against him was not proved.

Here is the “judgement” by “Justice” Professor Jonathan Moyo that should be reproduced by Justice Chinembiri Bhunu after presiding over the Ro Bennett case verbatim not withstanding his pretence that Bennett must be presumed innocent yet denied the right to take up appointment in the coalition government.

Whereupon after reading evidence of record and listening to the arguments by both the State and Defense Counsels I find that:-

“It is preposterous for anyone to say that Bennett should not have been charged or that, having been charged last February, he should not have been indicted simply because he is a white person or a former Rhodesian infantryman with the blood of freedom fighters on his hands.

Nobody is above the law, and that particularly goes for former Rhodesians who brutally massacred our freedom fighters and the innocent peasants who supported them or Zimbabwean children who were in refugee camps in Mozambique and Zambia.

The culprits must be brought to book and they will never ever be allowed to now masquerade as latter day champions of human rights. Never!

It is not okay for the very same Bennett who fought and massacred our liberation forces to be a Minister in the government of Zimbabwe 29 years after our hard-won independence. That is just not acceptable.

Although the media-connected Rhodesian network behind the MDC-T has whitewashed Bennett’s curriculum vitae to make it appear as if it starts from 2000, the year which Rhodies and their American and European backers say is when the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe started after the start of the historic land reform programme, even fools know that Bennett was a notorious member of the Rhodesian killer machine before 1980.

Given that reclaiming our priceless land from British colonialists who brutally and illegally stole it from our ancestors was the single most important driver of our national liberation struggle, the MDC-T’s treacherous nomination of Bennett who served in the Rhodesian infantry for the post of Deputy Minister of Agriculture is morally equivalent, and therefore as insulting as, having a former Nazi infantryman serving as a deputy minister of justice in Israel today.

If Israel would not accept that under any circumstance, including that of fake reconciliation, why should Zimbabwe accept the monstrosity?

There is no amount of the abuse of press freedom that can justify the rewriting of Zimbabwe’s history. Bennett’s hands have the blood of Zimbabwe’s liberation fighters including that of Zimbabwean children who were in various refugee camps in Mozambique during the liberation struggle.”

In the premise I find the accused………?

With that judgement will end the Bennett nomination issue and what Professor Moyo describes as:-

“In the vain hope of finding a SADC solution in Maputo, Pretoria, Kinshasa, Gaborone or Luanda, Prime Minister Tsvangirai is once again behaving like a nauseating drunkard who loses his car keys on the dark side of the street only to hopelessly look for them on the side with light.”


It appears Zanu PF after loosing the same car keys in similar circumstances have chosen not only to look for them in the dark side where they were lost but send blind political drunkards like Prof Moyo to find which is the dark side of the car and then the lost keys.