Has Charamba finally bitten mopre than he can chew and swallow?
It has always been coming and now it has arrived. The simmering and intriguing political contest between Premier Morgan Tsvangirai and Permanent Secretary for Media Information and Publicity as well as Presidential Spokesman George Charamba aka Nathaniel Manheru has exploded.
They may hail from the same District and have grown up eating the same Majekuchenene from the Mwerari River, fishing bream and cat fish from the Nyazvidzi river and herding the same goats, cattle and donkeys together but there is certainly no love lost between them politically.
As Presidential spokesman George Charamba has grown too close to Zanu PF leadership and excused for believing he is now the defacto President of the Republic of Zimbabwe.
Since the advent of the coalition government advice to the President from the cabal that includes Charamba, Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, Public Service Commission Chairman Mariyawanda Nzuwah, Attorney General Johannes Tomana, Chief secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda, Reserve Bank Governor Dr Gideon Gono, Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku and the Military Commanders has increasingly taken precedence over all other advice from elsewhere.
This is the same cabal that was headed by Emmerson Mnangagwa that anchored Mugabe’s retention of the undeserved 6th term Presidency following his humiliating defeat by Morgan Tsvangirai in the 29 March elections.
Even the loquacious Professor Moyo who once wielded total influence over the octogenarian Zanu PF President has not been able to attract the Charamba ring fenced President’s attention with his theatrics.
Charamba and Professor Moyo do not see eye to eye from days when they tussled over headship of the Information and Publicity Ministry.
Premier Tsvangirai on the other hand is aware of the most popular political following he commands and the extent to which his political magnanimity and generosity towards both Charamba and his principal President Mugabe is accountable for the duo’s political relevance.
Without in any way minimising the effects of intervention from a wayward Zanu PF compromised military command Charamba and Mugabe owe their official positions to MDC-T and Tsvangirai’s magnanimity in victory.
The Premier who has taken direct punches from Zanu PF, the Military and Mugabe on the chin and still emerged stronger from each encounter with the devilish Zanu PF party hell bent on putting him and his MDC-T formation down knows Charamba too well to be unduly bothered by his tantrums.
More importantly the Premier knows how to politically get under Mugabe’s skin and drive the octogenarian leader and his acolytes to the end of the tether.
After allowing Charamba freedom to commit all sorts of political hara-kiri using state media the politically astute Premier has Charamba in focus and Charamba may soon find out that President Mugabe will disown some of his excess in like manner to what he did to Dr Gono’s infamous quasi-fiscal operations.
“I have heard about this quasi-fiscal operations before and asked him Dr Gono to explain what it means without getting any satisfactory answers,” the President dissociated himself from Gono’s interventions that brought the country’s fiscal policy on its knees resulting in migration to multiple currencies.
Obviously Charamba is too comfortable to even think that the same treatment can be meted out to him by his trusted handler for him he has sacrificed everything to defend over the past three decades.
But President Mugabe’s political shrewdness is there for all to see other than those under his spell who will only know the extent to which he has manipulated them when he finally and in many instances abruptly snaps up on them.
The Premier in his simple but politically effective ways has driven Charamba in an uncomfortable corner by simply including Charamba’s double professional role in the coalition government in the list of outstanding Global Political Agreement (GPA) issues.
Charamba went ballistic on learning about the inclusion and immediately revived his notorious rabble rousing Nathaniel Manheru column in the Herald that had been suspended following JOMIC intervention to defend himself against the political onslaught that was triggered by his role’s inclusion in outstanding GPA issues.
“It is an attempt to renegotiate the GPA and a new constitution by precedent-setting misdeeds!” he wailed.
As if that was not irritating enough for Charamba the Premier has upped pressure on the Presidential spokesman by signing a BIPPA with the South Korean Government as Head of the Government immediately following his threat to summon the Media Commission over delays in it carrying out of its mandate which resulted in the registration of scribes and licensing of 5 Media houses within a week of the threat.
Charamba was miffed that the Premier’s threat had caused the Media Commission to act. He would have preferred it to defy the Premier as per his advice to maintain the State media monopoly that he has enjoyed since 2002.
Charamba believes that Media pluralism is best served if the new media houses tow the State controlled media line and embraces former Communist bloc dogma and propaganda views to counteract the Western capitalist media mantra that has engrossed the global village for centuries.
In Charamba’s closed mind any criticism of Zanu PF and President Mugabe by the new media houses will not contribute to media pluralism in the country no matter how factual the criticism will be as it will be nothing more than an extension of the legendary Western media onslaught on his beloved party.
Strive Masyiwa’s noble intentions of opening communication lines with the rest of the world through the ambitious Broadband project currently underway in Harare is in Charamba’s nerves and he has hinted that the project will not be commissioned because of its capacity to enable Zanu PF’s political contestants to reach out to the populace Zanu PF has for decades denied access to any other view than that which supports the party and President Mugabe.
“We will see lots of media-related projects for the MDC-T, as that party’s programme of using governmental processes to further its campaign goals pans out. To this party, all the Commissions are a transfer of its implementing machinery from Harvest House to Government. They must come under it and hence frantic efforts to subdue them.
The next polls will be fought on the waves, which is why Econet, and its card-carrying owner, Strive Masiyiwa, are so critical to the MDC-T. We wait for a new propaganda service, which MDC-T seeks to unveil on June 14, using Masiyiwa’s network, through a toll-free facility. Thank God cellular licenses are up for renewal and Government has to deal with all manner of mischief,” Charamba threatened ominously.
Charamba’s threat against Strive Masiyiwa and his thriving Econet Empire must never be taken lightly.
In the past such threats have resulted in closures and bombings of media houses and the forced exile of others into foreign countries not to mention the cruel harassment of scribes employed in institutions perceived to be associated or in league with the MDC-T.
The spoilt political brat he has grown to be, Charamba rants about Masiyiwa being a card carrying MDC-T member unworthy of being licensed to play any role that enhances communication between Zimbabwe and the global village as if Masiyiwa’s membership of the MDC-T is a crime deserving of the threatened punishment.
This is the same brat who later on argues that the Premier must account for the benefits of his foreign travels to the nation at large oblivious of the fact that he has just threatened some such associated benefit from a member of the Premier’s party.
The benefits that have accrued the nation from Econet and Masiyiwa’s enterprises in the country far outstrip any that have accrued from Charamba despite the complaints about his political flirting with the MDC-T from Charamba whose vindictive crusades make Masiyiwa look saintly and infallible when Charamba attempts to take the moral high ground from him.
So flabbergasted was Charamba about Premier Tsvangirai signing the BIPPA with South Korea in the capacity of Head of the current Government that he threw all caution to the wind and went to town trying to lecture the nation about how signing powers devolve from the President and are delegated to Ministers by none other than the President.
In his irate state Charamba’s despair at failure to reign in the Premier like he has done with all other Ministers from Zanu PF could not be missed.
We must thank our Gods that Charamba is not by any stretch of imagination a management authority for if he was, his explanation of the delegation principle would leave us in a quandary.
In structured bureaucracies like our government where power is centralized at the top authority cascade downwards through defined and structured ranks.
The President has command authority over all State institutions but is not necessarily the functional Head in all of them.
Leadership of the Zimbabwe Cabinet vests in the Prime Minister who by definition of his position is the most senior or prime Minister.
Strictly speaking the President must delegate Cabinet functional authority to the Premier and retain accountability for its performance to the populace. In turn the Premier would re-delegate the authority given to him by the President to manage cabinet functions to various Ministers reporting to him while retaining accountability for their performance to the President
As political Functional Heads ministers would then direct permanent secretaries in their Ministries towards desired political goals and leave them with the authority to devise and decide the technologies, systems and methodologies to be used in achieving those goals.
That is how the concept of delegation ought to work unless the likes of Charamba with an agenda to undermine certain disliked authorities in the hierarchy intervene and agitate for powers to be delegated piecemeal to certain stations while sidestepping the established hierarchy.
By sidestepping the Premier and delegating a Minister who reports to the Premier BIPPA signing powers that the Premier cannot exercise, it can be argued that the delegation chain would have been broken to an extent it will not be possible to be controlled.
Without management controls management performance fails.
Charamba argued that power cannot be delegated upwards in trying to justify that President Mugabe delegated his BIPPA signing powers to Minister Mangoma who could not in turn surrender such powers to his head the Premier.
But those of us who are in the know of the delegation principle would argue that the President could not delegate powers to a junior Minister like Mangoma that the most senior Minister namely the Prime Minister was incompetent to exercise and still expect the authorities to function normaly.
If anything in the hierarchy of government positions dictate that the President would delegate government operational responsibilities to the Premier who in turn would allocate functional responsibilities to the relevant Ministers and remain accountable to the President for attainment of Ministerial objectives.
It would mean the Premier would thus be perfectly within his rights to recall the delegated authority from any Minister and execute the role whenever the Minister responsible was somehow incapacitated to perform.
As a Permanent Secretary Charamba is far too junior to lecture the Premier on how he should exercise his powers as he attempts to do at every turn.
It is not unusual for the Head of any entity to decide when he needs or does not need expert advice and support.
When Charamba demands that the Premier must be accompanied by Ambassadors in every meeting we wonder by what authority he makes those demands.
As he says delegation cannot be done upwards we assume that conversely accountability cannot be done downwards and Charamba has no business instructing the Premier how to do his job and will be ignored with the contempt he deserves.
Charamba’s level of insubordination of the Premier is not motivated by the perceived breach of protocol when the Premier signed a BIPPA with the government of South Korea but rather because his position has been included in the outstanding GPA issues list by the Premier and his party.
Charamba is also missing the good old days when he used to globetrot with the President at the taxpayers’ expense which was stopped by the travel ban as opposed to his newly found sense of accountability for taxpayer funds utilization.
While he now views foreign trips by the Premier as an unnecessary expense to the fiscus he was part of the presidential entourage of 50 to the opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup.
We wonder what his presence there assisted in the lives of the ordinary Zimbabweans he purports to be standing up for in accusing the premier of being wasteful not to mention what his escapades with the President over the past three decades has yielded for the nation.
“The Prime Minister has donned the garb of Government, drawn resources of the State, only to chase matters that have nothing to do with the interests of the State. He did so twice in America; did so in Europe and has now done so again in South Korea,” ranted Charamba.
Likewise for him and President Mugabe before the Western travel ban was imposed we may as well add.
For three decades President Mugabe with Charamba in tow has crisscrossed the globe at our expense and all we got for his efforts was a collapsed economy and corpses from Zanu PF and government scripted political violence
It is not too late for Charamba to come clean and tell us what all the foreign trips he has undertaken have achieved for the country and who if any benefited from them.
Surely what was good for the goose must be good for the gander as well.
“The Prime Minister is free to walk the world, sourcing funding for his cause. But he goes on such errands as the president of MDC-T, never as the Prime Minister of this country. He should never levy prime ministerial deference from us for errands that cut him out as a leader of a political party. We may not belong to his party, may not believe in his cause which has spawned so much suffering for the Zimbabwean people. It is only when he fulfils his role as Prime Minister of this country that we doff and defer to him. Not this. Not this, this his bad habit of seeking to augment his mandate, of seeking to renegotiate the GPA, of seeking to rewrite the Constitution through calculated misdeeds,” ranted Charamba.
Need we demand anything to the contrary in respect of Charamba and Zanu PF President Mugabe’s globetrotting?
Charamba undertook several trips abroad to celebrate conferment of Honorariums on President Mugabe but never did he find it proper to complain that;
“Frankly, the conduct of the Prime Minister in South Korea makes one wonder whether at all he went there on Government business.
The honorary degree he got from his Korean counterpart’s former university is his to have, his to enjoy. It does not relieve pressure from a struggling family living in Mbare. The one-student-per-year scholarship he got from the Koreans will, quite predictably, go to his party activists. It is not like the Presidential Programme that has educated thousands, including one of the Prime Minister’s own. The money he got there is going to his own party. It feeds not a single victim of the sanctions he asked for and got?” in cases where he and Mugabe were the beneficiaries of state funding for those trips.
Who is funding the Presidential Scholarship fund if we may ask Charamba? What benefit has Zimbabwe derived from Mugabe’s honorariums that he used public funds to accept and receive if we may ask? Why are the families in Mbare still suffering 30 years into our independence Charamba? How many sons and daughters of Zanu PF activists have benefited from the Presidential Scholarship fund? How much money has been poured into Zanu PF coffers from abroad? Who has imposed POSA, AIPPA, food shortages, collapsed health and educational infrastructure sanctions on ordinary Zimbabweans Charamba if not the successive Zanu PF regimes? More importantly why have you not come out against these excesses in the past since the Premier is not the first and last person to have undertaken these foreign trips.
The strategy of using the MDC as a scapegoat for Zanu PF failings is archaic and hopeless at this time and age in our history, In like manner if China can be that easily checkmated by a single trip by the premier to South Korea the country would be better placed to search elsewhere or salvation.
If Charamba thinks he will succeed where his master has failed in efforts to demean the Premier then he must be ready for what is coming.
Dindingwe rinonakidzwa kana richikweva vamwe as kana rokweviwa roti mavara angu azara ivhu haikona?
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