Botswana’s President Ian Khama calls for fresh elections in Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai has always claimed that AU and SADC leaders pressured him into the power sharing arrangement. President Khama of Botswana and Prime Minister Odinga of Kenya were forth right in their condemnation of Mugabe’s sham June 2008 elections. The two leaders would have supported calls for fresh elections.
The other African leaders realised that Mugabe had gone too far. Most of them had rigged elections in their time but none of them had ever done what Mugabe did in the 2008. Mugabe had crossed the Rubicon and was beyond the peril. Of course they still wanted to serve Mugabe from a fate they themselves feared awaited them if the Zimbabwean electorate were to win back their democratic vote. Zimbabwe would set a bad precedence, as far as them were concerned, and soon the whole continent would be swept by an unstoppable wave of citizens demanding the same right. So the rest of Africa’s dictators had no choice but try to save Mugabe and thus ultimately themselves by proposing, with a heavy heart, a power sharing arrangement. It was with a heavy heart because these leaders know Mugabe had gone too far and they would be skating on thin ice if they openly throw they lot with him. If Tsvangirai had stuck to his guns and demanded free and fair elections most of the AU and SADC leaders would have relented rather than fight a lost cause.
The AU and SADC leaders must have been greatly relieved when Tsvangirai accepted the power sharing arrangement. Of course the President Khama camp were disappointed.
If Tsvangirai was not sure of President Khama’s support for fresh election in June 2008 well he has heard it now from the horse’s mouth! In the face of the mountain of evidence that the NGU is NOT working; will Tsvangirai take this life line and finally walk out of the GNU and give Zimbabwe the chance to finally turn over a new leaf? Sadly, he is not going to do that.
Tsvangirai did not take the option of fresh election in June 2008 and will not consider it now for the same reason: he really fears that Mugabe would use the Police, the Army and his Zanu PF thugs to make the country ungovernable. That is why Tsvangirai believe Mugabe has to remain “a part of Zimbabwe’s solution”. Of course it is a nonsensical and historically untenable.
Mugabe has bankrupted the nation; the schools, hospitals, everything has collapsed and the people are destitute and without hope. As long as Mugabe remains in power the whole nation will have no hope so how can he still remain even a small part of the solution; he is the problem!
Whilst it is true Mugabe had made Zimbabwe ungovernable from April to June 2008 because he needed to beat the electorate into voting for him. As soon as the voting was over he had started to wind down his violent operations. It was unsustainable.
If Tsvangirai had called for fresh elections Mugabe would have used his henchmen and thugs against whom and to what purpose?
Zimbabwe is stuck in this ridiculous position of economic stagnation and political rot; we have a ruthless dictator ruining our lives just as he has done since 1980, except that we have to pretend that something has changed with GNU when deep in our hearts we know nothing has changed.
If there is going to be real change in Zimbabwe then we must replace Tsvangirai with who believes in real change.
President Khama is taking great risk by cutting through the nonsense from his fellow SADC leaders and says it as it is. Mugabe will be fuming with anger over this and who knows what the dictator will do next! The tragedy is President Khama will have taken all this risk for nothing, at least as long as Tsvangirai remains the main opposition leaders.
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