“How do you confront a dictator using democratic means?” Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai asked. He was speaking at the launch of “Cries from Goromonzi – Inside Zimbabwe’s torture chambers.”
This should have been a rhetorical question for the PM, after all he has spear-headed the nation’s confrontation with Mugabe for the last twelve years. Sadly this was a genuine question from a man who clearly has the foggiest idea as to what the answer is. As the report clearly shows, ten years of Tsvangirai’s type “confrontation” has very little. Mugabe’s hold on power and his dictatorship is stronger than ever!
What people should be asking Tsvangirai today is; did he ever ask himself how he was going to confront Mugabe when he first assume the mantle of leader of MDC, Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader and therefore main challenger to Robert Mugabe’s continued rule twelve years ago? By then, Mugabe’s reputation as a ruthless dictator was well established and beyond doubt. Tsvangirai should have had a clear strategy on how to deal with the dictator from the word go; after all he was not the first person to face a dictator.
“How do you confront a mad man, wielding a stick?” That is a challenge that Caveman has faced since the dawn of time.
“Knock him down, disarm him and pity him afterwards!” is the answer.
With time the stick has become a spear, a Samurai sword, an AK rifle or, God forbid, a nuclear weapon. And instead of just one madman the number has grown from a handful of gangsters to dictator with an army a million strong. The answer, however, has remained remarkably the same; knock him down, disarm and pity him afterwards. There is nothing in Tsvangirai’s political career to show he had mastered any of these basic rules.
If the mad man is threatening the peace and/or human life; then “knocking” him down in some cases will have to mean killing him. Violence begets more violence and therefore the use of force must be considered only when all democratic and peaceful means have been exhausted and failed. It is the nature of ruthless dictators to refuse to see reason and thus seem to continue in their destructive and selfish ways; they will become even more arrogant if they are certain no force will ever be used against them. Therefore, the use of force must never be ruled out in the confrontation with a ruthless dictator.
Tsvangirai had no army and it was not a viable proposition for him to start some insurrection. His biggest stick with which to hit Mugabe and his cronies was to remind them that they will be called to account for all their past human rights violation no matter how long it took to end their reign of terror. Instead of being firm and uncompromising on this, Tsvangirai has been weak and feeble; keener to appease Mugabe than to end the latter’s dictatorial rule.
Tsvangirai has used “none violent” confrontation as any excuse for doing nothing. Mugabe has moved from having the Police turning a blind eye to the lawlessness of Zanu PF thugs to the Police, Army and other State Security organs playing an active roll in the political violence and murder of Mugabe’s critics and opponents. Whereas the real champions of none violence Mahatma Ghandi and Dr Martin Luther King Jr, for example, would have organised peaceful demonstrations to expose this serious breach of the Police duties and responsibilities to the public. Tsvangirai has done nothing.
Tsvangirai’s greatest chance to “disarm” Mugabe was in June 2008 after the sham presidential runoff. Mugabe declared himself the winner but the international community refused to acknowledge him as the “dually elected” president of Zimbabwe. Mugabe was on the hook and here was a really chance to force him out of office and end the nightmare of his rule. It was Tsvangirai who left him off the hook!
The legitimacy of the Zimbabwe government was to be based on September 2008 GPA, a power sharing agreement, between Tsvangirai and Mugabe. In the GPA, Mugabe got all his dictatorial powers back and, to add salt to injury, Tsvangirai has been trying to sell the white-washed dictatorship as embodiment of democratic change the nation has been seeking all along!
The past ten years of Tsvangirai leadership has been a repeated lesson on what one should never do when confronting a dictator – appease him! The desperate political situation in Zimbabwe has played a part in pushing the people into accepting Tsvangirai as their champion to confront the dictator Mugabe. But Tsvangirai’s pathetic political performance in the last ten years shows he has neither the strategic plans nor the common sense to confront a canning fox like Mugabe.
Zimbabweans must now look for some one to get the nation out of this mess; Tsvangirai’s blundering has only help give Mugabe the time and space to regroup when the dictator look weak and vulnerable.
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