Tsvangirai's superficial understanding of human rights makes him bargain them like mangoes!

Tsvangirai is back on the campaign trail again, he is asking Americans to lift the targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his cronies so they will have no “excuse” for failing to resolve the country’s problems!

"There are two approaches. The United States maintains a hard-line position. The European Union has relaxed it (sanctions), but they have said that the travel ban will still retain on the president and his wife. But everyone else has been removed.  So, as far as I am concerned, sanctions must never be used as an excuse for the failure of economic and political policies in the country. And that's why for us, removing these things (sanctions) will actually create condition where Zanu-PF has no excuse forever," Tsvangirai said.

At least Tsvangirai accepts this was a feeble excuse for Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown but since when has Mugabe ran out of feeble excuses for his failures! By campaigning for the sanctions to be lifted Tsvangirai is, unwittingly, giving credence to Mugabe’s claim that the sanctions had destroyed the Zimbabwe economy and, worst of all, that sanctions were imposed because of Mugabe’s serious human rights violations was a fallacious claim!

The trouble with someone like Tsvangirai is that their understanding of such matters is so superficial they always find it so difficult to defend their position at any given time and more often than not will say one thing today and the exact opposite tomorrow.

Before the formation of the GNU in 2009, MDC supported the imposition of the targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his inner circle. The sanctions were imposed in 2002 after Mugabe had once again failed to hold free and fair elections and for his regime’s bad human rights record.

Of course Mugabe has his own explanation why the West imposed the sanctions insisting that the elections were free and fair. No thinking Zimbabwean or anyone who has followed Zimbabwe politics could cross their hearts and say any of the Zimbabwe’s elections were free and fair. The 2008 elections had been such an abomination that not even SADC and AU election observer teams, known for their turning a blind eye to rigged elections, condemned the Zimbabwe elections.

The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic and political mess can be traced to the country’s failure to hold free and fair elections and thus to effect regime change. Zimbabweans have been stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical regime resulting in the economic ruin and serious human rights violations. The only way out of the mess is to restore the individual right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country. Imposing sanctions on those who were denying the people their free and democratic vote made good sense!

As soon as Tsvangirai was sworn in as Prime Minister in 2009 he started campaigning for the sanctions against Mugabe and his cronies to be lifted. He told the world Mugabe had changed and dropped his tyrannical streak to become a democratic. There was no evidence of this as Zanu PF continued to invade farms, beat up the opposition and, most significantly, not one of the agreed democratic reforms had been implemented by the GNU.

PM Tsvangirai complete failed to appreciate that Mugabe could not be considered a democratic and yet still retain the Zanu PF dictatorship. It was also for MDC to dismantle the dictatorship by implementing the reforms. And so for Tsvangirai to be calling for the lifting of the sanction when he had done nothing to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship showed just how little he understood the reasoning behind their imposition.

The July 2013 elections have settled the question of whether Mugabe and Zanu PF had indeed changed because they went on to blatantly rig the elections.

Mugabe and Zanu PF have blamed Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown on the “illegal sanctions imposed by the evil British and their allies”. But have completely failed to explain how this was so given that the sanctions were on a select few and that the country was free to do business with everyone else. But most important of all, after the 2008 elections whose results were condemn by all the internal and external observers Mugabe could no longer deny that he had failed to hold free and fair elections. He could no longer claim that it was the West who wanted regime change when it was clear he had systematically denied the people a meaningful vote.

So during the GNU Tsvangirai campaigned for the sanctions to be lifted because he was convinced Mugabe had changed from the tyrant to a democrat. Events have proven Tsvangirai was hopelessly wrong because Mugabe was the same ruthless tyrant he was before the GNU.

Now Tsvangirai is campaigning for the sanctions to be lifted but from a changed position. He accepts Mugabe is a tyrant, he accepts the regime has failed to hold free and fair elections, etc. and, most significantly, he also accept the regime has used the sanctions as an “excuse”, the smoke screen to hide behind for its economic and political failure.

What is certain to happen here is that Mugabe will take the lifting of the sanction as proof that he had been right all along! Yes without any significant change of direction on his part nothing on the economic and political front will change but he will have the ready excuse that the damage caused was so far reaching it would take time for the nation to recover.

Indeed he could even play hard ball by refusing to pay back IMF and WF debt, for example, knowing this would force the two institutions to stop all credit lines. Mugabe can then insist this cuts have nothing to do with the country’s failure to pay its debt but rather the West back on its “regime change” agenda.

The democratic right of the people of Zimbabwe to free, fair and credible is their birth right and their ticket to end this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule. The willingness of people like Tsvangirai to trade in this right at every turn shows how little he really understand that there some things that can be traded in the people’s basic democratic rights and freedoms are not one of these things.

Throughout the GNU MDC appeased the tyrant by failing to implement even one democratic reforms and Mugabe has since thanked you, Tsvangirai, and your fellow MDC friend by kicking off the gravy train. Now you want to appease the tyrant by campaigning for the lifting of the sanctions and tacitly accept that there have not been serious human rights violations including failure to hold free and fair elections.

You have cross a double red-line there because basic human rights and freedoms are not mangoes or tomatoes that you or anyone give away or bargain with to appease a tyrant like Mugabe!