In the dying months of British Prime Minister John Major’s he seemed to make one blunder after another and most of them of his own making. Someone said of him, “If John Major saw a banana skin across the street; he will cross the street, step on it slip and fall!” It seems Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s MDC opposition leader has a similar self-hurt and self-hate disposition.
With Morgan Tsvangirai, his blunders defy common sense. If Tsvangirai is warned of a political landmine buried in the dirty; he will get off the beaten track to step on the mine. He will do it “under protest” of course – as if that should explain it all.
Taking part in the presidential run-off is one minefield Tsvangirai has had to walk through- as usual, he did not have but chose to do so- and so far has stepped on each and every mine Mugabe laid for him without missing one!
Tsvangirai and a few key people within MDC have been out of Zimbabwe since early April, supposedly because they feared for their lives. Tsvangirai and, presumably, the rest of his followers will return to Zimbabwe in the next few days times to take part in the presidential run-off. So in the critical period when Mugabe deployed his thugs and the whole nation waited with abated breathe for guidance from the opposition, MDC’s top leadership were nowhere to be found. And now, when Mugabe has accomplished his campaign of terror, it is suddenly “safe” for Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leadership to return to Zimbabwe!
Tsvangirai has said he would take part in the run-off on condition that Sadc, AU and UN international election observers and international press presence are allowed back into Zimbabwe. He has also asked for SADC peacekeeper. Here we go again, Tsvangirai and his pathetic demands! As usual, Mugabe will contemptuously disregard these “conditions” and Tsvangirai will conveniently forget he ever made all these conditions and do whatever as he vowed he would not do.
Mugabe’s international statesman image had been tarnished by his acts of desperation of the last five weeks. The logic was simple enough; retaining the presidency was more important than protecting a public image he could do something about later once his tenancy in State House was safely secured. What he wants now is a run-off and the Zanu PF election machinery will deliver a convincing victory for him.
A Tsvangirai boycott now would give him the presidency in a silver platter but with the cursed sword hanging over his head. The whole world saw Mugabe’s frantic political machinations as the worst kind of election fraud, nothing else. Deny Mugabe the run-off will be the equivalent of refusing him the chance to wash the blood of the innocent lives his thugs have murdered in the last five weeks. Worse still, as a fraudulent president Mugabe will not get a penny in international help to rebuild the Zimbabwe economy.
The Zimbabwe economic melt down is the one issue Mugabe can not ignore for a single day. The economic reality of empty shop shelves, water and electricity cuts which last weeks on end, a 200 000% inflation rate, collapsed education and health service, etc. affect everyone including the hoards of thugs he deployed to terrorise and murder. If the melt down continues, and with him in office, it will get even worse; even his thugs will turn on him like a pack of hyenas!
Forget the nonsense about Tsvangirai “betraying” the people of Zimbabwe if he did not take part in the run-off. He betrayed the people when they delivered to him election victory on 29 March 2008 and he foolishly allowed Mugabe to snatch it away from him. And then was nowhere to be seen when Mugabe’s thugs went on a murderous rampage!
Tsvangirai is taking part in the run-off because he has nothing to lose and everything to gain, whatever the outcome! There is a slim possibility that in spite all the intimidation and murders by Mugabe’s thugs, the absence of MDC election agents in some Polling Stations, the absence of credible election observers, the betrayal by Tsvangirai and MDC, etc. the electorate will still deliver “final knock-out” Tsvangirai is seeking. If I was a betting man, I would put my money on Mugabe delivering the knock-out the punch. Whilst Tsvangirai will fight with goose feather padded gloves; Mugabe will be sporting with spiked knuckle gloves one of those medieval metal armour – it is hard to do a double shuffle in one of those for someone fit near impossible for a frail despot like Mugabe.
The result of the run-off is only to determine what roll Mugabe will have but one thing is a given- government of national unity. Mugabe would want it, a sop to the international community in return for the much needed economic assistance. Tsvangirai will want it- a sop to Mugabe to call off the marauding thugs. Which ever route we take the end result with be a Mugabe regime in all but name!
As far as Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders are concerned they will now be entitled the same pecks and privileges that to date have been the exclusive reserve of Mugabe and his cronies only. By taking part in the run-off Tsvangirai is facilitating the formation of the unity government. If he boycotted the run-off it would be impossible for MDC to ever cooperate with Zanu PF.
So far, Tsvangirai has done everything that Mugabe wanted him to do and right on cue. Tsvangirai has become Donald Duck cartoon character of Zimbabwe politics running through a minefield and stepping on everyone of Mugabe’s landmines. Comical, if only it was him who paid the price of his folly; it is the ordinary people of Zimbabwe who have paid dearly for his mind bogging blunders.
When Mugabe fails to hold free and fair elections it is not just Tsvangirai and MDC who are being cheated, the whole nation too is cheated too.
What the people of Zimbabwe are dying for, physically and literally, is meaningful change. Change that will deliver the freedom and human rights and dignity denied them by this Mugabe dictatorship and by the white settler regime before him. The nation must have leaders with the humility to accept that they are fallible and therefore establish a political system in which leaders are accountable to the people. And the vision to see the benefit of a free and democratic system as contrast to Mugabe’s stifling autocracy.
The government of national unity will at best bring about some economic recovery, nothing much. For example, Mugabe’s cronies will not give up any of the commercial farmers they seized, ostensibly in the name of the landless peasants; and yet increased agricultural production will be a key to Zimbabwe’s economic recovery. The new regime will never deliver any meaningful political reforms; neither Zanu PF nor MDC would want to give up their privileged status. A white-washed dictatorship will never drag Zimbabwe out of the economic and political abyss Mugabe’s 28 years of dictatorial rule has landed this nation into!
At this critical juncture in our history, with a deeply entrenched dictator in State House it is rotten luck that Zimbabwe should have a blundering John Major character as the alternative! Rotten luck!
No comments:
Post a Comment