MOYO STANDING OVATION WILL NOT TRANSLATE INTO KNIGHTHOOD FOR TSVANGIRAI

The British Labour Party Conference give the recently elected Speaker to the Zimbabwe Parliament, Lovemore Moyo from the MDC Tsvangirai faction a standing ovation. The truth is the British had little choice here, they could not work with the abrasive dictator, Robert Mugabe, and so they have at least try to work with Morgan Tsvangirai.

In 1995 the then British Secretary for International Development, Linda Chalker was the first to congratulate Robert Mugabe for his party’s election victory. Well that took the wind out of those inside and outside Zimbabwe who had been crying foul for yet another failure by the regime to hold free and fair elections. The British had to explain themselves.

In the past West had routinely accepted Zimbabwe’s fraudulent elections, on the grounds that the election process in Zimbabwe could not be measured using the same yard-stick as that in well established democracies. An extremely patronising stance, to say the least! In 1995 there level and extend of intimidation and other election irregularities were a lot worse than in the past- even by the half-measure yard-stick. (The full account of Zanu PF vote rigging were exposed in Court challenge of the Harare South Constituency result filed by Mrs Margret Dongo.) Ms Chalker knew, she had to come with a better excuse, this time.

It turned out that Ms Chalker just happened to be the first senior Western Government Official arriving in Zimbabwe after the election. She could not avoid saying something about the results (no doubt the Zanu PF control public media who have haunted her till she did). Without the full facts of the election irregularities she had to assume the ruling party had won fair and square. It was more diplomatic to do so. It was probably the last time that any British government official said anything complimentary to a Zimbabwean government figure. The standing ovation given to Lovemore Moyo was more out of relief after a tiresome past with Mugabe than a vote of confidence in MDC.

Even by Africa’s half yard-stick measure, the 27 June 2008 presidential run-off in Zimbabwe was not free or fair. Even Africa’s election monitors who normally see-nothing, hear –nothing and say-whatever the leadership want to hear, condemn the whole electoral process. It was therefore nonsense than anyone should recognise Mugabe as the dually elected president following such a scam. The British and many other countries had made their position clear on this- they will not recognise Mugabe. By signing the power sharing deal with Mugabe; the MDC has changed all that. The British, will have to accept Mugabe as the president of Zimbabwe.

The deal also reaffirmed some of Mugabe’s anti-British rhetoric. Now that MDC has signed on to the deal, Mugabe will pile up the pressure on Tsvangirai, Moyo and the rest of the MDC leadership to speak and act like him. The British knighted Robert Mugabe in hast and lived to regret it. I do not see Tsvangirai in the Queen’s New Year Honours list, the British have learnt the lesson.