BRITISH TO REWARD ZIMBABWE'S GNU FOR DOING NOTHING: IRON LADY WOULD HAVE NEVER DONE ANY SUCH NONSENSE!

So the British government has decided to “support Zimbabwe’s inclusive government”!? In a few days, we will know how much the British will put into Tsvangirai’s begging bowl. So far only the European Union had put US$ 42 million “for budgetary support” in the bowl. Everyone else, the Americans, Germans, Norwegians, etc. had pointedly refused to even put a token amount in the bowl – “yamatanda nyadzi” as we say in Shona. “Not until there are meaningful democratic reforms in Zimbabwe,” they told Tsvangirai.

The democratic reforms we Zimbabweans are dying for and the West is calling for is freedom of expression, end to intimidation and lawlessness by Zanu PF thugs and, worse still, by State Security Agents, etc. These reforms do not cost the GNU a penny and should have taken a matter of days – the time required to repeal the repressive laws, etc. The GNU is now five months old and yet these simple changes have not been carried out.

This GNU must be judged and rewarded on the basis of what it has achieved and not what it says it “will” do. It has had five months in which to act. Yes there are reformers within the GNU but more importantly there those who do not want change; they want the dictatorship and all it stands for to remain. Like it or not those who do not want change are the ones calling the shots in the GNU.

“The reformers who have faced torture and death in pursuit of democracy have chosen to make this government work. We must find ways to support them,” argued junior foreign minister Mark Malloch-Brown. Nonsense!

The British government has repeatedly decried the lack of meaningful reform and blamed Mugabe and his cronies for it. Minister Malloch-Brown himself acknowledged Mugabe is still a problem; he talked of “strong doubts about Mr Mugabe”.

All money donated as humanitarian aid is not really beyond the GNU’s reach; the administration has already said it will appropriate such funds in what Deputy PM Mutambara called “humanitarian plus”. At least there is an attempt to ring-fence humanitarian aid; there is no such thing with government to government aid. All money thrown in the begging-bowl is as good as thrown a black-hole!

The British can put whatever spin they wish on their planned “support” of Zimbabwe’s GNU; the bottom line is the money will be used by Mugabe and his cronies to consolidate their hold on power. The British will be rewarding the hardliners for standing firm and not giving one inch to those calling for democratic reforms.

I expected the French, whom Tsvangirai is yet to visit, not the British to break rank with the rest of the West one such a fundamental point as basic human rights and freedoms. It is times like this that one wishes the Iron Lady or Winston Churchill was still in 10 Downing Street; there would be no such wish-wash nonsense from the British!