Tsvangirai is going back home empty handed; he had hope to raise something towards the US$ 10 billion Zimbabwe requires to finance its economic recovery. All he got was US$ 42 m from EU for budgetary support; the rest was given for humanitarian assistance. Now he has to face the music and the nation must assess the price of this failure.
Mugabe and his cronies had hoped Tsvangirai would come back with lots of money. Ever since Gono “cleaned” out the last dollar from the last ZRB account, the cabal’s extravagant life styles has suffered; the stead supply of expensive cars, plasma TV and the ready supply of foreign currency to buy all the other luxurious have all but stopped. The ruling elite used to spend Hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and for months now have had to make do with the US$ 100 a month allowances paid to all the other civil servants.
Tsvangirai was sent off with specific instructions to get the targeted sanctions imposed by the West lifted. Mugabe and his inner circle with loot starched away outside the country have been waiting to draw on that to ease the economic hardships caused by the economic melt down. No doubt those Zanu PF officials who have been sidelined in the last few months would happily “melt” away. Sadly the West has spoken with one voice on this; the sanctions will stay.
So Mugabe and his cronies have no new money to loot, they can not leave the country and they can not access whatever loot they had whisked out of the country for “a rainy day”. They will no doubt be foaming at the mouth angry with what they will consider to be Tsvangirai’s failure. The harsh reality is Mugabe and his cronies have only themselves to blame for Tsvangirai’s failure.
Even before the Tsvangirai signed the Global Political Agreement (GPA) it was clear the outcome was a very poorly disguised wolf – Mugabe - in a sheep’s – Tsvangirai – coat. Tsvangirai was naïve, foolish and was readily bullied into signing the agreement. No one else was that easily duped.
Indeed to reassure his own Zanu PF supporters Mugabe was forced to discard the sheep coat and use his wolf teeth even before Tsvangirai was dispatched on the begging trip. On the dictator’s birthday party, held three weeks after the formation of the GNU, Mugabe gave his thugs the green light to invade more white farms. The move was to allow the thugs to continue looting but more significantly to assure them that their looted wealth would not be taken away from them; he calls the shots not Tsvangirai.
Mugabe has always treated Tsvangirai with contempt, but then the dictator has treated everyone else, even those in his own party, Zanu PF, with the same contempt. But after the failure mission, Tsvangirai would no doubt be up for some extra grilling by the dictator. The country’s Mugabe control public media has already starting taking pop-shots at Tsvangirai; from now on they just fall short of the “puppet” abuse of the pre GPA days. The Zimbabwe public and the West are angry with Tsvangirai too.
There was NO logical reason why Tsvangirai agreed to join Mugabe to form this GNU; not after Mugabe did after the 28 March election and then to “win” the presidential run-off. And then to make matters worse, signing GPA in which Mugabe has the sweeping dictatorial power. Of course the GNU was not going to work and the people have warned Tsvangirai of all this repeatedly.
After nearly four months of GNU people had expected Tsvangirai to finally admit that he had been wrong. Instead Tsvangirai stubbornly maintained the GNU was working. The West gave him the two finger sign, literally, when he had the chic to ask them to “reward” GNU for progress they could not see but Tsvangirai insisted was there.
People have a lot of patience and sympathy for the proverbial “underdog”, even a blundering one like Tsvangirai. But when the underdog assume airs and becomes arrogant the people’s patience and sympathy will disappear like mist in the morning heat!
The future looks gloomy for Tsvangirai and MDC; at the end of the day the GNU has meant a lot of rotten eggs on their faces. Mugabe and his cronies will not have any brownie points from having been a party to the GNU still the party bought itself some valuable breathing time.
The country’s economic problems are not over by a long mile; and it was this that forced Mugabe to accept Tsvangirai into the GNU. Still things are not as grim as they were last year; there is food in the shops, Zimbabwe has stopped printing paper money which had fuelled the run away inflation, the West has returned to feed the poor, schools and hospitals have reopened although not functional, etc. Mugabe will no doubt take advantage of the eased economic pressure to regroup.
Mugabe will be desperate to ease the economic hardships of his ruling elite; their continued support is wholly dependent on his continued ability give them the luxuries they have grown accustomed to. He will cream some of the aid money using the “humanitarian plus” Deputy P M Mutambara talked about; a scheme in which the regime expropriate some of humanitarian aid money and use it to pay Ministers allowances and other government expenses.
Mugabe will probably not care either way if the GNU collapsed. His main focus would be to drag his feet over the writing of the new constitution and then steam roll the whole process to ensure he gets what he wants. Hold new elections soon after; he will have his thugs to help him secure yet another election “victory”!
In the present political climate in which Tsvangirai is seen as a weak and indecisive leader prone to blundering; the election is there for Mugabe to lose.
The real big losers would yet again be the people of Zimbabwe. They have been the big losers in all these thirty years under the dictatorship. When Tsvangirai handed the dictator a life-line last year it is the people who have lost the most; the GNU it has failed to delivery any meaningful economic recovery or any political reforms. So it will be a wasted two years when the nation should have done to ease the long suffering people. Unless the people start now to think of a plan to end this dictatorship, Mugabe will be life-president. If the people are expecting Tsvangirai and MDC to stop him, then one thing is certain Tsvangirai will once again let them down
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