Mugabe sends MDC’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture to jail and Tsvangirai reacts- he “disengages” with the Mugabe from the GNU.
Mugabe is a master strategist and he set a trap for Tsvangirai and the later walked straight into it!
Mugabe picked on Roy Bennett because he is white. Mugabe has played the race card again and again and it has served him well every time. For the last ten years; talk about Zimbabwe and nine times out ten you end up talking about the white farm invasions. Try as you will to talk about the disruption the invasion have caused or the many farms now fallow; the discussion will gravitate back to addressing the historic injustice created by the white colonialists, which is exactly what Mugabe would want to hear. Zimbabwe’s economy has completely collapsed and Mugabe has committed some shocking human rights violations and all these matters have played second fiddle to the farm invasions. All these has happen not by accident; they were all carefully choreographed!
Mugabe must have been pleasantly surprised when MDC signed the GPA. OK he had out manoeuvred them on countless occasions in the past still even he must have been surprised that they would be that to stupid to sign such a one-side agreement and even to trust him to honour even the marginal concessions he had made. In the last eight months Mugabe has again and again violated the word and spirit of the GPA by appointing the likes of Gideon Gono without consulting the other partners in the GPA and then refusing to point blank to replace Gono. Tsvangirai threatened to walkout of the GNU but never did.
If Tsvangirai had stuck to his guns and actually walkout of the GNU, I bet Mugabe would have relented and fired Gideon Gono, Tomani and any of the so called outstanding issues. Mugabe is not stupid, he did not want the GNU to fail and be fingered for it. However, when it came to Roy Bennett; that was a different matter.
Roy Bennett presented Mugabe with the opportunity to play his race game. Mr Bennett is accused of having weapons of war and thus of threatening peace and Zimbabwe’s sovereignty. The fact that Bennett is white, the links to Mugabe’s mimesis, “the white imperialists”, is not that tenuous. Mugabe has stubbornly refused to swear in Mr Bennett as the MDC’s deputy Minister of Agriculture. Mugabe has done nothing for eight months now hoping MDC would walkout of the GNU over this one. When nothing happened, Mugabe provoked MDC further by having Bennett thrown in jail and finally Tsvangirai swallowed the hook.
Mugabe is well aware that if the GNU collapses, his own legitimacy will once again be called into question. His legitimacy was first questioned after the sham 27 June 2008 presidential run-off because he had failed to hold free and fair elections. His legitimacy is totally dependent on the GNU but not now. If MDC walkout, Mugabe would want to continue to rule the country as if nothing has changed. If anyone should dare question his legitimacy he will claim they are seeking to punish him because he stood up to a white imperialist. Just as he blame Zimbabwe’s economic collapse on the white imperialists “punishing him for redressing the injustice of historic land distribution.”
Tsvangirai should have never agreed to share power with Mugabe particularly after the serious human rights violation leading up to the 27 June 2008 vote. Surprise, surprise, Tsvangirai swept all that aside and joined Mugabe to form the GNU. Many innocent Zimbabweans have been arrested and some have been murdered including MDC members since the formation of the GNU. MDC has never taken any firm actions to get Mugabe to stop. And so for MDC to finally take action over the arrest of one white person who smack on racism; that MDC values the comfort of one white person over the lives of hundreds of blacks!
Mugabe has always accused Tsvangirai of being a puppet of the West and, make no mistake about it, Mugabe will claim Tsvangirai acted in this case not of his own convolution – his white masters pulled the strings!
Tsvangirai called his MDC colleagues and their agreed to “disengage with Zanu PF” – one assumes that is a half-way house to walking out of the GNU. What matters is MDC have swallowed the hook; that is exactly what Mugabe wanted them to do. He will always blame MDC for walking the GNU over the Bennett case whatever happens. It is a great pity that Tsvangirai and MDC always move before engaging their brain!
2 comments:
I have followed your comments /exchanges with the likes of Masango Matema, Joseph Chiteza, Professor Jonathan Moyo and many others on The Zimbabwe Times web site with interest – there are many insightful said - but mostly with a sense of anger and frustration because all is said and done Zimbabwe is still stuck in this man-made hell hole!
Wilbert I have agreed with everything you said and understand your frustration with people like Matema and why you called him/her a simpleton. However you are wrong to think the worst thing people like Matema, who “have no political aptitude”, have done “is making a fool of yourself on this web site”. Of course they have made complete fools of themselves but that is nothing. It is people like Matema who have egged Tsvangirai on from one blunder to the next. Until five, ten years ago these same individuals egged Mugabe on with just as much blind zeal.
There are the Joseph Chitezas of this world who continued to defend the ruthless dictator even to this day. All they have ever got from Mugabe is a job in Herald House or a small farm they are glorious happy. Schools and hospitals are closing, water and electricity are cut, there is fuel and food shortages, etc., etc; these things affect them as much as the effect everybody else and they will never ask why.
At the top end of the spectrum is the Professor Jonathan Moyos of this world. Smart as a whip; you can not call him a simpleton. “He would sell his own mother for a price and be proud he had a mother to sell” you, Wilbert, said.
Mugabe’s ruthless dictatorship would collapse in days where is not for people like Matema, Chiteza and Moyo propping it up. The last two constitute people who know exactly what they are doing and will continue to do Mugabe’s bidding as long as they are paid for their services.
People like Matema are not simpleton in the sense that they have had the advantage of a good education which many in the rural areas, for example, did not have and therefore should be smart enough to see some of Tsvangirai’s blunders. They do not see them because they have the lens cap of their brains screwed on – super glued on!
It took the likes of Matema eight months to realise the GPA was “flawed” as he/she admitted. With a canning dictator like Mugabe ably assisted by equally canning sell-outs like Professor Moyo Zimbabwe will never see the end of this dictatorship; Mugabe will have Tsvangirai and his myopic supporters like Matema chasing their tails for a long, long time.
Masango Matema or whatever you real name is; please, please – for the sake of the suffering and dying Zimbabweans – take off the lens cap to your brain!
Mariko, you are right. I have revised my position and the following was my reply to one of The Zimbabwe Times contributor, Gava.
Sure thing Gava, the GNU would work if Zanu PF was sincere and, I will add, if Mugabe was not in it. This is not time to talk about wish lists! Zanu PF is NOT sincere and Mugabe is the head of this GNU with all the dictatorial powers. These are the realities on the ground, realities we must face and deal with, and not some wishy-washy figments of you imagination.
You say "I supported the signing of the GNU and still do." Well do you not think you should have factored in your decision making process the possibility that Zanu PF would NOT be sincere and the practical difficulties of getting sane decision after granting an insane man like Mugabe sweeping executive powers?
Tsvangirai, the man who signed the GPA and paid no heed to the chorus of advice not to do it, the man who toured the West claiming the GNU was working when all evidence said otherwise and now claims he was doing all that for “the people”.
“We have done everything in order to make this government work and we have done so purely for one reason, the need to restore hope and dignity to our people,” Tsvangirai said. What an idiotic thing to say.
For three decades Zimbabweans have suffered under Mugabe’s mind boggling madness; all these years they have yarned for the light of sanity and reason to shine on them. The GNU is nothing but a whitewashed Mugabe dictatorship with an MDC façade and Tsvangirai expected Zimbabweans and the West to be fooled and embrace it as the democratic light they have been waiting for. If anything, this goes to show just how naïve, presumptuous and stupid Tsvangirai is.
After eight months of pretending the GNU was working, Tsvangirai finally admitted that it was not working. “It is our right to disengage from a dishonest and unreliable partner,” he said of Mugabe and Zanu PF.
Gava, do you still think the GNU was a wise move even now, with hindsight? It took Tsvangirai nearly a year for the penny to drop on that one; with you it will probably take ten years! What chance do we have of ever creating a viable and working democracy in Zimbabwe with leaders like Tsvangirai and voters like Gava, one has to ask?! No need to answer; just brace yourselves Zimbabweans we are in for rough, long and dangerous ride!
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