The only time Tsvangirai
and MDC ever stood up to Mugabe was when the party announced that it would not
attend the cabinet meeting until Mugabe implemented “all the outstanding issues”.
The standoff ended when Mugabe granted Tsvangirai a loan of $1.5 million initially
for the MDC leader to buy a house although the government got him a $4 million
mansion later.
Mugabe did nothing on
any of the really important outstanding political issues like having AG Johanis
Tomani and RBZ Governor Gideon Gono removed from their respective positions. MDC
had raised those matters to bolster their bargaining position with Mugabe and
the later rightly guessed that upgrading the MDC leaders’ gravy train bribes
would silence them. It did!
“The loan ($1.5 million)
was arranged from above … it was simply a housing facility at a critical juncture
in our history as a country and a critical juncture in the life of the government
of national unity after their (MDC-T) first disengagement (from the coalition
government,” a source in the RBZ told New Zimbabwe.
“How the former prime
minister used the money is neither here nor there … but you may recall that he
was, later on, able to spring a surprise when he reportedly paid (former wife)
Lorcadia Karimatsenga a six figure sum in November 2012 to end their relationship.
“However, he has not
repaid a cent and we have a situation now where the government is pressed for
money. We expect that Treasury will soon demand that Tsvangirai repay the loan
as government is struggling to raise civil servants’ salaries.”
There are those who
simply did not want to believe that Tsvangirai and his MDC's friends failed to
implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible
elections because Mugabe bribed them; now they will have no excuse but to accept
this reality.
"Vana Tsvangirai
vakapiwa vhara muromo," boosted one Zanu PF crony in reply to the nagging
question why MDC was doing nothing about implementing the democratic reforms
three years into the GNU. "Vakadzidza kudya vanyerere!" (Tsvangirai
and his friends were bribed. They have since learnt to enjoy the gravy train
life quietly.)
What was really
surprising though was that after five wasted years in the GNU Tsvangirai and
his MDC friends thought they could still go out and win the 2013 elections.
They had not implemented any reform because Mugabe paid them well to do nothing
and they had kept their end of the bargain and did not to rock the boat. They
knew without the reforms Mugabe would rig the elections and they expected to
win the elections regardless. They were not just being naive but showed how breathtakingly
incompetent they are!
Of course Mugabe went
on to blatantly rig the elections shattering the nation’s hopes and dreams of
end the Zanu PF dictatorship that had brought so much suffering, misery and
death to the nation.
Over the years Zanu PF
officials have borrowed billions of dollars from RBZ and other institutions to
the buy homes, cars, farm inputs, farm plant and equipment and a myriad of
other things and most of these loans have never been repaid. Tsvangirai thought
as PM he too was entitled to some of this free money; after all he was doing
Mugabe the greatest favour – he would not implement the reform and so save the
tyrant from seeing his Zanu PF dictatorship dismantled brick by brick!
Mugabe had granted
Tsvangirai the $1.5 million loan and instructed the Police to back off when
they tried to investigate the circumstances surround the loan. But now that the
tyrant has what he wanted - the dictatorship retained untouched after the GNU -
he has no use for Tsvangirai.
Zimbabwe's history is
full of good and honourable men and women Mugabe has used and abused and then
discarded like used toilet paper. Take Walter Kamba, for example, Mugabe appointed
him chairman of the Election Supervision Commission and deliberately under
resourced so that it ineffective. He needed Kamba's good name to give the elections
credibility whilst taking advantage of its ineffectiveness to rig the
elections. By the time Walter Kamba retired as Vice Chancellor of UZ and from
the Commission; his name was mud.
Mugabe has similarly
used Tsvangirai and now the tyrant is moving in to deliver his coup de grace on
the former PM - a savage kick in the teeth. Everyone knows MDC is broke; donors
have deserted the party disappointed at its failure to implement even one
reform and membership fees will not raise much given that most of the members
and either unemployed or are kiya kiya vendors.
Whilst other MDC
leaders had a profession to fall back on when their gravy train ride ended
after the July 2013 rigged elections; Tsvangirai, bambo vangu, had no skills
and no gainful employment to do. He could have saved some money during the gravy
train GNU years but not Tsvangirai; he squandered it all on generous settlement
payments, expensive sea cruises with women of ill repute, etc. Now, he is as
rich as Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist when the orphan arrived in London;
"Not a farthing!"
It is hard to have any
sympathy for people like Tsvangirai; if it was not for his greed and
breath-taking incompetence Zimbabwe will be a democracy today and the task of
rebuilding the nation will have started in earnest. Instead the nation is still
suffering under the yoke of this corrupt and murderous Mugabe regime. No, Tsvangirai
deserves all that is coming to him! Indeed, he should be kicked out of the $ 4
million mansion too!
6 comments:
@ MBJ
Biti and others did not get any $1.5 million loans but there can be no doubt that too benefited from the gravy train GNU years. Look at Mwonzora he earned millions and was able to build his own mansion. Job Sikhala has described the mansion as a hotel, it is that big!
@ munhumutema 07
"I'm not saying Tsvangirayi shouldnt pay back the loan, but whats good for the goose should be good for the gander." But that is what you have been saying all along but lack the courage to it right to the end.
Tsvangirai was elected by the people of Zimbabwe on a ticket to end the corruption and waste; the very things he is now guilty of!
In some country a Police Office convicted of crime will get twice the punishment a private individual would get for committing the same crime because the former has committed a double crime - against the victim of the crime and against the society at large.
Tsvangirai and his MDC friends were supposed to end the Mugabe dictatorship but instead sold the nation for the traditional calico cloth and a handful of beads! How are we going to get out of this mess if those we risk life and limb to elect are going to sell out and people like you think it is ok?! Fcuk me!
No wonder Zimbabwe is in a mess with confused individuals like you; what else! You cannot even make up your mind and condemn corruption even when the consequences of it are going to be paid in billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of human lives!
@ Afikkan
The Zimbabwe dream of ending Mugabe rule has not been realized these last 15 years because people like you failed to accept that Tsvangirai is stupid and so Mugabe was able to outwit him again and again.
Tsvangirai is stupid and anyone who still can not see that even with the benefit of all the evidence of his countless blunders is only underlining just how stupid they are too! Zimbabwe is not going to get out of this mess as long as there is an army of stupid people out there - that is a fact!
"Onlookers marvel at the ability of how the ageing, semi-blind, ninety-year-old President Robert Mugabe, each moment he is cornered, manages to out-maneuver opposition," wrote Grace Kwinjeh.
Well she is being very generous for sure to Mugabe because she is giving credit for something he certain does not deserve. The single biggest blunder MDC leaders have ever made, they have made many but the biggest, has to be their failure to implement the democratic reforms. There was nothing Mugabe did to stop them one can classify as "out-maneuvering", absolutely nothing. Tsvangirai, Biti, Ncube, Coltart, Cross all the MDC big beast failed to get even one reform implemented because they were breathtakingly incompetent, period.
The trouble with people like Grace is that they really have failed to get their heads round the reality that Tsvangirai and the other MDC leaders are breathtakingly incompetent and have always been if they had bothered to pay attention. It she had then she would not be taking about all this nonsense of MDC being "once vibrant opposition party"!
The former USA Ambassador to Zimbabwe Chris Dell 2004 to 2007 said Tsvangirai was "a flawed and indecisive character". This was probably after meeting Tsvangirai a handful of times! People like Grace Kwinjeh have met some of these MDC leaders countless times and they have the benefit of hindsight and yet they still fail to see these individuals for the flawed and breathtakingly incompetent blunderers they are.
No Grace, it is not the internal feud within the MDC with leaders tearing each other apart with bare hands that "makes for tragic and dispiriting reading"! It is the failure of people like you to see that these incompetent leaders betrayed the nation and that they will never add up to much when with a mountain of evidence of the blundering incompetence heap high before you.
What makes it so tragic is that is people like you who have all the advantage of good education and access to all the information cannot even see a flawed and incompetent individual after 15 years of blundering from pillar to post what more the peasant in Zimbabwe rural backwaters!!!!!
Grace? What grace, you are a disgrace!
A Dailynews report talks of many companies who are being forced to close down because of Zimbabwe’s worsen economic situation, particularly the liquidity crunch.
Whilst Mugabe hangs on waiting for his can rig economic recovery miracle the national economy will sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire, some of these company who sink will never ever rise again because the owners will have expanded all they ever had fighting this growing tide. Mugabe has led the nation into this mess and now out of sheer selfishness and stubbornness he destroying even the little that is left.
The truth is Mugabe cannot rig economic recovery and sooner or later he will have to accept that. He is nothing more than a man seating on a pot to stop it from boiling. The economic melt-down is the fuel burning fiercely and the pressure for change is increasing all the time. There is a real danger now that the pot will explode into Mugabe's face!
The voters are unhappy with the EU because the people voted for an economic union and the leaders have delivered a political union by stealth. How many times over the years have politicians bend over backwards to avoid a referendum on EU matters because they feared the voters will tell them what they did not want to hear? In countries like Ireland the voters have been asked to vote again on the same issue if they did not vote "correctly" last time.
Labour has a simple choice accept that the politicians were not honest with the voters in the past and thus commit itself to an "IN or OUT" referendum as the Tories have done as the party in government or face the same referendum as the opposition party. All the major political parties in Europe have been a party to denying the voters a say I EU decision for decades and the voters are rightfully angry about it. The smart thing is to take the sting out of the voters anger by giving them a vote now or face the music. The party(ies) viewed as the one(s) refusing to give the voters a say will take double the sting.
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