The gospel according to Biti
By Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia
IN an article titled "Opportunism in The Zimbabwean Struggle" and published in various versions by, among other publications, The Zimbabwe Independent; the MDC-T secretary general, Tendai Biti, postured as a cosmopolitan authority of political struggles, in a piece that read more like a personal struggle for intellectual recognition than a means of communication to whoever it is that may believe that Biti is indeed part of any liberation struggle.
In apparent reference to the age of the opposition MDC, Biti asserts that the "struggle" has been long and that the end has become "as illusionary as a mirage."
Assuming for once that the British founded and American propelled political project led by Morgan Tsvangirai were indeed a struggle, it is quite revealing of the depth of its leadership when nine years is described as too long, one needs to compare these nine years to the The Zimbabwe nationalist movement that started in 1954, culminating in the formation of Zapu and later Zanu, all the way to independence in 1980, or to South Africa’s anti-apartheid ANC struggle that was started by the likes of Pixley ka Seme on January 8, 1912 and endured tribulations all the way until 1994, when independence came South Africa’s way.
That was 26 years for the real Zimbabwean struggle and still the end was never for once described to be "as illusionary as a mirage" and it was exactly seventy two years for South Africa’s ANC and yet none of its cadres is on record as saying the struggle’s end was as illusionary as a mirage.
Well, a struggle propelled by Western donor funds and executed by men and women wearing designer suits and waging their battles from behind expensively furnished offices, punctuated by lavish globe-trotting and aided by the employment of media pseudo-guerrillas and with civic activists acting as collaborators cannot realistically last the length of a genuine struggle and naturally, its end has to be as illusionary as a mirage.
Biti lamented the emergence of "opportunism, hypocrisy and mendacity" in this donor-funded spending venture he calls "the Zimbabwean struggle".
The simple biblical law of sowing is that one reaps what they sow. There are no guavas from mango trees or vice versa.
By running a Western directed regime change political project in the name of fighting for democracy and human rights as cover to Bush’s "grand imperial strategy" what the MDC leadership was doing was establishing a hypocritical and mendacious organisation. Whinging and whimpering about the creeping in of hypocrisy and mendacity is in this regard, frankly laughable.
Biti alludes that "the struggle" is "already arrested by exhaustion" and has become "commodified and bastardised".
Surely a political project whose implementers are motivated by donor funds is a commodified piece of act and there is no doubt a Zimbabwean political party directed by political benchmarks from London and Washington is a thoroughly bastardised entity.
This writer would have thought that was common knowledge; or commonsensical as Professor Arthur Mutambara would put it.
"History also shows that those struggles that have survived have only done so because a few have stayed the course and have refused to be seduced by myopic soft-landings," Biti said.
Nothing can be further from the truth. This is to suggest that the Chinese revolution was won by a minority of its membership, that the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa was won by a few of the ANC membership, that the Zimbabwe elections of 1980 were only won by a few of the members of the Patriotic Front, and honouring the MDC-T project as a movement in a struggle for once — that the 100 seats they garnered in the March 2008 election was an act of a "few (that) have stayed the course."
This writer’s history shows that real struggles have always been won by the power of the majority and not even one comes to mind as having been made a success because of a few people staying the course.
It is ironic that a secretary general of a party that rides on the tide of the power of sanctions and on the motivation of donor funding can publicly express surprise or rancour at those members within his party’s ranks who prefer a "soft landing". Cheap methods are always targeted at soft landings.
Clearly taking advantage of the departure of Jendayi Frazer and Condoleezza Rice, Biti takes a mild swipe at what he calls "neo-liberal, elitist mafia".
Neo-liberalism created the political position that Biti occupies and the assumption that the US Democrats might be at home with an attack on this ideology is just puerile, just as much as it is silly to assume that the average Zimbabwean may be fooled by this childish pretence.
Biti somehow still believes that the election result he unilaterally announced in March, resulting in legal repercussions still pending in the courts; is the valid election result and he explained this by arguing that if and only if President Mugabe did not have "three helicopters" and him and Morgan Tsvangirai were not driving in "dilapidated jalopies" then that 56 percent win would have been the authentic result, which indeed has become the authentic result as contained in the gospel according to Biti.
In what many have viewed as an attack on Arthur Mutambara, Biti says some people with "over-inflated egos" are banking on "self proclaimed mantra as kingmakers" and that such people are a product of "myopic venery".
What Biti does not explain is that he was and still is part of the three-party negotiating team that upheld the March 29 election result as authentic, that agreed that the presidency of Zimbabwe was not negotiable at the talks, that Arthur Mutambara was to be recognised as one of the three principals to oversee the negotiation process and that agreed that Zanu-PF was to have the largest portion of cabinet portfolios.
Yes the legitimacy of Arthur Mutambara is purely enshrined in the Memorandum of Understanding that Biti and the five other negotiators agreed on.
In this sense Mutambara owes his legitimacy as one of the principles to the fact that he leads the MDC and also that Biti endorsed him as part of this process.
If indeed Arthur Mutambara has a bloated ego, then Biti is part of the little constituency that gave him legitimacy.
Quite correctly, Biti describes as fraud the attempt by some "to equate Tsvangirai with Mugabe".
Frankly speaking, a President and a Prime Minister are not and cannot be equal, a liberation war hero and a founding leader of a nation’s independence cannot and is not equal to a quisling politician thriving on the funding of those from whom the country was liberated.
The only voice that has been shouting highest for equality with President Mugabe is that of Tsvangirai and all the delay in implementing the all inclusive government has been based on this request, sorry demand.
If as Biti suggests, this demand "ridicules and demonises Tsvangirai and the MDC" then he must seriously consider telling Tsvangirai to stop the mess.
Denying one "rocket scientist" the right to equate the "Mugabe regime" with "any other person", Biti emphatically equated his own leader, Tsvangirai, with Vladmir Lenin of the Bolshevik Revolution and Nelson Mandela of the South African anti-apartheid struggle. Mandela is still with us to hear this comparison, but this writer wonders if the elderly son of Africa will be amused by this.
ANC might not be too happy either; if the sentiments we have been hearing of late are anything to go by.
Biti resolutely and understandably defended the benignity of sanctions and antagonism to the land reform policy as causes to the "phenomenal" economic decline Zimbabwe faces today. He placed all the blame on "Mugabe and his acolytes," at whom he angrily threw a barrage of non-existent derogatory superlatives like "thugocratic", "juntacratised" and "securocracy".
Despite earlier on attacking one "rocket scientist" for daring comparing Zanu-PF "with any person", Biti himself compared the party to "many nationalist parties" with "a sense of entitlement" to rule. That is what happens when one writes angrily.
Biti describes as "philistine madness" the assertion that the "anti-Mugabe position (is) mothered and authored by the West" and that the MDC "must wait for Condoleezza Rice and Jendayi Fraser" to do their thinking.
Surely these can be named now because the risk is harmless.
One BBC reporter has just described Bolivia’s land reform policy and its nationalisation policies as "similar to the dictatorships of Venezuela, Cuba and Zimbabwe . . . clearly moving on a path of conflict with Western powers."
This is the kind of "philistine madness" that will make people think the anti-Mugabe mantra is mothered and authored by the West.
Is it mere coincidence that Biti’s "philistine madness" has examples excluding the likes of David Miliband, who is still actively involved in the foreign policy of the UK?
Biti claims to be after fulfilling the "unfinished business" of Joshua Nkomo, Edgar Tekere and Ndabaningi Sithole. We all know the unfinished business of the late Dr Joshua Nkomo, not so sure how many people know what "unfinished business" Reverend Sithole left and Tekere is still there to take care of any unfinished business he might be having.
One clear thing is that there is no common unfinished business between the three characters upon whose shoulders Biti seems to be contriving legitimacy.
Biti criticises those he called "revisionists" for equating "the sins of this regime with any other person" but he was quite revisionist himself by claiming good Samaritan-credit for the 1980s Matabeleland disturbances, Operation Murambatsvina and what he called "the post 2000 violence, the Final Push and other great demonstrations".
By citing the ZCTU-spearheaded National Working People’s Convention of February 1999, the September 11 1999 launching of the MDC at Rufaro Stadium, and the announcement of the referendum result of the 2000 draft Constitution, Biti angrily argued that this history suffices to dismiss the assertion that the MDC is funded by the British and the Americans, without really explaining much the logic behind his argument.
By implicit admission that Zimbabwe is indeed already liberated, Biti claims his party is "a social liberation movement" again without bothering to explain what social liberation means, and if indeed it is the job of politicians to carry out such a task.
Without offering any alternative Biti dismissed the "myth" that there are no other options currently available outside the dialogue and broad-based agreement.
This writer can only envisage one other option available and that is the governance of Zimbabwe without Tsvangirai and his crowd.
Gerontocracy is oligarchy or the rule of elites that qualify on the basis of being older than the adult membership of a political organisation and this writer thought all along the MDC was opposed to anything of "gerontocratic proportions".
Apparently Biti signed off his piece by boasting that at his relatively young age he is already running stuff of "gerontocratic proportions" at MDC-T.
What Biti confirmed through his article are reports that he is firmly opposed to the broad-based agreement to which he was a chief negotiator and also that he is opposed not to the agreement itself but to the fact that the subsequent inclusive government will be "chaired by Mugabe", a situation he described as "cataleptic".
It really does not take more than a political science first year student to get the answer right on who in the world is opposed to the Zimbabwean inclusive government being chaired by President Mugabe.
Any student who may for some reason give the answer as Biti or MDC-T will not pass because the real forces behind the "Mugabe must stand down" slogan are well known.
Biti can only be parroting them and when people suggest that these people do his thinking he must not be as angry as he expressed in his article.
It is this writer’s hope that leaders trusted with the responsibility of leading the national healing process as was bestowed on Honourable Biti by those who elected him to represent MDC-T at the Sadc facilitated talks do realise the danger of spawning hate and animosity among the people.
The unfathered gospel that Biti tried to link to the cause of our liberation struggle is really not the best way of honouring the heroes of the liberation struggle.
Picking Dr Joshua Nkomo for purposes of isolating him against his living colleagues was not a wise thing to do and cherry picking those who fell by the wayside of the revolution as "Mugabe’s victims of persecution" was quite misplaced as well.
The frank reality about MDC is that even Zanu-PF rebels take exception at being associated with the quisling party and Biti cannot pretend to be rubbing shoulders with any part of the liberation struggle, even its own rebellious elements.
MDC is simply too tainted to quote anyone who for once meaningfully participated in ending white minority rule.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we shall overcome. It is homeland or death!
l Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@ rwafawarova.com or visit www.rwafawarova.com.
O lift high the banner, the flag of Zimbabwe. The symbol of freedom proclaiming victory; We praise our heros' sacrifice, And vow to keep our land from foes; And may the Almighty protect and bless our land. O lovely Zimbabwe, so wondrously adorned; With mountains, and rivers cascading, flowing free; And may the Almighty protect and bless our land. O God, we beseech Thee to bless our native land; The land of our fathers bestowed upon us all.
Monday, 26 January 2009
Friday, 23 January 2009
MDC: The way to handle flip-floppers
MDC: The way to handle flip-floppers
nathaniel.manheru
IT IS long known that Morgan Tsvangirai is handled by the worst of the West.
That cannot be news. That cannot be the latest hurt to our body-politic.
It is an abuse long introduced and administered, and thus one which cannot take us from the field play, tears in eyes, nostrils drooling and sniffing, hearts sobbing.
Equally, it is long known that Tsvangirai is the proverbial whirlwind: always turning and turning, always ever widening the gyre. You cannot tether him to any agreement, to any principle, outside what his masters endorse.
Again, that cannot be a new discovery, a basis for a fresh, bleeding complaint.
To be consistently inconsistent: that is Tsvangirai’s contribution to national politics, indeed his fate as a person who is not himself ideationally.
After all, there is a causal link between his being some "others" politically — and those others are the British and Americans — and his continued political tergiversation.
In our name, in our interest
Both the British and Americans have the problem of nursing a grievance which is patently un-edifying, illegitimate.
It has got to do with challenging a natural and therefore inalienable right of a people recognised at international law, something which if not well-corseted, damns them to colonial knavery which history long granted them.
In fact their abuse of Zimbabwe is so deep that even the defence and justification for that abuse, does abuse Zimbabwe even much further, much deeper.
We are the reason Britain is fighting us, runs the British and American justification, all the time unrestrained by the sheer absurdity and paradoxical nature of it all.
Which is why the American law whose import is a sustained assault of this nation, is paradoxically dressed in the name of the same victim-nation, is dressed in the aspirations of Zimbabwe. It has been difficult to dislodge them from this cynical argument.
Keeping the underdog running
And that this senseless and seamed argument has resonated so far and wide on the globe, often getting repeated with the thoughtless ease of a hymnal chorus, attests to both our weakened capacity for counter-messaging, and of course to the overwhelming, flattening power Europe and America wields in global communication.
All the media are Anglo-American, to adapt Tunstall’s argument.
The strategy of sustaining a fight in which you wield enormous power and influence, but contrastively wield a weak cause and sparse legitimacy, is to keep shifting grounds for placing blame, to keep inventing new reasons and circumstances for incrimination.
That way, the just underdog is kept running and running until at some point it badly negotiates a sharp turn, in the process creating a vast outrage by tossing a prized pot to pieces.
The British have been so good at it that we have spiralled out, beyond and so far away from of the original argument that many around the globe hardly remember that the basic issue remains one of challenging and rejecting colonial rights which give us a servile status in Independence.
And to beckon the world to this founding grievance — founding dispute — today sounds like delighting in the old-fashioned and hackneyed. You seem so out of place, made worse by the fact that as with many other things, the vocabulary that carries the grievances of the underdog is always sparse, short and even inexpressive.
Prerogative of a harlot
You tell the world you are fighting British imperialism, or British neo-colonialism, or fighting for full independence and sovereignty, you sound pre-1989: old, hackneyed and irrelevant.
And that is an important issue of social and political control: the ability of imperial powers to render stale and obsolete words that describe and therefore carry the grievances and causes of the underdog.
Or the obverse: to render immutably fresh and powerfully communicative words that legitimise their unjust actions against the underdog and his interests.
To place your case in the court of global opinion is not just to struggle to find a vehicle which carts it there for firm placement; it is also to invent a new language and vocabulary that expresses it. Which means struggling to demolish a whole rich and ever expanding lexicon of empire, specifically designed to de-ligitimise and indict your cause.
Tsvangirai is borrowing not just a cause and the wherewithal for fighting it; he is borrowing an ever-renewed language for defending it. It does not matter how many times he flip-flops, how many times he behaves badly.
Against the law and common-sense, he remains the winner of the Zimbabwe elections.
Against a sensible power-sharing formulae, against even his own power-sharing suggestions, he remains "a pro-democracy leader" fighting "autocratic
Mugabe who will not want to give up power". Words are the defence or condemnation, language the verdict.
He can commit all manner of outrage; there will always be a role, a language cut out for his exculpation, placing him well beyond judgement and blame, indeed beyond scrutiny.
This is the privilege, the prerogative he has wielded and enjoyed with recklessness comparable to that of a harlot over times, to paraphrase Baldwin.
Instructing Tsvangirai to opt out
I raise this whole argument against the content and tenor of the Monday meeting which reportedly yielded a dummy for Zimbabwe.
In the first place I do not agree that the meeting yielded nil result.
Quite the contrary, it gave us a momentous result, the same way Sandton did, only to a media and world too glued to a narrow, partisan expectation and result to understand, let alone accept, anything else.
The Monday meeting spoke to an African constituency, arguably the only constituency that has always mattered in this whole dispute. It committed Africa to a position which is set to be adopted this coming Monday in Pretoria, and subsequently to be recommended to the whole of Africa the following week in Addis.
And that position is simply that MDC has acquired intransigence built into its politics not so much by the sheer power of its cause, as by the awesome powers behind it, led of course by Britain and America.
After Monday, it became obvious to Africa that Zimbabwe has become a battleground between right and borrowed might.
And this unsettling equation was communicated to South Africans — right in their face — by America’s Jendayi Frazer, apparently as a haughty parting shot as she sauntered to permanent oblivion.
After Mufamadi and Nkosazana Zuma told Frazer South Africa was not about to do America’s bidding on Zimbabwe, Frazer curtly replied: "In that case we shall instruct Tsvangirai not to join the inclusive Government."
All this after the American had fervently protested her country was not running Tsvangirai.
Indeed on Monday, Tsvangirai made sure there was no inclusive Government a day later, making true this foreboding parting shot from the Republican functionary.
And the harbinger was the fact that he drove to the American embassy soon after touching down that Saturday, from months of self-exile.
Crushing and burning Zimbabwe
But the South Africans and Mozambicans saw much more.
They saw a Zanu-PF which readily agreed to the Sadc position; they met an overweening MDC abusing Mbeki and recklessly reopening matters long closed, matters long gazetted, apparently to complete their rejection of the Sadc decision made in November last year in South Africa.
It was the let-Zimbabwe-crush-and-burn-and-we-pick-up-the-pieces Rhodesian political thesis, realised through an African player-king and a dozen princes.
The Sadc mediators did not see nation-builders in the MDC; they saw earth-scorchers, insiders incited to flattening ruin of own homestead by outsiders.
It is a challenge to Sadc whose goal surely cannot be ruinous politics, but the search for a helpful, nation-building engagement. At a personal level, both heads saw an abundant show of raw contumely, sheer impudence, made worse by little education.
You do not abuse leaders of other countries to that extent, and still hope for their goodwill. Or to join them in their ranks.
The happy outcome of Monday last is that Tsvangirai helped Zanu-PF reveal who he is, indeed gave Zanu-PF a third party endorsement on what it claims Tsvangirai is.
He showed little regard for past agreements brokered by outsiders; showed little respect for regional organisation and regional leaders. Indeed, he exhibited greater regard for London and Washington as polar opposites of Tshwane and Addis.
Paying him by his own coin
The MDC is quite aware of the clear outcome of Monday and the disaster which that outcome bodes for their party.
They are in a flurry, much of it unknown to the media.
Apart from the frantic lobbying they have mounted since that day, the media are unaware of a private meeting with President Mugabe which Tsvangirai sought and got on Thursday.
He tried a useless trick, namely of playing victim of hardliners in his party he claims are opposed to the inclusive government.
He hoped to urge and persuade President Mugabe to soften on MDC demands, on grounds that in that fashion, he would be able to outflank his rivals in his party.
Correctly the President beat the same ball right back to his court by pleading similar difficulties, urging him to straightaway head for the ceremonial State House for immediate swearing-in, so he too, could outflank radicals in his own Zanu-PF party!
But it was not so much the contents of the meeting, as the fact that such a meeting was ever sought, a mere three days after Monday.
Deracinated from own people
Still much more happened. Tsvangirai sought through a briefing to African ambassadors to regain precious ground damaged by the Monday meeting.
Expectedly, he blamed Zanu-PF for the debacle, before rounding up his presentation by stating categorically that as leaders, both President Mugabe and himself owed their people a settlement, given the degree of suffering now evident around the country.
He reiterated his commitment to the September 15 Agreement.
What was significant was what followed. The British and Americans hit the roof, reading another about-turn, another flip, another flop typical of a man wont to being many things to many people, different things to different people.
To the British and to the Americans, Tsvangirai must never owe it to his people. He must owe it to them, fullstop.
The sideshow in Budiriro was part of an acknowledgment of the bad politics of both Monday, and of the three to four months of absentee leadership.
Zvese izvi zviri mumaziso eSadc, eAfrica!
Defending Zimbabwe, not Zanu-PF
I repeat that Tsvangirai is a creature of the West, a politician who rises and falls by the western wave.
That cannot be news. What is striking is why it has taken us so long, both as Zanu-PF and Zimbabwe, and as Sadc, to evolve strategies for handling him.
Surely Sadc does not benefit from chattel politics and quisling politicians.
It cannot.
Why have we dignified this charade, thereby looking to outsiders as if we are unsure of what we stand for.
The politics which Tsvangirai and his MDC pursue do not warrant a political response.
They require processes that make him and his party essentially irrelevant to the people of Zimbabwe. What brings this about are not more concessions, but a demonstration that Zimbabwe in the context of Sadc can forge ahead without cutting deals with surrogate politicians.
What is important is to show the Zimbabwean people that we can forge ahead economically without legitimising politics which undermine our sovereignty.
Frankly speaking Zanu-PF has not marshalled national resources in defence of the country’s sovereignty.
It has not even altered the parameters of governance to show it is in the middle of a nasty fight against powerful enemies who seek to overturn national independence.
Equally, Sadc has not fine-tuned its politics in such a way that it can separate the defence of a regional principle from extending Zanu-PF leadership inside Zimbabwe. The burden of ensuring the continued hegemony of Zanu-PF in national politics is Zanu-PF’s, and should never worry or cloud Sadc, much as it might worry individual parties with origins in the liberation ethos. Zanu-PF can take care of its own survival. But Sadc must recognise that it cannot blunt its anti-imperialist stance merely for fear of being labelled pro-Mugabe, pro-Zanu-PF, and this by nations and interests that opposed its emergence as an independent sub-region.
The right to freedom and continued independence of Zimbabwe and its people cannot be made less deserved by perceptions of what government presides over them. Nor can it ever be imagined that an un-free Zimbabwe can yield a democratic government for its people, anymore that an un-free opposition is made righteous by Zanu-PF’s perceived failings.
It is that lack of clarity which has delayed a solution, weakened the rise of a strong solidarity against the British and the Americans.
Nyarota’s immodest proposal
Did anyone read Geoffrey Nyarota’s piece last week in which he boisterously sought to proffer a way forward on Zimbabwe’s political impasse?
His well-canvassed view was of an interim government precluding both Tsvangirai and Mugabe, to find a new crop of leaders who have not been tarnished by past politics.
He gets very specific, and identifies Justice Wilson Sandura as head of that interim administration which must prepare for another poll, this time minded by the UN.
I have always had a dim view of Zimbabweans who look wise and clever from afar, from outside Zimbabwe, while snugly settled inside the belly of the beast.
They have been here before, wielding instruments which guided national thinking and direction, one way or another. In that respect bearing direct responsibility, therefore, for where we are and how we have got there.
I do not need to remind anyone about the role of the Nyarota-edited Daily News in launching and pepping up the British political project called the MDC. In terms of parentage, the Daily News and MDC are cognate.
Or to remind anyone about his role in the subterranean or arcane politics of the time — some of which involved Rhodesian elements — to which he has since made a grand confession. Not even his current role in sprucing up Tsvangirai’s image, including his latest trip to Gaborone.
Or his latest public relations effort in defence of Selous Scouts whose project was recently busted. For him a needless flight at the behest of Uncle Sam exculpates, washes away all sins.
I am pretty!
But all this is not my main point. My real point is the implication of Nyarota’s proposal. I boldly state that Nyarota’s piece immodestly suggests himself as part of the leadership for his never-never interim regime.
By suggesting Justice Sandura as a fitting leader of an arrangement he proposes, and all that based on the good judge’s role in the Willowvale Motor Industries Inquiry, Nyarota is implying his own appointability to this monstrous creature he proposes.
He has always regarded himself as the hero of Willowgate, much as some of us know better. He has always sought greatness built around that episode to which he did no more that play passive publicist.
The real hero of Willowvale is there and known, and in Government too, something Nyarota finds most inconvenient.
But I have another point to make. The likes of Nyarota have a very bad complex to fight. He served in a Zanu-PF Government, and grew big and influential in that capacity.
He was an important cog in the Zanu-PF wheel, and became part of a cabal of trusted cadre-editors. I will not refer to errands he ran in Matabeleland, which could be a matter for another day. Yet he finds himself immersed in new politics, with new godfathers.
Membership to these new politics, new club is exacting, demanding that he shows and dramatises enormous rheum for his erstwhile benefactors in order to belong.
It is a huge price to pay, one which seems to make him quite ridiculous. No one begrudges him for his new, sumptuous find.
But let him enjoy it in silence.
Icho!
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
nathaniel.manheru
IT IS long known that Morgan Tsvangirai is handled by the worst of the West.
That cannot be news. That cannot be the latest hurt to our body-politic.
It is an abuse long introduced and administered, and thus one which cannot take us from the field play, tears in eyes, nostrils drooling and sniffing, hearts sobbing.
Equally, it is long known that Tsvangirai is the proverbial whirlwind: always turning and turning, always ever widening the gyre. You cannot tether him to any agreement, to any principle, outside what his masters endorse.
Again, that cannot be a new discovery, a basis for a fresh, bleeding complaint.
To be consistently inconsistent: that is Tsvangirai’s contribution to national politics, indeed his fate as a person who is not himself ideationally.
After all, there is a causal link between his being some "others" politically — and those others are the British and Americans — and his continued political tergiversation.
In our name, in our interest
Both the British and Americans have the problem of nursing a grievance which is patently un-edifying, illegitimate.
It has got to do with challenging a natural and therefore inalienable right of a people recognised at international law, something which if not well-corseted, damns them to colonial knavery which history long granted them.
In fact their abuse of Zimbabwe is so deep that even the defence and justification for that abuse, does abuse Zimbabwe even much further, much deeper.
We are the reason Britain is fighting us, runs the British and American justification, all the time unrestrained by the sheer absurdity and paradoxical nature of it all.
Which is why the American law whose import is a sustained assault of this nation, is paradoxically dressed in the name of the same victim-nation, is dressed in the aspirations of Zimbabwe. It has been difficult to dislodge them from this cynical argument.
Keeping the underdog running
And that this senseless and seamed argument has resonated so far and wide on the globe, often getting repeated with the thoughtless ease of a hymnal chorus, attests to both our weakened capacity for counter-messaging, and of course to the overwhelming, flattening power Europe and America wields in global communication.
All the media are Anglo-American, to adapt Tunstall’s argument.
The strategy of sustaining a fight in which you wield enormous power and influence, but contrastively wield a weak cause and sparse legitimacy, is to keep shifting grounds for placing blame, to keep inventing new reasons and circumstances for incrimination.
That way, the just underdog is kept running and running until at some point it badly negotiates a sharp turn, in the process creating a vast outrage by tossing a prized pot to pieces.
The British have been so good at it that we have spiralled out, beyond and so far away from of the original argument that many around the globe hardly remember that the basic issue remains one of challenging and rejecting colonial rights which give us a servile status in Independence.
And to beckon the world to this founding grievance — founding dispute — today sounds like delighting in the old-fashioned and hackneyed. You seem so out of place, made worse by the fact that as with many other things, the vocabulary that carries the grievances of the underdog is always sparse, short and even inexpressive.
Prerogative of a harlot
You tell the world you are fighting British imperialism, or British neo-colonialism, or fighting for full independence and sovereignty, you sound pre-1989: old, hackneyed and irrelevant.
And that is an important issue of social and political control: the ability of imperial powers to render stale and obsolete words that describe and therefore carry the grievances and causes of the underdog.
Or the obverse: to render immutably fresh and powerfully communicative words that legitimise their unjust actions against the underdog and his interests.
To place your case in the court of global opinion is not just to struggle to find a vehicle which carts it there for firm placement; it is also to invent a new language and vocabulary that expresses it. Which means struggling to demolish a whole rich and ever expanding lexicon of empire, specifically designed to de-ligitimise and indict your cause.
Tsvangirai is borrowing not just a cause and the wherewithal for fighting it; he is borrowing an ever-renewed language for defending it. It does not matter how many times he flip-flops, how many times he behaves badly.
Against the law and common-sense, he remains the winner of the Zimbabwe elections.
Against a sensible power-sharing formulae, against even his own power-sharing suggestions, he remains "a pro-democracy leader" fighting "autocratic
Mugabe who will not want to give up power". Words are the defence or condemnation, language the verdict.
He can commit all manner of outrage; there will always be a role, a language cut out for his exculpation, placing him well beyond judgement and blame, indeed beyond scrutiny.
This is the privilege, the prerogative he has wielded and enjoyed with recklessness comparable to that of a harlot over times, to paraphrase Baldwin.
Instructing Tsvangirai to opt out
I raise this whole argument against the content and tenor of the Monday meeting which reportedly yielded a dummy for Zimbabwe.
In the first place I do not agree that the meeting yielded nil result.
Quite the contrary, it gave us a momentous result, the same way Sandton did, only to a media and world too glued to a narrow, partisan expectation and result to understand, let alone accept, anything else.
The Monday meeting spoke to an African constituency, arguably the only constituency that has always mattered in this whole dispute. It committed Africa to a position which is set to be adopted this coming Monday in Pretoria, and subsequently to be recommended to the whole of Africa the following week in Addis.
And that position is simply that MDC has acquired intransigence built into its politics not so much by the sheer power of its cause, as by the awesome powers behind it, led of course by Britain and America.
After Monday, it became obvious to Africa that Zimbabwe has become a battleground between right and borrowed might.
And this unsettling equation was communicated to South Africans — right in their face — by America’s Jendayi Frazer, apparently as a haughty parting shot as she sauntered to permanent oblivion.
After Mufamadi and Nkosazana Zuma told Frazer South Africa was not about to do America’s bidding on Zimbabwe, Frazer curtly replied: "In that case we shall instruct Tsvangirai not to join the inclusive Government."
All this after the American had fervently protested her country was not running Tsvangirai.
Indeed on Monday, Tsvangirai made sure there was no inclusive Government a day later, making true this foreboding parting shot from the Republican functionary.
And the harbinger was the fact that he drove to the American embassy soon after touching down that Saturday, from months of self-exile.
Crushing and burning Zimbabwe
But the South Africans and Mozambicans saw much more.
They saw a Zanu-PF which readily agreed to the Sadc position; they met an overweening MDC abusing Mbeki and recklessly reopening matters long closed, matters long gazetted, apparently to complete their rejection of the Sadc decision made in November last year in South Africa.
It was the let-Zimbabwe-crush-and-burn-and-we-pick-up-the-pieces Rhodesian political thesis, realised through an African player-king and a dozen princes.
The Sadc mediators did not see nation-builders in the MDC; they saw earth-scorchers, insiders incited to flattening ruin of own homestead by outsiders.
It is a challenge to Sadc whose goal surely cannot be ruinous politics, but the search for a helpful, nation-building engagement. At a personal level, both heads saw an abundant show of raw contumely, sheer impudence, made worse by little education.
You do not abuse leaders of other countries to that extent, and still hope for their goodwill. Or to join them in their ranks.
The happy outcome of Monday last is that Tsvangirai helped Zanu-PF reveal who he is, indeed gave Zanu-PF a third party endorsement on what it claims Tsvangirai is.
He showed little regard for past agreements brokered by outsiders; showed little respect for regional organisation and regional leaders. Indeed, he exhibited greater regard for London and Washington as polar opposites of Tshwane and Addis.
Paying him by his own coin
The MDC is quite aware of the clear outcome of Monday and the disaster which that outcome bodes for their party.
They are in a flurry, much of it unknown to the media.
Apart from the frantic lobbying they have mounted since that day, the media are unaware of a private meeting with President Mugabe which Tsvangirai sought and got on Thursday.
He tried a useless trick, namely of playing victim of hardliners in his party he claims are opposed to the inclusive government.
He hoped to urge and persuade President Mugabe to soften on MDC demands, on grounds that in that fashion, he would be able to outflank his rivals in his party.
Correctly the President beat the same ball right back to his court by pleading similar difficulties, urging him to straightaway head for the ceremonial State House for immediate swearing-in, so he too, could outflank radicals in his own Zanu-PF party!
But it was not so much the contents of the meeting, as the fact that such a meeting was ever sought, a mere three days after Monday.
Deracinated from own people
Still much more happened. Tsvangirai sought through a briefing to African ambassadors to regain precious ground damaged by the Monday meeting.
Expectedly, he blamed Zanu-PF for the debacle, before rounding up his presentation by stating categorically that as leaders, both President Mugabe and himself owed their people a settlement, given the degree of suffering now evident around the country.
He reiterated his commitment to the September 15 Agreement.
What was significant was what followed. The British and Americans hit the roof, reading another about-turn, another flip, another flop typical of a man wont to being many things to many people, different things to different people.
To the British and to the Americans, Tsvangirai must never owe it to his people. He must owe it to them, fullstop.
The sideshow in Budiriro was part of an acknowledgment of the bad politics of both Monday, and of the three to four months of absentee leadership.
Zvese izvi zviri mumaziso eSadc, eAfrica!
Defending Zimbabwe, not Zanu-PF
I repeat that Tsvangirai is a creature of the West, a politician who rises and falls by the western wave.
That cannot be news. What is striking is why it has taken us so long, both as Zanu-PF and Zimbabwe, and as Sadc, to evolve strategies for handling him.
Surely Sadc does not benefit from chattel politics and quisling politicians.
It cannot.
Why have we dignified this charade, thereby looking to outsiders as if we are unsure of what we stand for.
The politics which Tsvangirai and his MDC pursue do not warrant a political response.
They require processes that make him and his party essentially irrelevant to the people of Zimbabwe. What brings this about are not more concessions, but a demonstration that Zimbabwe in the context of Sadc can forge ahead without cutting deals with surrogate politicians.
What is important is to show the Zimbabwean people that we can forge ahead economically without legitimising politics which undermine our sovereignty.
Frankly speaking Zanu-PF has not marshalled national resources in defence of the country’s sovereignty.
It has not even altered the parameters of governance to show it is in the middle of a nasty fight against powerful enemies who seek to overturn national independence.
Equally, Sadc has not fine-tuned its politics in such a way that it can separate the defence of a regional principle from extending Zanu-PF leadership inside Zimbabwe. The burden of ensuring the continued hegemony of Zanu-PF in national politics is Zanu-PF’s, and should never worry or cloud Sadc, much as it might worry individual parties with origins in the liberation ethos. Zanu-PF can take care of its own survival. But Sadc must recognise that it cannot blunt its anti-imperialist stance merely for fear of being labelled pro-Mugabe, pro-Zanu-PF, and this by nations and interests that opposed its emergence as an independent sub-region.
The right to freedom and continued independence of Zimbabwe and its people cannot be made less deserved by perceptions of what government presides over them. Nor can it ever be imagined that an un-free Zimbabwe can yield a democratic government for its people, anymore that an un-free opposition is made righteous by Zanu-PF’s perceived failings.
It is that lack of clarity which has delayed a solution, weakened the rise of a strong solidarity against the British and the Americans.
Nyarota’s immodest proposal
Did anyone read Geoffrey Nyarota’s piece last week in which he boisterously sought to proffer a way forward on Zimbabwe’s political impasse?
His well-canvassed view was of an interim government precluding both Tsvangirai and Mugabe, to find a new crop of leaders who have not been tarnished by past politics.
He gets very specific, and identifies Justice Wilson Sandura as head of that interim administration which must prepare for another poll, this time minded by the UN.
I have always had a dim view of Zimbabweans who look wise and clever from afar, from outside Zimbabwe, while snugly settled inside the belly of the beast.
They have been here before, wielding instruments which guided national thinking and direction, one way or another. In that respect bearing direct responsibility, therefore, for where we are and how we have got there.
I do not need to remind anyone about the role of the Nyarota-edited Daily News in launching and pepping up the British political project called the MDC. In terms of parentage, the Daily News and MDC are cognate.
Or to remind anyone about his role in the subterranean or arcane politics of the time — some of which involved Rhodesian elements — to which he has since made a grand confession. Not even his current role in sprucing up Tsvangirai’s image, including his latest trip to Gaborone.
Or his latest public relations effort in defence of Selous Scouts whose project was recently busted. For him a needless flight at the behest of Uncle Sam exculpates, washes away all sins.
I am pretty!
But all this is not my main point. My real point is the implication of Nyarota’s proposal. I boldly state that Nyarota’s piece immodestly suggests himself as part of the leadership for his never-never interim regime.
By suggesting Justice Sandura as a fitting leader of an arrangement he proposes, and all that based on the good judge’s role in the Willowvale Motor Industries Inquiry, Nyarota is implying his own appointability to this monstrous creature he proposes.
He has always regarded himself as the hero of Willowgate, much as some of us know better. He has always sought greatness built around that episode to which he did no more that play passive publicist.
The real hero of Willowvale is there and known, and in Government too, something Nyarota finds most inconvenient.
But I have another point to make. The likes of Nyarota have a very bad complex to fight. He served in a Zanu-PF Government, and grew big and influential in that capacity.
He was an important cog in the Zanu-PF wheel, and became part of a cabal of trusted cadre-editors. I will not refer to errands he ran in Matabeleland, which could be a matter for another day. Yet he finds himself immersed in new politics, with new godfathers.
Membership to these new politics, new club is exacting, demanding that he shows and dramatises enormous rheum for his erstwhile benefactors in order to belong.
It is a huge price to pay, one which seems to make him quite ridiculous. No one begrudges him for his new, sumptuous find.
But let him enjoy it in silence.
Icho!
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Friday, 16 January 2009
Justice system: Defining parameters; defying the perverse
Justice system: Defining parameters; defying the perverse
PROFESSIONS are generally opinionated, but none as opinionated as the legal profession. And there is a veneer of righteousness to that enormous self-centredness, reinforced by the apparent acquiescence of other professions to its wanton bullying.
It robes itself, in the process robbing all other professions of their shine. And the robes give lawyers an air of papacy, which is what probably makes them believe they are votaries of the god/goddess of knowledge.
Global positioning satellite
Yet whatever our professions, we all go through university education, emerging robed at the end of it all.
After that brief crowning ceremony, we discard those gowns, for more humble apparel, seemly and suited to the multifarious daily chores that preoccupy hard-working, unassuming, citizens. Not so with lawyers — learned friends — for whom modesty passes for ignorance.
And the phrase "learned friend" is both mutual congratulation and assurance, indeed an exclusionary code by a profession and skill that regards itself as a nonesuch.
As a society, we all get to know how well we are doing in infracting our laws by the number of gowned citizens we meet along First Street, laboriously journeying to the High Court.
To the man, to the woman, they make sure their professional GPS — global positioning satellite — plots their shortest route to the High Court, all the time carefully making sure the route takes them through this bustling mall: the only part of Harare where millions teem, where the perennial clash between men and machines, between feet and wheels, has been decided in favour of that toed limb which takes us about.
These our lawyers, walk with a swooping swagger, their tiny frames obeying measured steps that ruffle gently the draping black robes, marking their proud motion.
Always in tow, or running beside, will be an un-robed ruffian, clearly grateful and fixed to the helm this dark "Christ" — literally by step, symbolically by trial and fate.
In stark reversal to biblical logic, the pilloried ruffian carries his crucifix, and finally gets nailed on it the same day our "learned" friend - in the same dark robes - is getting counsel from yet another urchin-victim.
DCJ on Sadc Tribunal
This week, the legal profession came under extraordinary spotlight, which is why even I, a creature of darkness by name, seeks to focus my equally dark beam on it. I claim no expert opinion on this profession.
I do not need it to give my readers a commonsensical view of what the trouble is with this sector which in theory facilitates the coming of justice to all manner of men and women, avowedly without fear or favour.
That is not to say law officers do not fear, do not favour. But that is another matter for another day. Today’s business first.
On Monday, we had Deputy Chief Justice (DCJ) Luke Malaba making a remarkable statement in respect of the recent so-called SADC Tribunal judgement on Zimbabwe’s vexed land question. As an aside, I want to say we have exposed the Bench through our slow diligence. The Bench cannot accost cases, may not address matters that are not before it.
This is an age-old legal principle which makes the Bench both active and inactive in shaping and reshaping society.
I tried to get those in authority to appreciate the need to get some resettled farmer somewhere in the countryside, to approach the Supreme Court for an interpretation of the so-called SADC Tribunal ruling, against that of the Supreme Court itself, which appeared non-existent to the pseudo-SADC Tribunal in its deliberations on the matter.
The case for such a course of action is quite clear and obvious. You are a resettled farmer set to be affected by two judgements, one reassuring that you are a lawful occupant of the piece of land you have inhabited since our Land Revolution; another buffeting and suggesting you are ripe for eviction, for landlessness.
You are a serious farmer, intend on long-term investments on the property, but substantially made unsure by the ruling of what purports to be a competent court, again purporting to enjoy jurisdiction in the whole of SADC, and thus whose word shall be last and un-appealable.
I am sure such a case would have allowed the Bench to apply its full, collective mind on the matter in a way that would have reasserted the justice-is-sovereign notion, while putting the varying competencies of the two courts under searing spotlight.
I have not the slightest doubt which court would have come worse off, the same way I have no doubt which judgement guides me as part of new farmers.
We did not help the Bench, leaving it to take narrow advantage of the ceremony of opening the legal year to make a non-binding, yet fundamental position on a matter so grave as to make or unmake this society.
JP on transient politics
The same Monday, we had Judge President (JP) Rita Makarau making yet another landmark pronouncement (not judgement) on the profession. A few of us, she said, referring to judges and legal practitioners alike, "have allowed the transient politics of the day to affect the relationship between the profession and the Bench".
The profession stood polarised, she declared, lamenting: "The time-honoured duty of all legal practitioners to seek the truth and to assist the court at all times, has in some instances and on account of politics, been thrown overboard."
Clearly she spoke somunhu mukuru, carefully ensuring rampant infractions of cardinal ethics of the profession, nevertheless get pointed out with remarkable restraint and measure, if not understatement.
Led by the same instinct and the instantaneous anger that visit and guide most of us — especially against an obvious and ever snowballing ill — I am sure she would have put the same point furiously, by voice and by limb.
The vice she hit out at, is simply rampant, made more so by the seeming indifference of the Law Society of Zimbabwe. This cannot be in contention. I will return to that vital point, in fact the thesis of my instalment this week.
AG on own rights and obligations
On Tuesday, we had the new Attorney General (AG) Johannes Tomana making his maiden intervention in that same capacity.
While he may have pronounced himself on a specific matter, it is clear he was making larger points about the legal profession, especially how it is evolving nowadays.
His insistence on the role and rights of the Attorney General and his Office, a good 29 years after our Independence, and in a language implying interlocutors in the legal profession — not you and me the un-learned friends — clearly showed his position and Office were or are under challenge from within the legal profession.
He asserted his rights and role as Government’s chief lawyer who must lead public prosecutions and in ensuring there is no danger to the State and Nation.
Significantly, he did not appear to be addressing the Bench.
He appeared to be addressing defence lawyers, in the process implying they had gone beyond their mandate of simply raising defences for their clients, to one of counselling if not guiding and determining for the AG and his Office which cases to carry to the courts for prosecution, which to discard.
Again, you cannot run away from the fact that the AG was very measured in the face of what appears to be a serious doubt of his competence as a lawyer, and that of all those lawyers who fall under him.
I do not need to refer to the Gula Ndebele case against the Police which in reality became a case of a sitting AG against his own Office and officers.
To the extent that the former AG sought to withhold legal cover to a department of the same Government of which he was the principal law officer, all this in a case in which he was party, the role of an AG and his Office became quite confusing.
Far from being a freak, it became a sample of the contradictions I am referring to.
CJ on crass incompetence and ineptitude
On Wednesday, you then had a real bluster: by way of the Chief Justice (CJ) himself, angrily throwing out a constitutional case on grounds of "crass incompetence and sheer ineptitude of the applicant’s legal practitioners" who hurried to the Supreme Court without seeking leave to do so from a lower court in terms of the "peremptory" Section 24 of the Constitution.
The legal practitioners in question are not cub-lawyers. They have been at it for years and years, which is why probably the CJ’s threw the case out with an undisguised feeling.
Munhu mukuru kwazvo. Yet you perfectly understand his anger at the fact that sheer reckless disregard of elementary technicalities had had the unwholesome effect of delaying justice. Negligence by people who should help the court, and in fact have the legal wherewithal to do it. What has gone wrong in this very proud profession?
Au milieu
Simply put, the praxis of this vital profession will have to be understood au milieu, on the basis of the lived experience and climate in the Zimbabwe of today. And the milieu of the Zimbabwe of today is essentially defined by the peculiar politics that have shaped this decade, politics whose juridical consequences are only beginning to be apparent to those in charge of our courts.
Those of us who operate in the media identified the baleful effects of these politics way back, with those in authority putting in place instruments for dealing with the mischief.
Whether or not they are succeeding is another matter.
The point is they have come to terms with the source of the distortion.
The legal profession which seems to be facing a huge challenge of practitioners who, in the words of JP, "abandon their training and ethics", either may have been in denial for a long time, or may have stood constrained by the case-by-case approach which seems to bar it from making larger points beyond cases on hand.
A few years back, the Americans made it clear they were targeting both the legal profession and the judiciary to get tools for effecting regime change, the same way they would target the media and even churches for the same.
The impact of that whole effort in respect of both the media and churches is now well documented, thanks to the noises we have made, and the prosecutions which have taken place, involving personalities from these sectors.
Not so in the legal profession against whose politically resonant misdeeds we have all acquiesced, gagged either by its sheer aura, or by the very values set by those subverting the profession, principally the value of "judicial independence".
To question the integrity of conduct or decision of law officers appear a heinous undermining of "judicial independence"!
We never posed to ask why the same Americans who vaunt themselves for a catholic recognition of that principle at home, still find no contradiction in undermining it abroad, to aid and further their foreign policy goals.
Attacking the other pillar
The CJ, the JP and the AG just have to come to terms with the fact that the legal profession — across the board — stands cankered by perverse monied merchants of politics of regime change who have actively recruited from the legal profession.
The Americans, the British, have become un-acknowledged players in our justice system – for worse.
The judicial hierarchy has to come to terms with the fact that the Judiciary, itself a pillar of the same State under attack and red-flagged for "regime change", could not have remained un-attacked, above the current onslaught.
Is it not a fact that the term "regime" stands for a bundle of rules and values — laws in other words – which the courts themselves guard and uphold, all for the sake of "rule of law"? Is not the observance of rule of law the mark of civilised normalcy, something the British and Americans would want to see in smoke here?
Where a regime has to change, how possibly can courts be allowed to function normally by proponents of that regime change goal?
Don’t they become part of the regime that must change?
And where the Judiciary stumbles or is made to appear to have stumbled, does that not reinforce the case for international crimes and therefore prosecution?
Does that not help suggest a state of anarchy, and thus make a case for the reclassification of Zimbabwe as a failed state?
Indeed, Obert Gutu, himself an MDC legal functionary, makes this same point the same week of the above sentiments.
Red herring
Having realised the politics of the land make Zanu (PF) formidable nationally and internationally, the British, the Americans and their EU partners decided on a strategy of attacking the pillars of the State of Zimbabwe on grounds of offending against a set of democratic tenets.
The raging debate of freedom of expression was witnessed by all.
The equally raging debate on police actions and the observance of human rights is again well known.
The attack on institutions which dispense critical social services is well documented, all to suggest the State can no longer dispense those services for which it is founded, and of course to legitimise intervention on grounds of "responsibility to protect".
The current onslaught against the military — including seeking the physical elimination of senior officers — is clear for all to see. Overall, the attack is quite systematic.
Privileged crimes, rewarding suits
Within the legal profession, we saw the setting up of funds and institutions ostensibly meant for enforcement of human rights, especially after 2000. Before this date, there were no human rights worth defending in Zimbabwe, no funds expendable in their pursuit.
After 2000, there was enough reason, enough budgets for all that, leaving history with the burden of explaining why the loss of so-called white land and the realisation of threats to human rights
in Zimbabwe, coincided.
Today the legal landscape has changed dramatically, creating a new milieu for all involved. Certain offences or allegations stand privileged by way of the defence they are accorded, specifically the defends funds that are availed to them. What is more, we have law firms and lawyers who serially chase these cases, no matter what. When the white man controlled land — undisturbed — human rights cases where orphaned.
Law firms — and they were predominantly white — lived off conveyancing, only taking on cases outside of this rubric for public relations purposes.
After 2000, when the white man lost land, the so-called human rights cases have become the preferred domain.
And human rights cases definitionally are anything against Robert Mugabe, his Party, his Government or his officials.
Once you pick a case pitting you against this condemned chain, you are instantly privileged: by way of defence funds, defence lawyers, defence publicity and, yes, awards that await you after it all. And once the Judiciary showed it stood on the side of the landless, it became a target, both for attacks and for attempted corruption.
The attorney general’s office also came under attack, not helped by previous attorney generals who equivocated, and of course the State which did not seem to appreciate the role of a strong AG’s Office in its own defence and that of the Revolution.
The pound impetus
Which takes me to the nub of the matter. Everything must be wrong in the legal profession because its present impetus comes from resources earmarked for regime change.
Those forces for regime change have simply made it rewarding for any law firm and any lawyer to take up cases they deem politically important to the broad regime change agenda. Persistence, or more accurately, obduracy which the law deprecatingly terms "frivolous and vexatious", fetches high rewards and better prospects for recognition in the end. This most probably explains why litigation is unnecessarily drawn out and even bogged down in time-wasting technicalities, indeed why lawyers go against training, knowledge and ethics, if only to be seen to have put a drawn out fight.
Much worse, lawyers who represent these people facing high crimes, are themselves part of the continuum of regime change as direct actors. Many are on forums that are clearly subversive, and which were set up by the same forces who fund projects and activities that lend people in courts. Illustratively, most of these lawyers for people facing high crimes are in organisations like Lawyers for Human Rights, itself a face of the MDC. Others are office holders in the MDC or play an advisory role. They thus approach the court with hands already dirtied, eyes already coloured by their mere affiliation to these partisan platforms. Yet once in court they dare point fingers at judges for being partisan. It simply pays to represent the accused in high crimes. It brings fame to clash with judges and attack them for any matter you lose, often through sheer incompetence or politically inspired bigotry. That is what is wrong with the profession. And the incompetence must always express itself in unreasonable defence of the accused. Equally, partisanship is only defensible if it gravitates towards interests of powers of regime change. Which is why it is a crime for the Bench to get resources from the RBZ, itself a national institution and a part of a Government which must avail these amenities anyway, but perfectly right for lawyers to get money and recognition from foreign governments which are hostile to Zimbabwe.
Dawn of a new ethos?
Yet all is not lost. That the issues are now discussable, and what is more, introduced by senior judicial officers, means we are close to the endgame. This, together with a new Attorney General who seems stubbornly determined to challenge abuse of due process, should see sobriety returning. The third element which must come is that from the Ministry of Justice. There is great case for reforming the Law Society of Zimbabwe. I find it extraordinary that Minister Chinamasa allows himself to be responsible for a law that founds a body in which his Ministry is a minority by way of representation. How does he hope to influence this critical body which is supposed to enforce ethics of the industry? And is self-regulation the ultimate, the standard? Surely where it does not work – and evidence is galore that it has failed monumentally in the legal profession – then direct regulation must come into play. It already does in the media profession and Minister Chinamasa took this to Parliament. Why not for the legal profession where cases of misconduct clearly undermine public faith in the administration of justice? Besides, the Ministry clearly watched a very dangerous poacher turn herself game-keeper at the Law Society of Zimbabwe, which is why the centre cannot hold, will never hold under the present circumstances. Instead of fearing, the poacher is actually expanding her role, including creating and dishing out phoney awards named after legal luminaries, as happened just this week. The poacher is allowed, in other words, to preside over the shooting competition for game wardens. My foot!
Icho!
Justice system: Defining parameters; defying the perverse
PROFESSIONS are generally opinionated, but none as opinionated as the legal profession. And there is a veneer of righteousness to that enormous self-centredness, reinforced by the apparent acquiescence of other professions to its wanton bullying.
It robes itself, in the process robbing all other professions of their shine. And the robes give lawyers an air of papacy, which is what probably makes them believe they are votaries of the god/goddess of knowledge.
Global positioning satellite
Yet whatever our professions, we all go through university education, emerging robed at the end of it all.
After that brief crowning ceremony, we discard those gowns, for more humble apparel, seemly and suited to the multifarious daily chores that preoccupy hard-working, unassuming, citizens. Not so with lawyers — learned friends — for whom modesty passes for ignorance.
And the phrase "learned friend" is both mutual congratulation and assurance, indeed an exclusionary code by a profession and skill that regards itself as a nonesuch.
As a society, we all get to know how well we are doing in infracting our laws by the number of gowned citizens we meet along First Street, laboriously journeying to the High Court.
To the man, to the woman, they make sure their professional GPS — global positioning satellite — plots their shortest route to the High Court, all the time carefully making sure the route takes them through this bustling mall: the only part of Harare where millions teem, where the perennial clash between men and machines, between feet and wheels, has been decided in favour of that toed limb which takes us about.
These our lawyers, walk with a swooping swagger, their tiny frames obeying measured steps that ruffle gently the draping black robes, marking their proud motion.
Always in tow, or running beside, will be an un-robed ruffian, clearly grateful and fixed to the helm this dark "Christ" — literally by step, symbolically by trial and fate.
In stark reversal to biblical logic, the pilloried ruffian carries his crucifix, and finally gets nailed on it the same day our "learned" friend - in the same dark robes - is getting counsel from yet another urchin-victim.
DCJ on Sadc Tribunal
This week, the legal profession came under extraordinary spotlight, which is why even I, a creature of darkness by name, seeks to focus my equally dark beam on it. I claim no expert opinion on this profession.
I do not need it to give my readers a commonsensical view of what the trouble is with this sector which in theory facilitates the coming of justice to all manner of men and women, avowedly without fear or favour.
That is not to say law officers do not fear, do not favour. But that is another matter for another day. Today’s business first.
On Monday, we had Deputy Chief Justice (DCJ) Luke Malaba making a remarkable statement in respect of the recent so-called SADC Tribunal judgement on Zimbabwe’s vexed land question. As an aside, I want to say we have exposed the Bench through our slow diligence. The Bench cannot accost cases, may not address matters that are not before it.
This is an age-old legal principle which makes the Bench both active and inactive in shaping and reshaping society.
I tried to get those in authority to appreciate the need to get some resettled farmer somewhere in the countryside, to approach the Supreme Court for an interpretation of the so-called SADC Tribunal ruling, against that of the Supreme Court itself, which appeared non-existent to the pseudo-SADC Tribunal in its deliberations on the matter.
The case for such a course of action is quite clear and obvious. You are a resettled farmer set to be affected by two judgements, one reassuring that you are a lawful occupant of the piece of land you have inhabited since our Land Revolution; another buffeting and suggesting you are ripe for eviction, for landlessness.
You are a serious farmer, intend on long-term investments on the property, but substantially made unsure by the ruling of what purports to be a competent court, again purporting to enjoy jurisdiction in the whole of SADC, and thus whose word shall be last and un-appealable.
I am sure such a case would have allowed the Bench to apply its full, collective mind on the matter in a way that would have reasserted the justice-is-sovereign notion, while putting the varying competencies of the two courts under searing spotlight.
I have not the slightest doubt which court would have come worse off, the same way I have no doubt which judgement guides me as part of new farmers.
We did not help the Bench, leaving it to take narrow advantage of the ceremony of opening the legal year to make a non-binding, yet fundamental position on a matter so grave as to make or unmake this society.
JP on transient politics
The same Monday, we had Judge President (JP) Rita Makarau making yet another landmark pronouncement (not judgement) on the profession. A few of us, she said, referring to judges and legal practitioners alike, "have allowed the transient politics of the day to affect the relationship between the profession and the Bench".
The profession stood polarised, she declared, lamenting: "The time-honoured duty of all legal practitioners to seek the truth and to assist the court at all times, has in some instances and on account of politics, been thrown overboard."
Clearly she spoke somunhu mukuru, carefully ensuring rampant infractions of cardinal ethics of the profession, nevertheless get pointed out with remarkable restraint and measure, if not understatement.
Led by the same instinct and the instantaneous anger that visit and guide most of us — especially against an obvious and ever snowballing ill — I am sure she would have put the same point furiously, by voice and by limb.
The vice she hit out at, is simply rampant, made more so by the seeming indifference of the Law Society of Zimbabwe. This cannot be in contention. I will return to that vital point, in fact the thesis of my instalment this week.
AG on own rights and obligations
On Tuesday, we had the new Attorney General (AG) Johannes Tomana making his maiden intervention in that same capacity.
While he may have pronounced himself on a specific matter, it is clear he was making larger points about the legal profession, especially how it is evolving nowadays.
His insistence on the role and rights of the Attorney General and his Office, a good 29 years after our Independence, and in a language implying interlocutors in the legal profession — not you and me the un-learned friends — clearly showed his position and Office were or are under challenge from within the legal profession.
He asserted his rights and role as Government’s chief lawyer who must lead public prosecutions and in ensuring there is no danger to the State and Nation.
Significantly, he did not appear to be addressing the Bench.
He appeared to be addressing defence lawyers, in the process implying they had gone beyond their mandate of simply raising defences for their clients, to one of counselling if not guiding and determining for the AG and his Office which cases to carry to the courts for prosecution, which to discard.
Again, you cannot run away from the fact that the AG was very measured in the face of what appears to be a serious doubt of his competence as a lawyer, and that of all those lawyers who fall under him.
I do not need to refer to the Gula Ndebele case against the Police which in reality became a case of a sitting AG against his own Office and officers.
To the extent that the former AG sought to withhold legal cover to a department of the same Government of which he was the principal law officer, all this in a case in which he was party, the role of an AG and his Office became quite confusing.
Far from being a freak, it became a sample of the contradictions I am referring to.
CJ on crass incompetence and ineptitude
On Wednesday, you then had a real bluster: by way of the Chief Justice (CJ) himself, angrily throwing out a constitutional case on grounds of "crass incompetence and sheer ineptitude of the applicant’s legal practitioners" who hurried to the Supreme Court without seeking leave to do so from a lower court in terms of the "peremptory" Section 24 of the Constitution.
The legal practitioners in question are not cub-lawyers. They have been at it for years and years, which is why probably the CJ’s threw the case out with an undisguised feeling.
Munhu mukuru kwazvo. Yet you perfectly understand his anger at the fact that sheer reckless disregard of elementary technicalities had had the unwholesome effect of delaying justice. Negligence by people who should help the court, and in fact have the legal wherewithal to do it. What has gone wrong in this very proud profession?
Au milieu
Simply put, the praxis of this vital profession will have to be understood au milieu, on the basis of the lived experience and climate in the Zimbabwe of today. And the milieu of the Zimbabwe of today is essentially defined by the peculiar politics that have shaped this decade, politics whose juridical consequences are only beginning to be apparent to those in charge of our courts.
Those of us who operate in the media identified the baleful effects of these politics way back, with those in authority putting in place instruments for dealing with the mischief.
Whether or not they are succeeding is another matter.
The point is they have come to terms with the source of the distortion.
The legal profession which seems to be facing a huge challenge of practitioners who, in the words of JP, "abandon their training and ethics", either may have been in denial for a long time, or may have stood constrained by the case-by-case approach which seems to bar it from making larger points beyond cases on hand.
A few years back, the Americans made it clear they were targeting both the legal profession and the judiciary to get tools for effecting regime change, the same way they would target the media and even churches for the same.
The impact of that whole effort in respect of both the media and churches is now well documented, thanks to the noises we have made, and the prosecutions which have taken place, involving personalities from these sectors.
Not so in the legal profession against whose politically resonant misdeeds we have all acquiesced, gagged either by its sheer aura, or by the very values set by those subverting the profession, principally the value of "judicial independence".
To question the integrity of conduct or decision of law officers appear a heinous undermining of "judicial independence"!
We never posed to ask why the same Americans who vaunt themselves for a catholic recognition of that principle at home, still find no contradiction in undermining it abroad, to aid and further their foreign policy goals.
Attacking the other pillar
The CJ, the JP and the AG just have to come to terms with the fact that the legal profession — across the board — stands cankered by perverse monied merchants of politics of regime change who have actively recruited from the legal profession.
The Americans, the British, have become un-acknowledged players in our justice system – for worse.
The judicial hierarchy has to come to terms with the fact that the Judiciary, itself a pillar of the same State under attack and red-flagged for "regime change", could not have remained un-attacked, above the current onslaught.
Is it not a fact that the term "regime" stands for a bundle of rules and values — laws in other words – which the courts themselves guard and uphold, all for the sake of "rule of law"? Is not the observance of rule of law the mark of civilised normalcy, something the British and Americans would want to see in smoke here?
Where a regime has to change, how possibly can courts be allowed to function normally by proponents of that regime change goal?
Don’t they become part of the regime that must change?
And where the Judiciary stumbles or is made to appear to have stumbled, does that not reinforce the case for international crimes and therefore prosecution?
Does that not help suggest a state of anarchy, and thus make a case for the reclassification of Zimbabwe as a failed state?
Indeed, Obert Gutu, himself an MDC legal functionary, makes this same point the same week of the above sentiments.
Red herring
Having realised the politics of the land make Zanu (PF) formidable nationally and internationally, the British, the Americans and their EU partners decided on a strategy of attacking the pillars of the State of Zimbabwe on grounds of offending against a set of democratic tenets.
The raging debate of freedom of expression was witnessed by all.
The equally raging debate on police actions and the observance of human rights is again well known.
The attack on institutions which dispense critical social services is well documented, all to suggest the State can no longer dispense those services for which it is founded, and of course to legitimise intervention on grounds of "r
PROFESSIONS are generally opinionated, but none as opinionated as the legal profession. And there is a veneer of righteousness to that enormous self-centredness, reinforced by the apparent acquiescence of other professions to its wanton bullying.
It robes itself, in the process robbing all other professions of their shine. And the robes give lawyers an air of papacy, which is what probably makes them believe they are votaries of the god/goddess of knowledge.
Global positioning satellite
Yet whatever our professions, we all go through university education, emerging robed at the end of it all.
After that brief crowning ceremony, we discard those gowns, for more humble apparel, seemly and suited to the multifarious daily chores that preoccupy hard-working, unassuming, citizens. Not so with lawyers — learned friends — for whom modesty passes for ignorance.
And the phrase "learned friend" is both mutual congratulation and assurance, indeed an exclusionary code by a profession and skill that regards itself as a nonesuch.
As a society, we all get to know how well we are doing in infracting our laws by the number of gowned citizens we meet along First Street, laboriously journeying to the High Court.
To the man, to the woman, they make sure their professional GPS — global positioning satellite — plots their shortest route to the High Court, all the time carefully making sure the route takes them through this bustling mall: the only part of Harare where millions teem, where the perennial clash between men and machines, between feet and wheels, has been decided in favour of that toed limb which takes us about.
These our lawyers, walk with a swooping swagger, their tiny frames obeying measured steps that ruffle gently the draping black robes, marking their proud motion.
Always in tow, or running beside, will be an un-robed ruffian, clearly grateful and fixed to the helm this dark "Christ" — literally by step, symbolically by trial and fate.
In stark reversal to biblical logic, the pilloried ruffian carries his crucifix, and finally gets nailed on it the same day our "learned" friend - in the same dark robes - is getting counsel from yet another urchin-victim.
DCJ on Sadc Tribunal
This week, the legal profession came under extraordinary spotlight, which is why even I, a creature of darkness by name, seeks to focus my equally dark beam on it. I claim no expert opinion on this profession.
I do not need it to give my readers a commonsensical view of what the trouble is with this sector which in theory facilitates the coming of justice to all manner of men and women, avowedly without fear or favour.
That is not to say law officers do not fear, do not favour. But that is another matter for another day. Today’s business first.
On Monday, we had Deputy Chief Justice (DCJ) Luke Malaba making a remarkable statement in respect of the recent so-called SADC Tribunal judgement on Zimbabwe’s vexed land question. As an aside, I want to say we have exposed the Bench through our slow diligence. The Bench cannot accost cases, may not address matters that are not before it.
This is an age-old legal principle which makes the Bench both active and inactive in shaping and reshaping society.
I tried to get those in authority to appreciate the need to get some resettled farmer somewhere in the countryside, to approach the Supreme Court for an interpretation of the so-called SADC Tribunal ruling, against that of the Supreme Court itself, which appeared non-existent to the pseudo-SADC Tribunal in its deliberations on the matter.
The case for such a course of action is quite clear and obvious. You are a resettled farmer set to be affected by two judgements, one reassuring that you are a lawful occupant of the piece of land you have inhabited since our Land Revolution; another buffeting and suggesting you are ripe for eviction, for landlessness.
You are a serious farmer, intend on long-term investments on the property, but substantially made unsure by the ruling of what purports to be a competent court, again purporting to enjoy jurisdiction in the whole of SADC, and thus whose word shall be last and un-appealable.
I am sure such a case would have allowed the Bench to apply its full, collective mind on the matter in a way that would have reasserted the justice-is-sovereign notion, while putting the varying competencies of the two courts under searing spotlight.
I have not the slightest doubt which court would have come worse off, the same way I have no doubt which judgement guides me as part of new farmers.
We did not help the Bench, leaving it to take narrow advantage of the ceremony of opening the legal year to make a non-binding, yet fundamental position on a matter so grave as to make or unmake this society.
JP on transient politics
The same Monday, we had Judge President (JP) Rita Makarau making yet another landmark pronouncement (not judgement) on the profession. A few of us, she said, referring to judges and legal practitioners alike, "have allowed the transient politics of the day to affect the relationship between the profession and the Bench".
The profession stood polarised, she declared, lamenting: "The time-honoured duty of all legal practitioners to seek the truth and to assist the court at all times, has in some instances and on account of politics, been thrown overboard."
Clearly she spoke somunhu mukuru, carefully ensuring rampant infractions of cardinal ethics of the profession, nevertheless get pointed out with remarkable restraint and measure, if not understatement.
Led by the same instinct and the instantaneous anger that visit and guide most of us — especially against an obvious and ever snowballing ill — I am sure she would have put the same point furiously, by voice and by limb.
The vice she hit out at, is simply rampant, made more so by the seeming indifference of the Law Society of Zimbabwe. This cannot be in contention. I will return to that vital point, in fact the thesis of my instalment this week.
AG on own rights and obligations
On Tuesday, we had the new Attorney General (AG) Johannes Tomana making his maiden intervention in that same capacity.
While he may have pronounced himself on a specific matter, it is clear he was making larger points about the legal profession, especially how it is evolving nowadays.
His insistence on the role and rights of the Attorney General and his Office, a good 29 years after our Independence, and in a language implying interlocutors in the legal profession — not you and me the un-learned friends — clearly showed his position and Office were or are under challenge from within the legal profession.
He asserted his rights and role as Government’s chief lawyer who must lead public prosecutions and in ensuring there is no danger to the State and Nation.
Significantly, he did not appear to be addressing the Bench.
He appeared to be addressing defence lawyers, in the process implying they had gone beyond their mandate of simply raising defences for their clients, to one of counselling if not guiding and determining for the AG and his Office which cases to carry to the courts for prosecution, which to discard.
Again, you cannot run away from the fact that the AG was very measured in the face of what appears to be a serious doubt of his competence as a lawyer, and that of all those lawyers who fall under him.
I do not need to refer to the Gula Ndebele case against the Police which in reality became a case of a sitting AG against his own Office and officers.
To the extent that the former AG sought to withhold legal cover to a department of the same Government of which he was the principal law officer, all this in a case in which he was party, the role of an AG and his Office became quite confusing.
Far from being a freak, it became a sample of the contradictions I am referring to.
CJ on crass incompetence and ineptitude
On Wednesday, you then had a real bluster: by way of the Chief Justice (CJ) himself, angrily throwing out a constitutional case on grounds of "crass incompetence and sheer ineptitude of the applicant’s legal practitioners" who hurried to the Supreme Court without seeking leave to do so from a lower court in terms of the "peremptory" Section 24 of the Constitution.
The legal practitioners in question are not cub-lawyers. They have been at it for years and years, which is why probably the CJ’s threw the case out with an undisguised feeling.
Munhu mukuru kwazvo. Yet you perfectly understand his anger at the fact that sheer reckless disregard of elementary technicalities had had the unwholesome effect of delaying justice. Negligence by people who should help the court, and in fact have the legal wherewithal to do it. What has gone wrong in this very proud profession?
Au milieu
Simply put, the praxis of this vital profession will have to be understood au milieu, on the basis of the lived experience and climate in the Zimbabwe of today. And the milieu of the Zimbabwe of today is essentially defined by the peculiar politics that have shaped this decade, politics whose juridical consequences are only beginning to be apparent to those in charge of our courts.
Those of us who operate in the media identified the baleful effects of these politics way back, with those in authority putting in place instruments for dealing with the mischief.
Whether or not they are succeeding is another matter.
The point is they have come to terms with the source of the distortion.
The legal profession which seems to be facing a huge challenge of practitioners who, in the words of JP, "abandon their training and ethics", either may have been in denial for a long time, or may have stood constrained by the case-by-case approach which seems to bar it from making larger points beyond cases on hand.
A few years back, the Americans made it clear they were targeting both the legal profession and the judiciary to get tools for effecting regime change, the same way they would target the media and even churches for the same.
The impact of that whole effort in respect of both the media and churches is now well documented, thanks to the noises we have made, and the prosecutions which have taken place, involving personalities from these sectors.
Not so in the legal profession against whose politically resonant misdeeds we have all acquiesced, gagged either by its sheer aura, or by the very values set by those subverting the profession, principally the value of "judicial independence".
To question the integrity of conduct or decision of law officers appear a heinous undermining of "judicial independence"!
We never posed to ask why the same Americans who vaunt themselves for a catholic recognition of that principle at home, still find no contradiction in undermining it abroad, to aid and further their foreign policy goals.
Attacking the other pillar
The CJ, the JP and the AG just have to come to terms with the fact that the legal profession — across the board — stands cankered by perverse monied merchants of politics of regime change who have actively recruited from the legal profession.
The Americans, the British, have become un-acknowledged players in our justice system – for worse.
The judicial hierarchy has to come to terms with the fact that the Judiciary, itself a pillar of the same State under attack and red-flagged for "regime change", could not have remained un-attacked, above the current onslaught.
Is it not a fact that the term "regime" stands for a bundle of rules and values — laws in other words – which the courts themselves guard and uphold, all for the sake of "rule of law"? Is not the observance of rule of law the mark of civilised normalcy, something the British and Americans would want to see in smoke here?
Where a regime has to change, how possibly can courts be allowed to function normally by proponents of that regime change goal?
Don’t they become part of the regime that must change?
And where the Judiciary stumbles or is made to appear to have stumbled, does that not reinforce the case for international crimes and therefore prosecution?
Does that not help suggest a state of anarchy, and thus make a case for the reclassification of Zimbabwe as a failed state?
Indeed, Obert Gutu, himself an MDC legal functionary, makes this same point the same week of the above sentiments.
Red herring
Having realised the politics of the land make Zanu (PF) formidable nationally and internationally, the British, the Americans and their EU partners decided on a strategy of attacking the pillars of the State of Zimbabwe on grounds of offending against a set of democratic tenets.
The raging debate of freedom of expression was witnessed by all.
The equally raging debate on police actions and the observance of human rights is again well known.
The attack on institutions which dispense critical social services is well documented, all to suggest the State can no longer dispense those services for which it is founded, and of course to legitimise intervention on grounds of "responsibility to protect".
The current onslaught against the military — including seeking the physical elimination of senior officers — is clear for all to see. Overall, the attack is quite systematic.
Privileged crimes, rewarding suits
Within the legal profession, we saw the setting up of funds and institutions ostensibly meant for enforcement of human rights, especially after 2000. Before this date, there were no human rights worth defending in Zimbabwe, no funds expendable in their pursuit.
After 2000, there was enough reason, enough budgets for all that, leaving history with the burden of explaining why the loss of so-called white land and the realisation of threats to human rights
in Zimbabwe, coincided.
Today the legal landscape has changed dramatically, creating a new milieu for all involved. Certain offences or allegations stand privileged by way of the defence they are accorded, specifically the defends funds that are availed to them. What is more, we have law firms and lawyers who serially chase these cases, no matter what. When the white man controlled land — undisturbed — human rights cases where orphaned.
Law firms — and they were predominantly white — lived off conveyancing, only taking on cases outside of this rubric for public relations purposes.
After 2000, when the white man lost land, the so-called human rights cases have become the preferred domain.
And human rights cases definitionally are anything against Robert Mugabe, his Party, his Government or his officials.
Once you pick a case pitting you against this condemned chain, you are instantly privileged: by way of defence funds, defence lawyers, defence publicity and, yes, awards that await you after it all. And once the Judiciary showed it stood on the side of the landless, it became a target, both for attacks and for attempted corruption.
The attorney general’s office also came under attack, not helped by previous attorney generals who equivocated, and of course the State which did not seem to appreciate the role of a strong AG’s Office in its own defence and that of the Revolution.
The pound impetus
Which takes me to the nub of the matter. Everything must be wrong in the legal profession because its present impetus comes from resources earmarked for regime change.
Those forces for regime change have simply made it rewarding for any law firm and any lawyer to take up cases they deem politically important to the broad regime change agenda. Persistence, or more accurately, obduracy which the law deprecatingly terms "frivolous and vexatious", fetches high rewards and better prospects for recognition in the end. This most probably explains why litigation is unnecessarily drawn out and even bogged down in time-wasting technicalities, indeed why lawyers go against training, knowledge and ethics, if only to be seen to have put a drawn out fight.
Much worse, lawyers who represent these people facing high crimes, are themselves part of the continuum of regime change as direct actors. Many are on forums that are clearly subversive, and which were set up by the same forces who fund projects and activities that lend people in courts. Illustratively, most of these lawyers for people facing high crimes are in organisations like Lawyers for Human Rights, itself a face of the MDC. Others are office holders in the MDC or play an advisory role. They thus approach the court with hands already dirtied, eyes already coloured by their mere affiliation to these partisan platforms. Yet once in court they dare point fingers at judges for being partisan. It simply pays to represent the accused in high crimes. It brings fame to clash with judges and attack them for any matter you lose, often through sheer incompetence or politically inspired bigotry. That is what is wrong with the profession. And the incompetence must always express itself in unreasonable defence of the accused. Equally, partisanship is only defensible if it gravitates towards interests of powers of regime change. Which is why it is a crime for the Bench to get resources from the RBZ, itself a national institution and a part of a Government which must avail these amenities anyway, but perfectly right for lawyers to get money and recognition from foreign governments which are hostile to Zimbabwe.
Dawn of a new ethos?
Yet all is not lost. That the issues are now discussable, and what is more, introduced by senior judicial officers, means we are close to the endgame. This, together with a new Attorney General who seems stubbornly determined to challenge abuse of due process, should see sobriety returning. The third element which must come is that from the Ministry of Justice. There is great case for reforming the Law Society of Zimbabwe. I find it extraordinary that Minister Chinamasa allows himself to be responsible for a law that founds a body in which his Ministry is a minority by way of representation. How does he hope to influence this critical body which is supposed to enforce ethics of the industry? And is self-regulation the ultimate, the standard? Surely where it does not work – and evidence is galore that it has failed monumentally in the legal profession – then direct regulation must come into play. It already does in the media profession and Minister Chinamasa took this to Parliament. Why not for the legal profession where cases of misconduct clearly undermine public faith in the administration of justice? Besides, the Ministry clearly watched a very dangerous poacher turn herself game-keeper at the Law Society of Zimbabwe, which is why the centre cannot hold, will never hold under the present circumstances. Instead of fearing, the poacher is actually expanding her role, including creating and dishing out phoney awards named after legal luminaries, as happened just this week. The poacher is allowed, in other words, to preside over the shooting competition for game wardens. My foot!
Icho!
Justice system: Defining parameters; defying the perverse
PROFESSIONS are generally opinionated, but none as opinionated as the legal profession. And there is a veneer of righteousness to that enormous self-centredness, reinforced by the apparent acquiescence of other professions to its wanton bullying.
It robes itself, in the process robbing all other professions of their shine. And the robes give lawyers an air of papacy, which is what probably makes them believe they are votaries of the god/goddess of knowledge.
Global positioning satellite
Yet whatever our professions, we all go through university education, emerging robed at the end of it all.
After that brief crowning ceremony, we discard those gowns, for more humble apparel, seemly and suited to the multifarious daily chores that preoccupy hard-working, unassuming, citizens. Not so with lawyers — learned friends — for whom modesty passes for ignorance.
And the phrase "learned friend" is both mutual congratulation and assurance, indeed an exclusionary code by a profession and skill that regards itself as a nonesuch.
As a society, we all get to know how well we are doing in infracting our laws by the number of gowned citizens we meet along First Street, laboriously journeying to the High Court.
To the man, to the woman, they make sure their professional GPS — global positioning satellite — plots their shortest route to the High Court, all the time carefully making sure the route takes them through this bustling mall: the only part of Harare where millions teem, where the perennial clash between men and machines, between feet and wheels, has been decided in favour of that toed limb which takes us about.
These our lawyers, walk with a swooping swagger, their tiny frames obeying measured steps that ruffle gently the draping black robes, marking their proud motion.
Always in tow, or running beside, will be an un-robed ruffian, clearly grateful and fixed to the helm this dark "Christ" — literally by step, symbolically by trial and fate.
In stark reversal to biblical logic, the pilloried ruffian carries his crucifix, and finally gets nailed on it the same day our "learned" friend - in the same dark robes - is getting counsel from yet another urchin-victim.
DCJ on Sadc Tribunal
This week, the legal profession came under extraordinary spotlight, which is why even I, a creature of darkness by name, seeks to focus my equally dark beam on it. I claim no expert opinion on this profession.
I do not need it to give my readers a commonsensical view of what the trouble is with this sector which in theory facilitates the coming of justice to all manner of men and women, avowedly without fear or favour.
That is not to say law officers do not fear, do not favour. But that is another matter for another day. Today’s business first.
On Monday, we had Deputy Chief Justice (DCJ) Luke Malaba making a remarkable statement in respect of the recent so-called SADC Tribunal judgement on Zimbabwe’s vexed land question. As an aside, I want to say we have exposed the Bench through our slow diligence. The Bench cannot accost cases, may not address matters that are not before it.
This is an age-old legal principle which makes the Bench both active and inactive in shaping and reshaping society.
I tried to get those in authority to appreciate the need to get some resettled farmer somewhere in the countryside, to approach the Supreme Court for an interpretation of the so-called SADC Tribunal ruling, against that of the Supreme Court itself, which appeared non-existent to the pseudo-SADC Tribunal in its deliberations on the matter.
The case for such a course of action is quite clear and obvious. You are a resettled farmer set to be affected by two judgements, one reassuring that you are a lawful occupant of the piece of land you have inhabited since our Land Revolution; another buffeting and suggesting you are ripe for eviction, for landlessness.
You are a serious farmer, intend on long-term investments on the property, but substantially made unsure by the ruling of what purports to be a competent court, again purporting to enjoy jurisdiction in the whole of SADC, and thus whose word shall be last and un-appealable.
I am sure such a case would have allowed the Bench to apply its full, collective mind on the matter in a way that would have reasserted the justice-is-sovereign notion, while putting the varying competencies of the two courts under searing spotlight.
I have not the slightest doubt which court would have come worse off, the same way I have no doubt which judgement guides me as part of new farmers.
We did not help the Bench, leaving it to take narrow advantage of the ceremony of opening the legal year to make a non-binding, yet fundamental position on a matter so grave as to make or unmake this society.
JP on transient politics
The same Monday, we had Judge President (JP) Rita Makarau making yet another landmark pronouncement (not judgement) on the profession. A few of us, she said, referring to judges and legal practitioners alike, "have allowed the transient politics of the day to affect the relationship between the profession and the Bench".
The profession stood polarised, she declared, lamenting: "The time-honoured duty of all legal practitioners to seek the truth and to assist the court at all times, has in some instances and on account of politics, been thrown overboard."
Clearly she spoke somunhu mukuru, carefully ensuring rampant infractions of cardinal ethics of the profession, nevertheless get pointed out with remarkable restraint and measure, if not understatement.
Led by the same instinct and the instantaneous anger that visit and guide most of us — especially against an obvious and ever snowballing ill — I am sure she would have put the same point furiously, by voice and by limb.
The vice she hit out at, is simply rampant, made more so by the seeming indifference of the Law Society of Zimbabwe. This cannot be in contention. I will return to that vital point, in fact the thesis of my instalment this week.
AG on own rights and obligations
On Tuesday, we had the new Attorney General (AG) Johannes Tomana making his maiden intervention in that same capacity.
While he may have pronounced himself on a specific matter, it is clear he was making larger points about the legal profession, especially how it is evolving nowadays.
His insistence on the role and rights of the Attorney General and his Office, a good 29 years after our Independence, and in a language implying interlocutors in the legal profession — not you and me the un-learned friends — clearly showed his position and Office were or are under challenge from within the legal profession.
He asserted his rights and role as Government’s chief lawyer who must lead public prosecutions and in ensuring there is no danger to the State and Nation.
Significantly, he did not appear to be addressing the Bench.
He appeared to be addressing defence lawyers, in the process implying they had gone beyond their mandate of simply raising defences for their clients, to one of counselling if not guiding and determining for the AG and his Office which cases to carry to the courts for prosecution, which to discard.
Again, you cannot run away from the fact that the AG was very measured in the face of what appears to be a serious doubt of his competence as a lawyer, and that of all those lawyers who fall under him.
I do not need to refer to the Gula Ndebele case against the Police which in reality became a case of a sitting AG against his own Office and officers.
To the extent that the former AG sought to withhold legal cover to a department of the same Government of which he was the principal law officer, all this in a case in which he was party, the role of an AG and his Office became quite confusing.
Far from being a freak, it became a sample of the contradictions I am referring to.
CJ on crass incompetence and ineptitude
On Wednesday, you then had a real bluster: by way of the Chief Justice (CJ) himself, angrily throwing out a constitutional case on grounds of "crass incompetence and sheer ineptitude of the applicant’s legal practitioners" who hurried to the Supreme Court without seeking leave to do so from a lower court in terms of the "peremptory" Section 24 of the Constitution.
The legal practitioners in question are not cub-lawyers. They have been at it for years and years, which is why probably the CJ’s threw the case out with an undisguised feeling.
Munhu mukuru kwazvo. Yet you perfectly understand his anger at the fact that sheer reckless disregard of elementary technicalities had had the unwholesome effect of delaying justice. Negligence by people who should help the court, and in fact have the legal wherewithal to do it. What has gone wrong in this very proud profession?
Au milieu
Simply put, the praxis of this vital profession will have to be understood au milieu, on the basis of the lived experience and climate in the Zimbabwe of today. And the milieu of the Zimbabwe of today is essentially defined by the peculiar politics that have shaped this decade, politics whose juridical consequences are only beginning to be apparent to those in charge of our courts.
Those of us who operate in the media identified the baleful effects of these politics way back, with those in authority putting in place instruments for dealing with the mischief.
Whether or not they are succeeding is another matter.
The point is they have come to terms with the source of the distortion.
The legal profession which seems to be facing a huge challenge of practitioners who, in the words of JP, "abandon their training and ethics", either may have been in denial for a long time, or may have stood constrained by the case-by-case approach which seems to bar it from making larger points beyond cases on hand.
A few years back, the Americans made it clear they were targeting both the legal profession and the judiciary to get tools for effecting regime change, the same way they would target the media and even churches for the same.
The impact of that whole effort in respect of both the media and churches is now well documented, thanks to the noises we have made, and the prosecutions which have taken place, involving personalities from these sectors.
Not so in the legal profession against whose politically resonant misdeeds we have all acquiesced, gagged either by its sheer aura, or by the very values set by those subverting the profession, principally the value of "judicial independence".
To question the integrity of conduct or decision of law officers appear a heinous undermining of "judicial independence"!
We never posed to ask why the same Americans who vaunt themselves for a catholic recognition of that principle at home, still find no contradiction in undermining it abroad, to aid and further their foreign policy goals.
Attacking the other pillar
The CJ, the JP and the AG just have to come to terms with the fact that the legal profession — across the board — stands cankered by perverse monied merchants of politics of regime change who have actively recruited from the legal profession.
The Americans, the British, have become un-acknowledged players in our justice system – for worse.
The judicial hierarchy has to come to terms with the fact that the Judiciary, itself a pillar of the same State under attack and red-flagged for "regime change", could not have remained un-attacked, above the current onslaught.
Is it not a fact that the term "regime" stands for a bundle of rules and values — laws in other words – which the courts themselves guard and uphold, all for the sake of "rule of law"? Is not the observance of rule of law the mark of civilised normalcy, something the British and Americans would want to see in smoke here?
Where a regime has to change, how possibly can courts be allowed to function normally by proponents of that regime change goal?
Don’t they become part of the regime that must change?
And where the Judiciary stumbles or is made to appear to have stumbled, does that not reinforce the case for international crimes and therefore prosecution?
Does that not help suggest a state of anarchy, and thus make a case for the reclassification of Zimbabwe as a failed state?
Indeed, Obert Gutu, himself an MDC legal functionary, makes this same point the same week of the above sentiments.
Red herring
Having realised the politics of the land make Zanu (PF) formidable nationally and internationally, the British, the Americans and their EU partners decided on a strategy of attacking the pillars of the State of Zimbabwe on grounds of offending against a set of democratic tenets.
The raging debate of freedom of expression was witnessed by all.
The equally raging debate on police actions and the observance of human rights is again well known.
The attack on institutions which dispense critical social services is well documented, all to suggest the State can no longer dispense those services for which it is founded, and of course to legitimise intervention on grounds of "r
Monday, 12 January 2009
Eddie Cross’ statement disturbing
Eddie Cross’ statement disturbing
By Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia
IT must be most disturbing to the generality of Zimbabweans and also to those extending a hand of help to alleviate some of the challenges facing the country when they are confronted with the MDC-T’s remiss policy chief advocating the "crashing and burning of the country so that we can pick up the pieces".
The insipid and spiritless utterances from Eddie Cross have been sold to the world through very unbelievable insinuations alluding that the "crashing and burning" of Zimbabwe is the feeling from the "grassroots" as researched by one of Cross’s colleagues, described by Cross as a common political activist. In fact, Eddie Cross shamelessly titled his January 5 piece "Let It Crash and Burn".
What can be read from this piece is a mentality that celebrates people’s suffering and an egregious greed for power that traverses all forms of morality and human decency.
This heretical political gospel being preached by Eddie Cross is most unfortunate in that it is coming from a man who evidently believes in the not so unfounded notion that disproportionately associates the white race with reason.
This is a view held by many in our midst today, not least those in Morgan Tsvangirai’s party.
What Eddie Cross is labouring to justify is the treacherous and irresponsible behaviour of his boss, Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai is reneging on most of his acceptance speech that he made on September 15 last year during the signing of the broad-based agreement.
Tsvangirai proposed co-sharing the Ministry of Home Affairs and firmly opposed the same once his proposals had been honoured.
He made proposals that Sadc make a ruling on the same issue and when the ruling was made, Tsvangirai insulted Sadc and prioritised a trip to Europe, ahead of concluding what virtually every Zimbabwean was waiting for.
MDC-T secretary-general Tendai Biti followed this up by calling the Sadc ruling a "nullity" and Tsvangirai concurred by his silence on the clearly obnoxious utterance.
MDC leader Arthur Mutambara briefly touched on this ill-conceived theory that says Zimbabwe can be crashed and burnt down economically in his January 5, article titled "The Inconvenient Truths about the West and Zimbabwe".
Mutambara particularly queried that there will ever be such a collapse as to result in the Government just disappearing to allow the opposition to "pick up the pieces", as Cross would put it.
Secondly, Mutambara argues in his article that even if such an event were to occur, there is neither evidence nor guarantee that MDC-T will naturally assume to power.
From its formation, the MDC has always overestimated the power of sanctions, hoping against hope that campaigning for Zimbabwe’s isolation would earn them the ruins of a destroyed nation — with some envisaging a celebratory mass march that would carry Tsvangirai shoulder-high all the way to State House, with the police and the army saluting.
As history will record, all attempts at such mass marches were ignored by the public and all attempts to force people were soundly thwarted by law enforcement agents and there was one memorable cruising for a bruising that captured worldwide attention in 2007.
In the run-up to the March 2008 harmonised elections, Tsvangirai engaged in pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics adapted to the moral posturing that the man held the messianic keys to the eternal happiness of Zimbabweans.
MDC-T resorted to a historic process in which resentment against Zanu-PF and President Mugabe was preached with vigour in the ecstatic cover of unreason.
Symbols and slogans that appealed to fear and other elementary emotions were used and aid was politicised under the political philosophy that said what the people were receiving from Western-oriented NGOs was just a foretaste of the good days ahead in an MDC-T government.
In fact, people were brazenly warned that all the aid would vanish into thin air if MDC-T did not win the election.
This is the mentality that makes Biti fume that South Africa has proceeded to release aid to Zimbabwe.
China, Venezuela and every other country that does not agree with the West on Zimbabwe have all been derided by the opposition for giving aid to Zimbabwe simply because this aid does not come under the umbrella philosophy of demonic messianism.
Noam Chomsky in his book "Failed States — The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy", defines demonic messianism as "a natural device for leadership groups that are at the extreme of the spectrum in their dedication to the short-term interests of narrow sectors of power and wealth".
The goals and programmes enacted and pursued by such groups are anti-public time after time and case after case.
For MDC-T, these goals and programmes have included an unachievable desire to reverse the land reform programme, a diabolical pursuit of ruinous sanctions against Zimbabwe, an attempt at holding the country to ransom through abuse of privilege in the broad-based agreement and a reported and alleged appetite for military instability.
In their short-term interests of narrow sectors of power and access to wealth, the opposition MDC-T has sought to exploit features of mass suffering that have uniquely diverged from the common suffering of an ordinary African since Zimbabwe started going into recession in 2000.
The sentiment of despair among the ordinary people has been manipulated for political gain by amoral politicians who would do anything to ensure that this despair does not go away until they manage to ride on it all the way to echelons of political power.
They behave like wandering spirits that declare sickness on their victims until their demands to be worshipped are met.
Another strategy that has been regularly exploited is the creation of a fear for a tyrannical and boundlessly evil regime, and on this one all manner of documentaries, pictures and mobile images have been gathered from whatever source and whichever place they can be found and they have all been attributed to "the murderous Mugabe regime".
This is understandable when one considers that Washington is the principal mentor of the British-created Zimbabwean opposition.
The American propaganda machinery has for hundreds of years depended on instilling in the public the fear of imminent destruction by enemies of boundless evil.
The story has always been the same whether the enemy has been the Japanese, the Russians, the Nicaraguans or the "Arab terrorists".
Like their masters in Washington, MDC-T has been trying very hard to create a faith in the nobility of purpose among Zimbabweans.
They want to make everyone believe that by making the country economically ungovernable through inviting ravaging sanctions, they are engaging in "democratic resistance" and that the whole episode is part of a "struggle for democracy".
This is not different from what Bruce Franklin identified in 1889 as the "Anglo-American Syndicate of War" that imposes its "peaceful and enlightened rule" by threatening "annihilation" of those who stand in the way, bringing "the Spirit of Civilisation to backward people".
During colonial days and in the wake of struggles for independence, all those aspiring to be independent were portrayed as demons about to destroy Western humanity.
These were Africans, Chinese, Indians, Arabs, South Americans and the rest of Asians.
Author Jack London even wrote a "popular story" in 1910 advocating the extermination of the Chinese by bacteria-based warfare so as to undercut their "nefarious secret scheme to overwhelm us".
This is the culture that has been mentored to Tsvangirai by his handlers and he calls it political strategy.
Whatever the roots of the economic features that characterise Zimbabwe today, the fact of the matter is that these features have been easily manipulated by cynical leaders from both sides of the political divide.
Some of these cynical leaders have emerged from the ruling party leadership and they have manipulated these economic features to enrich themselves while their counterparts in the opposition have manipulated the same features to try and ascend to power.
Most of this manipulation has been done in ways that are hard to believe.
On the one hand, some leaders have been reported to divert fuel meant for cultivation to the illegal parallel market where the scarce commodity was resold to the public ending up being burnt away by speeding teenagers hunting for juvenile mischief; and on the other hand, those in opposition have sought to campaign for more fuel shortages so that the economic features of shortages do not go away; not until "the regime collapses".
This is the politics that stand as character to the envisaged inclusive Government.
There is an opposition that hopes that there is a crash-and burn down coming and they seek to manipulate the economic crisis to the advantage of their short-term personal interests and also a clique in the ruling party that seems resigned on initiative and hard work, seemingly contented with using their positions to access whatever the sanctions-ravaged economy can spare for them by way of political privilege.
Africa is not looking for any of these kinds of political leaders when they call for an inclusive Government in Zimbabwe.
They are hoping for a good-willed opposition willing to work with an honest and good-willed ruling party in an administration that will aid in reversing in earnest the economic crisis bedevilling the country.
It is absolutely stupid for Eddie Cross to trust his friend in the assertion that the masses of Zimbabwe want Zimbabwe to crash and burn so that Tsvangirai can pick up a presidential piece from the wreckage.
It is frankly annoying and idiotic for Tsvangirai to keep on pronouncing a commitment to an agreement he does not respect, just for the sake of maintaining relevance within the African community.
This writer will urge Sadc and South Africa to make sure that everything that can be done to have a functioning Government for Zimbabwe is done and done immediately.
In the same vein, President Mugabe must respect Tsvangirai’s decision to turn down the invitation to the premiership and simply proceed without him.
MDC-T needs Constitutional Amendment Number 19 if they are going to keep arguing the case for a power-sharing Government and they cannot afford to kick out the Bill in Parliament in that regard.
That would be self-destructive and they should know better.
If the Bill is passed, then MDC-T can pick up their posts when they are ready, but a fully functional Government has to be appointed as early as possible.
If the Bill is not passed in Parliament, then Zimbabwe has always had laws and these laws should apply while the country prepares for the next election, whenever it comes.
This is the approach that seeks to address people’s needs, and not to exploit and manipulate the economic features of our country for political expediency.
The people of Zimbabwe must have no business spending 10 solid months following meaningless and stupidly endless negotiations between politicians.
They have a right to be governed and governed properly by responsible people who do not indulge in evil "crash-and-burn" hallucinations.
Zimbabwe, we are one and together we shall overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@ rwafawarova.com or www.rwafawarova.com
By Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia
IT must be most disturbing to the generality of Zimbabweans and also to those extending a hand of help to alleviate some of the challenges facing the country when they are confronted with the MDC-T’s remiss policy chief advocating the "crashing and burning of the country so that we can pick up the pieces".
The insipid and spiritless utterances from Eddie Cross have been sold to the world through very unbelievable insinuations alluding that the "crashing and burning" of Zimbabwe is the feeling from the "grassroots" as researched by one of Cross’s colleagues, described by Cross as a common political activist. In fact, Eddie Cross shamelessly titled his January 5 piece "Let It Crash and Burn".
What can be read from this piece is a mentality that celebrates people’s suffering and an egregious greed for power that traverses all forms of morality and human decency.
This heretical political gospel being preached by Eddie Cross is most unfortunate in that it is coming from a man who evidently believes in the not so unfounded notion that disproportionately associates the white race with reason.
This is a view held by many in our midst today, not least those in Morgan Tsvangirai’s party.
What Eddie Cross is labouring to justify is the treacherous and irresponsible behaviour of his boss, Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai is reneging on most of his acceptance speech that he made on September 15 last year during the signing of the broad-based agreement.
Tsvangirai proposed co-sharing the Ministry of Home Affairs and firmly opposed the same once his proposals had been honoured.
He made proposals that Sadc make a ruling on the same issue and when the ruling was made, Tsvangirai insulted Sadc and prioritised a trip to Europe, ahead of concluding what virtually every Zimbabwean was waiting for.
MDC-T secretary-general Tendai Biti followed this up by calling the Sadc ruling a "nullity" and Tsvangirai concurred by his silence on the clearly obnoxious utterance.
MDC leader Arthur Mutambara briefly touched on this ill-conceived theory that says Zimbabwe can be crashed and burnt down economically in his January 5, article titled "The Inconvenient Truths about the West and Zimbabwe".
Mutambara particularly queried that there will ever be such a collapse as to result in the Government just disappearing to allow the opposition to "pick up the pieces", as Cross would put it.
Secondly, Mutambara argues in his article that even if such an event were to occur, there is neither evidence nor guarantee that MDC-T will naturally assume to power.
From its formation, the MDC has always overestimated the power of sanctions, hoping against hope that campaigning for Zimbabwe’s isolation would earn them the ruins of a destroyed nation — with some envisaging a celebratory mass march that would carry Tsvangirai shoulder-high all the way to State House, with the police and the army saluting.
As history will record, all attempts at such mass marches were ignored by the public and all attempts to force people were soundly thwarted by law enforcement agents and there was one memorable cruising for a bruising that captured worldwide attention in 2007.
In the run-up to the March 2008 harmonised elections, Tsvangirai engaged in pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics adapted to the moral posturing that the man held the messianic keys to the eternal happiness of Zimbabweans.
MDC-T resorted to a historic process in which resentment against Zanu-PF and President Mugabe was preached with vigour in the ecstatic cover of unreason.
Symbols and slogans that appealed to fear and other elementary emotions were used and aid was politicised under the political philosophy that said what the people were receiving from Western-oriented NGOs was just a foretaste of the good days ahead in an MDC-T government.
In fact, people were brazenly warned that all the aid would vanish into thin air if MDC-T did not win the election.
This is the mentality that makes Biti fume that South Africa has proceeded to release aid to Zimbabwe.
China, Venezuela and every other country that does not agree with the West on Zimbabwe have all been derided by the opposition for giving aid to Zimbabwe simply because this aid does not come under the umbrella philosophy of demonic messianism.
Noam Chomsky in his book "Failed States — The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy", defines demonic messianism as "a natural device for leadership groups that are at the extreme of the spectrum in their dedication to the short-term interests of narrow sectors of power and wealth".
The goals and programmes enacted and pursued by such groups are anti-public time after time and case after case.
For MDC-T, these goals and programmes have included an unachievable desire to reverse the land reform programme, a diabolical pursuit of ruinous sanctions against Zimbabwe, an attempt at holding the country to ransom through abuse of privilege in the broad-based agreement and a reported and alleged appetite for military instability.
In their short-term interests of narrow sectors of power and access to wealth, the opposition MDC-T has sought to exploit features of mass suffering that have uniquely diverged from the common suffering of an ordinary African since Zimbabwe started going into recession in 2000.
The sentiment of despair among the ordinary people has been manipulated for political gain by amoral politicians who would do anything to ensure that this despair does not go away until they manage to ride on it all the way to echelons of political power.
They behave like wandering spirits that declare sickness on their victims until their demands to be worshipped are met.
Another strategy that has been regularly exploited is the creation of a fear for a tyrannical and boundlessly evil regime, and on this one all manner of documentaries, pictures and mobile images have been gathered from whatever source and whichever place they can be found and they have all been attributed to "the murderous Mugabe regime".
This is understandable when one considers that Washington is the principal mentor of the British-created Zimbabwean opposition.
The American propaganda machinery has for hundreds of years depended on instilling in the public the fear of imminent destruction by enemies of boundless evil.
The story has always been the same whether the enemy has been the Japanese, the Russians, the Nicaraguans or the "Arab terrorists".
Like their masters in Washington, MDC-T has been trying very hard to create a faith in the nobility of purpose among Zimbabweans.
They want to make everyone believe that by making the country economically ungovernable through inviting ravaging sanctions, they are engaging in "democratic resistance" and that the whole episode is part of a "struggle for democracy".
This is not different from what Bruce Franklin identified in 1889 as the "Anglo-American Syndicate of War" that imposes its "peaceful and enlightened rule" by threatening "annihilation" of those who stand in the way, bringing "the Spirit of Civilisation to backward people".
During colonial days and in the wake of struggles for independence, all those aspiring to be independent were portrayed as demons about to destroy Western humanity.
These were Africans, Chinese, Indians, Arabs, South Americans and the rest of Asians.
Author Jack London even wrote a "popular story" in 1910 advocating the extermination of the Chinese by bacteria-based warfare so as to undercut their "nefarious secret scheme to overwhelm us".
This is the culture that has been mentored to Tsvangirai by his handlers and he calls it political strategy.
Whatever the roots of the economic features that characterise Zimbabwe today, the fact of the matter is that these features have been easily manipulated by cynical leaders from both sides of the political divide.
Some of these cynical leaders have emerged from the ruling party leadership and they have manipulated these economic features to enrich themselves while their counterparts in the opposition have manipulated the same features to try and ascend to power.
Most of this manipulation has been done in ways that are hard to believe.
On the one hand, some leaders have been reported to divert fuel meant for cultivation to the illegal parallel market where the scarce commodity was resold to the public ending up being burnt away by speeding teenagers hunting for juvenile mischief; and on the other hand, those in opposition have sought to campaign for more fuel shortages so that the economic features of shortages do not go away; not until "the regime collapses".
This is the politics that stand as character to the envisaged inclusive Government.
There is an opposition that hopes that there is a crash-and burn down coming and they seek to manipulate the economic crisis to the advantage of their short-term personal interests and also a clique in the ruling party that seems resigned on initiative and hard work, seemingly contented with using their positions to access whatever the sanctions-ravaged economy can spare for them by way of political privilege.
Africa is not looking for any of these kinds of political leaders when they call for an inclusive Government in Zimbabwe.
They are hoping for a good-willed opposition willing to work with an honest and good-willed ruling party in an administration that will aid in reversing in earnest the economic crisis bedevilling the country.
It is absolutely stupid for Eddie Cross to trust his friend in the assertion that the masses of Zimbabwe want Zimbabwe to crash and burn so that Tsvangirai can pick up a presidential piece from the wreckage.
It is frankly annoying and idiotic for Tsvangirai to keep on pronouncing a commitment to an agreement he does not respect, just for the sake of maintaining relevance within the African community.
This writer will urge Sadc and South Africa to make sure that everything that can be done to have a functioning Government for Zimbabwe is done and done immediately.
In the same vein, President Mugabe must respect Tsvangirai’s decision to turn down the invitation to the premiership and simply proceed without him.
MDC-T needs Constitutional Amendment Number 19 if they are going to keep arguing the case for a power-sharing Government and they cannot afford to kick out the Bill in Parliament in that regard.
That would be self-destructive and they should know better.
If the Bill is passed, then MDC-T can pick up their posts when they are ready, but a fully functional Government has to be appointed as early as possible.
If the Bill is not passed in Parliament, then Zimbabwe has always had laws and these laws should apply while the country prepares for the next election, whenever it comes.
This is the approach that seeks to address people’s needs, and not to exploit and manipulate the economic features of our country for political expediency.
The people of Zimbabwe must have no business spending 10 solid months following meaningless and stupidly endless negotiations between politicians.
They have a right to be governed and governed properly by responsible people who do not indulge in evil "crash-and-burn" hallucinations.
Zimbabwe, we are one and together we shall overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@ rwafawarova.com or www.rwafawarova.com
Sunday, 11 January 2009
America: The leaders Africa must have
America: The leaders Africa must have
Can anyone visualise Hitler’s henchman making demands at the Postdam table? Or taking to the mountaintop for a cosmic address to mankind on human rights for former Nazis? Even pillorying the post-Nuremberg allied ethos for being undemocratic and racist?
Can anyone visualise Hitler’s henchman making demands at the Postdam table? Or taking to the mountaintop for a cosmic address to mankind on human rights for former Nazis? Even pillorying the post-Nuremberg allied ethos for being undemocratic and racist?
Yet that is what is happening in broad daylight inZimbabwe, leaving many mouths broadly gaping, most tongues tied and red-swollen.
Just what has gone so wrong that racist and autocratic Rhodesians feel so confident, feel so audacious enough to sit on the table to make a huge claim and stake on Zimbabwe’s future? And to do so with the finality of an oracle addressing puny and mortal mankind?
Is this not our country? Was it not our liberation song which went:
Vasingadi kugara nesu/Ngavabude muZimbabwe,
Vanoda kugara nesu/Ngavauye muZimbabwe,
Mhai Zimbabwe/Zimbabwe nyika yavatema Zimbabwe/
Inokosha iyo/ Inyika yedu!
Maybe Cde Chinx no longer sings enough for us to remember.
But the song is there, part of our liberation sensibility, part of our declaration on our sense of citizenship and entitlement to it.
Let it crash and burn!
Here is Eddie Cross: "What they [South Africans] fail to understand is that we will not get on the bus [inclusive Government] until the steering wheel and the accelerator and the gear lever are in our hands . . . The GPA says the MDC is in charge of the bus and MT is the driver.
"We just need to make sure, absolutely sure that there are no dual controls in the front of the bus — they remain where they were designed to be — further back in the hands of the Prime Minister. "What the people at the bus stop are saying is ‘we will not get on the bus until we are satisfied that the driver is our man and not Mugabe’.
"And that is not negotiable. If Mugabe is anywhere near the wheel, we would rather let the bus crash and burn."
The white Rhodesian oracle
Just what is this oracular voice called Eddie Cross? He is a Rhodesian first and foremost, one who happens to be white, as most where. Nowhere in history books is his name associated with the freedom fight, whether from a sugary liberal side or the from the centre.
Quite the contrary, Eddie Cross was a loyal and indefatigable Rhodesian by conviction, one only fated to join and remain in Zimbabwe by a sheer limitation of personal prospects, by the overwhelming fact of a shrunk horizon.
In spite of the head-start which colour and Rhodesia gave him, Eddie still went bust, forcing the law to declare him officially bankrupt.
He was not on America’s sanctions list when this happened, never will be, given history, colour and identity.
He still went bust in spite of the overly favourable, pro-white post-independence policies predicated on a one-sided reconciliation.
He occupied many seats after Independence, including taking charge of BCG, the Beira Corridor Group, which came to wailing grief when he was done with it.
You talk to any remnant Rhodesian white, you are told it is the likes of Eddie Cross who are spoiling race relations.
It is a very old, racist charge, but one showing clearly even the Rhodesians whose interests the man works so hard for, have a very dim view of him.
"How do you trust with a national purse a man who cannot trust himself with his own?" asked one such Rhodesian, mockingly.
He used to be in the Rhodesian army and now winds up time as an accomplished artist.
We have a curious situation where the worst of Rhodesia has been made the best of "democratic" Zimbabwe, thanks to Tsvangirai and his MDC.
He is MDC’s policy co-ordinator, as Chamisa proclaims it, apparently without any shame or self-rebuke.
The same passes for Roy Bennett, for Ian Kay. A haughty, ignorant triumvirate.
White master, driver coolie
Yet when Cross is making a case for the driving saddle for Tsvangirai, he does it not as a junior follower in the MDC party.
He does it not as one of the multitude of eager passengers at the bus stop.
Which white man goes on public buses?
And it shows by Cross’s poor handling of the metaphor. He does it as a white master, a bus owner making a case for the best coolie driver.
It is a vivid imagery, a more advanced metaphor than Welensky’s rustic "horse and rider" one, so fashionable in federal days.
Eddie Cross’ "we" is both for royalty and the plurality, in both cases white.
Rhodesia’s imagined white community feels greater prospect for a fusion between imagination and real prospect.
With the support of Britain, Europe and America, the dream of a return, a second coming, seems more and more palpable, more and more graspable.
On the one hand is a real chance for a second Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, with Tsvangirai at the helm.
On the other is Zanu-PF which, by Cross’s reckoning, is now sufficiently weakened to make more and more concessions, if not to capitulate.
Above all there is Albion’s royal might.
So let no one come under any illusion: Cross is making a case for the best black servant, never for the best black president.
He is making a case not for a strong black Zimbabwe, but for a white Rhodesia under a black puppet.
His argument for an MDC victory or, the obverse, an argument for Zanu-PF’s defeat, is a case for Rhodesia’s second coming without whose realisation, white Rhodesians are prepared to let Zimbabwe "crash and burn".
It is a stark choice between independence and colonial servitude, the latter made palatable by a dark political effigy superintending over it.
History and paper, descent and heart
But it is also a declaration of war by a character type whose security rests on amphibian citizenship, on dual identity and citizenship.
Cross is a Zimbabwean by history and papers, yet a Briton by descent and heart.
To him Zimbabwe is a house, Britain a home. In between the house and the home is South Africa, a detour and lay-bye.
The inability of Zimbabweans to recognise and appreciate this three-legged nature of our so-called white counterparts in citizenry, is for me the biggest tragedy of no end, until that cruel end-time arrives when another war again educates us.
We need the kind of shock the Congolese, the Nigerians and, most recently, the Rwandese, went through as they dived down to the trough of brutal, ethnicised fratricidal mayhem.
When war erupts and danger visits, nationality and citizenship get more sharply and accurately drawn, arguably and even conclusively defined as European-led rescue missions decide who is European and who is not, and on that basis, who outlives the war and who gets eaten by it, bowel, butt and bone.
By mop and broom alone
Eddie Cross can afford to let Zimbabwe crash and burn because he has a home elsewhere, in Britain, with South Africa, Australia or New Zealand as detours.
Pakuru, Museyamwa, Wakapiwa, Nzou Samanyanga and others do not have that prerogative, that luxury.
They can only enter Europe by a stamp of servility, or by stealth, to survive in it by mop and broom.
Period.
And many of us will never get that kindness to become Europe’s servants.
We will simply get eaten by bullets and bombs the way the Palestinians in Gaza now do, finding our way into news items as statistics.
And given that the world is not awfully mathematical, we will soon be forgotten: A perfect tribute to a kind, a people who died well before they lived, before they were born, a people long killed, by history, in history to have become anything.
Eight portfolios to whites
So Eddie is not threatening "to crash and burn" his home, our home with him as Zimbabweans. No, never!
He threatens to crash and burn your home, your only country, legitimised in this quest by the MDC.
As I write, the Rhodesian factor in the MDC is flexing its full muscle. Eight out of the 13 ministerial portfolios granted MDC-T, eight must go to white ministers for direct control.
That leaves Tsvangirai and his black horde with a mere five, which is why there is a rat race.
We are back to 1980 when whites had reserved seats, reserved status in the body politic.
On this, the white factor is not entertaining any negotiation.
Mugabe had the excuse of a constitutional stricture. What excuse does Tsvangirai have? Is this the investment the white farmer made reference to while donating a cheque to the MDC in 2000?
And this is where Tendai Biti and the Bennetts have joined hands, however furious Chamisa’s denial of this development may be.
The Rhodesians want a reopening of negotiations on portfolios as the only way out of Tsvangirai’s treacherous signing of the September 15 agreement Rhodesians never supported.
It is a salvage effort by the paymaster.
That is also why Tsvangirai has to be kept out of Zimbabwe, lest he makes another complicating blunder.
The Rhodesians want clear, unambiguous control of portfolios to do with lands, mines and the security ministries without which they have realised they cannot back their control of the first two.
The delineation of the claim is thus getting clearer, more brazen, to expose the whole essence of British, European and American fight here, through their Rhodesian bridgehead.
And of course Biti, for a whole set of different reasons, wants a reopening of debate on portfolios, hoping to realise goals which are entirely internal to the MDC, specifically how conceded portfolios are distributed — more accurately mal-distributed between vying figures and corners.
Again, young Chamisa, himself a protagonist of this vicious fight, can choose to deny a thousand times.
Both are going for broke.
Our man is weak, will be overrun
As for Tsvangirai, he soaking floater in a turbulent flow.
He faces Rhodesians who say it is payback time. He faces rebellious underlings who flaunt legal knowledge and constitutional threats, unless . . .
He faces Zanu-PF whose apparent calm composure belies seething anger and the urge to pounce and munch once and for all.
Which takes me to my main point.
Western imperialists have clear ideas about the leaders we Africans should have, which means they have clear ideas about leaders we should never have.
Last month when Jendayi Frazer was in the region, she told Mufamadi America had no beef with the framework agreement signed by the three parties, which it regarded as a good model for political settlement.
What America did not like — forcing it to withdraw its support for that excellent framework — was the fact that Morgan Tsvangirai is too weak to withstand Robert Mugabe, the same way the Americans think Raila Odinga is doing to President Mwai Kibaki.
I do not know what Odinga is doing, or can do, what Kibaki can or cannot do, and actually does.
Somehow the Americans perceive power skewed in Odinga’s favour, something they seek here.
And because in their reckoning, their man — Morgan Tsvangirai — cannot refrain from being a weak fool, the stronger, the wiser the abler Mugabe must come tumbling to the dust!
Don’t better the fool; drown the wise, fullstop. That is America’s simple power calculus abroad.
One last assignment, Sir!
But they are not as callous.
In their infinite generosity, the Americans want President Mugabe to use his wisdom to perform one last act: he must anoint a successor of sufficient weakness to mathematically match Tsvangirai, their man. That way the excellent September agreement will be taken forward, with America behind it, backing it to the hilt.
Oh ignorance the leveller!
And suddenly everyone in Zanu-PF wants to be cleverer, wiser, stronger, to duck America’s blighting anointment.
Who shall it be, Tsvangirai’s equivalent in Zanu-PF?
Mavambo and its internal cowards? Tavengwa and his person-less party? Or is it Chibebe to whose ZCTU the British are pouring millions, hoping for another alternative to the MDC?
Zimbabwe seems to be going through a graduated fragmentation, going through a phase of preferred mediocrity.
Yet one thing is quite clear: America wants a weak, servile leadership here, one which drives, drives, drives the bus for rapacious Europe. That leadership has to be weak and black.
More significantly, the agenda for that outcome has to be pushed by men and women who are equally marginal and black, which is why Jendayi Frazer froths; why Rice squelches; why Powell roared, indeed why McGee farts Zimbabwe, through and through, even where there are elders.
Eating ones too!
How white America views Africans in power abroad, is how white America places African-African Americans in power at home.
After all, it is the same colour, the same people. That is why I am not too hopeful about what comes tomorrow.
Icho!
l nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Can anyone visualise Hitler’s henchman making demands at the Postdam table? Or taking to the mountaintop for a cosmic address to mankind on human rights for former Nazis? Even pillorying the post-Nuremberg allied ethos for being undemocratic and racist?
Can anyone visualise Hitler’s henchman making demands at the Postdam table? Or taking to the mountaintop for a cosmic address to mankind on human rights for former Nazis? Even pillorying the post-Nuremberg allied ethos for being undemocratic and racist?
Yet that is what is happening in broad daylight inZimbabwe, leaving many mouths broadly gaping, most tongues tied and red-swollen.
Just what has gone so wrong that racist and autocratic Rhodesians feel so confident, feel so audacious enough to sit on the table to make a huge claim and stake on Zimbabwe’s future? And to do so with the finality of an oracle addressing puny and mortal mankind?
Is this not our country? Was it not our liberation song which went:
Vasingadi kugara nesu/Ngavabude muZimbabwe,
Vanoda kugara nesu/Ngavauye muZimbabwe,
Mhai Zimbabwe/Zimbabwe nyika yavatema Zimbabwe/
Inokosha iyo/ Inyika yedu!
Maybe Cde Chinx no longer sings enough for us to remember.
But the song is there, part of our liberation sensibility, part of our declaration on our sense of citizenship and entitlement to it.
Let it crash and burn!
Here is Eddie Cross: "What they [South Africans] fail to understand is that we will not get on the bus [inclusive Government] until the steering wheel and the accelerator and the gear lever are in our hands . . . The GPA says the MDC is in charge of the bus and MT is the driver.
"We just need to make sure, absolutely sure that there are no dual controls in the front of the bus — they remain where they were designed to be — further back in the hands of the Prime Minister. "What the people at the bus stop are saying is ‘we will not get on the bus until we are satisfied that the driver is our man and not Mugabe’.
"And that is not negotiable. If Mugabe is anywhere near the wheel, we would rather let the bus crash and burn."
The white Rhodesian oracle
Just what is this oracular voice called Eddie Cross? He is a Rhodesian first and foremost, one who happens to be white, as most where. Nowhere in history books is his name associated with the freedom fight, whether from a sugary liberal side or the from the centre.
Quite the contrary, Eddie Cross was a loyal and indefatigable Rhodesian by conviction, one only fated to join and remain in Zimbabwe by a sheer limitation of personal prospects, by the overwhelming fact of a shrunk horizon.
In spite of the head-start which colour and Rhodesia gave him, Eddie still went bust, forcing the law to declare him officially bankrupt.
He was not on America’s sanctions list when this happened, never will be, given history, colour and identity.
He still went bust in spite of the overly favourable, pro-white post-independence policies predicated on a one-sided reconciliation.
He occupied many seats after Independence, including taking charge of BCG, the Beira Corridor Group, which came to wailing grief when he was done with it.
You talk to any remnant Rhodesian white, you are told it is the likes of Eddie Cross who are spoiling race relations.
It is a very old, racist charge, but one showing clearly even the Rhodesians whose interests the man works so hard for, have a very dim view of him.
"How do you trust with a national purse a man who cannot trust himself with his own?" asked one such Rhodesian, mockingly.
He used to be in the Rhodesian army and now winds up time as an accomplished artist.
We have a curious situation where the worst of Rhodesia has been made the best of "democratic" Zimbabwe, thanks to Tsvangirai and his MDC.
He is MDC’s policy co-ordinator, as Chamisa proclaims it, apparently without any shame or self-rebuke.
The same passes for Roy Bennett, for Ian Kay. A haughty, ignorant triumvirate.
White master, driver coolie
Yet when Cross is making a case for the driving saddle for Tsvangirai, he does it not as a junior follower in the MDC party.
He does it not as one of the multitude of eager passengers at the bus stop.
Which white man goes on public buses?
And it shows by Cross’s poor handling of the metaphor. He does it as a white master, a bus owner making a case for the best coolie driver.
It is a vivid imagery, a more advanced metaphor than Welensky’s rustic "horse and rider" one, so fashionable in federal days.
Eddie Cross’ "we" is both for royalty and the plurality, in both cases white.
Rhodesia’s imagined white community feels greater prospect for a fusion between imagination and real prospect.
With the support of Britain, Europe and America, the dream of a return, a second coming, seems more and more palpable, more and more graspable.
On the one hand is a real chance for a second Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, with Tsvangirai at the helm.
On the other is Zanu-PF which, by Cross’s reckoning, is now sufficiently weakened to make more and more concessions, if not to capitulate.
Above all there is Albion’s royal might.
So let no one come under any illusion: Cross is making a case for the best black servant, never for the best black president.
He is making a case not for a strong black Zimbabwe, but for a white Rhodesia under a black puppet.
His argument for an MDC victory or, the obverse, an argument for Zanu-PF’s defeat, is a case for Rhodesia’s second coming without whose realisation, white Rhodesians are prepared to let Zimbabwe "crash and burn".
It is a stark choice between independence and colonial servitude, the latter made palatable by a dark political effigy superintending over it.
History and paper, descent and heart
But it is also a declaration of war by a character type whose security rests on amphibian citizenship, on dual identity and citizenship.
Cross is a Zimbabwean by history and papers, yet a Briton by descent and heart.
To him Zimbabwe is a house, Britain a home. In between the house and the home is South Africa, a detour and lay-bye.
The inability of Zimbabweans to recognise and appreciate this three-legged nature of our so-called white counterparts in citizenry, is for me the biggest tragedy of no end, until that cruel end-time arrives when another war again educates us.
We need the kind of shock the Congolese, the Nigerians and, most recently, the Rwandese, went through as they dived down to the trough of brutal, ethnicised fratricidal mayhem.
When war erupts and danger visits, nationality and citizenship get more sharply and accurately drawn, arguably and even conclusively defined as European-led rescue missions decide who is European and who is not, and on that basis, who outlives the war and who gets eaten by it, bowel, butt and bone.
By mop and broom alone
Eddie Cross can afford to let Zimbabwe crash and burn because he has a home elsewhere, in Britain, with South Africa, Australia or New Zealand as detours.
Pakuru, Museyamwa, Wakapiwa, Nzou Samanyanga and others do not have that prerogative, that luxury.
They can only enter Europe by a stamp of servility, or by stealth, to survive in it by mop and broom.
Period.
And many of us will never get that kindness to become Europe’s servants.
We will simply get eaten by bullets and bombs the way the Palestinians in Gaza now do, finding our way into news items as statistics.
And given that the world is not awfully mathematical, we will soon be forgotten: A perfect tribute to a kind, a people who died well before they lived, before they were born, a people long killed, by history, in history to have become anything.
Eight portfolios to whites
So Eddie is not threatening "to crash and burn" his home, our home with him as Zimbabweans. No, never!
He threatens to crash and burn your home, your only country, legitimised in this quest by the MDC.
As I write, the Rhodesian factor in the MDC is flexing its full muscle. Eight out of the 13 ministerial portfolios granted MDC-T, eight must go to white ministers for direct control.
That leaves Tsvangirai and his black horde with a mere five, which is why there is a rat race.
We are back to 1980 when whites had reserved seats, reserved status in the body politic.
On this, the white factor is not entertaining any negotiation.
Mugabe had the excuse of a constitutional stricture. What excuse does Tsvangirai have? Is this the investment the white farmer made reference to while donating a cheque to the MDC in 2000?
And this is where Tendai Biti and the Bennetts have joined hands, however furious Chamisa’s denial of this development may be.
The Rhodesians want a reopening of negotiations on portfolios as the only way out of Tsvangirai’s treacherous signing of the September 15 agreement Rhodesians never supported.
It is a salvage effort by the paymaster.
That is also why Tsvangirai has to be kept out of Zimbabwe, lest he makes another complicating blunder.
The Rhodesians want clear, unambiguous control of portfolios to do with lands, mines and the security ministries without which they have realised they cannot back their control of the first two.
The delineation of the claim is thus getting clearer, more brazen, to expose the whole essence of British, European and American fight here, through their Rhodesian bridgehead.
And of course Biti, for a whole set of different reasons, wants a reopening of debate on portfolios, hoping to realise goals which are entirely internal to the MDC, specifically how conceded portfolios are distributed — more accurately mal-distributed between vying figures and corners.
Again, young Chamisa, himself a protagonist of this vicious fight, can choose to deny a thousand times.
Both are going for broke.
Our man is weak, will be overrun
As for Tsvangirai, he soaking floater in a turbulent flow.
He faces Rhodesians who say it is payback time. He faces rebellious underlings who flaunt legal knowledge and constitutional threats, unless . . .
He faces Zanu-PF whose apparent calm composure belies seething anger and the urge to pounce and munch once and for all.
Which takes me to my main point.
Western imperialists have clear ideas about the leaders we Africans should have, which means they have clear ideas about leaders we should never have.
Last month when Jendayi Frazer was in the region, she told Mufamadi America had no beef with the framework agreement signed by the three parties, which it regarded as a good model for political settlement.
What America did not like — forcing it to withdraw its support for that excellent framework — was the fact that Morgan Tsvangirai is too weak to withstand Robert Mugabe, the same way the Americans think Raila Odinga is doing to President Mwai Kibaki.
I do not know what Odinga is doing, or can do, what Kibaki can or cannot do, and actually does.
Somehow the Americans perceive power skewed in Odinga’s favour, something they seek here.
And because in their reckoning, their man — Morgan Tsvangirai — cannot refrain from being a weak fool, the stronger, the wiser the abler Mugabe must come tumbling to the dust!
Don’t better the fool; drown the wise, fullstop. That is America’s simple power calculus abroad.
One last assignment, Sir!
But they are not as callous.
In their infinite generosity, the Americans want President Mugabe to use his wisdom to perform one last act: he must anoint a successor of sufficient weakness to mathematically match Tsvangirai, their man. That way the excellent September agreement will be taken forward, with America behind it, backing it to the hilt.
Oh ignorance the leveller!
And suddenly everyone in Zanu-PF wants to be cleverer, wiser, stronger, to duck America’s blighting anointment.
Who shall it be, Tsvangirai’s equivalent in Zanu-PF?
Mavambo and its internal cowards? Tavengwa and his person-less party? Or is it Chibebe to whose ZCTU the British are pouring millions, hoping for another alternative to the MDC?
Zimbabwe seems to be going through a graduated fragmentation, going through a phase of preferred mediocrity.
Yet one thing is quite clear: America wants a weak, servile leadership here, one which drives, drives, drives the bus for rapacious Europe. That leadership has to be weak and black.
More significantly, the agenda for that outcome has to be pushed by men and women who are equally marginal and black, which is why Jendayi Frazer froths; why Rice squelches; why Powell roared, indeed why McGee farts Zimbabwe, through and through, even where there are elders.
Eating ones too!
How white America views Africans in power abroad, is how white America places African-African Americans in power at home.
After all, it is the same colour, the same people. That is why I am not too hopeful about what comes tomorrow.
Icho!
l nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Sunday, 4 January 2009
The West and Zimbabwe
West and Zimbabwe
By Arthur. G. O. Mutambara
Last updated: 01/04/2009 17:58:00
THE year 2008 was a very difficult one for us as a nation. Since the inconclusive harmonised elections held on March 29, there has been a political impasse in our land. The country has been without a legitimate government. Our economy has virtually collapsed, while disease and starvation are ravaging our people. Hopelessness and despair characterise and define the national psyche. There has been complete leadership failure across the board, within Zimbabwe, in the region and in the international community.
As we start a new year, let us reflect on some of the major debates that are shaping our politics as we exit 2008. Of particular interest in this treatise are the uncomfortable realities and challenges that sometimes we shy away from confronting. In particular we seek to slay that elephant in the national living room: How ignorant and unstrategic external involvement in the Zimbabwean discourse does more harm than good.
We seek to argue that in the year 2008, brazen and crass Western shenanigans have actually undermined the opposition and strengthened Robert Mugabe. More importantly, it is our submission that the uninformed and reckless foreign policy positions of Western governments, in particular the US and the UK, have negatively impacted our national interest. Zimbabweans have to clearly understand this for our collective fortunes to be different in the year 2009.
The ‘Mugabe Must Go’ Chorus
As we exited 2008, in the month of December, there was a crescendo of demands for the departure of Mugabe from the political stage. There is nothing new and creative in this Mugabe must go mantra. The trouble is that many people and institutions on this track suffer from the disease of the heart being in the right place, while the mind is not being applied. One needs both a good heart and a good mind.
Some of us have been singing the Mugabe must go mantra for the past 21 years, to no avail. Incidentally, Western governments disagreed with us in 1988 when we turned against the Zanu PF regime. Now they patronise us, as if they understand why Mugabe must go, better than us, his Zimbabwean victims.
We have been fighting Mugabe for two decades, where have you been America and Europe? Why did you support Mugabe in the late 1980’s when we were opposing him? Why did you actively back him during Gukurahundi? We never heard you say ‘Mugabe must go’ during that period. Instead you gave him prestigious awards on both sides of the Atlantic.
We can understand it if your defence is that you are slow learners and late bloomers where our matters are concerned. We can accept that. But it then also means you must take your cue from us who understand the Zimbabwean terrain better. You must accept that you are essentially ignorant, unstrategic, and hence ineffective where African matters are concerned. While you seek to assist us in our struggles for change, your brazen behaviour effectively undermines us and strengthens our opponents. You must listen to us and not the other way round.
The December 2008 ‘Mugabe must go’ chorus was as pathetic as it was both unimaginative and predictable. It started with Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Bishop John Sentamu and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in that order. As soon as they were done, David Milliband and Condi Rice came in to support the “many” voices of African leaders. Thereafter, it was Gordon Brown, George Bush, Sarkozy, and Merkel. Then every European leader and their grandmother joined in, supporting the “many” voices of African leaders. To crown it all, there was an incompetent dash to the UN Security Council, where everything came crumbling down: what an embarrassing non-event. Why was anyone surprised by this unmitigated failure? Was there ever a method in the madness? What was to be the logical conclusion of the chorus?
First and foremost there was no African leader who had spoken. So whom, were the Western leaders purporting to support? Soon after Odinga spoke, he was contradicted by his own Foreign Minister. This means he was not speaking on behalf of Kenya or President Kibaki. Bishop Sentamu does not speak for any African country. Well, the same for Tutu; he is a good African who speaks for no African nation. For him to be effective he should work on convincing the South African political leadership to adopt his views.
Interesting enough, even the usually reckless and unimaginative Ian Khama was not part of the African voices. So when these American and European leaders went into chorus, who were they supporting? In a continent of 53 countries, the US and UK could not convince a single African President to be part of their elegant chorus.
If the Western leaders were indeed just supporting themselves, why did they lie that they were supporting voices of African leaders? If they care about what African leaders think, why did they not spend enough time convincing the real African leaders of the correctness of Western positions and thereafter, have the African leaders speak first?
Surely if, for example, Presidents Kgalema Motlanthe, Armando Geubuza, José Eduardo dos Santos, Jakaya Kikwete and Mwai Kibaki had taken a particular collective position on Zimbabwe, and Western governments had come in to support them, there would have been some traction.
But no, the Western powers chose to create their own pseudo African leaders, and then force a world chorus. This was sure to fail. Beyond the chorus, there was no real strategy to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe. There was no specific action that the US and the UK were going to take after the chorus. Would it not have been logical to back the slogans with both procedural plans and proper African buy-in?
It seems the rationale was that Mugabe was just going to fall off the Zimbabwe political stage because of the deafening sound of Western leaders repeating the same meaningless message. How pathetic! Well, shame on them for trivialising the legitimate struggle of our people.
The Avenues through which Mugabe Can Go
There are three ways Mugabe can be removed from the Presidency and leadership of Zimbabwe: (1) use of violence or arms of war (2) peaceful mass uprising or demonstrations (3) free and fair elections.
The use of violence to drive out Mugabe has been suggested in certain quarters. What has not been done is an interrogation of what form this will take, its meaning, consequences and the aftermath. One way a violent overthrow can be envisaged is to have American and British troops invade Zimbabwe as they did in Iraq. Of course they can get rid of Mugabe that way.
However, Western forces will have to bleed on Zimbabwean soil in the process. It will not be a walk in the park. After the US misadventure in Somalia, where American marines were slaughtered in the streets of Mogadishu, the debate in the US Senate was very instructive. The key sentiment was quite unequivocal, “That entire country of Somalia is not worth a single American life. We should never allow American lives to be lost in defence of these worthless African countries.”
That was the attitude then. Has anything changed? Jendayi Frazer, Condi Rice and George Bush, are you now ready to bleed in pursuit of African freedom and prosperity? If you are not prepared to have US marines killed in Zimbabwe, please just shut up on the issue of military intervention to remove Mugabe.
Let us assume for a minute that these Western leaders are serious players and not just careless talkers. They can then actually bring their troops into Zimbabwe and get the job done. After Mugabe is gone the Saddam way, what happens next? What has US military intervention produced in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do we have democratic outcomes in these countries? Are they peaceful, democratic and prosperous nations? Why would the Zimbabwean outcome be any different? If not, then why should this even be considered as an option?
In terms of foreign armies invading Zimbabwe, it is only Western nations that are worth analysing as we have attempted above. Only two African countries, Botswana and Kenya, have expressed an appetite for physical confrontation with Zimbabwe. We will not even dignify Botswana’s posturing with too much discussion. They have no army but an incompetent police force which has no capacity to invade a desert much less a country with Zimbabwe’s military experience. Raila Odinga does not speak for the Kenyan government, so the analysis ends there. If only he could start by convincing his own government, we will have more to say about the efficacy of his utterances.
The other version of violence that can certainly topple Mugabe is an armed struggle waged by Zimbabweans themselves in the same way that ZANLA and ZIPRA executed war against Ian Smith. How feasible and practical is this proposition at this point in time and within the geopolitical context of the SADC region? Is it even a desirable alternative for the people of Zimbabwe? We believe there are no affirmative responses to either of these questions.
The second possible method by which Mugabe can be deposed is through peaceful mass uprisings or demonstrations. Do we have the capacity as Zimbabweans to execute these? What do the gallant efforts of the NCA and WOZA teach us. How many of us join their brave marches? How many Zimbabweans joined the soldiers when they went on the rampage on the streets of Harare?
It is clear that the appetite for an ‘Orange Revolution’ in Zimbabwe has still to be developed, before a mass uprising becomes a realistic platform to drive Mugabe out. Our politicians within the opposition movement also have to be ready to assume the sacrifices that this option entails. Where political leaders go into hiding at the slightest threat of persecution, we fail to see how this option can be brought to fruition.
This leaves us with the third and only avenue for the departure of Mugabe, that is, through free and fair elections. The question then becomes how do we achieve a free and fair election in Zimbabwe? Certainly not through demanding harmonised elections today which will be conducted under June 27 conditions. Needless to say, in such a plebiscite, Mugabe will capture the Presidency and the current combined opposition majority in Parliament will be completely reversed.
Let us be strategic. Our people and country are not election ready at the moment. We need to go through a transitional period in which we resolve the humanitarian crisis afflicting our people, carry out national healing, begin economic recovery, and more importantly adopt a new people-driven democratic constitution. This is the bridge that Zimbabwe needs in its march to democracy. After that, we can then carry out free and fair elections. If Mugabe participates in those elections, he will be defeated. This is the only practical way that will lead to Mugabe’s departure.
The Global Political Agreement of September 15, 2008, seeks to facilitate such a possibility. Folks, this is as good as it gets. Unfortunately, Mugabe will have to be part of the transition, as we explain in the next section. Brown and Bush must get over their foolish, uninformed and unstrategic obsession with Mugabe going today. If they cannot explicitly articulate how they are going to remove him, they should please just back off, and allow our country to move on. We have to save Zimbabwean lives that are being lost needlessly.
Why Mugabe Cannot Go Away Through Talks
The election results from March 29, 2008, produced no outright winner both in Parliament and at the Presidency. The June 27 re-run was an illegitimate farce, so we are stuck with the March inconclusive outcome. As democrats, we must accept that this means that Mugabe and his party are as much a factor as Tsvangirai and his party are.
Short of a new set of elections or change of leadership by their parties, it means neither Tsvangirai nor Mugabe can be negotiated away. On what basis can we have a negotiated agreement that excludes Robert Mugabe? If we accept the March results as legitimate, he is a leader of a party which has 99 MPs vs. 100 for MDC-T, 30 Senators vs. 24 for MDC-T. He came second to Tsvangirai, 43.2% vs. 47.8%. More importantly Mugabe currently possesses the Presidency of Zimbabwe, yes illegitimately. Well, at law they say that possession is 90% of ownership.
The fact that Mugabe has this power of incumbency is the reason why Arthur Mutambara is still on trial in the Supreme Court, Tendai Biti has treason charges around his neck, activists are being abducted, and Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister-designate, had a torrid time getting a passport. This means Mugabe is in charge of the Zimbabwean State. Given this reality on the ground, and the electoral outcome of March 29, 2008, (which because of our lack of strategic thinking we have all sanitised as a legitimate outcome), it is foolishness to think that you can negotiate Mugabe out of power, and somehow miraculously achieve a power sharing arrangement that excludes him.
In terms of democratic practice it will be unjust, and in terms of real politick it will be impossible. Oh yes, on the basis of the March 29 results, Mugabe should be part of any power sharing transitional authority in Zimbabwe, since he is President of a Party well represented in both legislative houses, and he came second in the inconclusive Presidential race. We might not like these democratic circumstances, but we have to live with that reality.
Politics is an art of the possible, as Bismarck once famously said. In the current Zimbabwean political landscape, the possibilities belong to both Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai. They need each other. We can debate the specific role that Mugabe should play. For now that debate was settled by Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara when they signed the Global Political Agreement (GPA). Mugabe is President-designate and Morgan Tsvangirai is Prime Minister-designate. But, are we saying that GPA is the only show in town? No, absolutely not.
Alternative Frameworks to the GPA
A lot of debates and thinking has gone into crafting alternatives to the agreement of September 15, 2008. Unfortunately, it has been a comedy of errors and unsophisticated hallucinations. Even well respected international bodies like the International Crisis Group (ICG) have been found miserably wanting. Renowned conflict resolution experts, civic society leaders and Western pundits have shown astonishing lack of creativity and imagination.
The starting point in establishing an alternative path for Zimbabwe consists of grasping a clear understanding of why we are having challenges in implementing the current GPA. The new formulation must then robustly illustrate how it will avoid these current challenges. Beyond this, the efficacy, process details, timelines and milestones of any new strategy must then be clearly articulated. None of the critics of the current GPA has even begun to do any of the above.
Among a number of obstacles to consummation, the major challenge we have faced in executing the Zimbabwean GPA is the inability to achieve sufficient buy-in from the two major protagonists in the political impasse: Zanu PF and MDC-T. They are the critical players in any national transitional discussion, because any agreed arrangement will require legal effect through a constitutional amendment in parliament. Such a change will require a two thirds majority which can only be achieved by the participation of both Zanu PF and MDC-T, as a minimum requirement.
None of the proposals from the ICG, the civic society groups (both national and regional), or the arrogant and ignorant international community has addressed this simple challenge: How are you going to ensure that both MDC-T and Zanu PF will embrace your new grand proposal? If one or both of them do not accept your framework what are you going to do? Please, this is commonsensical. Anyone seeking to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis democratically and within the laws of Zimbabwe must apply their mind to this critical success factor: the show stopper.
The busy bodies at the ICG and in civic society do not even have the capacity to appreciate the existence of the problem, much less the intellect to develop the requisite solution. We are not saying it is impossible to develop an alternative negotiated framework to the September GPA. We are emphasising that it will require good and rigorously working minds to come up with one.
The reasons why we insist on fixing and then implementing the current flawed and imperfect GPA is because at some point the buy-in between the two key protagonist was achieved through the signatures of the MOU on July 21, 2008, and the GPA on September 15, 2008. Yes, there are disagreements now, but there are two agreed reference points. The key players and their teams have been actively negotiating the political impasse from March 29, 2008, and now four months after signing the GPA there are still implementation challenges.
Yes, this is bad and regrettable. However, let us be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water. If we adopt a completely new process, how and when are we going to convince the two key players to start working towards an MOU? Are you going to get that MOU signed soon, and after that how much time will be required to get to a new GPA of sorts? Furthermore, while we embark on these new processes that require time and resources what will be happening to the suffering people of Zimbabwe, the collapsed economy, and the destroyed industrial base? Given the hardened positions of the two protagonists at the moment, can you even begin to sell the new path to them?
The most bizarre, irritating and clearly ineffective critics of the current GPA are those that premise their proposals by denouncing one of the two key protagonists. Usually it is Mugabe and his Zanu PF who are dismissed. How do you even conceptualise a negotiated outcome without the involvement of the Zanu PF group? We thought it was common cause that you do not make peace with your friends, but with your opponents.
One would expect someone of Jendayi Frazer’s stature to understand all this. How does she say that the US supports the negotiated power sharing, but insists that Mugabe must not be involved? Making these statements while defying the consistent advice that she received from all the South African leaders that she interacted with means that Frazer is insulting the SA leadership at every level. By this disrespectful conduct, she is humiliating both SADC and the AU.
In this situation, with respect to the US-proposed dialogue framework, who will be the principals, negotiators, facilitators and guarantors? South Africa is the only country with leverage on Zimbabwe. To bring any kind of change in Zimbabwe you have to work with SA, and not insult or humiliate them. Anyone serious about the Zimbabwean agenda must grasp this.
Jendayi, I assume that she is supportive of Mr Tsvangirai and she wants him to succeed. Does she actually have any respect for him? He signed the GPA in which Mugabe is designated as the President. Is it that she thinks Mr. Tsvangirai does not know what is good for him and therefore she has to lead him every step of the way?
By the way, it is not true that the US government supported the agreement when it was signed. For the record, both the US and the UK were opposed to the GPA from the beginning. They did not like the fact that Mugabe was both Head of State and Chairman of Cabinet, and they despised the GPA positions on land reform and sanctions. Everyone knows this. We are not children.
The US and the UK are now taking advantage of the delay in implementation of the agreement to savage and destroy the GPA. Do Frazer and her government have a workable alternative framework to the current GPA, together with an enforcement mechanism? And what is this that she said about the weakness and incompetence of her favorite GPA principal? Did she not say the following; “Tsvangirai is too weak and incompetent for us to allow him to be in an inclusive government with Mugabe. He will be completely outmaneuvered. Tsvangirai is not as strong as Odinga. If he was, we would have allowed him to get into the GNU with Mugabe?”
How can she possibly say such insulting remarks about her favorite opposition leader? With friends like these, who needs enemies? Incidentally, did she share her views about Tsvangirai with him? Why not? Anyway, who is she to allow or disallow African leaders? Does the US government have locus standi to do this? From where does she derive such legal, political or moral authority? Would a reverse scenario where international players seek to influence US politics be acceptable to the US?
Jendayi, can’t you see that you are ruining the opposition you seek to assist, and strengthening Mugabe that you seek to destroy? You are foolishly confirming everything that Mugabe has said about the opposition: that we are puppets. Moreover, Mugabe’s strengths are Africa, Pan-Africanism and anti-Imperialism. Any foreign policy that undermines African leaders and African institutions plays right into Mugabe’s game plan. Why can’t Western diplomats master these basics? Why do we have a premonition that most of the destructive grandstanding by Western governments is meant for their domestic constituencies?
More specifically, US foreign policy is always characterised by double standards, hypocrisy and dishonesty all rooted in the pursuit of US permanent interests. We seriously hope that incoming US President Obama and his new team will depart from this ignorant, ruinous and ineffective foreign policy that effectively undermines its intended beneficiaries, strengthens the targeted villains, while blighting the US standing in the World.
Things have to change in 2009. We are not naïve. We know that the general thrust of the US foreign policy objective is largely independent of both the individual who is the US President and the Party they belong to. However, we hope the policy execution, nuances and tactics will be different. Zimbabweans have great expectations.
Collapse of the Mugabe Regime
It is clear that the Mugabe regime will not collapse because of economic decay, mass starvation or epidemics such as cholera. The formal economy collapsed way back when. The regime survives on the informal sector and through rent-seeking behaviours. Yes, ordinary people are perishing and will continue to do so, but the regime will not collapse. Can we all come to grips with this?
The diamonds of Chiadzwa, the Platinum Mines, and assistance from friendly nations such as DRC, Angola, China and Russia will see the regime pull through another 5-10 years. Of course this will be at major cost to the population. Zimbabweans should care about this.
However, to the external players that suggest that we must wait for the collapse of the regime at any cost, the needless loss of life in pursuit of the departure of Mugabe is a small price to pay. After all, the lives lost are Black lives which are not equivalent to White lives. Since September 15, 2008, we have had Western governments encouraging the continuation of suffering and death of our people in the misguided belief that this will lead to the collapse of the Mugabe regime. Well, this will not happen, and our people are dying in vain. All Zimbabwean leaders must understand this.
We must collectively take responsibility for the calamity afflicting our country. In particular, Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai are equally culpable for the failure to work together. They are effectively working against the interests of their supporters and the generality of our citizenry. The two leaders are more concerned about a misguided power play executed at the expense of Zimbabwean lives. They have blood on their hands. The US and UK governments who are specifically undermining SADC efforts to establish an inclusive government in Zimbabwe are complicit in this crime against humanity.
In the case of these Western governments, they are driven by racism and utter disrespect for African lives. As Africans, our position is that not a single Zimbabwean life should be used as a stick to inflict pain on Robert Mugabe. People’s lives are too important to be used as ineffective political tools and weapons. We all know that Mugabe will not collapse because of cholera, mass starvation and a collapsed economy, so why are we supporting this ineffective strategy?
Nevertheless, let us deceive ourselves for a moment and assume the game plan works and the Mugabe regime actually collapses through the existing crisis. Why are we assuming that such a demise of Mugabe will lead to a democratic outcome? We saw what happened in Guinea when their dictator died. Did the opposition take over? Nope. If the Mugabe regime collapses, it is most likely that the army will take over. Some ambitious and gutsy colonel or general will step in. Our democratisation processes will, resultantly, regress at least 10 years.
There is absolutely no way Tsvangirai and his Party will be the beneficiaries of the collapse of Robert Mugabe. Quite to the contrary, the Zanu PF regime will make sure they collapse together with Tsvangirai and MDC-T. Do the current abductions, confessions and dubious trials of activists mean anything to anyone? MDC-T will not exist after the demise of Mugabe. I hope Tsvangirai understands this in no uncertain terms. I wish our brazen and unintelligent Western friends will do more listening and thinking.
This Mugabe must collapse strategy is not in the best interest of Zimbabwe. A regime change agenda achieved through a scorched earth policy is not what we need in our country. It will not benefit anyone. As Zimbabweans, we should think seriously about options that will allow us to continue to build, brick by brick, our democratic institutions.
Opportunity for a New Beginning
The year 2009 presents us with an opportunity for a new beginning. However, for this to be achieved, we have to learn some difficult lessons from inconvenient truths. We have to do things differently. We must embrace self-criticism as part of our best practices, and adopt an interrogative and questioning attitude to all stakeholders, including those that purport to support our struggles and our national interest.
In the struggle for a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Zimbabwe, it is not enough to be right. It is not enough to be a victim or to have the higher moral authority. The victims must behave well. Those with moral high ground must be driven by principles and values. Those on the right side of history must be thoughtful and strategic. Those that support victims of despotic regimes must apply their analytical skills. Good heart, bad mind will not cut it.
In all this, we must always put the people first. We must cherish servant leadership. Only then can we succeed. While external players and events affect our country, we must take responsibility for our own circumstances. We should be at the centre of our struggles and be the drivers of our nation building processes. We must have enough leadership strength to define and determine both the terms of reference and frameworks through which foreigners participate in the affairs of our nation.
In 2009, Zimbabweans must set the agenda and own the rules of the game. We must be masters of our own destiny. The critique of external influences that has been proffered should not be used to absolve us as citizens. We as Zimbabweans, created the current socio-political and economic crisis, and we will be the primary drivers and developers of the sustainable answers. And yes, a people do get a government that they deserve. Let us all be the change we wish to see in the year 2009.
Arthur G.O. Mutambara is president of MDC
By Arthur. G. O. Mutambara
Last updated: 01/04/2009 17:58:00
THE year 2008 was a very difficult one for us as a nation. Since the inconclusive harmonised elections held on March 29, there has been a political impasse in our land. The country has been without a legitimate government. Our economy has virtually collapsed, while disease and starvation are ravaging our people. Hopelessness and despair characterise and define the national psyche. There has been complete leadership failure across the board, within Zimbabwe, in the region and in the international community.
As we start a new year, let us reflect on some of the major debates that are shaping our politics as we exit 2008. Of particular interest in this treatise are the uncomfortable realities and challenges that sometimes we shy away from confronting. In particular we seek to slay that elephant in the national living room: How ignorant and unstrategic external involvement in the Zimbabwean discourse does more harm than good.
We seek to argue that in the year 2008, brazen and crass Western shenanigans have actually undermined the opposition and strengthened Robert Mugabe. More importantly, it is our submission that the uninformed and reckless foreign policy positions of Western governments, in particular the US and the UK, have negatively impacted our national interest. Zimbabweans have to clearly understand this for our collective fortunes to be different in the year 2009.
The ‘Mugabe Must Go’ Chorus
As we exited 2008, in the month of December, there was a crescendo of demands for the departure of Mugabe from the political stage. There is nothing new and creative in this Mugabe must go mantra. The trouble is that many people and institutions on this track suffer from the disease of the heart being in the right place, while the mind is not being applied. One needs both a good heart and a good mind.
Some of us have been singing the Mugabe must go mantra for the past 21 years, to no avail. Incidentally, Western governments disagreed with us in 1988 when we turned against the Zanu PF regime. Now they patronise us, as if they understand why Mugabe must go, better than us, his Zimbabwean victims.
We have been fighting Mugabe for two decades, where have you been America and Europe? Why did you support Mugabe in the late 1980’s when we were opposing him? Why did you actively back him during Gukurahundi? We never heard you say ‘Mugabe must go’ during that period. Instead you gave him prestigious awards on both sides of the Atlantic.
We can understand it if your defence is that you are slow learners and late bloomers where our matters are concerned. We can accept that. But it then also means you must take your cue from us who understand the Zimbabwean terrain better. You must accept that you are essentially ignorant, unstrategic, and hence ineffective where African matters are concerned. While you seek to assist us in our struggles for change, your brazen behaviour effectively undermines us and strengthens our opponents. You must listen to us and not the other way round.
The December 2008 ‘Mugabe must go’ chorus was as pathetic as it was both unimaginative and predictable. It started with Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Bishop John Sentamu and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in that order. As soon as they were done, David Milliband and Condi Rice came in to support the “many” voices of African leaders. Thereafter, it was Gordon Brown, George Bush, Sarkozy, and Merkel. Then every European leader and their grandmother joined in, supporting the “many” voices of African leaders. To crown it all, there was an incompetent dash to the UN Security Council, where everything came crumbling down: what an embarrassing non-event. Why was anyone surprised by this unmitigated failure? Was there ever a method in the madness? What was to be the logical conclusion of the chorus?
First and foremost there was no African leader who had spoken. So whom, were the Western leaders purporting to support? Soon after Odinga spoke, he was contradicted by his own Foreign Minister. This means he was not speaking on behalf of Kenya or President Kibaki. Bishop Sentamu does not speak for any African country. Well, the same for Tutu; he is a good African who speaks for no African nation. For him to be effective he should work on convincing the South African political leadership to adopt his views.
Interesting enough, even the usually reckless and unimaginative Ian Khama was not part of the African voices. So when these American and European leaders went into chorus, who were they supporting? In a continent of 53 countries, the US and UK could not convince a single African President to be part of their elegant chorus.
If the Western leaders were indeed just supporting themselves, why did they lie that they were supporting voices of African leaders? If they care about what African leaders think, why did they not spend enough time convincing the real African leaders of the correctness of Western positions and thereafter, have the African leaders speak first?
Surely if, for example, Presidents Kgalema Motlanthe, Armando Geubuza, José Eduardo dos Santos, Jakaya Kikwete and Mwai Kibaki had taken a particular collective position on Zimbabwe, and Western governments had come in to support them, there would have been some traction.
But no, the Western powers chose to create their own pseudo African leaders, and then force a world chorus. This was sure to fail. Beyond the chorus, there was no real strategy to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe. There was no specific action that the US and the UK were going to take after the chorus. Would it not have been logical to back the slogans with both procedural plans and proper African buy-in?
It seems the rationale was that Mugabe was just going to fall off the Zimbabwe political stage because of the deafening sound of Western leaders repeating the same meaningless message. How pathetic! Well, shame on them for trivialising the legitimate struggle of our people.
The Avenues through which Mugabe Can Go
There are three ways Mugabe can be removed from the Presidency and leadership of Zimbabwe: (1) use of violence or arms of war (2) peaceful mass uprising or demonstrations (3) free and fair elections.
The use of violence to drive out Mugabe has been suggested in certain quarters. What has not been done is an interrogation of what form this will take, its meaning, consequences and the aftermath. One way a violent overthrow can be envisaged is to have American and British troops invade Zimbabwe as they did in Iraq. Of course they can get rid of Mugabe that way.
However, Western forces will have to bleed on Zimbabwean soil in the process. It will not be a walk in the park. After the US misadventure in Somalia, where American marines were slaughtered in the streets of Mogadishu, the debate in the US Senate was very instructive. The key sentiment was quite unequivocal, “That entire country of Somalia is not worth a single American life. We should never allow American lives to be lost in defence of these worthless African countries.”
That was the attitude then. Has anything changed? Jendayi Frazer, Condi Rice and George Bush, are you now ready to bleed in pursuit of African freedom and prosperity? If you are not prepared to have US marines killed in Zimbabwe, please just shut up on the issue of military intervention to remove Mugabe.
Let us assume for a minute that these Western leaders are serious players and not just careless talkers. They can then actually bring their troops into Zimbabwe and get the job done. After Mugabe is gone the Saddam way, what happens next? What has US military intervention produced in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do we have democratic outcomes in these countries? Are they peaceful, democratic and prosperous nations? Why would the Zimbabwean outcome be any different? If not, then why should this even be considered as an option?
In terms of foreign armies invading Zimbabwe, it is only Western nations that are worth analysing as we have attempted above. Only two African countries, Botswana and Kenya, have expressed an appetite for physical confrontation with Zimbabwe. We will not even dignify Botswana’s posturing with too much discussion. They have no army but an incompetent police force which has no capacity to invade a desert much less a country with Zimbabwe’s military experience. Raila Odinga does not speak for the Kenyan government, so the analysis ends there. If only he could start by convincing his own government, we will have more to say about the efficacy of his utterances.
The other version of violence that can certainly topple Mugabe is an armed struggle waged by Zimbabweans themselves in the same way that ZANLA and ZIPRA executed war against Ian Smith. How feasible and practical is this proposition at this point in time and within the geopolitical context of the SADC region? Is it even a desirable alternative for the people of Zimbabwe? We believe there are no affirmative responses to either of these questions.
The second possible method by which Mugabe can be deposed is through peaceful mass uprisings or demonstrations. Do we have the capacity as Zimbabweans to execute these? What do the gallant efforts of the NCA and WOZA teach us. How many of us join their brave marches? How many Zimbabweans joined the soldiers when they went on the rampage on the streets of Harare?
It is clear that the appetite for an ‘Orange Revolution’ in Zimbabwe has still to be developed, before a mass uprising becomes a realistic platform to drive Mugabe out. Our politicians within the opposition movement also have to be ready to assume the sacrifices that this option entails. Where political leaders go into hiding at the slightest threat of persecution, we fail to see how this option can be brought to fruition.
This leaves us with the third and only avenue for the departure of Mugabe, that is, through free and fair elections. The question then becomes how do we achieve a free and fair election in Zimbabwe? Certainly not through demanding harmonised elections today which will be conducted under June 27 conditions. Needless to say, in such a plebiscite, Mugabe will capture the Presidency and the current combined opposition majority in Parliament will be completely reversed.
Let us be strategic. Our people and country are not election ready at the moment. We need to go through a transitional period in which we resolve the humanitarian crisis afflicting our people, carry out national healing, begin economic recovery, and more importantly adopt a new people-driven democratic constitution. This is the bridge that Zimbabwe needs in its march to democracy. After that, we can then carry out free and fair elections. If Mugabe participates in those elections, he will be defeated. This is the only practical way that will lead to Mugabe’s departure.
The Global Political Agreement of September 15, 2008, seeks to facilitate such a possibility. Folks, this is as good as it gets. Unfortunately, Mugabe will have to be part of the transition, as we explain in the next section. Brown and Bush must get over their foolish, uninformed and unstrategic obsession with Mugabe going today. If they cannot explicitly articulate how they are going to remove him, they should please just back off, and allow our country to move on. We have to save Zimbabwean lives that are being lost needlessly.
Why Mugabe Cannot Go Away Through Talks
The election results from March 29, 2008, produced no outright winner both in Parliament and at the Presidency. The June 27 re-run was an illegitimate farce, so we are stuck with the March inconclusive outcome. As democrats, we must accept that this means that Mugabe and his party are as much a factor as Tsvangirai and his party are.
Short of a new set of elections or change of leadership by their parties, it means neither Tsvangirai nor Mugabe can be negotiated away. On what basis can we have a negotiated agreement that excludes Robert Mugabe? If we accept the March results as legitimate, he is a leader of a party which has 99 MPs vs. 100 for MDC-T, 30 Senators vs. 24 for MDC-T. He came second to Tsvangirai, 43.2% vs. 47.8%. More importantly Mugabe currently possesses the Presidency of Zimbabwe, yes illegitimately. Well, at law they say that possession is 90% of ownership.
The fact that Mugabe has this power of incumbency is the reason why Arthur Mutambara is still on trial in the Supreme Court, Tendai Biti has treason charges around his neck, activists are being abducted, and Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister-designate, had a torrid time getting a passport. This means Mugabe is in charge of the Zimbabwean State. Given this reality on the ground, and the electoral outcome of March 29, 2008, (which because of our lack of strategic thinking we have all sanitised as a legitimate outcome), it is foolishness to think that you can negotiate Mugabe out of power, and somehow miraculously achieve a power sharing arrangement that excludes him.
In terms of democratic practice it will be unjust, and in terms of real politick it will be impossible. Oh yes, on the basis of the March 29 results, Mugabe should be part of any power sharing transitional authority in Zimbabwe, since he is President of a Party well represented in both legislative houses, and he came second in the inconclusive Presidential race. We might not like these democratic circumstances, but we have to live with that reality.
Politics is an art of the possible, as Bismarck once famously said. In the current Zimbabwean political landscape, the possibilities belong to both Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai. They need each other. We can debate the specific role that Mugabe should play. For now that debate was settled by Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara when they signed the Global Political Agreement (GPA). Mugabe is President-designate and Morgan Tsvangirai is Prime Minister-designate. But, are we saying that GPA is the only show in town? No, absolutely not.
Alternative Frameworks to the GPA
A lot of debates and thinking has gone into crafting alternatives to the agreement of September 15, 2008. Unfortunately, it has been a comedy of errors and unsophisticated hallucinations. Even well respected international bodies like the International Crisis Group (ICG) have been found miserably wanting. Renowned conflict resolution experts, civic society leaders and Western pundits have shown astonishing lack of creativity and imagination.
The starting point in establishing an alternative path for Zimbabwe consists of grasping a clear understanding of why we are having challenges in implementing the current GPA. The new formulation must then robustly illustrate how it will avoid these current challenges. Beyond this, the efficacy, process details, timelines and milestones of any new strategy must then be clearly articulated. None of the critics of the current GPA has even begun to do any of the above.
Among a number of obstacles to consummation, the major challenge we have faced in executing the Zimbabwean GPA is the inability to achieve sufficient buy-in from the two major protagonists in the political impasse: Zanu PF and MDC-T. They are the critical players in any national transitional discussion, because any agreed arrangement will require legal effect through a constitutional amendment in parliament. Such a change will require a two thirds majority which can only be achieved by the participation of both Zanu PF and MDC-T, as a minimum requirement.
None of the proposals from the ICG, the civic society groups (both national and regional), or the arrogant and ignorant international community has addressed this simple challenge: How are you going to ensure that both MDC-T and Zanu PF will embrace your new grand proposal? If one or both of them do not accept your framework what are you going to do? Please, this is commonsensical. Anyone seeking to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis democratically and within the laws of Zimbabwe must apply their mind to this critical success factor: the show stopper.
The busy bodies at the ICG and in civic society do not even have the capacity to appreciate the existence of the problem, much less the intellect to develop the requisite solution. We are not saying it is impossible to develop an alternative negotiated framework to the September GPA. We are emphasising that it will require good and rigorously working minds to come up with one.
The reasons why we insist on fixing and then implementing the current flawed and imperfect GPA is because at some point the buy-in between the two key protagonist was achieved through the signatures of the MOU on July 21, 2008, and the GPA on September 15, 2008. Yes, there are disagreements now, but there are two agreed reference points. The key players and their teams have been actively negotiating the political impasse from March 29, 2008, and now four months after signing the GPA there are still implementation challenges.
Yes, this is bad and regrettable. However, let us be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water. If we adopt a completely new process, how and when are we going to convince the two key players to start working towards an MOU? Are you going to get that MOU signed soon, and after that how much time will be required to get to a new GPA of sorts? Furthermore, while we embark on these new processes that require time and resources what will be happening to the suffering people of Zimbabwe, the collapsed economy, and the destroyed industrial base? Given the hardened positions of the two protagonists at the moment, can you even begin to sell the new path to them?
The most bizarre, irritating and clearly ineffective critics of the current GPA are those that premise their proposals by denouncing one of the two key protagonists. Usually it is Mugabe and his Zanu PF who are dismissed. How do you even conceptualise a negotiated outcome without the involvement of the Zanu PF group? We thought it was common cause that you do not make peace with your friends, but with your opponents.
One would expect someone of Jendayi Frazer’s stature to understand all this. How does she say that the US supports the negotiated power sharing, but insists that Mugabe must not be involved? Making these statements while defying the consistent advice that she received from all the South African leaders that she interacted with means that Frazer is insulting the SA leadership at every level. By this disrespectful conduct, she is humiliating both SADC and the AU.
In this situation, with respect to the US-proposed dialogue framework, who will be the principals, negotiators, facilitators and guarantors? South Africa is the only country with leverage on Zimbabwe. To bring any kind of change in Zimbabwe you have to work with SA, and not insult or humiliate them. Anyone serious about the Zimbabwean agenda must grasp this.
Jendayi, I assume that she is supportive of Mr Tsvangirai and she wants him to succeed. Does she actually have any respect for him? He signed the GPA in which Mugabe is designated as the President. Is it that she thinks Mr. Tsvangirai does not know what is good for him and therefore she has to lead him every step of the way?
By the way, it is not true that the US government supported the agreement when it was signed. For the record, both the US and the UK were opposed to the GPA from the beginning. They did not like the fact that Mugabe was both Head of State and Chairman of Cabinet, and they despised the GPA positions on land reform and sanctions. Everyone knows this. We are not children.
The US and the UK are now taking advantage of the delay in implementation of the agreement to savage and destroy the GPA. Do Frazer and her government have a workable alternative framework to the current GPA, together with an enforcement mechanism? And what is this that she said about the weakness and incompetence of her favorite GPA principal? Did she not say the following; “Tsvangirai is too weak and incompetent for us to allow him to be in an inclusive government with Mugabe. He will be completely outmaneuvered. Tsvangirai is not as strong as Odinga. If he was, we would have allowed him to get into the GNU with Mugabe?”
How can she possibly say such insulting remarks about her favorite opposition leader? With friends like these, who needs enemies? Incidentally, did she share her views about Tsvangirai with him? Why not? Anyway, who is she to allow or disallow African leaders? Does the US government have locus standi to do this? From where does she derive such legal, political or moral authority? Would a reverse scenario where international players seek to influence US politics be acceptable to the US?
Jendayi, can’t you see that you are ruining the opposition you seek to assist, and strengthening Mugabe that you seek to destroy? You are foolishly confirming everything that Mugabe has said about the opposition: that we are puppets. Moreover, Mugabe’s strengths are Africa, Pan-Africanism and anti-Imperialism. Any foreign policy that undermines African leaders and African institutions plays right into Mugabe’s game plan. Why can’t Western diplomats master these basics? Why do we have a premonition that most of the destructive grandstanding by Western governments is meant for their domestic constituencies?
More specifically, US foreign policy is always characterised by double standards, hypocrisy and dishonesty all rooted in the pursuit of US permanent interests. We seriously hope that incoming US President Obama and his new team will depart from this ignorant, ruinous and ineffective foreign policy that effectively undermines its intended beneficiaries, strengthens the targeted villains, while blighting the US standing in the World.
Things have to change in 2009. We are not naïve. We know that the general thrust of the US foreign policy objective is largely independent of both the individual who is the US President and the Party they belong to. However, we hope the policy execution, nuances and tactics will be different. Zimbabweans have great expectations.
Collapse of the Mugabe Regime
It is clear that the Mugabe regime will not collapse because of economic decay, mass starvation or epidemics such as cholera. The formal economy collapsed way back when. The regime survives on the informal sector and through rent-seeking behaviours. Yes, ordinary people are perishing and will continue to do so, but the regime will not collapse. Can we all come to grips with this?
The diamonds of Chiadzwa, the Platinum Mines, and assistance from friendly nations such as DRC, Angola, China and Russia will see the regime pull through another 5-10 years. Of course this will be at major cost to the population. Zimbabweans should care about this.
However, to the external players that suggest that we must wait for the collapse of the regime at any cost, the needless loss of life in pursuit of the departure of Mugabe is a small price to pay. After all, the lives lost are Black lives which are not equivalent to White lives. Since September 15, 2008, we have had Western governments encouraging the continuation of suffering and death of our people in the misguided belief that this will lead to the collapse of the Mugabe regime. Well, this will not happen, and our people are dying in vain. All Zimbabwean leaders must understand this.
We must collectively take responsibility for the calamity afflicting our country. In particular, Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai are equally culpable for the failure to work together. They are effectively working against the interests of their supporters and the generality of our citizenry. The two leaders are more concerned about a misguided power play executed at the expense of Zimbabwean lives. They have blood on their hands. The US and UK governments who are specifically undermining SADC efforts to establish an inclusive government in Zimbabwe are complicit in this crime against humanity.
In the case of these Western governments, they are driven by racism and utter disrespect for African lives. As Africans, our position is that not a single Zimbabwean life should be used as a stick to inflict pain on Robert Mugabe. People’s lives are too important to be used as ineffective political tools and weapons. We all know that Mugabe will not collapse because of cholera, mass starvation and a collapsed economy, so why are we supporting this ineffective strategy?
Nevertheless, let us deceive ourselves for a moment and assume the game plan works and the Mugabe regime actually collapses through the existing crisis. Why are we assuming that such a demise of Mugabe will lead to a democratic outcome? We saw what happened in Guinea when their dictator died. Did the opposition take over? Nope. If the Mugabe regime collapses, it is most likely that the army will take over. Some ambitious and gutsy colonel or general will step in. Our democratisation processes will, resultantly, regress at least 10 years.
There is absolutely no way Tsvangirai and his Party will be the beneficiaries of the collapse of Robert Mugabe. Quite to the contrary, the Zanu PF regime will make sure they collapse together with Tsvangirai and MDC-T. Do the current abductions, confessions and dubious trials of activists mean anything to anyone? MDC-T will not exist after the demise of Mugabe. I hope Tsvangirai understands this in no uncertain terms. I wish our brazen and unintelligent Western friends will do more listening and thinking.
This Mugabe must collapse strategy is not in the best interest of Zimbabwe. A regime change agenda achieved through a scorched earth policy is not what we need in our country. It will not benefit anyone. As Zimbabweans, we should think seriously about options that will allow us to continue to build, brick by brick, our democratic institutions.
Opportunity for a New Beginning
The year 2009 presents us with an opportunity for a new beginning. However, for this to be achieved, we have to learn some difficult lessons from inconvenient truths. We have to do things differently. We must embrace self-criticism as part of our best practices, and adopt an interrogative and questioning attitude to all stakeholders, including those that purport to support our struggles and our national interest.
In the struggle for a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Zimbabwe, it is not enough to be right. It is not enough to be a victim or to have the higher moral authority. The victims must behave well. Those with moral high ground must be driven by principles and values. Those on the right side of history must be thoughtful and strategic. Those that support victims of despotic regimes must apply their analytical skills. Good heart, bad mind will not cut it.
In all this, we must always put the people first. We must cherish servant leadership. Only then can we succeed. While external players and events affect our country, we must take responsibility for our own circumstances. We should be at the centre of our struggles and be the drivers of our nation building processes. We must have enough leadership strength to define and determine both the terms of reference and frameworks through which foreigners participate in the affairs of our nation.
In 2009, Zimbabweans must set the agenda and own the rules of the game. We must be masters of our own destiny. The critique of external influences that has been proffered should not be used to absolve us as citizens. We as Zimbabweans, created the current socio-political and economic crisis, and we will be the primary drivers and developers of the sustainable answers. And yes, a people do get a government that they deserve. Let us all be the change we wish to see in the year 2009.
Arthur G.O. Mutambara is president of MDC
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