Zimbabwe doomed as long as Mugabe stays on

Zimbabwe doomed as long as Mugabe stays on

 By Jonathan Moyo

ALTHOUGH President Robert Mugabe has of late been displaying bravado by ruthlessly attacking in public some Zanu PF contenders for his 27-year tainted rule, such as Joice Mujuru, and unleashing violence against opposition politicians in police cells, while giving the impression he is still like an invincible lion, the inescapable home truth visible to all and sundry is that he is now behaving like a cornered rat whose quandary is that every escape route it tries is a dead-end.

This became clear after his astonishing yet revealing indication last week that he is set to dissolve parliament in the next few months to enable him to yet again stand for re-election under controversial circumstances that are certain to widen and deepen Zanu PF divisions.

At best, the threatened dissolution of parliament which has angered Zanu PF MPs is designed to give Mugabe assured campaign assistance from the ruling party's parliamentary hopefuls who would be forced to support his divisive candidacy in joint presidential and parliamentary elections he wants to call well before the expiry of his current term in March 2008.

But there could be another sinister agenda to resuscitate Mugabe's dead 2010 plan.

In effect, Mugabe does not want to be succeeded by anybody. Zanu PF factional leaders who imagine that they are Mugabe's preferred successors are living in a fools' paradise because Mugabe does not want any successor.

This is because in his book there will never be a vacancy for the presidency as a long as he is alive.

Witness how, because he has no shame in putting himself above Zimbabwe, Mugabe has become so determined to play all sorts of dirty games in his shocking quest to find any pretext to justify his ambition to remain in office and rule for life. As a result, his public pronouncements have become an embarrassing tale of flip-flops.

In December 2004 he was settling to retire in 2008 while publicly putting his weight behind Joice Mujuru as his designated successor whom he had clumsily imposed on the hierarchy of Zanu PF and government against laid down rules and procedures and to the detriment of the democratic process inside the ruling party.

But by December 2006 at the Zanu PF annual conference in Goromonzi the same Mugabe had changed tack as he was now bad-mouthing Mujuru and asking for a two-year extension of his rule under a deceitful plan to harmonise presidential and parliamentary elections in 2010.

Come March 2007, against the background of a decisive rejection by his own party of his sinister 2010 plan, Mugabe is now asking for a fresh and full presidential term while threatening to cause chaos and mayhem in Zanu PF by dissolving parliament in what is an utterly reckless pursuit of power for its own sake.

Besides his personal and maybe family interest, there is no ideological content, no policy thrust and no enduring national agenda or principle behind Mugabe's latest bid to extend and further entrench his rule through a self-indulgent re-election campaign that would require a premature and ill-advised dissolution of parliament. Even the usual anti-Blair gibberish would not do because Tony Blair is leaving office this July.

And the notion that the defence of Zimbabwe's sovereignty or land reform is possible only if Mugabe is in office is now a silly joke that is not funny. What everyone can now see and understand is that Zimbabwe is doomed as long as Mugabe remains in office. This is not a realisation of people who hate him but people who love Zimbabwe more and who want to put their country first and above any individual.

Yet Mugabe's indication that he will now seek re-election is revealing and most welcome in so far as it validates the fact which he has thus far strenuously denied that his earlier plan to scrap the 2008 presidential election under the pretext of harmonising parliamentary and presidential polls in 2010 was indeed designed to extend and entrench his rule via the backdoor.

What is now clear is that Mugabe believes he needs not two but at least five more years in power which he hopes will translate into a lifetime of his rule to secure immunity from likely prosecution for his alleged human rights violations and other indiscretions.

What this means is that, along with some of his Zanu PF succession contenders who think they are his preferred choice, Mugabe is also now living in a fools' paradise since he apparently does not realise that he has put himself in an untenable lose-lose situation whether it's heads or tails, given that what most people in and outside Zanu PF now want is for him to retire in the national interest.

Mugabe's determination to remain in office until death do him part is apparently driven by a fatal combination of old age, his unquenchable thirst for power, his having a young wife with young children and his getting sycophantic advice from unscrupulous politicians, incompetent bureaucrats and delinquent propagandists all influenced by insecure and increasingly nervous securocrats who are better informed about political developments on the ground and who can see that Mugabe's empire is crumbling.

It is notable that, unlike the dead 2010 proposal which was initially championed by Nathan Shamuyarira who is now conspicuous by his silence on all major issues, Mugabe's latest bid to extend his rule by standing for re-election did not emanate from Zanu PF structures but came direct from his embattled office using the government-controlled media. This is because the desperate bid does not have structural or political support within Zanu PF.

There are some roving Zanu PF political schemers who fancy themselves as kingmakers and who have been hoping and jumping from one faction to another since 2004 and who now, because they are still shopping around either for a leader or a factional home within the ruling party, are encouraging Mugabe to stand for re-election with the promise of their campaign support. These schemers are using their alleged support for Mugabe as a convenient weapon to block the presumed political interests of Joice Mujuru, Emmerson Mnangagwa and Gideon Gono.

Among these Zanu PF schemers are the likes of Elliot Manyika, Nicholas Goche, Sydney Sekeramayi, Oppah Muchinguri, Saviour Kasukuwere and Patrick Chinamasa who, by virtue of his ministerial portfolio, is drafting the legal instrument to facilitate Mugabe's re-election bid that would include the unpopular dissolution of parliament.

Most of them want Mugabe to stay for their own self-interest, not because they think that he is a good leader.

As influential leaders of the Zanu PF youth and women's leagues respectively, Kasukuwere and Muchinguri are key to Mugabe's controversial re-election bid and they are expected to provide powerful endorsements from their leagues. But their tasks will be more than a tall order because the majority of the youth and women in Zanu PF are saying they have had enough of Mugabe whom they accuse of failing to turn around the economy which has become Mugabe's effective opposition.

Against this backdrop, it appears that Mugabe's bid to seek re-election is intended as a ploy to regain lost political leverage in the negotiation stakes for his failed 2010 plan which he hopes to resuscitate through the bid. His strategy is to threaten to dissolve parliament in order to render every Zanu PF politician currently in public office as politically insecure and vulnerable as he himself has become.

Mugabe's hope is that by spreading his political insecurity to make it a shared threat within the leadership of his party, Zanu PF critics of his 2010 plan would be forced to rethink their opposition purely for reasons of safeguarding their own positions which are now in jeopardy as a result of Mugabe's re-election bid.

But Mugabe is in a zero sum quandary. What complicates the game plan for him to the point of being left behaving like a cornered rat, despite his roaring posture of a lion, is that, whether it's about his wish for a two-year extension of his rule under his old 2010 plan or his quest for a fresh and full presidential term under his new 2008 re-election bid that would be preceded by the unpopular dissolution of parliament, there is one irreversible constant: the growing chorus within Zanu PF's rank and file for him to retire now as a statesman or face the inevitability of a humiliating exit at the polls, as happened to Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia, or worse, be thrown out through chaos and mayhem, as happened to Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire.

The 'useful idiot' has gone too far this time

The 'useful idiot' has gone too far this time

By Prof Jonathan Moyo

IS PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe an ethnic bigot masquerading as a nationalist?

This admittedly very unhappy and most uncomfortable question is raised not out of any petulant disrespect or mischief but out of grave national concern given the persistence of inflammatory tribal bigotry by George Charamba, Mugabe’s spokesperson, in his weekly column “The Other Side” which he writes under the cover of the poison pen of Nathaniel Manheru in the Herald on Saturdays.

Charamba’s inflammatory tribalism would ordinarily go unnoticed but for the fact that he is Mugabe’s trusted and loyal personal spokesperson with no track record of ever holding independent opinions that are his alone. Charamba speaks for Mugabe. Put differently, Mugabe speaks through Charamba.

This is consistent with the fact that Charamba is a civil servant appointed as a government bureaucrat who should serve everyone without regard to their political affiliation, ethnicity or any other social or natural condition or division. Charamba is not a politician, elected or otherwise, and he thus does not represent anybody in government, not even himself. He only represents Mugabe as his spokesperson or mouthpiece.

Therefore, the views expressed in the column in question by Charamba are supposed and certainly are intended to project, articulate and defend Mugabe’s thinking and policies on major issues of national interest. I know this as someone directly familiar with the origins and purpose of the Nathaniel Manheru column in the Herald which was started under my watch when I was minister of information.

Against this backdrop, there is a feature of Charamba’s pro-Mugabe column which has been recurring over the last 12 or so months to the point of forming a disturbing if not alarming pattern. This has to do with the column’s crude tribal bigotry sometimes coupled with equally crude gender bigotry presented by Charamba in Mugabe’s name.

The latest example of this tribal bigotry is in Charamba’s current installment of his column published by the Herald last Saturday (July 8, 2006) and targeted at this writer.

Apparently stung by the real issues against Mugabe in an article I wrote last Friday (July 7, 2006) in the Zimbabwe Independent unraveling Mugabe’s ideological and policy contradictions behind the so-called mediation between Zimbabwe and Britain by former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa, Charamba yet again used inflammatory tribal bigotry in Mugabe’s defence.

In essence, Charamba’s response to my article is to assert that I have no right to criticize or challenge Mugabe from the “anthills of Mazowe” where my family is doing agriculture on 627 hectares we are currently developing from previously derelict land last used for grazing purposes, because I am from Matabeleland and thus belong to a clan “whose lineage never dreamt of having land in the heartland of Mashonaland of Zimbabwe”.

This is tribal bigotry at its worst.

But where is this tribal bigotry coming from? Do Charamba and President Mugabe whom he represents really imagine that they can ever get away with this kind of scandalous and unacceptable tribal intimidation?

This kind of crude tribal bigotry coming from Mugabe’s office at this juncture in Zimbabwe’s troubled history after the evils of Gukurahundi and Murambatsvina may explain why Mugabe and his cronies like Charamba remain liable to being held accountable for committing crimes against humanity. Tribal bigotry is a crime against humanity.

For anyone to boldly assert that it takes some “cheek” for a Zimbabwean from Matabeleland to criticize Mugabe from the “anthills of Mazowe” in the heartland of Mashonaland is crudely tribal and very inflammatory. Assertions of this nature can incite tribal hatred and violence.

In fact, you cannot get a better indication or expression of Mugabe’s Bantustan ideology than this. And when Mugabe’s pretences to nationalism are questioned, the same cronies like Charamba who peddle Mugabe’s Bantustan ideology cry foul. Yet Zimbabweans who worry about Mugabe’s tribal nationalism or ethnonationalism know only too well that it is this same Bantustan ideology that bred the Gukurahundi atrocities between 1980 and 1987 and the Murambatsvina atrocities in 2005.

These atrocities were a product of hallucinations of ethnic challenges to Mugabe’s power. In the case of Gukurahundi, Mugabe’s tribal hallucination led to the massacre of over 20,000 people in the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces and the destruction of homes and livelihood of many more. On July 1, 2000 Mugabe described Gukurahundi as madness at the first anniversary of Joshua Nkomo’s death in Bulawayo. Indeed, it was ethnic madness. But six years later Mugabe has done nothing to deal with the visible scars and still bleeding open wounds of that ethnic madness. Why this inaction for so long? Does Charamba’s shocking tribal rant in the Herald last Saturday give a clue to what Mugabe thinks about people from Matabeleland and their rights as Zimbabweans?

There are similar questions around the evil Operation Murambatsvina founded on Mugabe’s ethnic hallucination that some urban Zimbabweans he has previously ethnically insulted as “totemless” were about to use Ukrainian style orange revolution tactics to rise up against his government after the March 2005 parliamentary elections. Like in the case of Gukurahundi, the response was to ethnically uproot these Zimbabweans from their homes and sources of their livelihood with the result that 18% of the population was rendered destitute by Murambatsvina.

Even the so-called Tsholotsho saga of November 18, 2004, was a direct result of Mugabe’s ethnic hallucination when members of his party from at least six provinces who thought they had a right to freely and democratically choose the party’s leadership in terms of the Zanu PF constitution were accused of and punished for allegedly plotting a tribal coup against Mugabe and his ethnic cronies.

What the above three examples show is that tribal bigotry runs so deep in Mugabe’s politics that thoughtless cronies like Charamba cannot free themselves from it. That bigotry is now rearing its ugly head over the already controversial land reform program with shocking calls, exemplified by Charamba’s column in the Herald last Saturday, that people from Matabeleland with land in Mashonaland should not have the tribal cheek to criticize or challenge Mugabe. This is pure Bantustan politics with no national content whatsoever.

It is very clear from Charamba’s regurgitation of Mugabe’s Bantustan ideology that there are just too many things that are very wrong with Zanu PF’s patronage driven land reform program, including that it is apparently tribal. The fact that Charamba has the idiotic courage to blurt out this tribal bigotry in the Herald means that he gets his confidence from his knowledge that the Bantustan ideology he peddles under the pretext of nationalism and sovereignty which breeds tribal bigotry comes from his boss whom he speaks and writes for.

Do Mugabe’s cronies like Charamba really believe that Zimbabweans from Matabeleland should not have land in Mashonaland and that if they should have it they should not criticize or challenge Mugabe to whom they must be grateful? If they believe this tribal bigotry, what are its implications on Zimbabweans from Mashonaland who have land in Matabeleland?

And there are many Zimbabweans from Mashonaland with prime land in the choicest parts of Matabeleland. Go to Umguza in Matabeleland North around the very fertile Nyamandlovu Aquifer farming area, and you will find many Zimbabweans from Mashonaland there. You will also find them in very large numbers if you look at who controls the best hunting and tourist safaris in places like Hwange, Binga and Victoria Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world. In Matabeleland South you will find many Zimbabweans from Mashonaland with huge stakes in gold mining.

Should people in Matabeleland follow Charamba’s idiocy coming from Mugabe’s office and ask whether the lineage of those Zimbabweans from Mashonaland who are farming, mining gold or operating hunting and tourist safaris in the choicest parts of Matabeleland ever dreamt of having land there?

What is even of greater national concern about Charamba’s tribal bigotry in his Herald column in defence of Mugabe’s failed policies and false nationalism is that it now has a tribal pattern with many shocking examples which include the following.

If you take a careful look at the installments of the column published over the last 12 months in the Herald on Saturdays, you will be shocked to notice that Charamba has been systematically using the column to inflame tribal emotions for Mugabe’s political purposes. He has over the time preposterously claimed that Matabeleland region is not geographically, culturally or tribally synonymous with the Ndebele whom he has referred to in disparaging colonial terms as the “clicking people”.

In one of his many tribal attacks on Welshman Ncube and Gibson Sibanda in the same column over the last 12 months, Charamba has challenged the two opposition politicians from Matabeleland to prove that they are Nguni and therefore Ndebele in a vain attempt to prove his own stupid view that Matabeleland region is not synonymous with the Ndebele people whom he considers to be foreign to Zimbabwe. One need not wonder how Charamba and his boss would react if Mugabe were challenged to prove that he is a Zezuru let alone a Shona or a Zimbabwean.

As if this is not bad enough, reading through a number of installments of Charamba’s column over the last 12 months, readers would be shocked to find his scandalous tribal references to Ndebele women as mere sexual objects.

Other women who are not Ndebele but who have strong roots in Matabeleland have not been spared either from Charamba’s bigotry. At one time he dismissed Edna Machirori as a “menopausal” columnist after she criticized President Thabo Mbeki for not acting decisively against Mugabe. Machirori is the former editor of the Sunday News and Chronicle in Bulawayo who now writes a regular column under the pen name of Mavis Makuni in the Financial Gazette.

The question must be asked again, where does Charamba get the courage and confidence to use his Herald column on Saturdays to fan tribal and gender hatred in the manner he has done over the last 12 months?

One thing for sure is that Charamba does not get that courage and confidence from himself. Apart from being a coward who can only say the bigotry he has written only under the cover of a pen name, he is not a man of ideas by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, he does not have any ideas. He has words, yes, and he thinks those words are ideas.

This is because Charamba is a poorly schooled wordsmith who suffers from the folly of thinking that words are synonymous with ideas. That is why he cannot tell the difference between expressing himself through ideas and impressing readers through words.

Because he does not know the difference between words and ideas, Charamba is typically thoughtless and is prone to debating individuals and their personal lives and social identities through the use of what he imagines are fancy words ironically uplifted from Victorian literature. Charamba’s information about individuals is always based on the gossip of and rumors from state security agents and never on direct knowledge. This is why his information is often unreliable.

All of Charamba’s installments in the Herald on Saturdays are unique for their consistent failure to engage those he lampoons in a sustained debate of ideas, issues, facts, policies or ideologies. He invariably takes pot shots at individuals in very personally intrusive terms and always abusively so. He uses his Manheru disguise to invent things and peddle outright falsehoods about the individuals that have been the focus of his demonization over the last 12 months.

For example, in his tribal attack on me last Saturday, he found it necessarily to drag my wife into his bigotry. Does he dream that anyone is afraid of him or his boss? The fact that some of us who know better have not said anything about how abusive Charamba is of his vulnerable wife does not mean we are fools. We come from communities that know something about common decency.

But if Charamba continues to throw dirty mud at people’s families and insulting their ethnicity to fan tribal hatred, then he must prepare himself and his boss for real disclosures on the way. Zimbabweans would be told many things about everything including how Charamba has attempted to murder his wife in cold blood and how that attempted murder has been covered up. And the disgusting bloody evidence would be given because it is available. This is not a threat but a promise.

Last Saturday Charamba wrote in the Herald as Nathaniel Manheru that I should not lecture Mkapa on Zimbabwean politics allegedly because I was a “petty refugee” in Tanzania when Mkapa was that country’s foreign minister during the Lancaster talks. He also charged that I should defer to Mkapa because he was president of his country when I was a mere government minister in Zimbabwe! This demonstrates how thoroughly thoughtless and shallow Charamba. It also demonstrates how Mugabe has failed to groom his mouthpieces and why he has failed to groom a successor.

Charamba is so empty headed that he cannot understand the simple fact that every ordinary Zimbabwean has an absolute right to lecture Benjamin Mkapa or any other foreigner on Zimbabwean politics. The same absolute right is enjoyed by Zimbabweans who were not yet born when Mkapa was Tanzania’s foreign minister in 1979, let alone me who supposedly was a refugee in Tanzania at the time when in fact I was studying in America. Indeed, regardless of their background, Zimbabweans also have an absolute right to lecture Mugabe himself on national politics.

Another example of Charamba’s thoughtlessness displayed in his column last Saturday is his defence of Mugabe’s desperation for settlement talks with Britain through Mkapa’s mediation under the self-serving but false argument that “…we have been and still are dealing with an outstanding colonial question, namely that of land…”.

The fact of the matter is that there is a world of difference between the colonial question and the neocolonial question. Zimbabwe’s hard won independence addressed the colonial question which led to the liberation struggle. The discharge of that hard won independence through sovereignty and democratic governance along with dynamic and sound economic policies should address the neocolonial question. It does not make any sense for the postcolonial state to address the neocolonial question by going back to the colonial question as if Zimbabwe is not an independent country. This is because the colonial and neocolonial questions are structurally different. It may very well be asking too much to expect Charamba and his boss to understand or grasp this.

Despite the foregoing, Charamba’s tribally inflammatory Manheru column in the Herald on Saturdays is not altogether useless. In fact it has been a gold mine as a media and diplomatic source of juicy state secrets and other information about goings on in government. This is because there have been numerous occasions when Charamba has thoughtlessly used his column to leak juicy tit bits he overhears at the Monday briefing meetings and other encounters with Mugabe which he attends with state securocrats and other key bureaucrats.

That’s how Charamba got to hear for example that the CIO hatched the Murambatsvina plot with Mugabe without the input of key government decision making processes such as cabinet. Charamba leaked that to New African magazine and in his Manheru column. He also used the same column to leak the information that Zimbabwe had found a mediator outside the UN’s Kofi Annan and he named Benjamin Mkapa as that mediator long before the Banjul meeting between Annan and Mugabe.

There are many other examples of Charamba’s juicy leaks which have been so useful that some media circles in Zimbabwe have acknowledged Charamba’s help in filling them in on what’s happening in government by nicknaming him as “the useful idiot” because he gives hostage to fortune.

But others in the Zanu PF politburo and yet some in government, especially in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, have not been amused by Charamba’s reckless leaks in the Manheru column. They view Charamba as a double agent with dubious British links made during his days as a graduate student in Britain when he was on study leave from the president’s office sponsored by the British government whose hysterical dislike he now simulates with reckless abandon. The strong and growing feeling in these government and Zanu PF circles is that Charamba makes juicy leaks of state secrets in his Herald column on Saturdays to deliberately harm the Zanu PF government by cleverly forearming Mugabe’s detractors.

Only time will tell which is which. Meanwhile Charamba must wise up to the fact that his use of tribal bigotry and inflammatory intrusion into people’s families and personal matters has gone too far and will not be tolerated further. He should convey the same to his boss who stands to lose the most.

Mugabe's endorsement irresponsible

Mugabe's endorsement irresponsible

By Prof Jonathan Moyo

IF President Robert Mugabe truly and honestly believes that he is a serious presidential candidate in the general election scheduled for March 2008 and that he can best govern this battered country until 2013 should he win, then he miserably failed to demonstrate that at the controversial Zanu PF extraordinary congress which started late yesterday afternoon.

The simple truth is that Mugabe has no national reason to seek reelection and that Zanu PF is being particularly irresponsible by allowing him to do that in a disgraceful manner as shown yesterday at the special congress.

So pathetic was Mugabe’s performance that when he was formally declared the ruling party’s presidential candidate, fair-minded Zimbabweans in and outside Zanu PF who had or still have a soft spot for him for one reason or another did not know whether to laugh or cry.

The televised ill-fated declaration was as unwise and as sad as a different but morally equivalent event some 29 years ago when an aged and out-of-shape Muhammad Ali unwisely agreed to defend his world heavy weight boxing title against a young and agile Leon Spinks who went on to clobber and humiliate him on February 15 1978.

Because Zanu PF’s irresponsibility has caused it to fail to protect the national interest and because Mugabe is apparently determined to thrive under that failure in pursuit of his personal ambition to be president for life, it is now up to Zimbabweans across the political divide to rise to the challenge by finding a united front to stop Mugabe and his cronies from turning their self-indulgence into a national catastrophe.

Before he was declared as the Zanu PF candidate yesterday, Mugabe opened the Zanu PF special congress with an uncharacteristically insipid speech, delivered in a cracking voice and notable for its shocking incoherence, irrelevance and lack of inspiration. His rambling speech sent a clear, loud and very worrying message to bemused delegates that Mugabe now represents an unhappy past.

But if Mugabe’s speech was pathetic from the point of view of someone who desperately needed to convince his special congress delegates and the television audience that he has what is required to solve the nation’s daunting problems many of which have been caused by him or during his controversial rule over the last 27 years, the proceedings that followed his uninspiring speech proved beyond any doubt that the Zanu PF special congress was a charade.

Consider the following: Mugabe’s hopeless speech, which was full of the same old clichés he has been saying over and over again to no useful end, was immediately followed by a perfunctory tabling of the central committee report for adoption by Vice President Joice Mujuru who had the appearance of someone who was so removed from it all that she could not care less. Her dutiful act was followed by long-winded and useless vote of thanks from Vice President Joseph Msika whose essence was to confirm that the Zanu PF presidium would be better consigned in a museum than anywhere else in a properly functioning society, let alone a democratic one.

When the presidium was done, the secretary for legal affairs, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was asked to announce the main purpose of the special congress and he outlined two. First, he said that the special congress was being asked to ratify constitutional amendment 18 and he narrated the background to its enactment by the Parliament of Zimbabwe which he situated in the Sadc mandated South African led talks between Zanu PF and the two MDC factions.

What was shocking is that Minister Mnangagwa did not seem to appreciate the absurdity of asking a Zanu PF congregation, with no standing in our Constitution whatsoever, to ratify an Act of the Parliament of Zimbabwe. The matter would have been different and even understandable if he had asked the Zanu PF special congress to ratify decisions of the Zanu PF central committee in support of processes, including the inter-party dialogue, leading to the enactment of Amendment 18.

Someone needs to tell Zanu PF’s manipulative barons that once a law has been enacted by the Parliament of Zimbabwe, and assented to by the President, only the courts can pronounce themselves on that law one way or the other. No other body has the competence to ratify or do anything else about that law besides abiding by it.

After the absurd and meaningless ratification of Amendment 18, Minister Mnangagwa then announced that the second, and obviously most important, business of the day was to declare Mugabe as the Zanu PF presidential candidate in the 2008 presidential election allegedly "in compliance with Article 5 section 22(4) of the party’s constitution and in terms of Article 6 section 30(3) of the same constitution".

Article 5 section 22(4) of the Zanu PF constitution deals with the convening of an ordinary, not special, congress and provides that resolutions emanating from the party’s provincial structures, youth league and women’s league shall be circulated to the constituent organs of congress at least 14 days prior to the date of congress.

A number of these organs did not meet the requirement for making resolutions 14 days before the congress and some of them, like Matabeleland North, made their resolutions in support of Mugabe only last Saturday on December 8 while Masvingo reported to have done so only yesterday on the day of the congress! In the circumstances, while all the reporting organs recited Article 5 section 22(4) of the Zanu PF constitution to justify the resolutions they read in support of Mugabe, a majority of them violated that provision and shamelessly displayed their violation on national television.

In addition to this, all the reporting 10 provinces along with the youth league and women’s league claimed that they were declaring Mugabe as the candidate of the party in terms of Article 6 section 30(3) of the Zanu PF constitution which deals with the powers and functions of the national people’s conference. Section 30(3) of that article provides that the national people’s conference "shall declare the president of the party elected at congress as the state presidential candidate of the party".

What is instructive here is that this article is specifically about the powers and functions of the national conference and not congress or a special congress. It was very strange, and indeed incomprehensible, for the youth league, women’s league and 10 provinces to pretend to be following the Zanu PF constitution when they were in point of fact using a provision on the national people’s conference and mischievously conflating it with the special congress.

While those who read the strange resolutions in support of Mugabe’s candidacy did not know what they were doing and clearly are not familiar with the Zanu PF constitutional provisions that they were invoking, those who drafted the resolutions new exactly that they were manipulating the party’s constitution in order to violate it . This was done as part of the desperate efforts to impose Mugabe’s candidacy on an unwilling but helpless ruling party now incapacitated by deep divisions.

After all the organs had read the resolutions that had clearly been written for them by manipulative powers behind the scenes, Zanu PF national chairman, John Nkomo, formalised the declaration of Mugabe as the presidential candidate by acclamation.

The delegates responded by looking at each other in bewilderment. The usual chanting of slogans, singing and dancing were all forgotten. Even the singing national commissar, Elliot Manyika, remained glued to his seat looking as confused if not as sorry as everyone else. Mugabe himself looked equally perplexed and even fearful. As if there was the hand of God at work, Nkomo looked at Mugabe and sought to reassure by saying, "Cde. President we have tried".

All this was live on television. There was something about the images which seemed to foretell what we are most likely to see on the day of the results of the 2008 general election.

To any discerning observer who was either inside the special congress yesterday or who watched the charade unfold from the beginning to the end on television, it was clear that nobody in Zanu PF actually supports Mugabe’s candidacy. Everyone understands that it is wrong and the most telling statement in that regard is the holding of a sham special congress when a national people’s conference was in order.

The tragedy in Zanu PF is that its leading factions, especially those associated with Solomon Mujuru and Emmerson Mnangagwa, are now using their mutual hatred as a way of expressing their support for Mugabe. The divisions between these factions has widened and deepened as they compete to prove which faction supports Mugabe more than the other. One can only imagine what would happen if these factions were to unite against Mugabe in support of Zimbabwe.

Why Mugabe should go now

Why Mugabe should go now, by Jonathan Moyo

Source Majaira Jairosi Blog

PERENNIAL wisdom from divine revelation and human experience dictates that all earthly things great or small, beautiful or ugly, good or bad, sad or happy, foolish or wise must finally come to an end. It is from this sobering reality that the end of executive rule has finally come for Robert Mugabe who has had his better days after a quarter of a century in power.

That Mugabe must now go is thus no longer a dismissible opposition slogan but a strategic necessity that desperately needs urgent legal and constitutional action by Mugabe himself well ahead of the presidential election scheduled for March 2008 in order to safeguard Zimbabwe's national interest, security and sovereignty.

One does not need to be a malcontent to see that, after 25 years of controversial rule and with the economy melting down as a direct result of that rule, Mugabe's continued stay in office has become such an excessive burden to the welfare of the state and such a fatal danger to the public interest of Zimbabweans at home and in the diaspora that each day that goes by with him in office leaves the nation's survival at great risk while seriously compromising national sovereignty.

If there is one unified truth among otherwise divided Zimbabweans, a truth now also ringing true within key governmental and non-governmental centres of regional, continental and international opinion, it is that the country's seven-year-old economic recession will worsen as it gets wider and deeper beyond fuel shortages unless and until there is a far-reaching political settlement of the five-year-old Zimbabwean leadership question.

So what should President Mugabe do? The leader of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, says Mugabe should be dragged to the negotiating table by the likes of presidents Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo and forced to talk a political settlement with the MDC. But calling for inter-party talks now is really flogging a dead horse not least because there's really nothing to negotiate given the depth of "Mutually Assured Demonisation" (Mad) between Zanu PF and the MDC. No wonder Zanu PF and its government, gloating over reported divisions within the MDC as if they cannot feel the heat from the ethnic fires that are burning inside the ruling party, have been quick to dismiss inter-party talks by reminding Tsvangirai that his party is in parliament where a lot of talking is done.

On March 18 Trevor Ncube wrote an incisive analysis of the Zimbabwean predicament ahead of the general election in this paper which disappointingly concluded that President Mugabe was needed now as never before as the solution to the crisis gripping the country and challenged him to appoint able and dynamic deputies to succeed him.

Mugabe has publicly demonstrated his leadership incapacity to make way for an able and dynamic successor by succumbing to manipulative tribal pressure from a clique in his party on November 18, 2004 at a politburo meeting that unprocedurally and unconstitutionally amended Zanu PF's constitution to guarantee the imposition and ascendancy of Joice Mujuru to the vice-presidency three days before the Zanu PF membership was due to elect a new top leadership and central committee.

Curiously, this real coup whose tribal story has not yet been told took place on the morning of the same day during which, later in the evening, a coup plot was allegedly hatched at Dinyane High School in Tsholotsho giving rise to the so-called Tsholotsho Declaration.

"From all discernable indications, Mugabe has lost influence and is now viewed with suspicion or cynicism or both by his peers in the Sadc, African Union and across the developing world"

JONATHAN MOYO

Inter-party negotiations or appointment of able and dynamic potential successors are no longer viable options for Mugabe not only because Zimbabwe has now reached a point of no return to Zanu PF but also because the required critical solution must focus not just on Mugabe but also, and more importantly, on Zanu PF itself where there is internal dictatorship, institutionalised patronage and refusal to reform.

This leaves Mugabe with one real option that he must now exercise: to resign in terms of the constitution of the land and to allow Zimbabweans to choose a constitutional successor now. The nation is bleeding and it would be very irresponsible to expect Zimbabweans to wait until 2008 for the presidential election.

The Zanu PF proposal that the next presidential election should be held in 2010 together with parliamentary elections due then is pure political madness gone too far all because of the politics of patronage and must be rejected with all democratic and legal force possible.

Apart from the obvious yet very important fact that a voluntary constitutional resignation to make room for a constitutional successor now would indelibly guarantee him an honourable legacy and avoid the risk of looming instability in our country, the following are among compelling reasons why Mugabe must follow the constitutional exit door by resigning now.

First, Mugabe is now leader of a shelf political party that exists only in name even with those seemingly high numbers in parliament because, in real terms, the hearts and minds of the bulk of its members have ideologically emigrated to a new all-inclusive third way beyond current party boundaries, the so-called third force which in fact is a people's movement, such that Zanu PF membership is now only for strategic survival purposes in practical and not ideological terms which are temporary.

Mugabe could of course reverse this were he to resign now and give the remaining scattered faithful ones in his party some hope to inject a new dynamism before time completely runs out with the result of consigning Zanu PF to the fate suffered by Unip in Zambia, Kanu in Kenya and the MCP in Malawi.

The rot in Zanu PF smells in government where the Cabinet has become no better than a status club in which ministerial positions have no strategic policy value as they have become instruments of patronage to gain personal access to national resources and the illusion of power and influence.

This explains why government has now resorted to ruling through "GBO" (Government By Operations) led by jittery security arms, implemented an undeclared state of emergency and roped in the Reserve Bank to pursue an unprecedented law and order approach to monetary policy in order to criminalise Zimbabweans, whether as individuals, families or businesses, to make them insecure and vulnerable to inhuman and barbaric attacks in the name of restoring order reminiscent of the Gukurahundi days.

This evil has been dramatised by the destruction of houses and business properties that has affected the whole nation and invited the possibility of international intervention to the detriment of our sovereignty.

But the most compelling reasons for Mugabe to resign now have to do with his own fallen standing in and outside the country. The prevalence of unkind jokes about him on text messages and the Internet say it all. Mugabe now lacks the vision, stature and energy to effectively run the country, let alone his party. 

He is without compassion, maybe because he is now too old, too tired and not in the best of health. His failure to visit stranded families left homeless and suffering from the irrational acts of his own government speaks volumes of his cold and cruel leadership style.

From all discernable indications, Mugabe has lost influence and is now viewed with suspicion or cynicism or both by his peers in the Sadc, African Union and across the developing world where he used to enjoy considerable authority. Of course, Mugabe is still respected as an old man and he still makes very interesting bombastic speeches that are applauded for their entertainment value and which are full of sound and fury but signifying precious little at the level of policy and action.

Given the foregoing, President Mugabe has no reason whatsoever to continue in office as that is no longer in his personal interest and is most certainly not in the national interest. He just must now go and the fundamental law of the land gives him a decent constitutional exit that he must take while he is still able to do so to save the nation and preserve his legacy. 

Mugabe too tired to pull Zimbabwe out of the woods

Mugabe too tired to pull Zimbabwe out of the woods

By Jonathan Moyo

Source: Majaira Jairosi Blog

OF the various problems in Zimbabwe that account for the seven-year-old political stalemate that has precipitated an unprecedented economic meltdown, the one that is now looming larger than any other is the chronic leadership deficit, particularly but not only in the Zanu PF government. So serious is this deficit that the most fundamental issue that explains the palpable despair among Zimbabweans today is leadership, stupid.

Take the case of the economic meltdown. Many, not only among economists but also within the diplomatic community and multilateral bodies such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, believe that the problem in Zimbabwe has to do with the adoption of wrong policies by the Zanu PF government.

There have been ubiquitous calls to the effect that things could change for the better only if President Robert Mugabe and his ruling lot adopted correct policies underpinned by a new democratic dispensation.

While understandable, these calls have nevertheless been misplaced because those making them have failed to appreciate that policies, including a new democratic constitution, are not value-neutral commodities that can be traded with political ease.

Policies are an expression of leadership to the extent that there must be an ideological connection between the policy and the policymaker. The alternative is an assured circus.

The Zanu PF government has irredeemably failed to get a policy handle on the causes of the political malaise and the collapse of the formal economy in the country not because there are no alternative policies out there that it can adopt. It’s because there is no visionary leadership within the ruling party that is both existentially and ideologically well disposed to the pursuit of alternative national policies capable of getting Zimbabwe out of the woods.

On offer is the self-indulgent leadership of President Mugabe who is now too old despite his photogenic makeup, has become very tired, visionless and beleaguered. Mugabe remains in office not because he is in charge of the goings-on in the wider society but largely if not only because of considerations of his personal and family security in a world that is increasingly becoming hostile to former heads of state with unresolved human rights and corruption issues during their rule.

A leader in this kind of a box in which Mugabe now finds himself tends to invariably construct his own political reality which in turn blunts his ability to tell the difference between winning a popular victory and securing a stolen result at the polls. There is no way such a leader can ever enact correct policies even if they smack him on his face.

This explains why even with the best of intentions by some within his inner circle, Mugabe’s leadership has become inherently limited and in fact doomed to fail. No wonder his associates are now unable to distinguish between defending their beleaguered boss as a person and defending his principles, human ideals or policies.

Mugabe’s two deputies are not in a better position than him vision-wise. Vice-President Joice Mujuru is seemingly content with wanting to become executive state president by crisscrossing the country in the glare of the media hoping to win voters by waving “a pigs-and-chicken manifesto” in an economy whose wheels have fallen off.

Mujuru’s more senior counterpart, Vice-President Joseph Msika, has practically retired on the job but not from it and is now marking his sweet time in office incapable of doing anything meaningful.

If this kind of visionless and self-indulgent leadership is bad for Zimbabwe’s battered economy, what is dramatically worse is that Zimbabweans must for reasons only known to God endure the policy curse of a do-nothing Minister of Finance in Herbert Murerwa who has become an ever-sulking crybaby over money printing and currency reforms as if he has forgotten that it is him who presided over the economic origins of the present crisis in 1997 when he printed money to irresponsibly compensate some veterans of the liberation war and to bankroll the unpopular war in the Democratic Republic of Congo whose political and economic benefits to Zimbabwe remain elusive.

The situation is no better outside government but is worse within Zanu PF’s raging succession war in which the acrimonious factions are united by their lack of a policy.

Meanwhile the crisis continues to widen and deepen despite occasional flashes of recovery through what some now see as cynical manipulation of apparently declining inflation figures at a time when prices are skyrocketing like never before.

History does not have a single example of a nation that has ever pulled out of the grip of a chronic crisis of the magnitude currently bedevilling Zimbabwe without following the path of visionary leadership. Failed leadership always leads to failed governments and ultimately failed states. On this the examples are too many to mention.

The bottom line is that when a nation finds itself in the woods, it simply cannot get out without the guidance of a visionary and capable leadership that first and foremost knows what is going on; is confident that it knows for sure and is able to make it abundantly clear to everyone else that it indeed knows not only what is happening but also what must be done and why.

Once despair takes hold of a nation in some unprecedented fashion, in the way Zimbabweans today are suffering the indignity of living from hand to mouth in a land of plenty, it becomes necessary for society to produce leaders who are dealers in hope to checkmate the merchants of despair. This happens through either having the incumbents in government reinventing themselves and discovering new visions and new skills or having a new generation of previously unknown visionary and capable leaders emerging to show the way.

When Britain was in the woods during the Second World War, the way out was through Winston Churchill’s leadership. And when the Great Depression battered the American economy, Franklin Roosevelt provided pivotal leadership in the form of his “New Deal”.

The remarkable success of the civil rights movement in the United States was made possible by the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. Closer to home south of the Limpopo Nelson Mandela’s leadership was decisive in moving South Africa from the apartheid woods to the promise of a new democratic dispensation.

In our own country, visionary leaders such as Joshua Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole and Herbert Chitepo were instrumental in laying the nationalist foundation for Zimbabwe’s liberation.

But since Independence Mugabe’s leadership has tragically failed to lay the foundation of a vibrant, dynamic and prosperous nation. While there are a number of explanations for this, the main one is that Mugabe is given to using high-sounding words to put his ambition over and above any enduring human principles or ideals.

During the Tsholotsho saga in 2004 Mugabe demonstrated to the whole world his hostility to democracy as an enduring human principle and ideal even within his own party when he invoked false allegations of a coup in order to prevent his party membership from freely electing leaders of their choice in accordance with Zanu PF’s constitution.

Earlier in 1980 no human principle or ideal informed Mugabe’s rhetorical declaration of national reconciliation which stands in retrospect as cynical propaganda never intended to achieve any racial harmony beyond consolidating Mugabe’s political power. Witness how today Zanu PF is prone to shocking racism. In the 2005 parliamentary election campaign, Zanu PF political commissar, Elliot Manyika, had no qualms about singing at rallies and in the electronic media “Musha une Bhunu ndewani tibhombe?” (Whose house has a white man so we can bomb it?)

Similar trappings are evident in Mugabe’s claims to national unity that are all about self-preservation without any lasting principles or human ideals. Zimbabweans will never understand how a leader committed to national unity could have allowed the madness of Gukurahundi in which over 20 000 people were massacred while many more had their homes and livelihoods destroyed.

The fact that Mugabe has done absolutely nothing of national significance to heal the Gukurahundi wounds even after rhetorically acknowledging the madness speaks volumes about his disdain for enduring human principles and ideals. It is this disdain that has left the door wide open to such evil deeds as Operation Murambatsvina whose victims numbering at least 18% of the population are still trapped in untold misery to this day.

In the same vein, the disastrous failure of the otherwise necessary land reform programme undertaken in 2000 is defined by its lack of grounding in enduring human principles and ideals that can withstand the prejudices of the moment. Mugabe’s self-indulgent propaganda that Constitutional Amendment 17 brought finality to land reform remains dangerous nonsense because, as a trained lawyer, he should know better that there can never be such finality through a law that bars people who lost land during the chaotic reform process from approaching the courts.

Against this backdrop, and given the breadth and depth of the current crisis that has left Zimbabweans in total despair, one does not have to be malicious or mischievous to understand that Mugabe simply does not have the leadership vision and capacity to pull Zimbabwe from the woods. He is just not that kind of leader.

Mugabe can't stomach defeat.

Mugabe can't stomach defeat

By Prof. Jonathan Moyo

IF there is one sobering thing that can be unequivocally said about why the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has scandalously delayed the announcement of the March 29 presidential election, it is simply that President Robert Mugabe did not win the election and is now desperately trying to steal the result through an unjustified recount because he does not have any prospect of winning a run-off or a re-run.

Had Mugabe won the election, even with less than the absolute majority required under the Electoral Act, ZEC would have announced the result ages ago and Zimbabweans would have been spared the constitutional uncertainty and political anxiety that have put the nation on the brink of utter chaos and mayhem.

The simple truth which ZEC has found hard to stomach and which Mugabe and his shocked cronies have found hard to swallow is that Morgan Tsvangirai won the presidential election even if with less than the required absolute majority. In other words, Tsvangirai got more votes than Mugabe and thus defeated him.

If the Electoral Act had not been amended after the 2002 presidential election to require a run-off where no candidate gets an absolute majority, Tsvangirai would have been sworn in by now and Zimbabwe would be in a totally new situation under his MDC government and we would not have the current charade of a dissolved cabinet whose defeated ministers are now seeking to unconstitutionally smuggle themselves back into office under spurious but self-serving interpretations of Section 31E of the Constitution.

It is common cause that Mugabe dissolved not just parliament but also cabinet before the March 29 elections and this fact was widely reported in the media.

What must be understood is that in terms of Section 31E (1) (a) of the Constitution, the significance of the dissolution of cabinet by the president is that it is constitutionally the same as the removal from office of vice-presidents, ministers and deputy ministers. When the president dissolves cabinet, it means that vice-presidents, ministers and deputy ministers have all been dismissed and removed from their offices in one fell swoop.

There are two scenarios under which cabinet is typically dissolved or dismissed in Zimbabwe: one happens before a cabinet reshuffle and the other before a general election. In either case, the dissolution means that there is no cabinet thereafter and thus there are no government ministers. Many times in the past, Mugabe has dissolved cabinet before a reshuffle and persons not reappointed in the reshuffle have not remained as ministers on grounds that the dissolution was merely an administrative matter with no constitutional significance.

Given that Mugabe has not reappointed anyone to reconstitute the cabinet that he dissolved last month, Zimbabwe right now does not have a cabinet. This means there is no government. As such, there is now a constitutional vacuum which is made worse by the fact that the country is also going through an unprecedented economic meltdown whose resolution requires an elected government with a requisite economic recovery plan.

The only exception, which is not much of a consolation, is that the dissolution of the cabinet in March did not affect the embattled Mugabe who appointed it and who, even if defeated on March 29, is nevertheless empowered by Section 29 of the Constitution to unhappily continue in office until the person elected as President on March 29 takes over the reins of governance.

The constitutional crisis now gripping the nation arises from ZEC’s delinquent failure to announce the result of the March 29 presidential election and that failure has in turn prevented the democratic and constitutional processes from yielding a new President to enable the country to move forward in a stable and cohesive manner cemented by national unity and the law.

Against this background, ZEC’s perverse delay in announcing the result of the presidential election leaves Zimbabweans and the international community with only one gloomy conclusion: the defeated Mugabe and his shocked hangers-on are using the delay to scheme up a dirty game plan whose nefarious purpose is to reverse Tsvangirai’s electoral victory with the collusion of ZEC at all cost and by any means available. This is being done under a barrage of confused and confusing Zanu PF talk around a recount, runoff or rerun when the result has not been announced.

In the circumstances, ZEC’s delay in announcing the result has become inherently destabilising to the detriment of both the national interest and national security.

As far as the national interest is concerned, there was no reason on earth why the nation went to great lengths and at great cost to hold a presidential election in terms of the law on March 29 if there’s was a predetermination by officialdom that only one particular candidate, Mugabe, had to win or else all hell would break loose.

The outcome of an election is determined by the voters and not by the whims of officialdom. The voters rejected Mugabe on March 29 and officialdom must unconditionally and graciously accept that electoral verdict in the national interest even if some officials have debatable or even understandable reservations about Tsvangirai’s leadership, ideology or policies.

If officialdom uses all sorts of self-indulgent pretexts to reject an electoral outcome that has been determined by the will of the people, as is currently happening, that rejection necessarily threatens national security by exposing the country to hostile external interference. This is because the international community, especially Zimbabwe’s neighbours in SADC, cannot be expected to stand idly by while Mugabe digs in and embarks on a scorched earth policy against his own people and country for the sole purpose of reversing an unannounced election result won by Tsvangirai. Zimbabwe’s detractors won’t miss such an unfortunate opportunity created by what can only be Mugabe’s contempt for the electorate with the assistance of ZEC.

Because Mugabe is so stubborn as to be incapable of doing the right thing on his own, those who still have his ear and the ear of the military and security complex around him, need to appreciate three inescapable realities facing officialdom and communicate them accordingly:

• The current electoral stalemate created by ZEC on Mugabe’s behalf cannot be resolved through a recount, rerun or runoff. It would be foolhardy to use an election to resolve an election impasse. What is needed is a negotiated settlement for a transitional process that recognises the will of the people as expressed on March 29 while also appreciating Mugabe’s institutional sensitivities and personal anxieties along with those of his close associates in key organs of the state.

• Zimbabweans have crossed the electoral Rubicon which means that Mugabe simply cannot win any election; not even one which is neither free nor fair in his favour. Mugabe’s days of electoral victories are irretrievably gone.

• In the most unlikely event that Mugabe were to win a recount, runoff or rerun by hook or by crook and thus remain in office, the economy would reject him with devastating consequences for the livelihood of ordinary people to the point of necessitating never before seen chaos and mayhem.

What this means is that Mugabe no longer has any electoral option involving him as a candidate outside a negotiated settlement for a gracious exit. He is certain to be humiliated in untold ways if he should be unwise enough to participate in a runoff or rerun as no rational voter can see him turning around the economy or just running this country for the next five years.

The Zanu PF claims that only Mugabe can secure the gains of the liberation struggle in general and the land reform programme in particular are plain silly and if they are true, then God help us because Mugabe is not going to be with us for any sustainable period in revolutionary terms.