MDC-T must outline its policies

only valid candidate, or so he imagines.
The biggest problem is that Tsvangirai does not juxtapose his right to default candidacy with matters of policy and where he intends to put the country in the event, perhaps unlikely, that he takes the reins from the old and “frail” President Mugabe.
The latest of Tsvangirai’s drive to disqualify President Mugabe is contained in Tsvangirai’s recent interview with a British newspaper, The Guardian.
Tsvangirai’s strategy involves a mixture of attacking the person of President Mugabe, cajoling him and trying to banish likely and existing support for the revolutionary leader.
In part, Tsvangirai says of President Mugabe, “With his age he’s frail . . . To tell you honestly Mugabe is not in a fighting mood to retain power. I think he has long given up that. He knows that time and tide has gone beyond him.”
He is also quoted as saying: “I don’t think he has that staying power to study, read and develop . . . That time is gone.” Tsvangirai dissuades regional support for President Mugabe.
He says: “He is now a liability to the region. And therefore they are asking if supporting Mugabe is really in the best interests of the region.”
And for the punchline: “For the sake of his (President Mugabe’s) legacy and the sake of the future stability I hope that he behaves in a manner which observes the constitution.”
Tsvangirai believes the legacy of President Mugabe will be a mixed bag (on condition that he leaves power), “from a hero to a villain and back again to someone who has managed a transition”.
An analysis of these statements will show that Tsvangirai is simply a desperate man who is clinging onto banalities like President Mugabe’s well-known age to score political points. His psychological games involve trying to dispirit his rival as incapable fighting on and developing and in the same vein encourage him to step aside for the sake of a “legacy”.
These are well-worn battle tricks, but that will not be enough for the electorate. In fact, people who hear such banter and verbal puke as Tsvangirai dishes out are likely to question what has happened to MDC-T’s policy blueprints. Is it not ironic that at a time when Tsvangirai is busy with personalities, his party has failed to launch its “Juice” blueprint twice in as many months?
The seemingly ill-fated “Juice”, standing for Jobs, Upliftment, Investment, Capital and Environment, has not been able to be produced let alone whet the appetite of Zimbabweans.
A similar blueprint, all to rival Zanu-PF’s Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment policy, failed to take off last year.
The dearth of winning brains or governing ideas in the MDC-T cannot be clearer, which is enough reason for its backers and funders and masters to be upset, as they are being reportedly so.
It has been reported that the leadership of the party has been in the past few weeks taken to task at EU and American embassies. The writing is on the wall: the MDC-T is facing a real crisis.
It is also more specifically, a crisis of leadership as Tsvangirai is a demonstrable failure and veritable charlatan whose real substance stakeholders are beginning to see.
No amount of trying to deflect attention from his failures will save Tsvangirai, especially if the same deflection is sought to be achieved by mentioning the obvious like President Mugabe’s gloriously advanced age.
On the same note, is it not ironic that Tsvangirai mentions that President Mugabe no longer has “power to study, read and develop” when Tsvangirai himself has not shown anything of these good attributes since the time he entered the big stage?
On the balance of probabilities, Tsvangirai will not develop beyond the barely schooled opposition figure that he is. This is especially so when there are other people like Nelson Chamisa and Tendai Biti waiting on the wings and have charmed the party’s backers and funders.
One of the things that Tsvangirai needs to be schooled in is the regional political dynamics and ideology. In most elementary terms, the region as mainly a political grouping, was born of the anti-colonial struggles under the banner of the Frontline States.
The movement has evolved over the years to also incorporate trade and economics, but the founding principles of anti-imperialist struggle very much exist today. The liabilities that the region faces are client leaders and imperialist stooges, not revolutionaries like President Mugabe.
President Mugabe embodies the best of the region’s continuum of struggle and Tsvangirai should never pontificate knowledge of the region’s best interests.
And since when has Tsvangirai become the oracle of the region and one to be authoritatively consulted over matters of Zimbabwe and the region?
Is this the same group that Tsvangirai and company used to call a “club of dictators” and had to be reminded by the likes of former South African president Cde Thabo Mbeki that the party did not intend to rule a European or American country?