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This week’s edition of the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper carries an interview between opposition MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai and one Wongai Zhangazha. It is one of those useless interviews that nobody is interested in, not least because the subject and persona, Tsvangirai, no longer sells as he used to so many years ago. Talk of water under the bridge.And when you get down to read the interview, it is so stale and stilted as it fails not only to coherently flow but to excite the reader, especially with fact or soundbite.
You may as well have read it somewhere, both the set of questions and Tsvangirai’s responses.
And yes, you have read it somewhere, actually!
This is about the fourth interview this year alone that Tsvangirai has given to the private media, who go on and ask questions regarding, the so-called electoral reforms, (non) participation in elections, reflections on the GNU and how Tsvangirai fared; the 2013 elections and whether the MDC-T should have participated; and finally the Government house that he still occupies and has been a matter of much discussion.
In all this, Tsvangirai gives very routine answers and you will be hard pressed to find anything new in all that jazz.
In fact, the situation in which a whole leader of a one-time formidable opposition party gives half a dozen interviews to newspapers in 10 months confirms how Tsvangirai is not selling as a commodity.
A few years ago, he would be too busy for that.
A serious leader, even the most democratic ones, do not have time for silly, repetitive, senseless interviews.
What is understandable though is that there is an attempt to keep a man on the wane alive and relevant.
It is a homage that the private media has to pay to their ailing political deity.
It should be recalled that the fortunes of the opposition are tied to those of the private Press, also referred to as the opposition media and both owe to common funding.
A PR exercise
Hence you cannot entirely blame poor Zhangazha for the difficult and needless and useless interview.
It is a thankless duty that has to be disposed.
And the first few exchanges of the interview tell us that it is a work in public relations after Tsvangirai’s performance in Bulawayo as his party marked 17 years of existence.
It was when he pulled out that violence card again, which raised eyebrows and may as well get him in trouble if authorities wish to pursue the matter.
For the record and in essence, he gave the President, Head of State and Government, and Commander in chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces two options namely to “step aside and allow a peaceful transition” or face a “violent endgame”.
Such is Tsvangirai’s infamously characteristic “shut-mind-open-mouth” policy.
The Zimbabwe Independent thought they would have him minimise the damage of his careless remarks, asking whether “your party have a bigger plan beyond protests to force the regime to adopt electoral reforms?”
To which he replies: “We have never said that we want to engage in a revolution. We just want to express our discontent for this Government which is failing to attend to the people’s grievances.
I hear people say why don’t you wait for 2018? We will wait for 2018 but the question is that by the time we reach 2018, there will be nothing. The pressure is not intended to overthrow anyone. The pressure is intended for Mugabe and the regime to sit down and find a national solution.”
The reporter’s next question does not take Tsvangirai to task over what he said less than a week prior, about a “violent endgame” and his stated wish to see protesters being shot at by authorities as a spark of the same violent endgame.
Tsvangirai even premised the said same “violent endgame” on the introduction of bond notes and what he imagined to be a possible appointment by President Mugabe of his wife to succeed him. The reporter does not seem eager to question all this incongruence.
Nor does the same reporter ask what “transition” could be effected when Tsvangirai is waiting for 2018 albeit exerting “pressure”.
What a public relations opportunity for Tsvangirai to correct himself!
A nostalgic man
Let us all step back and take a breath and consider this:
The so-called GNU was the highest that Tsvangirai could ever reach and it is not because he is a genius.
He simply rode on the misery of Zimbabweans groaning under sanctions imposed by the Western world to cause regime change in Zimbabwe.
That hyperinflation of 2006-8; that cholera pandemic, those food, fuel, cash and other shortages were a result of sanctions.
Who can forget the glee with which the likes of Christopher Dell and James McGee rubbed their hands each time sanctions bit into the country, deepening the economic crisis?
“The end is nigh,” they would proclaim.
And 2008 gave us the biggest protest vote ever as mdc-t nearly wrested power from zanu-pf on the back of that protest vote that gave us a hung Parliament and necessitated a presidential run-off poll.
This led to the GNU, which Tsvangirai wanted to use “to take power from within”.
It did not turn out that way, with the walloping of July 2013, but Tsvangirai looks at that period with relish.
It is understandable.
That is the highest he could climb.
No wonder, as well, that he often speaks of elections of 2008 as though 2013 did not intervene.
It is the same view that mdc-t supporters like the Zimbabwe Independent and its reporters hold, hence their stated sense of hurt from the loss of 2013.
Zhangazha believes MDC should not have taken part in the 2013 general elections “without reforms”.
But Tsvangirai let them down, mainly because of his poor judgment and overconfidence.
He rationalises: “When I look back at the last rally of the MDC — the crossover rally — do you think it would have made sense for me to stand there and say we are not participating in the elections? It would have been naive for me to say that.
“The level of rigging, we found out that it was massive. I don’t think anyone would have advised we should not go into the election.”
Still, after massively losing in 2013, Tsvangirai somehow thinks that he has some ordained role to talk to the legitimate leaders of the country.
He complains that there has been “no engagement between me and Mugabe.
After the GNU he refused completely to engage me.”
He wanted, says he, to discuss a lot of things over the post-election situation around the national status and the state of the nation.
“Unfortunately he didn’t find it necessary,” bemoans Tsvangirai.
Of course it is not necessary to talk to a loser like Tsvangirai who does not bring any value to the table.
He cannot hanker after an election in which he walked over dead bodies and destruction of the economic to share power with zanu-pf.
Tsvangirai is of zero value and this is soon going to bear on his own party which, at 17 years has seen diminishing returns in his continued leadership characterised by continued losses.
Online Reporter