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Qhubani Moyo
Some years ago when Morgan Tsvangirai was still untouchable, I was one of those who dared lift my finger to pin point his weaknesses and how unsuitable he was as leader for Zimbabwe. At that time when there was collective consensus in the private media that he was a messiah, many people never understood and they usually complained about what they thought was a reckless obsession with criticism of their chosen one. Only a few of us stood our ground against the tide and made it very clear that our view was that he was not the best person for the number one job. That was before he became Prime Minister.
Having spoken so much about him some time in December 2011, I wrote an article in the Zimbabwe Independent whose conclusion was that Tsvangirai needs no enemies because he was the worst enemy of himself. In that regards I concluded that I was never to write about him again because he needs no enemies as he has adequate propensity to self destruct. Left to himself I concluded he was enough arsenal for self annihilation and true to my word I kept the vow and never wrote about him and consistent with my statement and observations the man went on an overdrive for self destruction and today he remains a pale shadow of himself and is an insignificant player in the future of this country.
Actually in his confirmation of his self destruction mode, he went on to pen a book that all but confirmed him as a finished man. “At the deep end” was the title and indeed the man is at the deep end but unfortunately he cannot swim to rescue himself. The time I made my position to let him self destruct was before he became the political wreck that he is today. But today I could not hold on again because here is a finished man who wants to burn the country with him so that it slips into his deep end. My conclusion then has seen me vindicated as many who thought I was engaged in unjustifiable attacks on him are singing from the same hymn book with me today.
Despite being in the opposition politics for so long, Tsvangirai still suffers from poor judgement. While for many experience is the best teacher for him experience erodes grains of wisdom. While for others wisdom has come with age, for him age has eroded any potential of wisdom. And in his stupor of being drunk with power Morgan Tsvangirai seems to have gotten into an overdrive attacking everyone and thus wanting the country to immediately get into an electioneering mood.
The art in his madness is to ensure that the focus shifts from the government 2015 emphasis on policy implementation processes to ensure sound economic recovery. He is deliberately shifting attention to the issues of electioneering where he can specialise in personality assassinations and not policy debates given that he is devoid of the latter. However, given that what the country needs now is urgent attention to accelerate the implementation of government policy Zim-Asset and that the party in government Zanu-PF has taken adequate internal strengthening measures to ensure that it is ready for implementation of the policy for national good, Tsvangirai would not have it. Being a drowning man clutching to a serpent he would not stop at anything as he slides deeper into the deepest end and he now wants to slide with the whole country into oblivion. If the truth be said without prejudice, Morgan Tsvangirai has done more harm to this country than any other group of individuals rolled together and multiplied by many. The nature of the suffering that this country is in today which he pretends he does not know where it came from can be directly linked to his induced sanctions. No doubt these were imposed for the sole purpose of inducing pain and suffering against the masses so that they capitulate and vote him into power out of desperation. So desperate for power and so uncaring for the people was Tsvangirai that at some stage we hear he wanted to work with Tony Blair for a military invasion of the country. Any leader who is desperate for power and would want to have it at all cost including inviting foreign military forces to complement his economic destruction measures is by design unqualified to be a leader of the country.
Actually his behaviour and role in inducing mass suffering on Zimbabweans by aligning and assisting hostile nations against the country shows how uninterested he is in the people’s welfare. He is a very disloyal citizen and his behaviour in direct contrast to the requirements and responsibilities of the citizens as outlined in Section 3 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe. One of the key responsibilities and requirements from citizens of the country is loyalty to Zimbabwe and he fails that test.
In his shallow, vacous and hollow message to the nation disguised as a vision for 2015, Tsvangirai makes strange and bizarre suggestions that all but confirm him as a man who is in the deepest end. His statement, which was devoid of any policy propositions on issues of value to assist the country move forward, reads like a script of a jilted lover who is busy persuading an uninterested former partner to give him a second chance. Clearly the people of Zimbabwe need not give him any chance, not even a half chance because he has shown that he is not interested in helping the country and the citizenry move forward. What makes him not worthy the office that he aspires is his continued inclination to use of inducing suffering as strategy for getting into power.
While the rest of the country and the region as well as Africa and the rest of the world including the European Union has seen value in collaborating with Zimbabwe to resuscitate the economy and eradicate the problems caused by many years of the Tsvangirai induced international isolation, he is busy writing letters to SADC and AU to give an impression that the country is under siege when in actual fact it is just an attention seeking strategy.
Because at some stage he thought he had arrived and is still living in the nostalgic past of sitting in meetings with SADC heads of states, Tsvangirai seems to be missing that lifestyle and hopes that he can easily get attention at the stroke of the pen. What he forgets is that the same SADC and African Union he is appealing to over what he terms the national crisis actually endorsed the July 2013 elections and recognise both President Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF as the legitimate winners of the elections.
The real quandary which he finds himself in is that how does he expect to be given attention by the same bodies that he savaged when they gave their view that the elections were credible. Why should they give him attention to discuss the issues of Zimbabwe when he does not agree with them on the simple foundations of the legitimacy of the leadership? To add insult to injury, the same President Robert Mugabe he refuses to recognise as the president of Zimbabwe is the chairman of the same SADC that he is appealing to and soon he will be taking over the reins of the same AU that he is running to, to complain about Mugabe. What comes out clearly is that because he is a short range thinker he failed to see this coming because of poor judgement. Again Tsvangirai speaks of calling an MDC national convergence conference to discuss the economy and appeals to every opposition party to attend.
It is very ironic that a political party that went to its own congress and never came out with any national policy pronouncements on the economy or any national issues would want to convene a conference to include other parties to discuss what they were unable to do. Opposition parties in other countries really work hard to provide policy alternatives and when they come out of their congresses they come with packages that are credible enough to compete with the ruling parties. But with his congress nothing is remembered of it except the elections, the dubious defeat of Hon Nelson Chamisa.
So before Tsvangirai speaks of a national conference he must first give us his own party proposed policy solutions to what he terms the national crisis. But as is always the case with drowning people there is always a strategy around the madness. Tsvangirai now wants to lure all parties around him so that he moves towards forging a coalition under the guise of the national conference on the state of the economy. He knows quite well that in its current state the MDC-T which has been fragmented beyond recognition poses no threat to anyone and would like to renew himself. Again given his state of party and personal bankruptcy it is possible he has used such proposals as fundraising mechanisms. But what he does not realise is that the amount of anger by most of the key opposition political figures, most whom were driven out of the party by his poor leadership would not fall for the bait.
They know that he is manipulative and has lost so much popularity that he cannot pose any challenge at all. In fact it is preposterous that a senior political leader like him will in this day speak of a national crisis when the focus is on policy implementation. The only crisis that is there is only imagined in his mind.
While it is a fact that there are still some challenges facing the country, most of them directly linked to the sanctions, it is folly to assume that they constitute a crisis.
These problems can be solved and they are better solved without Tsvangirai’s input because he has shown that his actions are not in the national interest. In his usual obsession with personalities he goes on to throw cheap shots at Vice-Presidents Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko, accusing them of being green and pseudo reformists.
One can only forgive him for being childish to think that a man of Mnangagwa’s stature is green when he has been part of this revolutiuonary train for so long and in leadership of this Government for every day of the past thirty five years. To imagine that a respected diplomat who has served with distinction in key embassies like Russia, Botswana and South Africa in Mphoko is green is simplistic to say the least. But it is more of his obsession with individuals that show how narrow minded he is. He decided to disregard the wholesale changes in Zanu-PF and Government re-configurations and pokes at individuals because of his sectional short sightedness. What he can’t see or could see but would just want to disregard is that in the two decorated liberation war heroes President Mugabe has reliable and dependable lieutenants who would not be easy to manipulate like was the predecessor. Undoubtedly his anger at the two is based on his knowledge that his implant has been kicked out and his little project of destroying Zanu-PF from within is dead and buried. While the rest of the country is trying to find common ground through open engagements on the unfortunate phase of our history in Gukurahundi, all he can do is name calling without providing leadership for direction of the discourse. Surely such kind of approaches aimed at whipping emotions to score cheap political points cannot continue to be given prominence. What is required now is a discussion that allows for all to find national convergence and sustainable solution for now and the future so that we learn from that dark history how not to treat each other and therefore value and cherish unity, peace as ingredients for development.
Any machinations like the ones by Tsvangirai to attempt to divert focus from the real issues should be dismissed as wishful thinking and focus should be on the implementation of Zim Asset. Also needing urgent attention than the electioneering rhetoric is attending to real issues like identification and amendment of the provisions of the constitution which inhibit progress and policy implementation. There are many such provisions which emanated from the reality that the constitution was written as a compromise but the people of Zimbabwe gave Zanu-PF the necessary two thirds majority to attend to some half baked clauses in the constitution. It will be a dereliction of duty and a betrayal of the overwhelming mandate given to it if Zanu-PF does not move with speed to initiate processes of amendments and harmonisation of the constitution. This process together with the implementation of Zim Asset for sustainable economic growth is more urgent than Tsvangirai’s kindergarten proposals.
Dr Qhubani Moyo is a policy and political analyst based in Bulawayo East Constituency. He is contactable on [email protected]
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