Tsvangirai’s MDC exposed

advice during inter-party talks that led to the signing of the Global Political Agreement, it has emerged.
Former South African President Cde Thabo Mbeki made the revelations in an interview last month with British-based Zimbabwean academic Dr Blessing Miles Tendi.
Cde Mbeki brokered the GPA in 2008.
At a public lecture in London last week, Dr Tendi said Cde Mbeki had told him of Mr Tsvangirai’s reliance on Western hand-holding.
Cde Mbeki said Mr Tsvangirai would interrupt the talks to phone former US Ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee to give him updates and get instructions on how to proceed.
Intelligence agents monitored the calls and transcripts of the conversations ended up on the desks of Cde Mbeki and other Sadc leaders.
At the time of the talks, The Herald reported how US embassy officials would fly to South Africa to brief and debrief the MDC-T leadership on what to say in the talks.
Dr Tendi said, “These are the power-sharing negotiations in 2008, this is from my interview with Thabo Mbeki, they sit around – all the various parties – and they agree on a clause.
“Tsvangirai stands up and says ‘I need to go outside for a bit to consult others in the MDC’.
“He goes out there at the Rainbow (Towers) Hotel in Harare and what does he do? He picks up the phone and calls the US embassy to ask for advice from the US ambassador.
“What does he not know? That the CIO has tapped the phones! So they get a transcript of everything, they pass on the transcript to South African intelligence, and they in turn pass the transcript to Mbeki’s lap and he passes it onto other Sadc leaders.
“Mugabe’s narrative all along has been that the MDC is a stooge of the West. What is that then? And people are surprised when Sadc leaders don’t take the side of MDC; it’s things like that, that mediocrity.
“It’s really pathetic that a leader would call the US Embassy and ask for advice.”
Dr Tendi said the two MDCs were guilty of numerous “strategic errors”.
He said Cde Mbeki had told him that during the talks the MDCs had insisted on a two-year GPA while Zanu-PF had pushed for a five-year arrangement to give Zimbabwe more time to stabilise.
“When Zanu-PF came to the table, they wanted five years straight, there was to be no two years that the Global Political Agreement would end, and then possibly be extended.
“Had that passed, we would be talking about stabilisation and economic growth. Who shot that down? The MDC again.
“People talk of the MDC playing catch-up, a lot of it has to do with the MDC’s own strategic errors.”
MDC-T responded to the revelations by calling Dr Tendi a “Zanu-PF apologist”.
In a statement, the party accused Cde Mbeki of working to destabilise the then united MDC in 2005.
The party split in 2005 after Mr Tsvangirai unilaterally overruled a party decision to contest in the following year’s Senate elections.
“Mr Mbeki has always deployed effort to discredit, rubbish and weaken the MDC. We are also well aware of his disposition and role in the destabilisation of the MDC in 2005,” MDC-T said.
However, Dr Tendi has stuck to his guns, adding that one of MDC-T’s major weaknesses is the inability to take fact-based criticism.
He said, “I would also like to add that my remarks on February 23, in fact, also drew from a wide range of interviewees in the higher echelons of the former Thabo Mbeki-led ANC government.
“Over the past four months, and in two separate trips to South Africa, I have been interviewing senior ANC officials and some members in South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Co-operation.
“It is striking that they all express misgivings about how the MDC is hamstrung by its relationship with Western powers.
“This is not about Mbeki. This is about how the MDC’s relationship with the West is widely recognised by ANC elites, and how it has proven detrimental to the party’s image and standing among many current and former ANC and Southern African leaders.”
Dr Tendi – who is the author of the recently published “Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media” – said the view that MDC-T was a Western stooge was now common currency.
“Even in British academia – where I work – this view has gained and continues to gain currency.
“The shift of thought in British academia began most palpably in 2008 with Professor Stephen Chan of the University of London when he wrote: ‘I admire Tsvangirai. I wrote a book about him, based on many hours of face-to-face interviews, which was distributed underground in Zimbabwe to help the MDC’s 2005 campaign . . . But I also want to say that he screwed up. Tsvangirai’s main source of advice was the US Embassy in Harare’.”
He said the tendency to label people “Zanu-PF” apologists whenever confronted reinforced his assessment that “mediocrity reigns in the MDC”.
Whistleblower website WikiLeaks recently revealed that MDC-T’s Western backers felt the party needed “massive handholding”.
McGee’s predecessor in Harare, Ambassador Christopher Dell was exposed as having said, “Zimbabwe’s opposition is far from ideal and I leave convinced that had we (the US) had different partners, we could have achieved more (by way of regime change) already.
“But you have to play the hand you’re dealt. With that in mind, the current (MDC-T) leadership has little executive experience and will require massive handholding and assistance should they ever come to power.”
Other WikiLeaks disclosures have detailed how the West has worked closely with MDC-T in trying to effect illegal regime change in Zimbabwe, though instruments such as sanctions.