Open Letter To The MDC - T Secretary General
Dear Sir
Re: From A Revolution To Great Betrayal
Concern to see a successful execution of the revolution compels me to take this unusual step of addressing myself to you. To be precise, the fear of another Welshman Ncube/Arthur Mutambara crack within the movement reigns top-most in me and all concerned locally, regionally and internationally some of whom might not necessarily be subscribers to the party.
The movement is youthful and vibrant. It has survived Mugabe orchestrated mayhem and the internal cancer emanating from divergent views within itself and yet diversity, in other organizations, remains a catalyst for positive growth. But of late, Mr SG, amongst all the movement’s sympathizers, supporters, members, friends and partners in the revolution immense fear has emerged emanating from what has been viewed as gross loss of logic and highly questionable sense of purpose in the leadership as regarding the lifting of western sanctions issue slapped on the former ruling terrorist ZANU PF party. The MDC – Tsvangirai has joined the terrorist ZANU PF’s campaign against the targeted sanctions that have crippled its, about two hundred, international shoppers from a severely mutilated democracy.
In 2009, the President of the movement, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, embarked on a multi-national tour of the western countries leading a high powered delegation on a vigorous campaign against western sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe in protest against Mugabe’s kangaroo rule. This conduct caused immeasurable agitation to the above parties in the same manner as the movement’s entry to the Global Political Agreement {GPA} did. This has, inevitably, been a major cause of the urgent need to size and re- size the movement’s Executive Council sense of judgment, its memory and consistency. Such concerns were further exacerbated by the President of the movement’s withdrawal from a ZANU PF working relationship a few weeks after the whirl-wind trip that took the delegation as far as The White House in the United States of America. The movement’s out-cry over that untenable partnership was viewed as the cause for the further justification of sanctions. A few days later the movement was back into the ZANU PF working relationship having achieved “zero” concession/s over the withdrawal. Genuine feelings of fear and despondency still ran high in the above parties. ZANU PF arrogance, and mayhem went on unabated and the movement’s President was loudly ridiculed for the uncalculated move within and without ZANU PF.
The most astonishing and potentially irrepairably disastrous action by the Movement for Democratic Change - Tsvangirai Executive Council came on the 1st of March 2010, in Parliament where the Presidency found it fit to unstrategically adopt the opposition ZANU PF anti-western sanctions chorus. The event has caused nervousness and genuine cause for introspection to the above mentioned parties. And yet lots of joy within the opposition ZANU PF and its ally the minute MDC Mutambara. Mr Secretary General, it remains difficult to believe that the movement’s Executive Council resides in Zimbabwe judging by the quality of political strategy. It is most embarrassing to hear lots of logic in favour of the Zimbabwean citizenry from the western countries as compared to the movement’s Executive Council despite the fact that it has the advantage of being favoured with on the ground observation. When the western chorus was repeated to the President that not enough progress had been observed to justify the wholesome lifting of sanctions the Executive Council’s credibility was further subjected to a more rigorous interrogation by the ailing citizenry world-wide as its behaviour fueled –up the levels of panic within the parties described above. The fear of having Mugabe use resources from the west for heinous purposes remains top-most and therefore, sanctions have to be most tactifully removed.
Mr SG. it is my well considered assertion that the movement has greatly misled itself in its assumption that all credible citizens with the capacity to add value to good governance could only be located within its membership register so much that Mugabe was found to be the best alternative. Acknowledgement of high potential within the citizenry would be the beginning of political wisdom for the movement, as it is a matter of fact that within the above listed parties dwell lots of energetic, highly informed, multi-talented change driven/change driving citizens. Mr SG, the movement seems to trivialize the strategic roles played by its sympathizers, supporters, members, friends and the various other partners in the revolution as evidenced by their non – inclusion in the Global Political Agreement {GPA} of September 15 2008.
And yet the opposition ZANU PF has sensitively acknowledged these patriots by wielding both a stick and dangling a carrot either in favour or against the concerned citizenry local, regional and international. The Executive Council’s position on sanctions remains viewed as a great betrayal of the above parties honest and brave endeavours performed in good faith and based on the assumption that the movement’s heart beat was fully aligned to theirs as has always been the case. Some of the above patriots started running with the revolution non-stop as early as 1980 throughout past the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change twenty years later and despite the fact that they might be non- membership card carrying. It is a shocking experience to note that the movement’s Executive Council makes a real uncle in Robert Mugabe, and a genuine cousin in Professor Arthur Mutambara at time when the duo was most determined to elbow the President out of the road map by either hook or crook! It is true that anyone who dares lose direction in the wilderness at sunset, for him, the risk of being preyed on by predators remains imminent no matter how far/close from base he might be. The conduct of the movement’s Executive Council clearly confirms that the organization was not with the above parties in their conviction that: 1. The western sanctions remain legal and functional for the Zimbabwean current situation 2. Visible positive developments on the ground would determine the wholesome lifting of sanctions 3. High desire for good governance and quality citizenry life enshrined in property rights and the rule of law remain as the key determinants for the wholesome lifting of sanctions.
MR SG. If logic was anything to be gone by, it would go that what necessitated the imposition of sanctions against the then ruling ZANU PF terrorist regime, and now an opposition party, and yet a leading partner in the so-called Government of National Unity {GNU} should unnegotiably be halted before the wholesome lifting of the western sanctions could be imagined. The locus of power rests with the citizenry neither does it with ZANU PF nor either faction of the MDC. The movement’s ill-fatted and untactiful ZANU PF driven call for the wholesome lifting of western sanctions remains viewed as citizenry oppression/ misrepresentation despite the fact that it {the citizenry} had put the movement in a position of trust. The citizenry, however, would humbly take the challenge to signal both ZANU PF and the MDC to the real locus of power, the recipients of the Mugabe mayhem.
Mr Secretary General, it remains a fact that most of the above described parties have, in various ways, played crucial roles in making the movement an ever vibrant entity. In many cases not necessarily a campaign for the Movement for Democratic Change but a brave campaign for a just cause in Zimbabwe driven by the high desire to observe the permanent restoration of qualitative living standards for the opposition ZANU PF disenfranchised citizenry ever subjected to the rule of the jungle. One such strategic role has always been the protection of the movement by avoiding public criticism of its activities/blunders committed in good faith on the assumption that the movement would also strive to be an entity of high repute. It is undoubtedly the above named parties concerted efforts, informative communications and good governance and human rights activism that accurately informs the west as evidenced by British Premier Gordon Brown’s educative response to the Zimbabwe crisis mediator South African President, Jacob Zuma’s poorly considered pleas for a wholesome lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe.
Mr SG. it is of grave importance to point out that some of the leadership fatal utterances/ commitments carry elements of a “thumb suck”. The utterances seemingly carry “zero” signs of serious debate. A “thumb suck” remains a grave sign of dictatorship where the respective organization deployees tend to amass immense power, there-by, inevitably, subordinating all the people and the entities that deploy them in the terrorist ZANU PF fashion. Mr SG. the fact that ten years later after the movement’s formation, the MDC still elected to go to the March 29th 2008 harmonised elections as a mere opposition as against a government-in-waiting remains a great source of worry. When the movement professed its incapacity to provide senior civil service bureaucrats/diplomats its partners in the revolution were left shell-shocked! Morgan Tsvangirai accepted ZANU PF false allegations that the existing Permanent Secretaries and diplomats were apolitical careerists despite the publicly known fact that all of them were ZANU PF functionaries some of whom had severally vied for both local authority and parliamentary elections on ZANU PF tickets where they faced embarrassing and humiliating casualty. Mugabe brutality has no room for careerists ranging from a mere security guard, policeman to head of parastatals and all other public institutions, and Morgan Tsvangirai knows all about that!
Mr SG, it would be very strategic for the movement’s Executive Council to convince all the interested parties referred to above that after almost over eleven years of its birth, and many more in respect of its various partners, of gruesome multi-casualed battle against ZANU PF rule of the jungle, it {the movement} would still pursue unpredictable risk-ridden short-cuts which, inevitably, would lead to half baked temporary and treacherous solutions to a poverty and atrocity weary citizenry would suffice. That would be very cruel Mr SG and, therefore, should never be allowed to happen at all costs. It is, therefore, urgent that the movement’s Executive Council puts its act together, summons abundant both courage and determination into a value-adding relationship with the patriotic above mentioned parties in the cause for Zimbabwe citizenry aspirations for high quality life.
While the MDC President, Morgan Tsvangirai thinks that whoever appreciates him should equally appreciate Mugabe; and political clown, Professor Arthur Guseni Oliver Mutambara {AGOM} has shamelessly joined the Presidential Praise Singers Quartet {PPSQ} and has found a great heroe in Mugabe and praises him for having done lots of good and for strategically “looking east” for Zimbabwe’s economic survival so much that, according to Mutambara, even in 500years to come his {Mugabe} legacy would live on. And yet to the ordinary suffering citizenry Mugabe remains a true symbol of bleeding wounds, a true, brutish and nasty God of the Islamic Sharia laws equivalent cult, against the law abiding citizenry. A Tsunami that has violently dispersed the citizenry into hiding in various parts of the world. A tyrant who has gruesomely ruled graves, the man-maimed, man-orphaned, the brutalized, the hungry and angry for the purposes of institutionalizing a sorry personality cult at the expense of citizenry rights. A cold-bloodied arsonist who has set villages ablaze over the past thirty years of sorry rule. For the citizenry, the Mugabe appreciation that MDC President Tsvangirai campaigns for, remains worse than being compelled to drink deadly venom, and to political loose cannon and go-getter severely calculating political monkey of letters, Professor Mutambara, with his little party which now comprises of the leadership only, as it has failed to see light beyond March 29 2008, 500 years to come the citizenry remains in shallow graves and disused mine pits will stay, and the wounds would ever bleed from generation to generation to mark Mugabe’s legacy which anchored on unrestricted corruption, gruesome death, unjustified vengeance, lawlessness, rape, extreme fear and inevitable citizenry displacement and loss of property among the other various atrocious acts of the regime. 500 years to come Mugabe’s name would prevail unrivaled on the devil’s Guinness Book of shame! That was the road leading from The Great Zimbabwe to the present Great Zimbabwe Ruins. Mugabe has, however, continued to occupy the prestigious office of Patron of the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society, a humanitarian organization whose core business was attending to catastrophes and sheltering the displaced peoples of the world due to political upheavals and other natural disasters. Mr SG, the above utterances which are exhibits of politically shallow mindsets, undoubtedly, have pressured the citizenry to desperately search for new political homes. This might work in favour of the two paralysed “Mavambo” Movement barons Dumiso Dabengwa and Dr Simba Makoni who have since fallen out of favour with each other and both have come up with their new frivolous political parties, typical of political gladiators, to try their luck with the desperate citizenry at a most grave moment.
That could be a detrimental factor to the movement’s hoped for landslide victory next election.
Mr SG. the above listed parties to the revolution would be very keen to get detailed feed – back on the above outlined legitimate concerns.
Reginald Thabani Gola is a Zimbabwean Political Analyst, Civil Societ and Human Rights Activist and Independent Journalist
E-mail: [email protected] : [email protected] Cells 00267 74688127, 00267 75040090, 00263 915184749
