Mugabe's Police Now Appear To Be Fighting Him - Another Bomb Explodes At A Harare Station & Why He Refused A Visa To Kofi Annan

UPDATE: The goverment of Robert Mugabe has refused to give Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and Graca Machel visas to enter Zimbabwe on a humanitarian mission. The group, known as the Elders, and set up by Nelson Mandela, a man Mugabe loathes, applied for visas seveal weeks ago but the answer was no. Annan tried to call Mugabe this past week, but the Zimbabwean dictator refused to come to the phone. Carter also tried, with the same result. There were last-minute, frantic efforts that also involved the South African government, former SA president and mediator Thabo Mbeki and others in trying to make the ageing dictator see sense, but he rebuffed all of them. Last night, "a very senior official" from Mugabe's illegal government told Annan point blank over the phone that if he set foot on Zimbabwean soil, he would be immediately deported. The elders have now retreated. Petulantly, Mugabe's refusal to entertain the intervention of the South Affricans is, in his own mind, payback for the suspension of the delivery of promised aid by South Africa.
But Mugabe's paranoia has also convinced him that the Elders are the thin end of a wedge. He has said these eminent persons are coming into the country to find a pretext upon which to invite the intervention of the United Nations on humanitarian grounds. It is his fear that they would have come in, taken a look around and then reported a crisis that requires the urgent intervention of the world body. Mugabe is mortified that the US and Britain will use that as a pretext for coming into the country to forcibly eject him from power. The Elder's ill-advised (diplomatically) move to meet with Tsvangirai in South Africa before coming to Harare also made the dictator even more suspicious. They should understand that Mugabe is very, very touchy about the subject of his legitimacy. He wishes eminent visitors to the country to pay homage to him first before the prime minister-designate. To him, this is acknowledgement of the fact that he rules the roost and is the legitimate leader of Zimbabwe. It is this sort of pettiness that is slowly destroying Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai himself, looking to score points, also rashly announced that he would meet the elder statesmen before they come to Harare. He is still runing away from Mugabe and is unlikely to come back into the country soon. He has, according to MDC sources, moved his entire family to Botswana and is now virtually a permanent resident there.

Another bomb exploded at Harare Central Police Station on Thursday night. This is the third bombing of a police station in Harare within about a month. The first bomb, which exploded at the same police station bombed Thursday, was said by the Police Commissioner to be an inside job. This one is almost certainly also the work of policemen, since access to these places is strictly controlled.

The Mugabe regime should really not be surprised by all this. The police, used by Mugabe to quell dissent, to harass and arrest peaceful protesters and muzzle civil rights wantonly, are also feeling the pinch of the economic meltdown. Their pay is pitiful, as is the case with all other civil servants. Corruption is rife in their ranks, but even this has failed to lessen the impact of a world-breaking economic meltdown.

While campaigning for the presidency with Dr Simba Makoni in Manicaland in March this year, I was approached by a policeman at a growth point who made it clear that he and his fellow officers were sick and tired of Mugabe. He complained that they had no resources, were treated like wiping rags (zvikorobo), by Mugabe who used them and then abandoned them when they had served their purpose.

The policeman pointedly told me that "90%" of the officers at his station were supporting Dr Makoni and asked for contact details of the provincial leadership for our movement. It was one of the most unforgettable experiences of our six-week marathon drive across the country.

Interestingly, to date no arrests have been made in the bombings, except the Morris Depot (Police Headquarters) one, in which two soldiers were arrested on suspicion of the crime.

ZANU PF's patronage system is definitely crumbling. Yet the opposition MDC is failing to capitalise on this. The fruits are ripe for the picking but the "leaders" have fled from the orchard. Morgan is somewhere over the oceans, on his way to or from Europe. Their MPs are to be seen drinking in Harare's beer halls, boasting about a parliamentary majority that they are not using at all to help the suffering masses, Tendai Biti, their third most senior member remaining in Zimbabwe, is busy fighting to kill the negotiations over a government because he wants to run the Home Affairs ministry single-handedly and punish the policemen who have been arresting and harassing him.

You see, the MDC-T is now focused on acquiring power, but only so that they can wreak revenge on the police and the Registrar-General's office. Just like Mugabe, they have forgotten that there are people dying from disease and hunger in the country. They have forgotten that the people of Zimbabwe want an urgent solution to their problems. The fight for power is all that they are keen on now. They could quite easily marshal the rank and file of the police to defy Mugabe, to start the process of making the country ungovernable for Mugabe and to ensure that the dictator sees once and for all that he is left only with the support of the police bosses who owe him their 4X4 vehicles and obscene perks.

But this is all wishful thinking. The MDC are floundering, without a real strategy, hoping for events to direct them as opposed to directing events.

It is the Zimbabweans who are paying for this with their lives and it's amazing to stand in bank queues and hear just how people are turning against the opposition party. They have long since given up on Mugabe, but their bitterness at opportunities wasted by the MDC and the party's insensitivity to their suffering is palpable.

Our Movement's offices in Harare have now had to be rearranged to cater for an avalanche of visitors, ordinary people who are coming in to ask if Dr Makoni can do anything about the current situation. And last week on Tuesday, in my meeting with Professor Arthur Mutambara, he lamented the absence of Simba Makoni from the process, telling me, "we really needed Simba at those negotiations, I think he could have made a big difference."

But I know that Dr Makoni is not interested in dirtying his hands trying to deal with people whose focus is now avarice for lucre and power. He knows how insincere both main parties are, how utterly impervious they are to reason or compassion and he is preparing the ground for his own frontal attack on the system. This will be evident to all and sundry before long.

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And then there is the shameless talk of a Transitional Authority now coming out of the MDC as a Plan B, as reported in the current issue of the Zimbabwe Independent: http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/local/21567-mdc-t-moots-transitional-govt-as-plan-b-.html

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. The MDC's Plan B is shamelessly copied word for word from Dr Simba Makoni's position before, during and after the ill-fated March elections. Back then, the MDC, joined by blind praise-singers and followers who have have handed their brains to the MDC-T for safe-keeping, dismissed talk of a GNU from Dr Makoni. They threw venom at him and egged on their myriad cohorts, including some so-called political commentators, in trashing this solution. Yet, today, they are touting that very same proposal, right down to the smallest detail, as if they have just thought of it. What do they want with Makoni's ideas now? Let them show with the solutions to this crisis that they lied to the people they have and not copy Makoni's solutions, which they can never implement anyway.

Dr Simba Makoni asks, and quite rightly, why it has taken a thousand deaths from cholera, a stratospheric rise in inflation, the death of countless villagers from hunger and the collapse of the population's morale for the MDC to finally admit that they were wrong and Dr Makoni was right. But this latest 'plan" from the MDC will go nowhere because the party is not interested in truly solving the problems facing Zimbabwe nor do they know how even if they wanted to. They also have neither the experience nor wits to negotiate for a Transitional Authority, as evidenced by the mess they have made out of the current, doomed, talks on a GNU.

Thing is, because the MDC-T thinks of the opposition political space in Zimbabwe as their own personal property, they are unwilling to listen to reason, afraid of intelligent suggestions. The dimwitted always shoot down the bright ones, because they are afraid of being eclisped. That is the way of the human race through the ages. But the people are waking up to the dullness of both MDC and ZANU PF now.

Simba Makoni has vastly more experience in diplomacy and crisis management in a single finger-tip than the entire MDC-T leadership put together. He read the situation correctly in March and has stuck to his guns throughout, out of principle. He has even stated that he will not lobby to either head or be part of a Transitional Authority. He simply sees that this is the only solution if we are to focus on the country's urgent problems and prepare the ground for truly democratic elections on a level playing field. Priority number one is to kick Mugabe out in order to let the country he is suffocating breath again. That is Makoni's position.

The MDC-T, now shooting wildly from the hip, won't listen, seeing in him only a threat to their imminent entry into power. But they are unlikely to achieve anything with this latest theft of ideas from Simba Makoni. Trying to copy the principled stand of Simba Makoni on a Transitional Authority will not work, because they simply do not know how to strategise around ZANU PF to achieve this. To them, this is a tactic and not a position arrived at after careful analysis of what Zimbabwe's unique pain needs to be salved. The task of bringing about a Transitional Authority, which requires a nuanced and delicate approach, is hopelessly beyond the MDC-T. They and the dictator Mugabe are simply wasting the people's time and Zimbabwean lives. But rest assured, the people will kick both of them out the first chance they get.

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And then in the latest symptom of the Madness of King Bob, the Mugabe regime is seriously considering "investigating" how Tsvangirai was able to travel to Europe "without a passport". King Bob is the one denying him the passport in the first instance. Its a case of beating up a child, and then beating them up again for crying.

This sickening regime is still sauntering around as though it holds any power. Yet Mugabe can not form a government and is cooling his heels at his Helensvale home because Tsvangirai is playing the coy bride. The MDC-T has demonstrated that the dictator has the power to grind Mugabe's play-acting of governing to a halt. Still, the dictator insists on behaving as though he is still in charge. Pettiness is the order of the day.

How, the people ask, will the witch hunt to punish immigration officials who allowed Tsvangirai to cross the border into Botswana stop the cholera? How will it bring food to our rural folk who are now surviving on diminishing wild fruits? How will it provide desperate farmers with seed and fertiliser as the rains fall? How will it bring down inflation? How will it ensure the opening of hospitals Mugabe closed down yesterday after beating protesting doctors and nurses senseless?How will it? There are no answers to this because the dictator is now engaged in a fruitless game of pettiness. He is no leader. Instead of using the power of the presidency, an office he grabbed through force and violence, to better our lives, he is using it to simply amuse and delude himself.

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Next, Gono's excuses are now getting tired. Nothing is ever this Reserve Bank Governor's fault. His basket of excuses seems to never dry up. But these are now making Zimbabweans sick.They do not eat excuses, nor can they withdraw them from the bank. The latest scapegoats are banks. He was mouthing off yesterday about how the people should now see who the real cause of their financial suffering is, insinuating that it is the banks that are causing the cash crunch in the country.

This is idiotic.

Do the banks set withdrawal limits? Do the banks print worthless money on bond paper? Was it the banks that boasted only three months ago that they would "continue to print money until donkeys grow horns"? We can not be fooled. we know who is responsible and tying to go after the banks will not save Gono's tattered reputation now. He is totally discredited and universally loathed in Zimbabwe. With transport for most workers costing between 500 and 700 thousand dollars for a one-way trip, the Reserve Bank governor is still limiting the banking public to a paltry withdrawal of 500 thousand dollars a day. Is this not a case of forcing people into criminality? How are they supposed to live? Meantime, his own staff are growing fat on this sewage that he is discharging into our country, conniving with criminals to access vastly more than the allowed daily limits. Perhaps the governor should just shut up, because people have long since dismissed his posturing, realising that he treats all of us as if we are idiots who will swallow any tripe he dishes out and refusing to take the responsibility that is rightly his: righting the monetary policy mess that he is dunking the whole nation into daily.

Because Gono is driven around in a State car, never has to queque for anything and is making a killing from his farms, exporting chickens and other foods while elderly widows and widowers in the rural areas eat flies, he is not bothered by any of this. We fail to understand how a man of compassion can still insist that the people should live on 500 thousand dollars a day. How does he expect them to buy food when shops are only demanding cash and wont accept cheques or electronic means of payment? How is a sick person supposed to be treated when the pharmacies are demanding US dollars or Zim dollars cash for payment? One old woman I met at the bank this week asked in all seriousness: "Asi imi mukati Gono haaroyi here?" - "Is Gono not a witch?" It is a valid question.