Mavambo Sets A Date For Launch As A Political Party

The Party Formation Steering Committee of the Mavambo Kusile Dawn met on Tuesday this week in Harare and settled on May 13 as the date on which the party is going to be officially launched.

The meeting, which was Chaired by Mavambo Interim Chairman, Mr Godfrey Chanetsa, has already finalised a draft constitution and now has an interim structure in place, with Dr Simba Makoni as Interim President until the elections for substantive office holders on the launch date.

Meanwhile, I can reveal that most civic organisations have now started consultations with the Mavambo leadership in order to put together a united front and take on the moribund Inclusive Government.

So far, Dr Simba Makoni and the MKD leadership have met with Dr Lovemore Madhuku of the National Constitutional Assembly, Mr Wellington Chibhebhe of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and others.

There are also three "smaller" parties that have effectively dissolved themselves and joined Makoni's movement. I am not yet at liberty to disclose them, but they should be announced on May 13 when the Mavambo Party is launched officially.

There are also more than a dozen MDC MPs who have indicated their displeasure with Morgan Tsvangirai who have indicated that they will be jumping ship to join the new party with their constituencies, which will immediately give the new party a presence in parliament.

I was personally stunned today to see Harare blanketed by posters from the National Constitutional Assembly, which has now become much more confrontational towards the MDC-T.

Posters have been put up all over Harare, asking: "Are you still hungry? Are you still jobless......"

It is clear that the fact that the MDC have taken on the NCA, with MDC parliamentarians boycotting an NCA meeting this week, called to explain why the Constitution-making pressure group is unhappy with the Party-driven Constitution process, has energised the NCA, which has taken gloves off in their approach to the opposition party.

The Trade Union body, also a former ally of the MDC, have now also started distancing themselves from the MDC-T, which they accuse of betraying teh struggle against the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe.

We will all have to wait until May 13 to see what sort of alliances and endorsements these organisations will strike up with Dr Makoni's new party.

**************************

Meantime, in an interesting development, the MDC continues to bend over backwards to accommodate the dictator's party, ZANU PF. It has been announced that the opposition party will attend the independence celebrations tomorrow.

BUT, the parties have banned their supporters from wearing their own party regalia.

I was in a conversation about this with Dr Makoni yesterday and he made the interesting observation that this move benefits ZANU PF more than it does MDC-T.

He saw it this way: In Harare, especially, Mugabe knows that he has no support at all. If the wearing of party regalia (typically T-shirts or dresses with the parties' leaders heads on them) had been allowed, then it would have been a given that Tsvangirai's face would have dominated the event, with Mugabe's face struggling to make its presence felt.

Hence, this is basically a concession to ZANU PF by the MDC, to spare them embarrassment! And what thanks does Morgan Tsvangirai get? He is told to put up or shut up!

In our conversation, we also agreed that this move clearly shows that the Inclusive government has failed in its objective of promoting tolerance. In fact, Dr Makoni said, "It would have been a wonderful sight, wouldn't it, to see the party regalia of these two organisations side by side on the terraces. That would have given me hope that tolerance has triumphed."

The fact that these uniforms have been banned clearly shows that the two two parties still have not accepted each other at all.

************************

And have you heard?: Nelson Chamisa has threatened to resign if the issue of his disemboweling by Mugabe is not sorted out. The meeting I referred to at the beginning of this article has basically agreed that Mugabe's position stands. Chamisa remains effectively a Minister who now has no portfolio.

By announcing his intention to "resign", Chamisa has painted himself into a corner.

Will he indeed resign?

No, of course not.

He is enjoying his perks as a minister too much and, like all the other greedy Ministers and MPs from the MDC who have prostituted themselves to the ZANU PF patronage system, he will stick around, sitting in his office twiddling his thumbs.

Remember, this is the very same man, this Chamisa, who said only a couple of weeks ago that he took the Mercedes Benz from ZANU PF in order "to demonstrate to our supporters that we are in power."

***************

To sign off, I just want to tell you about about my interview with Lance Guma of SW Radio yesterday, for his programme, Behind The Headlines. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was glad to get an opportunity to explain my motivations for this blog.

As you know SW Radio is one of the most popular private radio stations beaming into Zimbabwe from outside (since Mugabe will not allow them to operate from within our borders!). They, together with Studio 7 of Voice of America and another radio station broadcasting out of South Africa, have become the media of choice especially in the rural areas. They are seen as more truthful than Dead BC, the state broadcaster.

I was genuinely surprised to hear from Lance that this little blog has, as he put it, "taken the Zimbabwe media scene by storm."

I am at a loss as to why this is so, since I have never thought of what I am doing here as extraordinary at all.

Still, I remain grateful for your patronage and support. We are now officially the Number 1 blog on Zimbabwe, ranked Number 1 by Afrigator, the South African Blog Aggregator that lists more than 8000 (eight thousand) African Blogs from Egypt to South Africa, with this little blog being featured in such publications as the Guardian of the U.K. and the Telegraph, BBC and others.

I hope you continue to visit and exchange views and opinions with others here.

And I also hope you have a happy Independence Day!

By the way, I intend to Live-Blog the Independenc Celebrations here tomorrow and will be reattaching the Chatroll that used to be at the bottom of this page for that purpose, internet connections allowing!

I have taken the chatroll off because it was now being used to post strange websites by spammers and that could have been dangerous to you my visitors because those sites could have viruses on them and, if you clicked on them, your computers could have become infected.

The best thing, therefore, was to remove it until I found a way to protect you. You can still get in touch with me and continue the conversation through comments on any of the stories and I will publish those comments as long as they are on topic and are not abusive towards other users and readers of the blog.