Mugabe Secretly Escalates Unity Government Sabotage

With the failure by the MDC to bring in foreign aid and balance of payment support and the "pesky" demands by the MDC for equitable distribution of government posts, Mugabe and his crew have now decided to keep the MDC in government busy by inciting civil servants labour unions to march and protest against the ministries responsible, all held by Tsvangirai's party. Within a week or two, armed forces may be brought into play, to complain also about their measly salaries. Mugabe feels he no longer needs the MDC in government, since they have proved incapable of loosening the pruse strings of the West and Bretton Wooods.

In a move incited by the Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, Mariyawanda Nzuwa, George Charamba (Mugabe's spokesman) and Misheck Sibanda, the Secretary to the President and Cabinet, civil servants marched to the offices of two MDC-T ministers complaining about their "poor" salaries.

The brains behind this scheme are now planning on roping in the armed forces as well, to get them to protest their poor salaries and working conditions on the streets.

The idea, as the strategists see it, is to so overwhelm the MDC-T in government that it will spend all its time occupied with the strikes and demonstrations and have no time left to protest the continued tenure of office by Gono and Johannes Tomana, the Attorney General, as well as other "outstanding issues".

A couple of weeks back, civil servants marched to the offices of Labour Ministry and those of the Ministry of Public Service. Both ministries now belong to the MDC-Tsvangirai.

Mugabe and two of his closest advisers have been inciting these demonstrations. Tellingly, although, as Tsvangirai himself said yesterday, freedom of assembly is still stifled in Zimbabwe (marches and demos are still being largely banned by the police, citing lack of manpower or some such excuse), the civil servants were able to get permission to march quite quickly.

The police escorted them and even offered advice on how to hand over their letters of grievance to the relevant ministers.

The plan to destabilise the coalition government took shape soon after the first announcement of Permanent Secretaries appointed by Mugabe. Tsvangirai at the time declared them null and void.

As the battle widened to take in the disputed appointments of Gideon Gono and Johannes Tomana, Mugabe's Kitchen Cabinet hatched the plot to widen the circle of disgruntlement to include the armed forces.

"Vachaita ekutiza maoffice ehurumende avaichemera iwayo," is one comment from one of Mugabe's commanders.

It is rather odd that, considering what civil servants went through at the height of Zimbabwe's economic crisis, when they still were paid in Zimbabwe dollars with inflation in billion percentage points range, they would choose to take to the streets now, when they at least get US$100 per month.

Because the Ministries of Finance, Public Service and Labour are all in MDC-T hands, the civil servants Labour Union, whose leaders are indeed aligned to ZANU PF, have been roped in to distract the new government partners and take their minds off the fight for space at the feeding trough.

I can assure you that before the week is out, you will start hearing whispers of disgruntlement within the armed forces. This will soon escalate and Tsvangirai, Biti and his party will have their hands full trying to stave off what they will think is a rebellion not only by civil servants but even by uniformed forces as well.

The Generals, as well as Mugabe, are well aware of the fact that the MDC-T is scared stiff of the Zimbabwe armed and uniformed forces. The last thing they want is to get on their bad side.

Because, by law, armed forces are forbidden from holding public protests, it will be interesting to see how they are brought into play.

My sources are certain that we may see what we saw last year, when Mugabe was plotting to declare a state of emergency and some soldiers were sent into the streets to protest and smash up a few windows and beat up a few people (including policemen). The rioting soldiers, you will remember, were pardoned a couple of month back and the pardon was announced in the public media (despite some nonsensical reports at the time that said the rioters had been executed!)