Tsvangirai Loses Out Heavily To Mugabe In Ongoing Talks

Robert "The Solution" Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai in parliament n Wednesday to listen to Tendai Biti, the Finance Minister, deliver his 2010 Budget Speech. It now emerges that Mugabe has largely won out in the negotiations going on under the facilitation of the Southern African Development Community point-man, Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa. Biti's budget also revealed that the MDC-T are looking to stay in this government for as long as they can, possibly five years, and this is said to be informing their decisions to give in to Mugabe on key points.

Harare, Zimbabwe, 06 December 2009

Very authoritative sources now say Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has essentially capitulated on matters before the negotiating team in the ongoing talks n Harare and an announcement is likely to be made within a fortnight after a report from Jacob Zuma is presented to the Southern African sub-body charged with ensuring that the talks proceed timeously.

Names for the Zimbabwe Media Commission have already been decided between Mugabe and the MDC-T leader/Prime Minister. I have previously revealed the names on this blog and these will be held aloft by Tsvangirai in an effort yo divert attention from the fact that he has not got what he originally wanted when he disengaged from ZANU PF and Cabinet in October.

On the Governors, Mugabe is also said to have won out on the basis that SADC's communique of January this year had simply called for the parties to "decide the formula for the distribution of government posts."

That formula, Mugabe now says, has to take into account the fact that the Governors are his personal representatives in the Provinces and not party-political appointees. He says that giving in on them would be out of his own good heart, because he wants to, and not because he has to.

Gideon Gono and Johannes Tomana are remaining where they are and Tsvangirai is said now to have abandoned moves he had started to make a deal by asking Mugabe to get rid of Gideon Gono in exchange for Tsvangirai's party dropping its objection to Attorney General Johannes Tomana's appointment.

On the issue of the people hired by Mugabe's party and put on government payroll, Tsvangirai has been outwitted by Mugabe through the dictator saying that he would now "regularise" the appointments of the more 13 000 "youths" hired to terrorise the MDC-T in the run-up to the presidential election run-off.

They will now not be fired and will remain loose in the rural areas, ready for teh next election.

The issue of the speeding up of a new constitution is one on which Tsvangirai will also try and claim a victory.

But, as ZANU PF sources have openly said before, "a constitution does not vote". The only way a new constitution would guarantee free and fair elections is if it called for Zimbabwe's elections to be monitored by the United Nations and other independent bodies.

This will clearly only happen over Mugabe's dead body.

A facilitation team appointed by Jacob Zuma (whom MDC-T supporters have always been telling us is against Mugabe and better Thabo Mbeki, will be in Zimbabwe again on Monday (tomorrow), where they say they will be hearing about progress from the negotiators.

Tsvangirai has already said that the talks are progressing well. He has achieved his objective of being seen by his supporters as standing up to Mugabe by walking out of the cabinet in October. That he has got nothing in return is immaterial. He will always be able to spin these loses to Mugabe now and claim that the dictator has capitulated on some points.

When details of the deals made during the negotiations are made public, there are going to be a lot of disappointed MDC-T supporters and they will probably blame Zuma, their former darling, of "forcing" Tsvangirai to accept terms that are clearly against the interests of not only the MDC-T but the democracy project in Zimbabwe itself!!

The reason behind Tsvangirai giving away so much is not too difficult to fathom. He and his party want this Inclusive Government to last for five years, despite all the noises that Tsvangirai makes about new elections.

Mugabe had to step in and announce publicly that there would be new elections in 2011 (after the FIFA World Cup in South Africa is finished). Tsvangirai believes that giving Mugabe ground will persuade the dictator to prolong the life of the Inclusive Government, giving the Prime Minister the opportunity to spread his tentacles into all aspects of government.

We are set for a long haul, with no discernible difference to the quality of life of Zimbabweans.

One source within the MDC says the people are going to be so angry when they hear what Tsvangirai has agreed to on Mugabe, but also says Tsvangirai has told his colleagues that they should leave the selling of the bad news to the population to him, since he believes that he when he speaks, no MDC supporter will doubt that he has won, even if all evidence points to the fact that he has lost.