Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog: 4/1/09 - 5/1/09 Live From Harare, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono got what he wanted today.

Mugabe, for the first time since the Inclusive Government was launched, publicly stated that the Governor is not going anywhere.

This comes hot on the heels of the resignation of the RBZ governor at the president's mansion in Helensvale. Gono, as I told in a previous article on this blog, complained to Mugabe on the day that no one from ZANU PF was standing up for him despite the fact that he was being "victimised for supporting them."

It appears Mugabe took this a direct challenge. It is also probable that, just like the rest of the people in ZANU PF, he has now heard of Gono's fear that Mugabe may well sacrifice him to Biti and Tsvangirai in return for getting much-needed aid from outside Zimbabwe.

This was a real fear in the Gono camp.

It appears the Governor got even more rattled when Morgan Tsvangirai announced that agreement had been reached on Governors, who would be laid off and paid off.

Gono thought he could also be forced into early retirement and be paid off compensation for cutting short his tenure. If Mugabe could let go of Governors, was anyone safe?

Mugabe, speaking at the funeral of Gono's brother today, Monday 25 April, used the occasion to state unequivocally that Gono was not going to be sacrificed, despite the calls from Western capitals, Bretton Wooods and other donors.

The dictator went further.

He also acknowledged that within the Inclusive Government, there are people who also want Gono gone. Although he did not name them, it is clear who he refers to.

After all, it was only last week that Prime Mnister Tsvangirai told a packed press conference at Munhumutapa Building that he and the other Principals would refer the matter to SADC.

In other words, Mugabe told the world today that whatever the Prime Minister says, it is of no consequence whatsoever. Like it or not, Mugabe, says, Gono will stay. SADC or no SADC. Which means there is little point to the whole pursuit of the matter.

But Gono now has public backing from his patron, who had maintained silence on the matter for months now. Gono can now wave that approval in the face of not only the Prime Minister but also the Finance Minister, who most probably will not be able to amend the RBZ Act as he wishes and will be blocked first in parliament and then at the stage of signing into law by Mugabe, should it get that far.

Now, you may also hear from Mugabe's cronies and ministers. They may start also publicly defending the Governor.

Somehow, I think it unlikely because Mugabe is running a very tight ship. He has told his Politburo that "it is me they are after. Let me deal with them." Which means dispute resolutions or positions will only be communicated once the President says so.

This is also why, through all of this nonsense, we never heard from ZANU PF in public. They are under orders to keep silent. And when people like George Charamba speak, it is with feigned ignorance of what is taking place in the negotiations. They are under orders to appear respectful at all times.

You will also notice that Mugabe made a confirmation of what I told you two months ago on this blog. Back then, I informed you that Mugabe had said to the MDC Gono can only go if it is demonstrated that he is being insubordinate or was being disloyal to the new order. He could not be punished for anything that happened before the MDC came to power.

"I said show me the wrong he has done," Mugabe told the mourners at Gono's brother's funeral today.

This is also the very reason why that letter said to be from Gono, is a fake. It would be insubordinate of him to appeal to the Prime Minister and smear Tendai Biti like that. The MDC would have found something to take to Mugabe.

Still, we know now that Gono stays and there's an end to the matter.

Scenes From Harare on 25 May 2009 (And Condolences)

Street Theatre: It is Africa Day In Zimbabwe today, a Public Holiday. Here, you see a crowdthat was gathered today in First Street watching a group that conducts street plays on First Street in Harare. They seemed to be enjoying themselves fully. The group performs comedy daily on the pedestrian-only First Street.

And this is a scene from Glen Norah, a high-density area of Harare today, where residents gathered at the Community Centre in Glen Norah B to fetch water from a Borehole dug by UNICEF. This particular area of Harare has gone for three days without electricity and they last saw water in their taps, they say, last year in July.

This is happening while, as you can see at the very top of these photos, treated water is left to gush out of pipes all over the city. I took these pictures today and the ones of the treated water gushing away were all taken within one block between Eastgate and Parliament in Harare.

CONDOLONCES:

It is also with a very heavy heart that I announce the death of our Provincial Coordinator in Manicaland, Mr George Kawonza, who was found burnt beyind recognition in his car in the province. He had just returned from a business trip to South Africa.

Dr Makoni, Mrs Makoni and thousands of Mavambo supporters gave him a fitting send-off on Saturday at his rural home in Rusape, where he was laid to rest.

The headman and chiefs from the area also attended.

Speaking at the funeral, Dr Makoni (who received a tumultous welcome) bemoaned the continued suffering of the people of Zimbabwe, saying the country is not working and that if it was working, George would perhaps not even have gone to South Africa, because business would be alright in Zimbabwe.

Dr Makoni also bemoaned the collapse of the health and edcucation infrastructure in Zimbabwe, saying "our kids today are getting a worse education than ever before."

He assured the gathering, which included countless people in Mavambo T-shirts, dancing and singing, (we ran out of T-shirts at the event as people kept clamouring for them) that the Mavambo party would be launched very soon to give people a true alternative to the moribund Government of National Unity.

Gideon Gono Resigns

Here's yet another scoop from this blog! Following hot on the heels of my scoop that the letter supposedly written by Gono was in fact written by George Charamba and is designed simply to expose the fact that the MDC-T "has done nothing since assuming power)

Gideon Gono, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, handed a letter of resignation on Saturday morning to dictator Robert Mugabe just as he was about to leave for his rural home in Zvimba from his Helensvale home.

Gono lives just up the road from Mugabe in the posh area and delivered the letter personally to Mugabe.

In a move that shows just who it is that is scuppering the Global Political Agreement, Mugabe is said to have refused to accept the resignation.

Gono, however, was insistent that no ZANU PF minister is standing up for him, not one is fighting from his corner except President Mugabe himself.

But the dictator, who has told Gono that he must hold his horses because the fight here is between the dictator and Tsvangirai, was apparently dismissive of Gono's move.

Gono was still insisting yesterday that his only option is to walk, claiming that, in doing so, he is going to show ZANU PF ministers and officials, whom he claims benefitted from his largesse, that they would also be exposed in the process.

For some time now, Gono has been bitter that the whole of ZANU PF has remained silent while he is hung out to dry by Biti.

He has not been sure whether Mugabe will hold fast in his refusal to let him go. My own assessment of his latest move is that it is designed specifically to test just how steadfast Mugabe is in his support. People close to the Governor say if he gets the impression that Mugabe is indeed willing to let the GNU fail on account of the Gono and Tomana issue, the governor could well be persuaded that he has a future.

Gono also told the president that he has essentially been made a lame-duck Governor by Tendai Biti, who has taken away pretty much all of the functions that used to give the Central Bank a source of income.

The Reserve Bank is now struggling to fund its own operations, with Biti insisting that the 6000 people that Gono has hired at the Central Bank are not needed (he calls them a parallel government) and refusing to fund their salaries. So, even as I write, RBZ staff are not being paid their salaries because Gono's coffers are dry.

You will recall that I told you soon after Biti's budget statement that the Finance minister and the MDC were vowing that, within six months, Gono will have to come to Treasury (Finance Ministry) to ask for funds to keep the central bank going.

What Gono fears, though, is to wake up one day and find that Mugabe has struck a deal over him with Tsvangirai.

The events of Saturday seem to show that Mugabe is unwilling to let his personal banker go.

Tsvangirai himself, who told the Financial Times at Jacob Zuma's inauguration that "it is not helpful to jump on the Gideon Gono bandwagon", will need to refer the matter to SADC if he is keen on getting the man to go.

As things stand, Tendai Biti and others are of the opinion that Tsvangirai will not do this, hiding instead behind the anthem that ALL principals need to AGREE to refer the matter to SADC for the matter to be referred there.

You will notice that Biti has now resorted to making moves on the legislative front to curtail and reorganise the Reserve Bank. This he is doing because he has lost hope that Gono will indeed go. Advice given to Biti by the IMF during recent consultations will inform the legal measures Biti will take to try and bolster confidence in the RBZ amongst donors and Bretton Woods institutions.

Still, it appears that Gono has now reached a stage where he is willing to walk unless ZANU PF becomes more vocal in supporting his continued stay at the Central Bank.

Fake: Gono's Letter To Tsvangirai

Impeccable sources now confirm that the letter supposedly from Gideon Gono to PM Tsvangirai, which the Prime Minister has denied receiving, was in fact written by Mugabe Spokesman George Charamba as a propaganda ply. It has worked spectacularly

The letter circulating online purportedly from Gideon Gono to Prime Minister Tsvangirai is fake.

Sources close to the Governor say the Governor has disowned the document and says he has not written to the Prime Minister. Gono claims that his issue is being handled by the dictator and the Prime Minister and he had no reason to appeal to a man whom he knows definitely wants him out of office - Morgan Tsvangirai.

Impeccable sources now confirm that the letter originated from the office of Mugabe's spokesman, George Charamba. Charamba, a propaganda man, has repeatedly suggested to Gono that he should fight back by telling the world the true facts around the US$1 billion credit lines and STERP that are Gono's achievements.

The embattled Governor has resisted these suggestions because he still hopes to be able to work with Tendai Biti and does not want to appear insubordinate. You will recall that I have told you before that Mugabe, at the outset of the battle over Gono, told Tsvangirai that Gono can not be punished for past deeds but that if he proved insubordinate under the new dispensation, then the MDC would have a case.

Gono is aware of this and was fighting to ensure that he does not put a foot wrong. The press conference held by Gono and Biti last month, at which Biti said there was no bad blood between them, was an attempt to fall in line with Mugabe's wishes.

Prime Minister Tsvangirai has denied receiving the letter.

Charamba apparently felt that Gono was letting a good propaganda opportunity go to waste. He felt that the MDC-T was claiming credit for things they did not do, such as the credit lines, dollarisation, reduction of inflation and even STERP.

(It boggles the mind, though, that t=anyone would want to claim credit for STERP, which a South African economist as recently as last week called "a joke").

The fake letter contains many of the arguments that appeared last week in The Herald in an article that quoted unidentified "sources" as saying STERP was a ZANU PF programme handed to Biti in his capacity as Minister of Finance when he took office.

The same article also sought to "set the record straight" on dollarisation and all the other things that Tsvangirai has been claiming as the successes of the Inclusive government.

Charamba first sought to have these leaked anonymously, and the Herald article only said STERP was put together by ZANU PF "officials" before the Inclusive government was formed.

Perhaps this did not cause a good enough stir for Charamba. Shrewdly leaking a fake letter to PM Tsvangirai from Gono ensured that the letter got a much wider audience than the Herald.

Sure enough, it has now been widely reproduced on the Internet. In doing so, the arguments in it, the ones Charamba has been seeking to make widely-known (STERP, dollarisation etc as ZANU PF programmes), are also now being read.

No Deadlock In Zimbabwe, Says SADC

SADC Heads of State at a meeting of the regional body in Swaziland after the formation of Zimbabwe's Coalition Government. The regional body says there is no deadlock in Zimbabwe

"The first hundred days of Zimbabwe's Unity Government were given the seal of approval by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which dismissed any notion that the fledgling government was facing difficulties - a view not shared by Western donors," reports IRIN, the United Nations news service.

Tomaz Salomao, the Executive Secretary of the regional body, told the news agency yesterday that SADC was happy with the strides made by the Zimbabwe Unity Government so far, according to a story issued by IRIN here.

The Executive Secretary says no deadlock has been declared to them "but we are happy with what they have achieved so far."

As I told you before, Tsvangirai appears to be working against his own party on this supposed deadlock. He is happy to let Mugabe get the Permanent Secretaries, Ambassadors and so on.

The MDC National Council took a decision to refer "outstanding issues" to SADC because they are not happy with what Tsvangirai has agreed with Mugabe. The issues that they highlighted include the following:

Continued harrassment of MDC supporters, officials and even MPs
Continued dententions and arrests of MDC activists and supporters and officials
Failure by Mugabe to convene a meeting of the National Security Council, which is supposed to replace JOC
Gideon Gono and Johannes Tomana appointments
Permanent Secretaries' appointments
Swearing in of Roy Bennet
Governorships of the ten Provinces of Zimbabwe.

The Council, led by people like Biti, wants ALL of these to be referred to SADC because they do not trust Mugabe one bit. They do not believe that he will honour his word and swear in Governors and Roy Bennet, especially since he will not give a specific date on which he will swear them in.

Of course, he has refused to discuss the continued trials of Jestina Mukoko, Gandi Mudzingwa and other MDC activists and Tsvangirai has not pressed him.

At his press conference yesterday, the Prime Minister said nothing about any of these issues of the arrests and harassment of MDC activists. Nothing at all.

So, Tsvangirai has essentially undermined that Resolution from Sunday by announcing that he has agreed to most of the issues that the National Council wanted referred to SADC.

The statement from SADC today shows that he has also not even taken the issue of Gono and Tomana (the only issues he says he will refer to SADC, in contravention of the Resolution of the MDC-T issued on Sunday) to them.

But Tsvangirai knows his supporters at the grassroots well. They will follow him unto death. He knows that, even if he were to tell them today to vote for Mugabe for president, they would unquestioningly do so.

His supporters at the grassroots level also seem to accept that it is OK for Mugabe to continue to detain MDC supporters as long as the MDC-T gets Principal Directors and Governors. They are happy with these "crumbs" as one diplomat put it to me yesterday, and are not worried about anything else really.

He is also quite happy with the junior "Principal Director" posts he has been given. Principal Directors, as one long-serving diplomat explained to me yesterday, have "no impact whatsoever on policy".

The hierarchy of the civil service is as follows:

Minister, followed by a Deputy Minister, followed by a Permanent Secretary, followed by an Undersecretary, followed by various Assistant Secretaries and then followed by the Principal Director.

In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for instance, it was explained to me that Ambassadors report to Assistant Secretaries. They do not even report to the PermSec. The ambassador would report whatever he has to say to the Desk that covers his region, which is manned by an Assistant Secretary.

He will take the matter to the Undersecretary, who, if need be, will take it to the Permanent Secretary. Ambassadors can not speak to the PermSec unless the PermSec asks to speak to them.

In any case, Tendai Biti is privately saying now that he has had enough and he has the National Council backing him.

He is baffled as to why there would be silence on a fundamental issue like the continued sham trials and detentions of MDC-T activists, why Tsvangirai would consider these closed when Bennett, Mukoko, Mudzingwa and others are still being tried and face stiff jail sentences.

He is also baffled why Tsvangirai would continue on this route when all the donors say these are the very issues upon which aid to Zimbabwe depends.

Does the Prime Minister not realise that he has a no chance whatsoever of getting aid and assistance as long as he quietly accepts these breaches and leaves Mugabe's patronage structure in place?

In any case, it appears that even the matter of Gideon Gono and Johannes Tomana has not been referred to SADC. But when one leads sheep, it is a walk in the park. Tsvangirai only needs that statement he made yesterday and then he will remain quiet, with his supporters thinking that his word alone at that Press conference means that the issue has been referred.

Soon, they will start again pointing fingers at Mugabe and SADC, forgetting that their leader has not sent a letter to the regional body and that the MDC-T itself can not approach SADC, only the three leaders can and it appears not one of them (Tsvangirai included) wants to take that futile route.

It is called smoke and mirrors and the gullible have already swallowed it.

End of story. The dispute is closed, unless Tendai Biti and the National Council decide to continue pushing Tsvangirai to fight for real power.

If Zimbabwe Is On The Right Track, Why Are Exiled Zimbabweans Not Coming Back Home?

Morning at Beitbridge border post, the gateway for Zimbabweans who fled Mugabe's misrule to find jobs in better-run South Africa. And they are not coming back, despite professed positive changes in Zimbabwe. Why not?

If the government of Zimbabwe, the one between MDC and ZANU PF, is working well and achieving positive results in Zimbabwe, why are our citizens still outside the country, living and working in Britain, South Africa, New Zealand and so on?

Why?

If STERP and the other plans that this government has are in tune with what Zimbabwe needs to roar again, why are our countrymen refusing to come back home and help make the vision of thet STERP a resounding success?

Instead, what we have now is Zimbabweans overseas "urging" the West to give money to the MDC-PF in order to turn the country around. What we have is applause for a strategy (STERP) that hinges purely on begging for alms from the West in order to feed the nation.

If that money comes, what will be done with it?

Most qualified personnel from Zimbabwe have found jobs elsewhere. This has left a serious gap in skills needed to revive Zimbabwe. From civil engineers to mechanics, let alone accountants and scientists, Zimbabwe is short.

Instead of praising the moribund and visionless plans of this government, Zimbabweans with skills out there in the diaspora need to start putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

It all reminds me of a comment on the South African Sunday Times website late last year when it was announced that South Africa had committed to giving Zimbabwe 300 million Rand in farm aid.

The commenter, a South African, said Zimbabwe should get nothing, South Africans needed to satisfy their own needs first.

"I have been fortunate enough to interact with educated Zimbabweans in South Africa, UK, New Zealand and USA and they are all very negative about their country. So why should I care about their country when they don't?"

That attitude is still with us in the world.

It appears that, to some extent, MDC-T supporters and Morgan Tsvangirai have realised this. Instead of exposing the truth about how Mugabe is still stubborn, refusing to replace Permanent Secretaries, refusing to fire Gono and Tomana, arresting MDC-T activists and officials like Gandi Mudzingwa, they are very keen to to sanitise Mugabe now, to say to the world is everything is just fine, the government is working well and Tsvangirai is winning and has power, so give us the money.

Of course, much of the world is not paying attention. The World Bank has just clarified it's position on the US$22 million that Tendai Biti claimed had been given to Zimbabwe.

They say, no, we are doing no such thing. The money is money that we have been giving to aid agencies and NGO all along for humanitarian work. The government gets nothing.

Of course, the money has not made a much fundamental difference even through all the years that aid agencies and NGOs have been getting it.

Still, the question remains: would it not convince the world even more that things have changed in Zimbabwe if all her exiled doctors, nurses, scientists, civil engineers and other qualified Zimbabweans started flocking back to the country, looking to see where they can help to uplift their country?

As long as the praises of the MDC-PF government are sung by Zimbabweans from the comfort of Peterborough, Manchester, Brighton, Alberta, New York and Johannesburg, then the words sound very hollow indeed.

And the world will ignore those voices and instead look inside Zimbabwe to make up its own mind.

The situation obtaining now is simply this: Zimbabweans outside Zimbabwe, professionals who are working elsewhere, show by their actions that they do not have confidence in Zimbabwe. The world takes its cue from the actions, not only of Mugabe, but also of those who oppose him.

That is the basis upon which they will judge whether to engage and help Zimbabwe or not.

Tsvangirai Announces Agreement On Outstanding Issues

Morgan Tsvangirai addresses a Press Conference at his offices earlier today, under the watchful eye of Mugabe. The Prime Minister claimed at the Press Conference that all outstanding issues have been resolved

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has confirmed that Mugabe's Permanent Secretarial appointments are not null and void and have been confirmed in their posts.

At a press conference this morning in Harare, Tsvangirai also detailed the other areas on which he, Mugabe and Mutambara and have reached agreement. But he also announced that Mugabe has flat out refused to agree to reviewing the appointments of Gideon Gonoa and the Attorney General.

When you look closely at the agreement as announced by Tsvangirai, it becomes very clear that Tsvangirai has basically been defeated substantially by Mugabe.

You also understand why Tendai Biti and the Executive of the MDC-T are so angry.

This is simply confirmation of what I told you yesterday, in an article below, that Mugabe insisting that the GPA says priority has to be given to the economic situation in Zimbabwe and all other issues should play second fiddle to this.

That the Prime Minister is willing to accept this is what is angering his Executive at the MDC-T.

On Provincial Governors, Mugabe has apparently "relented" and "agreed to appoint" 5 MDC-T Governors and 1 MDC-M Governor. ZANU PF gets 4. But, there is no word on when this will happen. Tsvangirai, at today's press conference, said they would be sworn in "at the earliest opportunity".

When will be the earliest opportunity? A year? Six months? One week?

It remains to be seen.

Roy Bennett's swearing in has also been "agreed on" and he will be sworn in, according to the Prime Minister, "before or on the day" that Provincial Governors are sworn in.

On ambassadors, Tsvangirai says the MDC-T has been asked to supply names of people to be "trained" for ambassadorial posts. Which means Mugabe has refused to reorganise the Foreign Service.

The Prime Minister, however, says Mugabe has agreed to fill four vacant posts for ambassadors with MDC-T and MDC-M nominees. Again, these will be made at the "earliest opportunity". No word on the exact date.

Nelson Chamisa has been given back control over the cellphone companies and ZIMPOST, but ZANU PF has retained control of the Interception of Communications mandate, which leaves them free to spy on everyone from the Prime Minister downwards. Interception of Communications was the real reason Mugabe grabbed the ministry from Chamisa, which means he has got what he wanted, after all.

The fact that Mugabe has refused to back down on Gideon Gono and Johannes Tomana means that the matter will now be referred to SADC, Tsvangirai announced. Like I predicted earlier today, he claimed at the three principals have, with the backing of their parties, agreed to refer the matter to SADC.

But ZANU PF and MDC-M are still saying going to SADC is "premature". Which means, if they insist on this, the matter of Gono and Tomana will simply be left hanging and not be referred to SADC. Tsvangirai has indeed bought Mugabe;s argument that unless they all agree to refer the matter to SADC, it can not be referred there.

Significantly, Tsvangirai said absolutely nothing about the continued arrests and detentions of MDC-T activists and officials. He completely ignored the issue.

When he spoke about the rule of law, he mentioned continued "taking the law into their own hands" by "some of our citizens" with regards to the Land Reform Programme.

He said nothing about what, if anything will be done about it.

He was very quick, however, to dismiss, almost in the same breath, the same disturbances, saying "It is important to recognise that progress has been made and continues to be made with respect to rebuilding Zimbabwe."

So, to recap:

Permanent Secretaries are not null and void
The Interception of Communications, the real reason why Mugabe raided Nelson Chamisa's ministry, remains firmly in ZANU PF's grasp, for them to spy on citizens to their heart's content
Ambassadors remain at their posts and only the vacant five posts will be filled with MDC-T and MDC-M nominees. The others will be looked at "as they fall vacant" and filled through "a formula to be agreed"
Roy Bennet will be sworn in at a date no one is sure of, except that it will be before or at the same time as the Governors are appointed
Governors have been agreed on and will be sworn in at a time of Mugabe's choosing.

On media freedoms, Tsvangirai, despite the arrests of journalists like Vincent Kahiya and Constantine Chimakure of the Independent this last week, says the media was reformed on January 11, a month before he was sworn in as Prime Minister and 19 days before the MDC announced its agreement to join the Inclusive Government.

He says the Media Commission of Tafataona Mahoso is now null and void. Yet Mahoso still draws a salary and his offices remain open. Parliament, apparently, is in the process of putting in place a new Media Commission which will be announced at a date no one knows.

It is important for you to note that none of these things will be implemented. Mugabe will insist that the issue of Gono and Tomana, which will at some point (if ever) be brought before SADC, has to be concluded before he can move to implement the other things he has "agreed" to.

I will be very surprised if we see any movement on any of this soon at all.

All Mugabe's Appointees Reinstated

25 February 2009: Morgan Tsvangirai, flanked by Arthur Mutambara, announces that the appointments of Permanent Secretaries are null and void. Yesterday, he capitulated and ALL of Mugabe's Permanent Secretaries have been reappointed, as announced by the Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Misheck Sibanda.

Tsvangirai has accepted this, driving his National Council even crazier with rage that he would accept such a slap in the face.

Every single Permanent Secretary appointed by Mugabe has been reinstated and confirmed in the post, President Mugabe's Office said last night.

On Tuesday, in a meeting of the Principals soon after Cabinet, Mugabe asked Mariyawanda Nzuwa, Chairman of the Public Service Commission and Misheck Sibanda, Secretary to the President and Cabinet, to come in and explain to Tsvangirai why none of his suggested nominees were qualified to be permanent secretaries of any ministry

They did this

Mugabe then threw in a sweetener and said he would give the MDC-T some Principal Directorships. Tsvangirai accepted this as a fair deal.

What it exposes is that the MDC-T simply wants space at the feeding trough, jobs for their boys. Mugabe read Tsvangirai right and, by offering the lesser posts of Principal Directors, he has provided that space at the trough.

Tsvangirai is satisfied with this because it allows even more of his cronies to join the gravy train.

So, even as Nelson Chamisa said, "Their appointments are null and void", the Prime Minister has relented and finally agreed that they are indeed no null and void.

That score that we were keeping from a month or so back is now active again.

This Thursday morning, it reads:

Mugabe: 3 Tsvangirai: 0

Tsvangirai Sabotages His Own Party

While Tsvangirai is willing to pursue the dictator to Kingdom Come, Tendai Biti and others believe Mugabe is "moving goalposts". So, he's reverted to type then?

In a move certain to anger Tendai Biti and the MDC-T National Council, Morgan Tsvangirai has decided to take the route of quietly defeating his Council's resolution to take the dispute over jobs for the boys to SADC.

The Prime Minister was advised by the president that SADC does not respond to statements by political parties. They will only engage a government.

Consequently, unless one of the Principals in the government approaches SADC with a grievance, SADC would simply ignore the resolution of the aggrieved political party. (Mugabe also falsely clams that unless the Principals ALL agree to declare an impasse, they can not approach SADC).

Tsvangirai has decided not to take the matter to SADC. You will notice that since he came from that meeting in Masvingo at the Flamboyant Hotel, Tsvangirai has made no moves whatsoever to make the request to SADC.

It appears he is taking Mugabe's advice and simply sitting back, while his National Council think that their Resolution is enough to elicit a call from Jacob Zuma to ask after them.

Tsvangirai remains very much committed to dialogue with Mugabe. He is willing to go the distance, cajoling and praising the dictator in the hope of charming him into capitulation.

I also learnt today that Mugabe's main arguing point, which the Prime Minister appears unable to counter effectively is that the GPA signed by the three parties clearly states that the Inclusive Government "will give priority to the restoration of economic stability and growth in Zimbabwe."

Mugabe is insisting that this has not been done and it would be hasty to start talking about other things, such as Governors and the like, when the priority item was still outstanding.

This is why you have heard Tsvangirai, over the last two weeks, at pains to emphasise that the government has stabilised the economy, brought inflation down and restored the supply of goods and services in the shops.

Mugabe is refusing to buy this and he has much evidence of his misrule to point to in the economy to bolster his position that the priority is STILL not attended to.

As Tsvangirai kept pushing, Mugabe had agreed to give a verbal commitment to addressing the MDC-T outstanding issues, but benchmarked against certain milestones on the economic front.

These had to do with the lifting of sanctions and the aid Zimbabwe receives from outsiders as a result of the efforts of the Inclusive Government.

Tsvangirai appeares to want to go along with this.

But, Tendai Biti is dead against the idea. He believes the dictator is trying to "move the goalposts" and that he can not be trusted one bit to do as he says should the MDC-T succeed.

But the frustration Tsvangirai has expressed at the West's reluctance to chip in with funds is evidence of the fact that he believes should there be even just a portion of Zimbabwe monetary needs released by the West, he would have an upper hand. He would go to the dictator and say much more could come if did A, B and C.

Right now, Tsvangirai does not have that bargaining chip.

And this is also one of the reasons Mugabe reminded him in the Herald a couple of days ago that he has "done nothing" since taking office.

In any case, Tendai Biti and Co. must now demand that the Prime Minister approach SADC as Prime Minister and Principal and formally declare an impasse or crisis.

If they do not do this, that Resolution will hang in the air like a bad smell for the rest of this government's life. Tsvangirai, Mugabe and Mutambara will simply continue to refuse to declare an impasse.

Tsvangirai will tell his executive that unless the three principals ALL agree to take the matter to SADC, it can not be taken there.

They should not believe him.

"We Don't Report To A Prime Minister" - Zimbabwe Service Chiefs

HERE ARE THREE ZANU PF HARDLINERS: General Chiwenga, Mugabe's top Commander, happily congratulates the president soon after his inauguration at State House on Sunday June 29. Misheck Sibanda, the Secretary to the President and Cabinet, can be seen in the background, partly obscured by the General. These are the men who are causing Tsvangirai endless headaches. But he insists Mugabe, at least, is "not the problem."

Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe and his security chiefs have refused to disband JOC (the Joint Operations Command, which was at the forefront of strategising Mugabe's retention of power in the chaotic aftermath of the March elections in 2008).

Instead, JOC still sits regularly, thumbing its nose at the Inclusive Government. The meetings, some of which I have reported here before, are mainly held in two places: at State House, which Mugabe now uses as his preferred office after moving his family to his mansion in Helensvale, Borrowdale, a minute's drive from Gideon Gono's house, just off Carrick Creagh Road) or at the house in Highlands that I have mentioned here before.

The Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed by Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara commits to the creation of a National Security Council, on which Tsvangirai is guaranteed a seat.

The Service Chiefs and Mugabe hav simply ensured that the Security Council never meets.

The MDC-T made the mistake of assuming that the creation of a National Security Council meant the disbanding of JOC.

The agreement says nothing about disbanding JOC. Based on this, the Service Chiefs and Mugabe have said the continued meetings of JOC are legal and not in violation of the agreement. Technically, they are correct. The letter of the agreement certainly indicates this. But only if you are being legalistic and insincere.

The spirit of the same agreement, however, suggests that the body should not even be meeting anymore.

Meantime, the MDC-T has been reduced to demanding that the National Security Council meets "without further delay".

They bemoaned the failure by the Council to meet in their Resolution this past Sunday, the one in which they said they had referred the matter to SADC. (Another cock-up I shall be discussing in detail in a later posting this evening).

I also know for a fact that the Prime Minister "invited" the Service Chiefs to have a cup with them for familiarisation purposes and got back the following response (within the day):

"We don't report to a Prime Minister. Send your request through our Commander-in Chief (President Mugabe)."

It is not known whether Tsvangirai put his request to Mugabe in their one-on-one Monday meetings, but the fact that he has failed to meet the Service Chiefs to date says a lot.

As I told you around the time Tsvangirai was sworn in (and I was told that I was dreaming and was wrong, the tide had turned etc), Mugabe was clear from the outset that Tsvangirai had to be kept as far away from the Defence Forces as possible.

The Prime Minister, who keeps telling us about hardliners and how Mugabe is such a dandy chap, needs to look no further than Mugabe to find the gang leader of these "residual elements".

So far, he is insisting that he needs Mugabe in order to give Zimbabweans a solution.

Why Mugabe Is Walking Away From The Coalition

PICTURE OF HEALTH: It appears even Morgan Tsvangirai has given up on Mugabe retiring, telling an audience at Wits University barely two weeks ago: "President Mugabe is not going anywhere. He is with us in this government until we achieve positive results"

The commenting system on the Blogger platform, who host this blog, has been misbehaving for some days now and I commiserate with all who have called and emailed to say you can not leave your comments.

I am sure the blog platform are aware of this glitch and are fixing it, so we should be back to normal soon.

A few of you who have called or emailed today were asking how feasible it is for Mugabe to go it alone, to abandon the Coalition with Tsvangirai as he has now clearly decided to do.

First thing to understand is that Mugabe now believes that the MDC needs the GNU more than he does.

The explanation is found in the story below this one, the story in which I tell you about Mugabe's ZANU PF publicly humilating the MDC by revealing that:

STERP (The Short Term Economic Recovery Programme) was crafted by ZANU PF before MDC agreed to join the Coalition and simply presented to Biti for him to take to cabinet upon taking office (this has not been disputed by the MDC, so we can conclude that this is true)
Dollarisation was introduced by ZANU PF (this is public knowledge and we all know that it is Chinamasa who introduced dollarisation in his budget as Acting Minister of Finance before the MDC even announced that they had agreed to go into a coalition with ZANU PF)
Licencing for all providers of goods and services to charge in foreign currency was introduced by ZANU PF (again, this is public knowledge, we all heard Gono make the announcement in the Monetary Policy that followed the Chinamasa Budget. This, again, was before MDC even announced its decision to join government)

Now, it is not in dispute, even amongst MDC-T die-hard supporters, that these measures have brought a measure of relief on the inflation front and on the economic front.

The Prime Minister has been, over the last two weeks or so, pointing to these measures as the big achievements of this Inclusive Government. He claims inflation is now at minus 3%.

Mugabe and ZANU PF are now saying, since they did these things by themselves without the MDC-T or M, since these measures have been proved to be successful and to bring results, what on earth do they need the MDC-T for?

It is a very real position within ZANU PF that with or without the MDC, what Mugabe's party did in January this year would have brought the same results.

ZANU PF readily admits that the only thing they need MDC-T for is removal of sanctions. But it is now clear to them that these are not being lifted.

As one senior member said yesterday, "why should we allow them to claim credit for our success when they are not doing anything at all about the sanctions? Tsvangirai has achieved nothing since coming to office, nothing."

So, ZANU PF clearly now believes that were it to be left alone in government, it would essentially continue with the route they put in place in January (dollarisation) and see this bring in results, changing the face of Zimbabwe's economy.

Now, the economy was Mugabe's biggest problem, the root of his unpopularity and the issue that turned the whole country against his party. They had to be forced to support him.

He is certain that the correction of the economy signals his ascendancy back to supremacy.

The key to defeating an enemy is to understand how he thinks, and not to prejudice our opinion of him because of our hatred for him. A long line of brilliant Generals, from Ceasar to Eisenhower, grasped this simple truth in the cradle

The trump card the MDC-T held, which was that they could open floodgates to aid coming into Zimbabwe, has been proved to be hollow and false. The aid is not forthcoming.

Based on this, Mugabe is now absolutely certain that he will lose nothing if the MDC walks away from the coalition today.

He can not fire them, but he would like them to go. This is where we are. This is what we we face.

It is indeed true that the only thing that will change today if the MDC-T walks away is that they will not longer be in office, they being the MDC-T.

Otherwise, everythig else remains as it is now. Nothing will change.

AS FOR THOSE CREDIT LINES: ZANU PF SAID THROUGH THE HERALD TWO DAYS AGO THAT THESE WERE ALL NEGOTIATED AND SEALED BY GONO AND BITI HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM.

So, the MDC has not even brought those grants into the country, except for the US$22 million that was announced yesterday by the World Bank.

But you must remember how insignificant this is: this sum from the World Bank, negotiated by Tsvangirai, is barely enough to cover just the salaries of the bloated civil service for ONE MONTH.

ZANU PF says, through Gono, it brought in the credit lines amounting to almost a billion which Biti was now trying to take credit for.

None of these claims have been dismissed by the MDC-T, so they stand and are true.

If you are in doubt, please tell me now the one thing that the MDC-T has given Mugabe during the short life of this GNU that would he wouldn't have got otherwise.

I agree, it is unpalatable. But the truth has a certain way of being unpalatable.

Biti Stole STERP From ZANU PF, Says Mugabe As Coalition Crumbles

BETTER DAYS: Tendai Biti is seen here with Mugabe and South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe when South African business leaders jetted in to talk investments with the Zimbabwe government.

Now Mugabe has publicly humiliated Biti and the Prime Minister by saying STERP was drafted by ZANU PF before the Inclusive government was formed and simply handed to Biti when he took office

President Mugabe and ZANU PF have now basically declared the GNU or Inclusive Government dead.

Mugabe's party yesterday let it be known through the media that Tendai Biti did not draft STERP. Instead, it is claimed, the plan was drafted by the ZANU PF government prior to the MDC agreeing to go into the Government of National Untiy or Inclusive Government.

Apparently, Biti was handed the document when he took over and "all he did was present it to Cabinet".

You will also notice that the 100 Day Plan document itself does not carry pictures of the President and his two deputies.

Although it details the laughable "plans" in each ministry, the Presidency was left out, suggesting either that the Presidency has no plans for the next 100 days or that Mugabe is keeping his plans secret.

It is the later, of course.

Technically, the Prime Minister is in charge of the policy formulation and implementation, but the spirit of inclusiveness should have seen Mugabe and his deputies volunteer their own plans for reorganising government.

The true state of affairs in Zimbabwe is that ZANU PF and Mugabe have already made up their minds that the GNU is dead. Mugabe has said anyone who does not like the fact that Gono is staying can go and hang.

He is certain that he will never back down.

Which has also led to him being certain that the MDC are on their way out of the MDC-PF government. He fully expects them to walk.

The confirmation of this state of affairs came yesterday in the state newspaper, The Herald.

The newspaper publicly called the Prime Minister a liar, basically. It quoted his statements in recent times (including in South Africa) in which he claimed credit on behalf of the Coalition government for dollarisation, bringing inflation down and filling the shops with food.

The paper, in a page-long feature, explained that dollarisation was introduced by Patrick Chinamasa in his budget speech as Acting Finance Minister. It debunked the inflation story by saying Gideon Gono, "four days later", introduced wholesale licencing for goods and services to be charged for in foreign currency.

Shops, the paper pointed out, were already full of goods by the time the MDC agreed to join the Inclusive Government.

It then goes on to paint an extremely dismissive picture of the measures taken by Tendai Biti and the Inclusive Government, including the claim that STERP was drawn up by ZANU PF and simply handed to Tendai Biti when he came into office. All he did was present it to cabinet, Mugabe's camp says.

And this has not been disputed by Biti.

As for the aid that is now coming in from African Banks, it is explained that the deals had already been done by Gideon Gono at the Reserve Bank and Biti simply concluded them. Again, this has not been disputed by the MDC.

But the importance of all this lies in the indication it all gives that, clearly, Mugabe is now preparing for an election. He is campaigning.

Yesterday, he obviously gave orders for the gloves to be taken off and for Tsvangirai to be exposed as having "done nothing" since assuming office.

The paper also carries an opinion piece that says "No Reforms" at the Reserve Bank until sanctions are removed.

There you have Mugabe's answer to the MDC Resolution.

The dictator himself remains quiet as a mouse and simply moves pieces into place on the chessboard called government.

It is now almost certain that by the time the MDC-T wakes up and the Prime Minister realises that Mugabe is, indeed, the problem, they would have been checkmated.

This line on the economic turnaround will be drummed into people's heads relentlessly during any election. It will be repeated with every news bulletin.

It is the only straw the MDC was hanging onto in terms of achievements in the Inclusive government so far. Mugabe wishes to blow that straw away.

And with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission confirming yesterday that by-elections will be held for seats whose incumbents are dead or in jail or dismissed by his party, the stage is set.

Nakedly, ZANU PF is going to abandon the pledge not to fight the MDC for MDC seats that fall vacant.

The point of all this, really, is to give you a heads up. The signs are all there that this Coalition Government is now dead in the water.

If the MDC get frustrated enough with not being able to appoint a Governor or an Attorney General that they think it wise to walk out, that indeed would be the end of the government.

But the Prime Minister's party says it has no intention of walking. Which means Mugabe is going to get even more outrageous in the coming weeks. He is going to go out of his way to humiliate and frustrate the MDC.

If they stay through all that, they will emerge at the end of this experiment the laughing stock of Africa and, more importantly, of the people of Zimbabwe.

"Chiyadzwa Diamond Massacre and June 27 Run-off Victims Buried in Chitungwiza"?

Shallow graves can be seen clearly in the foreground in this picture I took earlier this evening. In the background are "normal graves" where people continue to be buried.

In the first photo, at the very top, you can see the sort of grave into which these bodies were put. They are the "pre-graves", dug by council employees at cemeteries just as a start. Normally, those burying their loved ones would deepen the grave considerably before burial, but it was not the case here. The bodies were dumped into these "pre-graves". In the same photo right at the top, you can also clearly see the surgical masks and gloves discarded by the prisoners who buried them there.

One April night, just a few weeks back, a tipper truck arrived at Unit L Cemetery in Chitungwiza.

It was accompanied by a truckload of prisoners, who all disembarked and were handed gloves and surgical masks as well as picks and shovels.

Shortly, bodies started being offloaded from the back of the tipper truck and thrown into the graves. No coffins.

Eighty five bodies are now buried at the Unit L Cemetery in Chitungwiza, a satellite town of Harare, the Capital of Zimbabwe.

The bodies were piled two or three into a row of shallow, knee-length graves. There are thirty seven of these shallow graves in all.

Sources say the 85 bodies belong to victims of the Chiadzwa diamond fields massacre as well as some victims of the June 27 presidential election run-off horrific violence.

The 85 bodies were allegedly buried by prisoners and the masks and gloves they wore during the grisly act have been dumped into another shallow hole, which nobody has bothered to cover up. The masks and gloves were still visible when I visited the place today.

The row of shallow graves is unmistakable at the Unit L Cemetery.

It says a lot about the sense of impunity that pervades Zimbabwe when things like this happen in an urban area.

But in a way, it makes sense. Traditionally, chiefs out in the rural areas would rather die than accept the bodies of strangers into the ground over which they preside. It would the scariest thing they can do and no spirit medium would let a chief like that off the hook.

This explains why the burials had to be in town.

The bodies had been turned away from Mutare and from Marondera by the Mayors of the town, according to very reliable sources. Residents of Unit L in Chitungwiza are aware of the presence of these graves and are up in arms against their own MDC-T mayor for allowing the bodies to be brought there.

Within two days, the whole neighbourhood near the Cemetery was filled with the stench of rotting human flesh, according to residents who live nearby.

I also understand that, this week, there are plans to put up a tarred road over the shallow graves, which are buried in the middle of the cemetery. The new road would simply look like an access road for cars and people, flanked by proper graves on either side.

MDC-T officials in the area also fear that the more 40 MDC-T activists who the opposition can not account for and who disappeared last year may well be part of the group.

Since coming into government, the MDC-T has pressed for information on where the missing activists are, but the police say they have no idea.

Residents of the area, some no doubt with hyperactive imaginations, now say that they see strange lights rising into the sky over the cemetery late at night and are very upset with the Mayor of the City for allowing the bodies to be buried there, especially since they had been turned away from Mutare and Marondera.

It would require more resources than are available to a blogger to unravel this whole thing.

But what is not in doubt is that there are 37 shallow graves at Unit L Cemetery in Chitungwiza some with three and others with two bodies in them that are about to be tarred over.

Hopefully, the MDC-T will push for an explanation on this particular incident and give us all an official position, otherwise.......

What Happened At The MDC National Council Meeting On Sunday, May 17?

Tendai Biti and Nelson Chamisa (above) as well as Roy Bennett and other members outside cabinet, rammed through the resolution to take the "outstanding issues" back to SADC and AU, despite Tsvangirai's resistance. The Prime Minister would have lost not only the argument but even his job as head of the party is he had refused to capitulate to his Council

Morgan Tsvangirai was left all alone in the MDC-T National Council meeting held in Masvingo on Sunday as the rest of his executive argued against the continued status quo in the MDC-PF Coalition regime.

Not a single member of the National Council backed the Prime Minister's position that time was needed to bring Mugabe around. Not a single one of them thought it wise to listen to the Prime Minister's advice counselling "patience".

Tsvangirai was again in the mood to defend Mugabe, saying the dictator was "tired" but that if he were to push matters, the whole government could crumble around their ears, plunging Zimbabwe into an even deeper crisis from which neither the MDC-T nor ZANU PF would benefit.

At one time, he asked the gathering whether they thought they could achieve anything by going back to the days of running battles and harassment from the police and whether they thought they could achieve anything by abandoning everything now, before they had had a chance to put in place measures that would make a news election fairer and the playing field more level.

From the beginning of the meeting, it was clear that National Council wanted Tsvangirai to send a big signal to ZANU PF that what they continue to do is unacceptable.

About half of those present (including Nelson Chamisa) favoured pulling out altogether, but it was Tendai Biti who argued against this, saying staying in government allowed the MDC-T to claim credit for changing the economic situation of Zimbabweans. He also agreed that they had to stay in to get a new constitution, licence new media players and influence the environment as much as possible in their favour for the next elections.

He argued it was quite possible to continue the work of government while fighting for "political space". He believes there are important areas where the MDC is proving influential and more are available.

In the end, the Council decided that it had "to be seen to be doing something" about all these violations.

One member reminded the gathering that SADC and the African Union were guarantors of the whole deal and could be appealed to to knock sense into Mugabe's head.

Tsvangirai pointed out that this would not achieve any results, reminding the gathering that these are the very same issues that he had tried to raise with the regional and continental groupings after signing, as the MDC-T refused to be sworn in.

He explained how both Jakaya Kikwete, whom he called a "friend" of the MDC (and who is Chair of the African Union) and the then South African President Motlanthe said these were issues that were out of the facilitation mandate and would have to be resolved by the Joint Implementation and Monitoring Committee set up by the three parties to the agreement.

Some members of the Zimbabwean opposition Supreme Body argued that, be that as it may, they still thought that sending the matter back to SADC would at least show their supporters that they were not taking ZANU PF violations lying down.

And that is how agreement was reached on sending the matter back to SADC and the African Union.

It is important to understand that all this is smoke and mirrors, that the MDC-T National Council knows very well that SADC and the African Union can not force Mugabe to appoint MDC-T ambassadors.

They know the regional bodies will most probably refuse to even step in and instead ask the parties to continue addressing their concerns through JOMIC.

But these are desperate times for the MDC-T and they want to give an impression of doing something about the humiliations they continue to suffer at Mugabe's hands.

Tsvangirai remained opposed to what he called "confrontation" right to the end of the meeting.

This is why he told the gathered masses at the MDC-T 10th Anniversary rally at Macheke Stadium that he was "bound" by his party's decision. He does not like it and would prefer to plod along, ignoring the violations by Mugabe.

But it became very clear during the MDC-T National Council meeting that if he insisted, he risked losing his job as President of the party. So strong was the feeling against the continued status quo that, if he had tried to steamroll his way through, he would elicited a vote of no confidence from the gathering.

As it is, Tsvangirai has saved his job. But for how long? It is clear Mugabe is not going to budge and the frustrations will continue within the opposition.

One interesting fact here is that it does not appear as though this whole thing will lead to a split. It would have done if Tsvangirai had anyone backing in the party, thereby creating two camps: Pro and Anti Tsvangirai.

But, with no one standing by his side in this fight, when the whole thing explodes, it is likely that only Tsvangirai will be the one to be sacrificed.

It is like what happened with Winston Field after the dissolution of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Federation, when Ian Smith and other hardliners felt that he was not being confrontational enough with Britain in demanding independence for Rhodesia.

In the end, the Rhodesia Front ousted Field and elected Smith, giving themselves more than 15 years of survival as the supreme political force in Rhodesia.

So it will be with Tsvangirai. He has now been mortally wounded politically by this rebellion and it is just a matter of time. His days are definitely numbered, especially if he keeps insisting that Mugabe must be handled with kid gloves.

Tsvangirai Declares Stalemate, Says Government Can Not Function

The MDC-T party has won over its president, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in the argument over outstanding issues.

Despite the Prime Minister's insistence that the government is working very well and nothing was amiss except a few men with hard heads, the MDC-T announced Sunday that it is referring the "Outstanding Issues" to SADC.

Morgan Tsvangirai himself told a rally at Macheke Stadium in Masvingo that he is "bound" by the decision of his party to take the matter to SADC and the African Union.

It was admission that he did not agree with this route. But Tendai Biti managed to rally the Council to his side and made the announcement.

In a direct challenge to Tsvangirai's claim that "there is no deadline," Biti pointedly announced on Sunday:

"We had given the three principals a deadline to have solved the outstanding issues by last month, but there was no progress."

So, there WAS a deadline?

Tsvangirai knows he can not get any joy from SADC and the African Union and he therefore preferred to deal internally with Mugabe, cajoling the reluctant dictator by incrementally currying his favour.

Hence the politeness in private and public and so on.

In making the announcement, Nelson Chamisa said, "Government can not function under the current circumstances.

The Prime Minister had no alternative to being browbeaten by his Executive, who felt that Mugabe was simply making fools of all of them, stringing Tsvangirai along while consolidating his power by elbowing the MDC-T out of the real power sphere.

By saying the government can not function under the current circumstances, the MDC-T are basically saying this is no government. That the present state of affairs mean the death of the GNU (or Coalition government or whatever is in fashion today).

What happened to the 95% of outstanding issues that had been resolved?

What were they? With 95% agreed, what is so important about the remaining 5% that it warrants killing the Coalition?

Could it be that there never were 95% of anything agreed on as I told you before.

These are the facts of the matter. And facts are stubborn.

So now the country will be put on autopilot, left to simmer in its own juices on the back burner while the two main parties to the Agreement fight over what should have been fought over before the document was signed.

As Tsvangirai is well aware, he will not win the battle at SADC or the African Union.

It is highly unlikely that Mugabe takes them seriously anymore, especially as they are very keen to emphasise that they will not be leaving the government come what may.

So what is the incentive to Mugabe?

None.

Like I told you earlier this month, SADC still views Tsvangirai as not only an outsider but also an impostor. It is highly unlikely that they will satisfy his demands. They can not. If Mugabe does not want, then he does not want.

It would be easier and much less painful for them to simply walk away now. They still have some vestige of pride. Later, it will be much more different.

But their supporters, who were against the GNU before Tsvangirai agreed to it, were now at the forefront of supporting the decision to stay in. Whatever will they do now?

Why, support the futile decision to appeal to SADC and then support the pull out or crumbling of the agreement when it comes, of course.

I guess it was fun while it lasted.

The MDC-PF Government's 100 Day Plan: Go Begging

GETTING A HAIR CUT AT BEITBRIDGE BORDER POST BEFORE GOING TO LOOK FOR A JOB IN SOUTH AFRICA:

Instead of formulating policies that create jobs and empower industry, the MDC-PF's 100 Day Plan shockingly relies only on going begging or "mobilising resources". It is a frighteningly inept document

My God!

We are in more trouble than even I thought.

If you have not done so already, I urge you to read the 100 day plan that was launched by the Prime Minister last week and see for yourself evidence that this government has no clue about how to revive this country.

I fear this MDC-PF government is in over its head and does not have a single clue as to how to get us out of this mess.

The 100 Day Plan is a naive plan that can be explained in one simple word: Aid. You could replace that with "Donors" if you like.

This is what the government went to Victoria Falls for?

We are in trouble.

The 100-Day Plan is simply a wish list and, more disturbingly, a rehash of failed ZANU PF policies.

For example:

The plan calls for the dishing out of goodies left right and centre, without saying where the money for this will come from. These include the "target" at the Agriculture Ministry to "facilitate" the dishing out of crop inputs and seedlings by June 1. This is followed by this:

Increase tobacco to 150kgs, Cotton to 450 000mt, sugarcane to 600 000mt and soya beans to 240 000mt......mobilising farming equipment and implements for both the summer and winter crops

Just like that? But how?

Like I said, it is not a plan, it is wish list.

What the MDC-PF government fails to understand is that government is not a farmer and can therefore not "increase tobacco".

Government is not a factory can therefore not "supply fertiliser".

Well, the madness stretches across the board.

Targets for the Ministry of Industry and Commerce include:

Ensure adequate supply of fertiliser for winter crops by end of May...Develop pricing models (price controls).....Compile comprehensive information on the manufacturing sector (what were they doing in opposition if not studying the gravity and magnitude of the problems facing this critical sector for the last ten years?)......and then "Promote rebranding of Zimbabwe through the hosting of ZITF (which was gonna happen anyway and was a flop), COMESA (Mugabe's long-awaited Chairmanship of that body is now here)...

As you read through this wish list that is trying to pass itself off as a plan, you begin to realise something: THESE PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

A wish list does not a plan make.

There is legislation, by-laws and investment environmental issues that make is impossible for locals as well as the foreigners to invest here. There are impediments that have been set in the way of business over more than 30 years that must be addressed by this MDC-PF government.

But they do nothing of the sort. Instead they want to "mobilise fertiliser" and "hold the COMESA Summit".

One of the more laughable targets belongs to the Ministry of Women's Affairs and Gender and Community Development. And it is?

"Hire a Consultant."!

Local Government has a target that says "Design and Fund a Local Authority Retreat"!

Excellent! More tax dollars spent on hotel bills and imported beers while sewage flows in the streets.

Ministry of Public Works, held by the MDC, (which should be at the forefront of using innovative infrastructural works that are historically the engines for employment and economic revival in an economy in the doldrums like ours) is tasked with what?

I'll tell you: "Cleaning all government buildings by end of June 2009".

"Complete 19 Government buildings by end of July (the government already has too many buildings housing too many underemployed people who, if they so wish, should be allowed by the Prime Minister to go on strike, because the country will not notice the difference) and

maintenance and rehabilitation of all sanitary facilities by end of June 2009"

That is IT? Yes, folks, that is the 100 day plan of this important ministry.

Meantime, Nelson Chamisa, whose Ministry has been stolen by Mugabe, is tasked with mainly Internet thingies to do and some cryptic targets about "parastatal status report in 60 days" (I doubt Mugabe will let him anywhere near the parastatal's offices, whose boards are chaired or populated by retired soldiers and armed forces people.)

It really would be a waste of your time and mine to spend any more time on this joke they call a 100 day plan.

This government has no clue what it is doing, where it should start or how it should be doing what it needs to do: remove the impediments that make it impossible for business to function properly and create jobs in Zimbabwe.

Instead of urging the Ministry of Finance to "widen the tax base", they should be tasking that same ministry to provide specific breaks on tax set against specific reinvestment targets for companies."

For example, if a company reinvests a certain amount into its own business in the 90 days and proves it has not only created X% capacity increase but also new jobs, then it gets given tax breaks to allow it to do more of the same.

Instead, the Prime Minister, who proudly claimed responsibility for the document at its launch, exhorts Tendai Biti to "widen the tax base". How, if you do not create any jobs?

There is not a single item in the whole 100 day plan that even attempts to stimulate job creation in the market. Instead, it is all about going begging and dishing out the alms to an expectant nation.

LIKE I SAID, WE ARE IN TROUBLE.

And Yet Another Blow To White Farmers from Morgan Tsvangirai

The Tobacco Auction Floors in Harare on May 7 2009

Quite odd, this.

Coming hard on the heels of the MDC-PF government declaring that farms protected by Bilateral Investments Protection Agreements (BIPAs) are not immune to being seized by the government of Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, Morgan Tsvangirai has dealt yet another blow to the hopes of Zimbabwe's white farmers.

The Prime Minister of Zimbabwe was in Bindura yesterday for what the state newspapers are calling a "Stakeholders Conference".

(An awful lot of these are being held with nothing to show for them, by the way."

Anyway, the Prime Minister is quoted as saying, "There is no going back on land reform," by the Herald.

His actually words were, "No one is going to reverse Land Reform. Isu tiri kuti rimai tidye tese tese."

No mention of the Land Audit, one of the most burning issues of Zimbabwean elections since at least 2002. It was rightly demanded by the opposition because many good-for-nothings had hoarded farms in the hope that they would get title deeds and then sell those farms right back to their former owners or go into 50-50 partnerships where they shared the profits but not the capital costs.

It was well planned...

In the interim, they do no farming at all, using farmhouses as brothels and weekend retreats.

Now, however, this is territory the Prime Minister fears to tread.

In fact, in the last couple of weeks, ZANU PF parliamentarians and ministers have written in the state media saying they are going to push for a land audit. One of them was very clear that the continued refusal of ZANU PF to entertain an audit would be its undoing, since it would be seen as wanting to hide something.

To win the next election, he said, ZANU PF must now be at the forefront of calling for the Land Audit that the Prime Minister now fears to press home. In case he treads on the toes of the military brass, who have taken this crusade to be theirs, a protection of what they fought for...

So ZANU PF does not want to appear to hiding anything....

But in reality they most certainly are. Most, if not all, multiple-farm owners are ZANU PF lackeys and cronies. Some are ministers, others soldiers and policemen.

Western countries, if we abandon beating about the Bush, primarily refer to property rights when they talk of the rule of law. Specifically, they lecture Zimbabwe on this in order to get it to pay compensation for the private assets (farms) that it took from their owners.

This is really not a racist or supremacist stance, when you look at it within the context of the 21st century.

FDI - Foreign Direct Investment, has been the proven engine for the growth of any economy. But foreign investors will never come into Zimbabwe if the government decides on a whim that it is going to "liberate" certain farms or companies and redistribute them without paying"a cent"in compensation for them, as Mugabe once famously declared.

FDI will dry up, as it has in Zimbabwe. No matter how much gold or uranium or platinum you have, no one except the riff-raff, shady characters of the international business underworld will want to have anything to do with your country.

By endorsing this Marxist approach to private property, the Prime Minister is actually doing more harm to the future of this country than he realises.

He should stop skirting the issue and start engaging the world about the issue of the Land dispute. Most white farmers are not against the process, but they simply want compensation for their toil to date.

Mugabe says they must go and get it from Britain, who stole the land in the first place and parceled it out to people who later claimed ownership to the stolen property and sold it on to unsuspecting people.

I sincerely believe that the true test of the statesmanship of the Prime Minister will be whether he can bridge this divide, whether he can get Mugabe and the British to meet halfway, wherever that halfway is.

Right now, though, he is ignoring the festering sore on the neck of Zimbabwe, instead prescribing painkillers for the headache caused our nation by the toxins in this sore.

Mugabe is already in the land of the hopeless.

I hope the Prime Minister is not planning to join him there.

Outstanding Issues To Remain Outstanding

Morgan Tsvangirai is seen here wearing his reading glasses as he delivers a speech at the "launch" of yet another 100 days of plans by the MDC-PF regime. Tonight, his office confirmed that there is no announcement on the outstanding issues. The Prime Minister, on this, has now managed to break three promises in one week. Good going, Morgan.

A few minutes ago I was told by the Prime Minister's Office that "there is no announcement on the outstanding issues scheduled."

The main news bulletin on State television is going on at the moment and nothing has been said about the matter, as can be expected. Instead, one of the main news items is the fact that the lawyer for MDC-T activists Gandi Mudzingwa and Chris Dhlamini, has been granted US$100 bail by the courts. He is charged with defeating the course of justice.

I told you earlier this week that Mugabe responded to Biti's "ultimatum" by saying, "No one threatens me." I also told you that he was now determined that no resolution of the outstanding issues is reached before the threatened May 17 MDC-T National Council meeting.

This has come to pass.

The Prime Minister is livid with Tendai Biti, because he believes that, were it not for that stunt of a press conference giving Mugabe an ultimatum, he would have sealed a deal with Mugabe by now.

He gives both himself and the dictator too much credit.

Tsvangirai now believes that the best way to get anything out of Mugabe is to show him due respect both in private and in public, to avoid confrontation at all cost (and I mean ALL cost). But this strategy was scuttled by members of his own party who are now after his head, believing him to have been "bought" by the dictator.

Still, the situation in Zimbabwe today is that outstanding issues have not been resolved. Governor Fagan, Gideon Gono, and Prosecutor Shylock Tomana, remain at their posts.

Nelson Chamisa remains Minister of Nothing-in-Particular (at least he has a cossetted Mercedes Benz ML into which he can retreat and sulk).

Permanent Secretaries (null and void) remain very much valid.

Ambassadors, First Secretaries, Provincial Governors and all the other issues that are sticking in the MDC-T's throat remain firmly lodged there tonight.

The MDC-T is proving very bad at agenda setting. They have spent the first 100 days of their MDC-PF regime fighting for space at the feeding trough, paying scant attention to the deplorable issues that are killing Zimbabweans as I speak.

As they squeal at the feeding trough, every time the MDC-T thinks it has elbowed one of the ZANU PF people out of the way, he runs off to complain to Brother Napoleon Mugabe, who, in this classic Animal Farm scenario, immediately takes a ministry away, or rushes to detain an MDC-T legislator or activist.

The dictator himself has spent the time ensuring that the MDC-T gets nothing of substance done. And they have played into his hands time and again.

The Prime Minister's office told me this evening "Zvatova zve next week" - meaning, "Maybe next week."

Maybe.

Maybe not.

As the Herald pointed out this week, Mugabe thinks it the height of absurdity for the MDC-T to be demanding a complete reorganisation of the diplomatic services, the civil service and the entire government when this "arrangement" of a GNU is supposed to be only temporary.

He still, like I keep telling you, insists that the MDC-T must simply ensure that they fix the economy while Mugabe and ZANU PF strengthen their structures, imprison MDC-T activists and basically push to regain the electoral upper hand they are used to.

Whether anything will be announced at the MDC rally to be addressed by Morgan Tsvangirai at the weekend in Masvingo remains to be seen.

The MDC-T has said it will not leave government. And that is the only thing the Prime Minister could do to precipitate a crisis and force Mugabe's hand if he feels very strongly about any of the outstanding issues.

It appears that he does not want to do this.

What he is achieving by staying put is less certain.

Money remains too tight to mention.

Services remain dismal if at all existent.

Instead of hunting down people like myself who are pointing out the futility of this MDC-PF regime, MDC-T supporters would be well advised to tell their PM and their leadership to forget about the struggle for posts and instead concentrate on delivering services for the people, on formulating policies that actually work and are different to the failed ZANU PF policies.

The fight that they have set up for themselves is untenable and the more they issue deadlines and play up "outstanding issues", the more egg they wake up with on their faces every morning.

But, of course, the MDC-T are ordained by God, and Tsvangirai is a Black Jesus. They know it all. They listen to nobody.

So we will just have to keep pointing out the egg on their faces every morning.

Tsvangirai Refused Entry To State House

I could not credit this when I first heard it, but I am now forced to concede that it is true after the Independent confirmed it today.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was effectively barred from entering the State House on Monday for a banquet being held in honour of the President of North Korea, who was in the country to "talk nuclear" with Robert Mugabe.

James Maridadi, MT's spokesman, says the one of the vehicles in the Zimbabwean Prime Minister's convoy was refused entry into State House grounds by the Presidential Guard.

Tsvangirai had been invited by Mugabe.

The Prime Minister was reduced to arguing with Gatekeepers for his delegation to be allowed in, but they would have none of it.

In the end, the whole convoy, including the Prime Minister himself, turned around and drove off.

It makes one wonder: How can the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, who recently said "there is nothing Mugabe does without my approval" - effectively equating himself to the dictator - be ordered around by the President's bodyguards?

How much power does he have, really, if he can be so humiliated by men who should be saluting him?

But, as most Zimbabweans know, the President's Praetorian Guard is a law unto itself. Countless motorists have been bludgeoned and hauled off to police or Military Intelligence cells for not getting out of the way of the Presidential convoy fast enough.

And bad behaviour seems to be the order of the day in the Mugabe family as well. Taxi drivers at Fife Avenue Shopping Centre now know to flee when they see Sabina Mugabe approach.

Apparently, quite apart from the fact that, once the hired taxi arrives at State House and the groceries are offloaded, the President's sister is in the habit of paying the drivers in Zimbabwe dollars, at a rate she thinks is fair, the drivers, on trying to exit, are then stopped, searched and questioned on what they were doing inside and how they got in.

Mugabe thinks there is nothing amisss about this at all, saying, for instance, after Tsvangirai was beaten up by the police:

"When the police say "move", you move".

The Prime Minister is putting this down to "residual elements" who refuse to acknowledge that there is "a new force in town, the Office of the Prime Minister."

It appears the residual elements have every intention of remaining residual.

(Blogger will not load photos, so I could not attach one here, but will do when I can)

Mugabe Talks Nucelar With North Korea

Kim Yong Sam, seen here with Jacob Zuma on 10 May, two days before he met Mugabe as head of the North Korean delegation in Zimbabwe, is the de facto Head of State in North Korea, although he is officially the 2nd in Command to Kim Jong Ill. His delegation included representatives of "power and energy" companies as well as a Korea Defence Force Colonel. A Barter deal is in the offing, involving uranium in exchange for rehabilitation of our crumbling electricity infrastructure and expansion of current power stations.

Robert has apparently been talking nuclear power with North Korea.

The dictator in Zimbabwe met with a delegation from the Kim Jong Ill regime and representatives of DPRK companies.

The delegation was led Kim Yong Nam, who is the 2nd in Command in North Korea after Kim Jong Ill. In fact, he is widely regarded as the de facto Head of State in that Communist country.

So this was high-powered delegation indeed and it was coming straight from South Africa, where the North Korean de-facto Head of State met with Jacob Zuma.

This is a tour headed by the Head of State. They don't come much more high-powered than that.

Kim Yong Nam is the one who meets goes on foreign trips, meeting with the Russians, South Koreans and so on in the last two months. Kim Jong Ill himself has only ventured as far as China, where he went when his country was in the grips of famine. He came back with trainloads of grain and other aid from the Chinese.

But we are getting carried away.

The businesses represented in the delegation are interesting to say the least.

Mugabe was not accompanied by his Prime Minister when he met the delegation. In fact, he cancelled a meeting called to discuss essentially the fate of his Coalition government with Tsvangirai (the outstanding issues meeting) in order to meet with the North Koreans.

Although he attended the launch of STERP by Tendai Biti, he absented himself yesterday at the launch of "the next hundred days" plan of the MDC-PF government.

Amongst those in the North Korean delegation were:

Jung Sang Kwon - Korea National Defence Forces
Colonel Gap-sik Shin - also of Korea Defence Forces
Myoung Reul Huh (huh?) - Hyundai Construction vice-president (Power and Energy)
Chang-Mok Lee -Chief Rep of South Africa-Korea Electric Power Corporation

There were also Civil Engineers and Construction experts in the delegation.

Mugabe is quoted by the Herald as telling the Nuclear-missile-launching North Koreans that Zimbabwe has plenty of minerals in the ground. It only needs appropriate technology to get them from under there. There is more goldfields waiting to be explored than had been found so far, he told them.

The presence of military officers in the delegation should be duly noted.

Kim Jong Ill is scouting around for a place where he can get even more uranium for his game of chicken with the United States. He has already defiantly launched a test missile and has managed to get away with it.

He only gets bolder.

Mugabe, for his part is now desperate to restore the fortunes of Zimbabwe so that he does not have to leave the stage in disgrace. Seeing the light at the end of the Bretton Woods tunnel extinguished, he is now going out on a limb and gambling with one of the most sought-after and dangerous minerals known to man - uranium- which makes nuclear bombs, which can reduce London to ashes in a matter of seconds.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

If this was a transparent democracy, we would ask for a transcript of the closed-door meetings Mugabe had with the his visitors. As it is, we have to make do with the words of those who have been briefed about this.

It could be scaremongering. But I doubt it.

Like I said, these are desperate times for the MDC-PF government. Desperate measures are called for.

And did you hear? They gave Mugabe some High Rank in the sport of Taekwando, which is a form of wrestling. The sport is catching on fast in the world. My son goes to classes of this sport!!

Mugabe? Wrestling?

We thought we had seen it all!

Mounting Anger As Residents Drink Sewage

Residents in Zimbabwe's cities, like the little girl in Kambuzuma pictured here, are still collecting dirty water from drains and polluted wells for their needs because the taps are still dry. Now a massive electricity blackout, affecting suburbs for more than three days at a trot, are stoking the people's anger against the MDC-T and the Inclusive Government. The most common sentiment is that "We never experienced this bad when Mugabe was alone in Government."

With the advent of winter here in Zimbabwe (which has come early this year, not in June as in other years), ZESA, the Power Authority, has started a brutal, unforgiving schedule of rolling blackouts (load-shedding).

Large swathes of Harare, Bulawayo and other urban centres are being totally cut off for more than three days at a time.

As I speak right now, large parts of industrial areas around Graniteside and Workington are in darkness.

Quite apart from the impact this has on the operations of private enterprise (which the IMF recently insisted will be the engine for Zimbabwe's regeneration and not aid or donor funds), it is the anger of residents that is most disturbing.

The two MDCs in government are clearly forgetting that this is exactly what turned people against Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF. They suffered lack of services (no water in their taps, no electricity, they could not pay school fees and so on). They suffered diminished standards of living until they decided they had had enough of ZANU PF and Mugabe.

Prime Minister Tsvangirai must not make the mistake of thinking that he holds a magic wand that lulls the people into a deep slumber regardless of how shoddily his government treats them.

The mistake the MDCs are making is thinking that the people will give them the same leeway they gave Mugabe. That they will suffer in resilient silence like they did when the dictator was alone in government.

The dictator used force to silence the masses. The MDC does not have this tool at their disposal. Even if they did, I would like to think that they would not go that route. Persuasion, delivering services and actually changing people's lives is the only tool at their disposal.

They are squandering this.

Yet solutions abound.

For starters, one of the MDC leaders that I truly admire, Elias Mudzuri, the former mayor of Harare, is the new Minister of Energy in Zimbabwe.

Day before yesterday, he held a press conference at which he announced that he had issued a directive to ZESA setting the charges they should bill customers (US$30 per month for high-density, poorer areas and US$40 for the more affluent areas).

Ironically, in the same statement, Mudzuri says ZESA needs more funds injected into it in order to import up to 500MW of power and to rehabilitate crumbling infrastructure.

The MDC was at the forefront of telling us for years that the ZANU PF government was ensuring the failure of ZESA by setting prices, not allowing the power authority to charge viable rates that would finance the rehabilitation of infrastructure and imports of the deficit we suffer as a nation.

Yet now, Tsvangirai's own MDC-T ministers are doing exactly what they criticised ZANU PF for: issuing directives on prices and tariffs for everything from phones to water and electricity.

It is a peculiarly Communist approach to governing. They want the people to enjoy the benefits of all these services without paying anything that even approaches cost recovery.

The problem is that people do not see it this way when they then do not get the services. What they see is failure by the governing parties.

As one visitor to our offices put it yesterday, "If the MDC is allowed to appoint governors and Permanent Secretaries, will that give me electricity or water? Will that stop cholera? Will that school fees for my children?"

Like I said, it is difficult for anyone outside Zimbabwe at the moment to fully appreciate the people's anger, which is now directed at Tsvangirai and the MDC-T, who tied a noose around their necks by repeatedly telling the nation that they are in charge of policy formulation and implementation.

The people want implementation.

The people see burst water pipes in the city centres of Harare, Bulawayo, Masvingo, Mutare and other areas, spilling countless gallons of treated water into storm drains while in their own homes out in the townships, not a drop can be found in the taps.

They see this and they say Tsvangirai only cares for posts and power, not for them. They see this and they say he has abandoned them while fighting for places at the feeding trough for his lackeys and cronies.

The MDC-T, MDC-M and the Prime Minister, as well as his deputies, are making a big mistake in taking people for granted like this.

But I reckon, because Tsvangirai now knows that the MDC will fight against another, unconstitutional and illegal term for him as Party President, he really does not care much for electoral success.

If he hangs on in the Prime Minister's Office, he is guaranteed a government pension, perks and the like, for the rest of his life.

He is now looking out for himself and nobody else.

But in so doing, he is undoing his party.

Mavambo Launch Update

Dr Simba Makoni is seen here at the World Economic Forum, addressing the "Reconstructing Zimbabwe" Session

The launch of Mavambo as a political party, which had been agreed by the Party Formation Steering Committee to be set for today, 13 April 2009, has now been put back.

At a meeting of Conveners (Heads of Department) last Saturday, held at the Mavambo offices in Harare, the Conveners asked for more time to finalise plans for the launch ceremony in their own areas. Because the launch ceremony can only be held once and the new party wants to launch with a huge bang, they felt that they would rather delay than rush headlong into the whole affair.

So, later this month, detailed plans for the launch ceremony itself, as well as the logistics, will be finalised at a retreat of the Party Formation Steering Committee, which will also be attended by what Mavambo structures are there in the Diaspora (South Africa and Botswana are particularly active at the moment), at a secret location here in Zimbabwe.

After that, the definitive announcement will be made as to the venue and the logistics in place to get people to the launch venue.

Interest is huge.

Since Monday, when people read in a newspaper coming out of London that the party would be launched today, Mavambo offices have been overwhelmed with people seeking to become members.

The party leadership has now been forced to put extra at the offices in order to handle the upsurge in numbers. Staff members who had been eagerly giving out their mobile numbers are now regretting this.

I found one sitting on the carpet this morning, saying SMS messages he has been receiving have simply overwhelmed him!!

Meantime, it appears the MDC-T especially is quite worried about this. I and two other colleagues got phone calls from senior MDC-T officials yesterday asking if Makoni, "is going to launch a comeback"!

As if he ever went away!!

They were there at the ZCTU celebrations (addressed by Tsvangirai) on May 1, and they saw the reception that Dr Makoni got from the people.

For those who missed it, when he was introduced by Mr Chibhebhe, the whole stadium went wild with cheering and it would not stop.

Sitting in the VIP tent right in the middle of the ground, it was rather difficult for Dr Makoni to hear what was being shouted by the crowd.

Eventually, Mr Chibhebhe announced through the Public Address system: "Zvanzi ngavabude mutende tivaone...." - meaning "the crowd says he should come out of the tent because want to see him."

He came out and waved to the cheering crowd.

(This is the main reason Morgan Tsvangirai, in his speech afterwards, specifically told the crowd that Mavambo has been invited to take part in the Constitution-making process. The fact of the matter is that we have received no such invitation.)

So the man remains popular and is perhaps now the sole hope people have that things could change in this country, hence the cheering.

The country is hungry and ripe for change, it appears, and Mavambo wants to ensure that they emerge into the sunlight in a fitting manner.

This blog will update you as soon as the retreat is done and the new, bigger venue and dates are set.

Twist and Shout

Life Goes On........while the MDC-T twsts and shouts over "outstanding" (and grandstanding issues). Above is the start of the tobacco auction in Harare, where a lot of twisting and shouting is also being done, but more profitably

He he he he.

"All outstading issues have been resolved," Prime Minister Tsvangirai said at the weekend.

An announcement was allegedly to be made at the cabinet meeting today, Tuesday. And then the PM was going to tell parliament in a special address what these things agreed on are.

Mugabe and ZANU PF today revealed just how far away from a resolution of these issues we are. They used The Herald to do this.

The State says it "understands" that Ambassdors are off-limits to Tsvangirai. They claim that highly placed sources in government told them ambassadors are career diplomats, professional types who are not bound by any political agreement.

These professional types who were drafted into the civil service through ZANU PF structures, mind you. Otherwise, we mus ask if you have ever seen an ad in the paper or even an internal advert within the Civil Service asking for applications for these career posts?

If they were career posts, then this what you do to fill them.

This same argument, we can be certain, is also being put forward with regards the Permanent Secretaries. (They were "null and void", these permanent secretaries, according to Tsvangirai. And that almost three months ago.)

Today, we were told that the meeting to discuss outstanding issues has been moved to tomorrow.

Twist and Shout time.

Slowly, the naton is witnessing the spectatcle of the MDC-T swinging in the wind, hung from the tallest tree in the land: The Prime Ministerial Office.

Of course, the PM has said that there is no deadline to Mugabe on this matter. Effectively, he is aware that he has to play Mugabe's game. And Mugabe says "no one threatens me." The PM says "Yes, Baba."

While these "issues" are still outstanding, perhaps the Prime Minister can add another outstanding issue to the ones already on the table. This being the recent sentencing of an MDC Member of Parliament to ten months in prison WITH HARD LABOUR (that was a particularly gratuitous act, an act not of justice but vengeance).

General Chiwengwa did warn them, as I told you on this blog in the article "General Chiwengwa Now Issuing Political Orders".

The MDC-T likes to talk tough but then not back that with any action. This works very well with empty heads. They tend to mistake the tough talk for tough action.

"Null and Void!" And they cheer.

"Mugabe Must Go." And they cheer and repeat.
Well, The Prime Minister at the weekend changed this one and shouted, "Mugabe Must Stay!"

Still they cheered!!

"Ultimatum!" Again we hear cheers. But Monday has come and gone. The PM has said there is no deadline. Since he is Mugabe's spokesman now, (He does all the talking on behalf of the MDC-PF government while Mugabe remains quiet), this means that his views (government and not party views) carry the day.

Come Wednesday, to when will they postpone the next meeting of the Principals?

To next week, most likely. Just so Mugabe can show the MDC-T that its National Council ultimatum means nothing to him. He will prevaricate until the Council meets on Sunday. He is enjoying watching Tendai Biti and company twist and shout.

I can tell you he is desperately hoping that, at that National Council meeting, they will pick up their toys and decide to go and play by themselves.

Zimbabwe Is Still Not Working

The profiteering in Zimbabwe has reached alarming levels, I tell you.

This last week, I received a foreign cheque in US dollars and duly went to Barclays Bank to deposit it in my new foreign currency account, which they had helpfully automatically opened for me because I am a long-standing customer.

Imagine my shock on Monday when my branch called me to tell me that bank charges for clearing this cheque were US$109.

I know that in Kenya, where I have made enquiries, the very same cheque, from the very same company, is cleared for US$20. In South Africa, the charges are even less than that.

Meantime, instead of supervising Zimbabwean banks that are doing this, Gideon Gono is busy fighting political battles? Can he explain how it is that the very same cheque, cleared by a neighbouring country through the very same process and the very same international bank, costs five times less in a neighbouring country than it does in Zimbabwe?

The problem goes back to politics. The MDC-T president is supposed to be in charge of policy formulation and implementation.

Are these the sort of policies he is implementing?

Does he realise that these policies make Zimbabwe an unattractive destination for investment? Is he willing (or even able) to do anything about this?

This sort of thing is simply unacceptable for a country that is trying to attract investment in this tough global environment.

But the problem is that the MDC-T believes that it is special and the world should genuflect before them without regard to any other factors.

Basic commodities are more affordable now in Zimbabwe, but only because Mugabe scrapped duty on imports of these. Local businesses are up in arms, because they prefer to have a captive market, where they can charge as they see fit, milking helpless and defenceless workers with punitive prices.

Tsvangirai and the MDC appear willing to accommodate local business demands for protectionism.

It would be disastrous to do so.

Our local businesses live beyond their means and they hanker for the old days, when they made super profits even in US dollar terms. This should not be allowed.

Ever.

It would kill Zimbabwe.

And this Inclusive Government can forget about attracting tourists here in 2010 with these sorts of skewed pricing policies. Why should they come here to pay through the nose for a crumbling infrastructure and abysmal service?

As usual, you can expect that none of this will change.

The focus at the moment is wrong: the focus is power. Can anyone tell me of a single initiative this inclusive government has made since it was formed?

Just one.

Tsvangirai Versus The MDC, The Fight Is Now Out In The Open

President Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's dictator, looks mighty pleased as he acknowledges the roar (and chanting of his name) from the crowd gathered as he arrives for Jacob Zuma's inauguration at Union Buildings in Pretoria. With him is Grace and behind them but out of this photo, Misheck Sibanda, Secretary to President and Cabinet

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai arrives for the inauguration of Jacob Zuma at Union Buildings in Pretoria, accompanied by an unidentified woman, who is believed to be named Jacqueline and is effectively the Prime Minister's second wife.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has dismissed the ultimatum issued by his own Secretary General and Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti, saying "it is not helpful to jump on the Gideon Gono bandwagon."

Speaking to the Financial Times of London's Richard Lapper and Tom Burgis in South Africa where he was attending the inauguration of Jacob Zuma as president of South Africa, Tsvangirai pointedly said, "There is no deadline."

You will recall that in my article, "MDC-T Poised To Fire Tsvangirai", I told you that the Prime Minister had refused to attend the press conference called by Biti on Wednesday, during which the MDC-T Secretary General put down the ultimatum to Tsvangirai and Mugabe.

I also told you why.

It is now clear that there are serious disagreements within the MDC-T on the way forward, with some MPs (nine identified so far) calling into question the Prime Minister's motivation in staying in government.

There are also strong forces within the MDC-T itself who feel that Tsvangirai is not being grateful enough to them for all that they have done for the party. He is failing to stand up for them. Failing, for instance, to stand up to Mugabe on behalf of the MDC-T Deputy Minister of Agriculture-designate, Roy Bennet, despite his gigantic efforts over the years in fundraising for the opposition party.

Failing, also, to stand up to Mugabe on behalf of Nelson Chamisa, who is now in charge of a shell of a ministry.

But the significance of the Prime Minister's statement to the FT lies in the fact that, although we all know an ultimatum when we see or hear one, and although Biti was clear that his was an ultimatum, Tsvangirai says the Secretary General does not know what he talking about.

He openly calls Biti's fight to clean up the Reserve Bank in order to get donor money into government coffers "the Gideon Gono bandwagon."

As for Biti's threat that failure to resolve "outstanding issues" by Monday 11 May 2009 will result in the matter being referred to the MDC-T National Council, Tsvangirai also dismisses that as so much hot air, saying:

"We had to express our frustration."

In other words, he is saying Tendai Biti was simply blowing off some steam and his statement should not be take seriously at all.

I wonder how the Secretary General, who is emerging as the strongest critic of the Prime Minister within the party, will take this.

Still, on the matter of the Unity Government (or Coalition Government or whatever it is they are calling it this week), it is clear from all of Tsvangirai's statements in South Africa that he has accepted that there is no way out.

With MDC activists, including Gandi Mudzingwa still behind bars and scores of others persecuted, the Prime Minister boldly told three separate audiences at the weekend that the GNU is "on the right track."

I wonder if Gandi Mudzingwa agrees with him. What about Jestina Mukoko? Or the other 17 people charges with her?

I wonder if Nelson Chamisa, who threatened to resign centuries ago but has still not gone anywhere, agrees with him?

What about Roy Bennet?

And what about the people themselves, Zimbabweans who are still plagued by cholera (which the Prime Minister, aping Mugabe, now says has "disappeared"), with no water in their taps, with boreholes being drilled at our University of Zimbabwe?

Do they agree that the GNU is on the right track?

What about the all-important donors? The IMF, World Bank, British, Americans and others who, if things were as rosy as the Prime Minister would want us to believe, should be falling over each other to offer us the balance of payment support we need to get this country working again?

The right track?

The Prime Minister should have his head examined.

Still, he has now cut his Secretary General down to size in full view of the world. What remains to be seen is whether Biti can marshal enough forces on his side at the National Council, set to meet on November 17.

What, I wonder, is the point of the meeting, seeing as the President of the MDC-T himself says there is no deadline. They will be meeting to do what, in light of the fact that the Prime Minister says they should not pay attention to the "frustration" of Tendai Biti?

Mugabe Can Not Be Beaten, Says Tsvangirai

ROBERT MUGABE and his wife arrive inSouth Africa on Friday night for the inauguration of Jacob Zuma, which was on Saturday. Tsvangirai was also in South Africa and told a gathering at Wits University that he is not interested in having Mugabe go

Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwe Prime Minister who is buffeted by winds from within his own party and battered by Mugabe's antics in the unity government, made news when he told an audience at Wits University in South Africa on Friday, "....Robert Mugabe is not going anywhere. He is with us in the Unity Government until we achieve positive results."

Besides pointing to the obvious, little-held secret in government circles that this unity Government has already been agreed to last five years, the statement itself also betrays Tsvangirai's new-found belief that Robert Mugabe is a man whom he can never beat. The decision is to work with him, as long as he will have the MDCs in government.

This is quite important, this statement from the Prime Minister, a man who is maintaining his brilliant openness and approachability even now when he is in government. That event at Wits is a gold mine for anyone wanting to explore the psychology driving this Unity Government now, especially from Tsvangirai's viewpoint.

The Prime Minister essentially told the world that Mugabe can not be beaten and must, therefore, be joined.

The Zimbabwean Prime Minister now accepts that his job in government is to provide Mugabe with a functioning, if not booming economy. The hope from him is that once this is done, Mugabe and his party will then suddenly not find it so embarrassing to be defeated in elections.

Those who say that Tsvangirai is now acting like Mugabe's Public Relations Officer are wrong. Instead, the Prime Minister is simply Mugabe's fixer on the economy. This, in Mugabe's eyes, is the only thing that the MDCs should be concerned with.

They should not look to political power.

They should understand that they hold no authority except that which Mugabe chooses to give them.

They should understand that the Zimbabwe state machinery belongs to ZANU PF and was put in place to serve that party. The MDCs have simply been given leases on certain specific areas to do with correcting the economy that Mugabe vandalised.

The Zimbabwean Prime Minister now understand this. Which explains the frustration in his party that he is failing to fight for Roy Bennet to be sworn in, failing to fight for Nelson Chamisa to be handed back his ministry, which was nicked in a midnight raid by Mugabe and his party, failing still to have even one MDC-T Provincial Governor in place, failing to secure any diplomatic posts, failing to stop the arrests and harassment of scores of MDC supporters and failing to push for information on where eight other missing activists, disappeared since October last year, are.

But Tsvangirai knows very well that he can do nothing about any of this. Absolutely nothing.

So, the new strategy is hope.

Hope that once the economy is righted, Mugabe will not consider retirement or defeat a disgrace.

Hope that the leopard has changed its spots and will indeed move away from the carcass called Zimbabwe on which it is feeding in order to give way to the MDC.

Whatever they put in the tea at the Executive Offices in government is potent stuff. If Tsvangirai believes for a minute that the ambitions of the people who organised the beatings, killings and torture of June 27 2008 will vanish because Mugabe has been given back a sound economy by the MDC, then he should think again.

There is a mistaken belief within MDC and amongst its staunchest and blindest supporters that, if Mugabe goes, they can handle the Mnangagwa's the Mujuru's, the Chiwengwas and all the other powerful sidekicks of the dictator.

For many years now, we have heard MDC-T supporters tell us: "Vamwe ava havatinetse", meaning, "All the others will not be a problem..."

Hope?

Delusion?

You know what I think. Delusion is more like it. Mugabe is not a lone ranger, with magical powers to compel reluctant and half-hearted men to murder and hack off limbs, to burn huts and seize fields.

He has people.

Just as many other presidents have had people: security chiefs who are underestimated and suddenly are seen to rise to the top and stay there brutally once their principal is gone.

It is like in the Mafia, where The Don's sidekick knows all the ins and outs, who owes what and who owns what. And who owns whom. Once the Don is gone, the sidekick uses the same network used by the Boss to establish his own empire.

But, of course, we are in the twenty-first century, we are told by wide-eyed MDC supporters and sympathisers. It will be different when Mugabe is gone, they say.

Dream on and on.

As Patricia De Lille of the Independent Democrats in South Africa said just after the elections that saw Jacob Zuma become president: It is a proven fact that the surest way a ruling liberation party can be dislodged from power is from within its own party, through splits.

What De Lille and others hope for on this continent is that popular alternative leaders within these liberation movements be men of character, vision and progress.

It has happened with Cha Ma Pinduzi in Tanzania, the ruling parties in Botswana, in Namiba even, to an extent. In Namibia, especially, I feel the face and fortunes of that country will be transformed radically for the better once leaders like Hage Geingob and Theo Ben Gurirab are in charge. They are within SWAPO and much more progressive than Nujoma ever could be.

This is the reason why some of us were and still are excited at the prospect of a progressive, tolerant and shockingly democratic leader like Simba Makoni establishing an alternative leadership and rallying to his banner the cross-party majority that admires him.

As it becomes clear that Tsvangirai has now given up on defeating or dislodging Mugabe, as the Prime Minister seeks to convince the world to buy into his new-found belief that Mugabe can not be beaten and must therefore be joined, there is a force in the making that is about to prove him wrong.

I long for day and I know I do not have long to wait.

Zimbabwe's Morgan Tsvangirai: Echoes of Nkomo

This is Nigel Mutemagau, the 2 two year old toddler imprisoned by the government at a Maximum Security Prison in Harare for some months before his release after an outcry, at his release from that notorious prison.

Now the Unity Government of Mugabe and Tsvangirai has imprisoned a nine month old baby

A nine month old baby has been thrown into jail by the government of Zimbabwe. The baby is there with its mother, a court clerk who is charged with abusing her office by ordering the release of Gandi Mudzingwa and two others.

Perhaps this is as good a time as any to take you back to what I wrote on this blog in November last year as the MDC and its supporters cried that it was better to die than to not be given the ministry of Home Affairs, which controls the police.

I did point out back then getting the Ministry of Home Affairs was irrelevant anyway and the MDC-T was simply fighting over an empty can.

I refered to Joshua Nkomo and the fact that he was told of the arrests of his top commanders, Dumiso Dabengwa and Lookout Masuku, only after the warrants had been executed. No one had bothered to tell him about any of this, even though he was the Minister of Home Affairs, who, according to law, has to sign those arrest warrants.

I remember a reader here commenting that this would never happen to the MDC-T because they were wiser and times had changed, this was the "21st Century", was a particularly choice phrase from that comment.

So, here we are, in the 21 st Century. Things have changed?

If they have, I have to ask:

Why is the MDC-T Minister of Home Affairs, Giles Mutsekwa, signing arrest warrants for nine year old babies?

To say nothing of authorising the arrrests of court officials who have acted according to law to release the Minister and Prime Minister's own supporters and activists?

21st Century?

The arrest of Constance Gambanga has to do with the fact that the original granting of bail to Gandi Mudzingwa and his fellow prisoners was on April 9 this year. The Attorney General, waited until April 17 before submitting his appeal.

He had objected to the granting of bail and cited extraordinary and state security reasons for

this. This had the effect of suspending the ruling made by the court to allow the State to approach a higher court with an appeal.

BUT, this appeal had to be made within 7 days of the granting of bail. That's the law.

The Attorney General, however, now says that because there were holidays in between, these should not be counted. Constance Gambanga read it to mean any seven days. Hence, April 17 being the 8th day, she went ahead and granted the defence their request to have the three released.

This is the crime that she committed. I am not sure what crime the nine month old committed. But let's leave that aside for now.

In essence, then, this argument is about interpretation of the law. Does it specifically say "seven working days" or just "seven days"? It appears to simply state "seven days", which means that Constance Gambaga acted according to how she understood this Zimbabwean law.

So then, over what is clearly a difference in opinion on what the law means, the Zimbabwe government is allowing a nine month old baby to be put behind bars?

Morgan Tsvangirai sleeps well at night, knowing that there is a nine month old baby in a flea-infested, filthy and stinking cell simply because its mother interpreted the law differently to the Attorney General?

We know Mugabe has no qualms about this. But Tsvangirai? And his minister of Home Affairs?

Remember, we were told by MDC-T and its supporters that they would never have a Nkomo pulled on them. They were streetwise, much more so than Nkomo. Time had moved on....

And, oh, there was the classic:".....all the policemen are now with Tsvangirai and they would refuse to obey illegal, illogical and anti-MDC instructions."

This idiocy was peddled by people who today remain quiet as the opposition party is disemboweled by Mugabe, soon to be discarded onto the same heap on which ZUM, UANC, Forum Party, Democratic Party, NAAG and many others now repose in eternal sleep.

If this is not so and things have indeed changed, then I ask again: what is an MDC minister doing signing arrest warrants for nine month old babies?

MDC-T Poised To Fire Tsvangirai

Tendai Biti speaking at the press conference at party Headquarters yersterday, Wednesday 06 March 2009, at which he issued an ultimatum to Tsvangirai and Mugabe to resolve "outstanding issues" during their scheduled routine meeting on Monday 11 May, failing which the MDC-T would refer the matter back to their National Council

Nine MDC-T members of parliament, including three cabinet ministers, have taken a hard line against their own leader Morgan Tsvangirai, giving him until Monday to confront Mugabe and get the "outstanding issues" resolved. The nine consolidated their position on Tuesday night, in the wake of Mugabe's government sending MDC-T activists back to jail.

Mugabe is aware of the moves against Tsvangirai within the MDC-T and it said he is more comfortable dealing with Tsvangirai, whom he feels he can manipulate and bully. This was the reason why he scrambled to strengthen the Prime Minister's hand by having the activists released on bail yesterday.

THe dictator feels Tsvangirai is easier to deal with than, say Biti or any other unknown quantity that may emerge from the MDC-T as a new leader.

In an escalation of the issue and an indication of how serious the rebels in MDC-T are, two senior members of the party, claiming to be acting on behalf of what they call "the majority of the National Council" (the supreme decision-making body in the MDC-T), approached a senior Zimbabwean politician yesterday (Wednesday) asking if he would be interested in leading the opposition party in the event of the MDC-T deciding to recall Tsvangirai.

This move dovetails with the statement issued by the firebrand MDC-T Secretary-General and Zimbabwe Coalition government Finance Minister, Tendai Biti on Wednesday, in which he complained of the outstanding issues that Tsvangirai and Mugabe have failed to resolve.

There is increasing frustration within the MDC-T with their leader because of what a member of staff the Prime Minister's office has called his "mellowing".

For instance, Tsvangirai's political strategist (PM's Office) has consistently told his boss that he is mistaken to buy Mugabe's excuses that there are "hardliners" in ZANU PF and the military bent on destroying the Unity Government. He is of the opinion that it is Mugabe himself who directing events, a position that this blog has consistently taken.

When Tendai Biti tabled a motion to investigate Gideon Gono during a recent cabinet meeting, for instance, he expected Tsvangirai to back him up. But the Prime Minister remained silent as Biti and Mutambara, backed by some ZANU PF ministers, pressed Mugabe on the matter.

Biti subsequently confronted Tsvangirai after that cabinet meeting to ask why his Prime Minister had "hung him out to dry".

The Prime Minister is said to have said that he preferred to raise these issues with Mugabe in the Monday meetings they hold together in order for Tsvangirai to report to Mugabe on government business.

The Finance Minister then retorted that the Monday meetings were failing to have an impact on the attitude of Mugabe and ZANU PF towards MDC-T in government.

This was just one in a long line of frustrations the senior leadership of the opposition party have had with their president.

It is reliably understood that Tsvangirai was against the press conference that Tendai Biti called on Wednesday. It was at that press conference that Biti announced his was giving an ultimatum to Tsvangirai, Mugabe and Mutambara to resolve outstanding issues by Monday.

On Monday, Tsvangirai reports to Mugabe as per their weekly routine and the leadership of the MDC-T will be waiting to hear from the Prime Minister what would have transpired.

If Tsvangirai fails to resolve matters in that meeting, Biti says the matter will be referred back to the National Council for deliberations on the way forward. Privately, it is now clear that the next option being considered is the recalling of Tsvangirai from the leadership.

During his Wednesday press conference, Biti repeated that pulling out of government is out of the question.

There is a problem with this.

The Global Political Agreement is a very personalised document. It specifies that the office of Prime Minister shall be occupied by Morgan Tsvangirai and that of president will be occupied by Robert Mugabe.

Recalling Tsvangirai would essentially mean the death of the GNU, which is a contradiction of Biti's insistence that his party will not pull out of the GNU. The MDC-T can only recall Tsvangirai from the leadership of the MDC-T, and not from the Prime Ministerial post.

But if Tsvangirai refused to vacate the PM office, who would he be representing there if his own party has recalled him and elected someone else to be their president?

It is a prickly pear.

And it strengthens Tsvangirai's argument. When he refused to be part of the "issuing of the ultimatum" yesterday, he said it was unwise to give yet another ultimatum which, if not met, would result in the MDC not doing anything but continuing in government. He said he feared the party would not be taken seriously anymore if it kept issuing these deadlines and not acting when the deadlines come up.

Personally, I do not see how the rebels can triumph against Tsvangirai. Although they claim to have the majority of the National Council on their side, this is no guarantee that they will succeed.

Tsvangirai has shown before he is capable of going against the entire National Council like he did during the split with Welshman Ncube, Gift Chimanikire, Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga and others, which resulted in the split that saw the formation of the group now led by Arthur Mutambara.

Let's wait and see. We don't have long to wait. This coming Monday, obviously, Tsvangirai will fail yet again to have these issues resolved by Mugabe and then the matter will be taken by the MDC-T to the Council on 17 May.

Tsvangirai To Pull Out Of Coalition With Mugabe?

Walking out of the GNU? Dream on.

The MDC-T coffers are are fast running dry.

Their donors, who kept the party going through huge injections of money (US$10 million in the first six months of 2008 alone) have all fled. Their reluctance to fund the opposition coincided with the party's decision to go into an unholy marriage with Mugabe in the Coalition government.

In a moment of pique and frustration, the Prime Minister, speaking to some of his staff, including a young man who acts as the political strategist in his office, blurted out yesterday after the cabinet meeting that "this is not worth it."

Tsvangirai's frustration has to do with Mugabe's continued open contempt for him, even as the Prime Minister is told by the dictator that he has to respect him (which the Prime Minister has duly done, referring to the dictator as "Father", even in their private one-on-one Monday meetings, correcting journalists at press conferences when they do not use the Presidential title in referring to Mugabe etc).

But it is also driven by the increasing complaints from Harvest House where, because donors have fled, the party coffers are running dry, staff are being paid paltry wages (unlike the heydays of opposition when the party was so awash with money that it staff were buying houses in low-density areas as the economy melted).

The outburst by Tsvangirai has been latched onto by Nelson Chamisa, the MDC-T spokesman whose own ministry has been gutted like a dead fish by Mugabe. Chamisa then rashly made it known that his party was "mulling pulling out of the GNU."

Nothing of the sort if being contemplated by Tsvangirai, Biti or any of the senior members of the MDC-T who are now enjoying a very good life indeed.

The MDC-T, and Nelson Chamisa, especially, have still not learnt anything. But this is not their fault. They know they can abuse the emotions and hopes of their hardline supporters (who are not the majority) and get away with it.

This rash leak by Chamisa is simply sending up the hopes of MDC-T supporters who are now up the creek without a paddle, frustrated and bewildered by their leader's mellowing and open support for the dictator Mugabe.

They all know that there is no strategy for getting around ZANU PF in government. They all know that, within the corridors of Munhumutapa Building, the presidential and Prime Ministerial office complex, the MDC-T is simply walking around twiddling its thumbs, whistling to itself while watching ZANU PF exercise the power and authority that it undoubtedly and demonstrably retains.

There will be no pull out.

The supporters who are cheering the announcement by the loose canon known as Nelson Chamisa will be sitting in a puddle very soon when Tsvangirai makes it clear that he is staying put.

As he said barely two weeks ago at the party's 10th Anniversary rally in Chinhoyi, "there is no going back" on the unity government with Mugabe.

It is true that Tendai Biti was told by the British foreign Secretary and the American State Department during his recent trips to the two countries that they will not be supporting the MDC-PF government.

And it is true that Biti has communicated this to Tsvangirai.

But it is also equally true that Tsvangirai believes that he stands to gain more by staying in than by pulling out. Go figure.

Four senior MDC-T people confirmed this to me this morning. So, as things stand right now, the cruel upping of hope for the bedraggled and wide-eyed MDC-T hardline supporters will be dashed before the week is out.

But Tsvangirai knows his die-hard supporters very well and does not fear that they will lose hope in him even as he abuses like this. Like abused wives, they will stick with him and his party, hoping against hope.

Bottom line: The MDC-T is not going anywhere. This coalition with Mugabe will continue. There is a new constitution to put together, there are Mercedes Benzes to be ridden, perks to be enjoyed, school fees to be paid for MDC-T ministers' children, free accommodation to be provided, free fuel at taxpayer's expense, free food and clothing allowances.........

All this is ensuring that the MDC-T stays put, because back at their party HQ, the coffers are so dry that, if they pulled out now, they will not be able to be kept in the style to which they have become accustomed.

In other words, the opposition party is well and truly SCREWED.

Zimbabwe: Mukoko Re-Imprisoned As Mugabe Further Weakens Tsvangirai

Jestina Mukoko is seen here on March 2, after she was freed on bail in a move that many said indicated the strengthening of Tsvangirai's influence in government. She was sent back to jail today after the state indicted her, showing yet again that Mugabe continues to use state apparatus for party purposes. The magistrate indicated that the matter was "now outof my hands."

A couple of hours after the traditional Tuesday Cabinet meeting started here in Harare today, Jestina Mukoko and 15 other MDC activists were sent back to Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. The Magistrate told a visibly stunned and shaken Mukoko that the matter was now "out of my hands".

Which was very telling.

Tsvangirai was alerted to the re-imprisonment of Mukoko as he sat at the oak Cabinet Room table with Mugabe, Mutambara and other ministers from all the parties. At the time of writing of writing this, it is not clear if Mugabe has allowed Tsvangirai to bring up the matter under Any Other Business in the cabinet (He is a stickler for protocol and will only entertain what is on the agenda. As Chairman of Cabinet, he also has the power to rule not to allow any matter to be put on the agenda.)

But this move by Mugabe is not really a surprise for those who are in the know.

This is a reaction to the renewed efforts by the MDC-T to investigate Gideon Gono. JOC, which is still unofficially meeting (mostly at private residences) resolved last Thursday, just before May Day, that the gloves would now come off.

By going after Gono, Mugabe says, the MDC-T have basically signalled that they are not interested in reconciliation and healing. Reconciliation and healing for Mugabe means that anyone who has ever done anything for ZANU PF should be allowed to get away with murder, if it comes to that.

Hence, Mukoko and the other activists are once again the bargaining chip in the Gono fight. But the Gono fight itself is only a symptom of a deeper underlying problem within this GNU.

As Tsvangirai is exposed to have absolutely no power whatsoever in this Coalition, expected to do all the giving without getting anything back, he is being dressed down rather swiftly by the dictator.

In addition to the Gono issue, apparently what convinced Mugabe and ZANU PF that there is nothing to lose in behaving so badly is the conviction they have now that, no matter what they do, as long as Mugabe heads government and state, no funds will be forthcoming from the international community and the Bretton Woods institutions.

Essentially, therefore, there is nothing for Mugabe and his party to lose, except their position of power within Zimbabwe. Now they see that, even if they were to concede ground to Tsvangirai and the MDC, they will still be in a fix, they have decided simply to re-assert their authority.

As a ZANU PF minister said almost two weeks ago as the Gono debate raged: "Tsvangirai should be grateful to Mugabe for allowing him to not only continue walking around free, but also even become Prime Minister. If he does not show enough gratitude, he will be bitten (acharumwa)."

The case of Jestina Mukoko is now part of the wider "reconciliation" fight between Tsvangirai and Mugabe, into which Gono's own head has also been sucked.

As Kubatana asked in their SMS message sent to thousands of people in Zimbabwe less than an hour ago as I write this, "How does this reflect on the MDC-T?"

True, it is yet another humiliation for the Prime Minister, who vowed after his inauguration that Jestina and her fellow prisoners would "not stay in jail a day longer."

It also demonstrates yet again that where the power in this government lies. And more importantly, it shows just how the Prime Minister was unprepared to go into government, how he did not have a bigger strategy for dealing with what he must have known would be intransigence by Mugabe.

If he had a strategy, he certainly would have been concentrating on larger issues than the piddling fights for Permanent Secretaries, Ambassadors and Governors, which do not increase his authority or standing in any manner within government.

He would have picked his quarrels with Mugabe much more carefully than he is doing now.

As things stand now, the Prime Minister has been pushed to the very margins of power and is in danger of falling off the power radar completely.

Tsvangirai is essentially now in the same position Joshua Nkomo was in during the 1980s, when he was Minister of Home Affairs. As I have said before, people like Dabengwa and Lookout Masuku were arrested without Nkomo, their leader and Minister of Home Affairs, knowing anything about it.

You will recall that the same MDC-T supporters who were busy fighting against the GPA and agreeing with Tsvangirai as he refused to join the government changed their tune after he announced he was going in.

They dismissed my assertion that Tsvangirai would become another 1980s Nkomo by saying, "It's different. We are in the 21st Century now."

How different is this, I ask?

As usual, you will get no answer, only attempts at diversion!!

Proof is being provided by Mugabe that he still holds all the cards. He continues to state institutions and apparatus to dish out patronage to ZANU PF members and activists, just as he is currently doing in Mashonaland West and parts of Manicaland, where he is dishing out diamond money to supporters to start "projects".

The Real Reason Why Morgan Tsvangirai Joined Mugabe In Government

25 February 2009: Tsvangirai,flanked by Mutambara, declaring Permanent Secretary appointments made by Mugabe as "null and void". Three much later, the PermSecs are proving to be neither null nor void

With Morgan Tsvangirai telling workers at Gwanzura stadium on May Day that his government was broke and could only continue to pay civil servants US$100 (and was duly booed for his pain), it is perhaps time to examine why the MDC-T and Morgan Tsvangirai decided to join government.

Few saw the interplay and connection between what ZANU PF had started doing internally and how the MDC reacted. The timing is especially betraying.

Here's what it is.

As Morgan Tsvangirai and his party refused to be sworn in and ran away over our borders from the very agreement they had signed, Mugabe was finally persuaded to abandon his long-standing, ideological aversion to dollarisaton.

First, it was Patrick Chinamasa who stood up in parliament as Acting Minister of Finance and delivered not only a dollarised Budget but also a green light for Monetary Authorities to go ahead with wholescale licencing of businesses to trade in foreign currency.

Then Gono came in and announced just that. The Zimbabwean economy was dollarised. In Kombis and other public spaces, commuters discussed the rumour that Barak Obama and his government had given Zimbabwe seven days to stop using the Greenback because they did not have permission.

Even the ZCTU, which had been campaigning against dollarisation, suddenly found itself making public demands for specific salary figures in US dollars.

Meantime, the MDC-T and its leader were still playing the coy bride. Tsvangirai was cooling his heels in Botswana. Tendai Biti was spotted over oceans on his way overseas.

"Junior partners? Never?" was one sentiment expressed by both Tsvangirai and Nelson Chamisa.

"Better to have no deal than a bad deal," was how Tsvangirai put it at a rally he held while he was stuck in Zimbabwe because Mugabe had apparently taken to walking around with the Prime Minister-designate's passport in his back pocket.

THEN THE DOLLARISATION BOMBSHELL DROPPED.

Within a couple of weeks, Tsvangirai, who could clearly see that Mugabe was in a corner, failing to form a government without him, decided to give in.

So, at his strongest, the Prime Minister capitulated.

Well, he himself will privately acknowledge that dollarisation pretty much flushed the MDC-T out from the bushes. Running in tandem with this, of course, was the carefully planned destruction of the MDC as a political force by labelling it a terrorist organisation that trained insurgents.

The MDC-T's own immediate short-term strategy for stabilising Zimbabwe was to dollarise. When the MDC-T conceived of the idea, long before Mugabe adopted it, a strategist and leading Banker in Harare described the impact such a move would have as "dramatic, immediate and almost miraculous."

For the MDC-T, though, this strategy was backed also by a "promised" US$10 billion which the opposition had told supporters during the March campaign was "waiting at the border" to be shipped in as soon as the MDC-T went into government. "Friends", is how the benefactors were described.

So then, seeing Mugabe pull the rug from underneath them and convinced that Mugabe's bitterest foes, the economy and inflation were about to be tamed with dollarisation, the MDC-T and, especially Morgan Tsvangirai, decided to go in and hopefully take a share of the credit for the stabilisation that was to follow dollarisation.

Well then, it is the dollarisation, combined with the pressures from the heat Mugabe was turning on the party membership internally that drove Tsvangirai into Mugabe's arms.

Everyone said Tsvangirai had no appetite for it. His hand had been forced (though I think it would have been a scandal if Thabo Mbeki was seen wrestling the MDC-T leader and forcing him to sign the Global Political Agreement), we were told.

But the Prime Minister has proved that he does have an appetite for working cordially with Mugabe. This agreement, which is supposed to be reviewed by SADC in four months, is in no danger of collapsing.

The Prime Minister says, "We will not leave this government", preempting not only the Generals' suspicions but also all hope from his supporters who thought that the review remained the one light at the end of the dark tunnel into which Tsvangirai has now been shoved by Mugabe.

How can the MDC-T go back to SADC when they keep saying that their new-found "father" is just dandy and wonderful, but it is only a handful of frightful men in uniform who are wielding more power than the President and Prime Minister combined, who are the real problem?

The review itself could well be cancelled.

By the way, there has not been an official release of the findings of that SADC mission to investigate the insurgent claims by Mugabe against Tsvangirai? Botswana was paid a visit. And the SWAZI Monarch, who presented the report to SADC Heads of State, has not made it public. Nor has the SADC Full Summit itself.

We wait with bated breath for when this will be brought out. Meantime, we enjoy the show that is being put on by the MDC-PF. Fact: the Prime Minister is now implementing ZANU PF policies, has joined hands with ZANU PF. It is also fact now that Tsvangirai's MDC-T are the government in Zimbabwe. The MDC-T can not therefore, choose to enjoy the trappings of the office without sharing the responsibility.

As PM Tsvangirai told a reporter: "We are aware that we will be credited with the success or failure of this government."

If Mugabe fails, he fails.

So, essentially, when you strip away all the noise, you are left with this: Tsvangirai is now working to ensure that Mugabe succeeds, because therein also lies his own success.

Morgan Tsvangirai Sends Thugs After Simba Makoni

The Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, MDC-T's Morgan Tsvangirai, sent six thugs to disrupt, jeer and belittle Dr Simba Makoni when he delivered a speech at a public forum organised by the Mass Public Opinion Institute in Harare on Thursday.

This is a tactic that was used extensively in 1920s and 1930s by Adolf Hitler (before he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933) against his rivals.

The subject of Dr Makoni's speech was National Healing and Reconciliation. Other panelists included Dr John Makumbe. The MDC-T's Sekai Holland, A Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office (Healing Organ), who had been scheduled to speak, pulled out the day before the meeting when she heard that Dr Makoni himself would be representing Mavambo.

As soon as Dr Makoni started speaking, one of the six whipped out his cellphone and started speaking into it very loudly, right there in the hall as Dr Makoni spoke.

The six who were sent from the Prime Minister's office were each given US$5 to do the job. They are:

Nelson Nerwande, Cephas Chimedza, Edmore Manyofa, one Bernard (whose last time could not be immediately established), Washington Gaga (a bodyguard of Tsvangirai) and Clever Mudzingwa (a relative of the imprisoned Gandi Mudzingwa).

One of those sent, Edmore Manyofa, shocked the gathering, which was on Thursday, 30 April 2009, when he stood up during question time and insulted Dr Makoni to his face with the most vile and undignified words.

Makoni himself retained his cool and let the young man finish his rude interjection. The room was so silent when Manyofa launched his tirade that you could have heard a pin drop. His main point was the usual MDC-T smear against Makoni, that he had belonged to ZANU PF and was now being critical of the GNU simply because he wanted to be president, amongst other unprintable things.

Makoni took notes throughout Manyofa's tirade and then stood up to answer, chronicling in detail his efforts within ZANU PF and giving examples of when he stood up to Mugabe to try and change the course ZANU PF was taking. There was a standing ovation in response to Makoni's answer from the packed hall.

There was an audible sharp intake of breath from the gathering when Makoni revealed that, after Morgan Tsvangirai was famously beaten up in police custody, Makoni not only confronted Mugabe about it in a Politbro meeting, but he was also the ONLY ZANU PF Politubro or Central Committee member who visited the opposition leader in hospital.

Interestingly, the heckler as well as one other person sent by the MDC-T leader's office approached Dr Makoni at the High Table after the end of the function and apologised for what they had been sent to do.

It is true, as my commentor says, some amongst the six disruptors are now being asked to return the US$5 they were given to humiliate Makoni. It is said they did not do good enough job of it. They say it is Dennis Murira, Public Affairs Officer in the Prime Minister's Office who is harassing them to return the US$5.

This handler, Dennis Murira, Public Affairs officer from the Zimbabwe Prime Minister's office, was at one time being sought by police and would have been arrested together with Gandi Mudzingwa according to plans that were laid down by Mugabe's people's before Tsvangirai agreed to become Prime Minister.

Murira, it was said privately by the intelligence authorities in Zimbabwe, had received the same training in Serbia that Gandi Mudzingwa got in December 2004. The MDC says the training they got in that country was on "mass action".

The authorities here were saying the training was much more sinister than that.

The meeting was also useful for the ugly mood towards this Unity Government amongst the people that it revealed. For instance, one questioner asked Dr Makoni how there can be healing when he was sitting next to a person to had raped his sister during the June 27 presidential "run-off".

Another also asked how long this healing process was supposed to take, to which Dr Makoni responded that it should last until "those aggrieved feel that they have been healed."

Yet another questioner told Dr Makoni that "all politicians have let us down. We have now lost faith in both ZANU PF and the MDC." He also told Dr Makoni that in his (the questioner's) own constituency, a lot of promises had been made by the Mavambo Parliamentary Candidate and these never came to anything.

Dr Makoni responded by telling him that in his campaign, he repeatedly told people that he was not offering them anything material to vote for him. He wanted the people to be given an environment in which they did things for themselves.

There was deafening applause when he said: "If you were promised material things in my name by anybody, I would like to apologise to you. That is not the way we do things."

In fact I myself can confirm that during the campaign, as I travelled for six weeks by road all over Zimbabwe with Dr Makoni, he repeatedly refused to buy "scuds" (sorghum beer) for the young men who frequently asked him to do so.

Makoni even clashed with one high-ranking member of Mavambo at a meeting I attended in Masvingo during the campaign. His ire had been raised because the high-ranking member had organised haulage trucks with trailers to ferry people to one of Makoni's rallies in area.

Dr Makoni cancelled the arrangement, saying he wanted people coming to his rally to be genuine supporters, not bussed-in supporters. "If five people show up, then we know those are genuine five supporters, instead of misleading ourselves with bussed-in people."

As an aside, I must say I was surprised at Dr John Makumbe who was agreeing loudly with Dr Makoni throughout his speech. Makumbe, who is a known MDC-T strategist and sympathiser, suggested the following as a way to deal with the Military Chiefs who remain opposed to Tsvangirai:

He said the Inclusive Government should give them amnesty and then hold new elections. He supposed the elections would be won by the MDC-T. After the elections, Dr Makumbe said, then the new government should revoke that amnesty and arrest the former Service Chiefs, who would have by then been retired.

Perhaps this is naivety, but he should know that the Service Chiefs are of the opinion that they do not need amnesty. One has said, "Amnesty for what? For defending my country?"

Still, for me, it is very revealing that Morgan Tsvangirai would sink to such depths. It betrays the lack of ideas within the MDC-T. It shows just how hollow their talk about tolerance and democracy is.

It reveals just how afraid, nay, mortified, the opposition party is of the challenge that Dr Makoni represents.

It also demonstrates beyond a doubt that the MDC stands neither for democracy nor for change. They are, at the highest level, as intolerant as Mugabe and ZANU PF.

It makes those of us wanting Zimbabwe to become as much of a First World country as South Africa (economically) even more determined.

It makes us even more determined to bring about a truly tolerant and democratic society that lives out the true meaning "freedom and tolerance."

Mugabe Has NOT Agreed To Swear In Roy Bennett

Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe, has NOT agreed to swear in Roy Bennett, despite reports to the contrary this last week in some sections of the online media.

The truth of the matter is that Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has admitted defeat on this one and the "acceptance" to swear in Bennett by Mugabe was leaked by his office so that the issue dies down.

Mugabe's position has NOT changed, but the Prime Minister and his party are desperate to make the world believe that they have at least "won" something.

Here's where we are:

You will recall that I am the one who broke the story about Mugabe's refusal to swear in Roy Bennett, a white Zimbabwean, into the office of Deputy Minister of Agriculture. I did so right here on this blog while Bennett was still in Mutare prison.

It was right here on this blog that I told you of my call to the Prime Minister's office on the day of his accident (before it happened), telling them that I had received impeccable information that Bennett's charges would not be dropped unless Tsvangirai withdrew his nomination.

Subsequent to this, Zimbabwe's Deputy Prime Minister, Arthur Mutambara, went to see Mugabe while Tsvangirai was on compassionate leave after the death of his wife.

Mutambara asked Mugabe about swearing in Bennett and Mugabe told him that he would not do so because Bennett had "serious charges" hanging over his head.

The Zimbabwean Deputy Prime Minister revealed to other ministers, like Sipepa Nkomo, that, when asked, "What if he (Bennett) is acquitted?", Mugabe responded by saying:

"He will not be acquitted."

This information was subsequently confirmed to organisations like SW Radio by MDC ministers in interviews.

Now, do you see that Mugabe's position has not changed. Last week's reports say that Mugabe has "agreed" to swear Bennett in once the case against him is concluded and he is acquitted. Yet the dictator has told Mutambara point blank that the acquittal will never come!!

We all know that, despite what the Prime Minister rather mistakenly and stupidly believes (he believes Mugabe's lies that it is not him directing the courts to frustrate MDC supporters by arresting them and denying them bail etc), Mugabe is the one who is in firm control of the courts.

Mugabe long ago bought off the judges with Plasma screen televisions, farms and 4x4 vehicles amongst many other goodies! Now and again, he gives instructions for them to "appear" independent by making rulings that, on the face of it, go against Mugabe.

But these are always either reversed or ignored. This is the reason why Tsvangirai's Director of Intelligence, Gandi Mudzingwa and his head of security, Chris Dhamini, have now been re-arrested despite being granted bail by the courts.

The acquittal of Roy Bennett will not come, just as Mugabe told Mutambara.

One of two things will happen: either Bennett will be convicted on these trumped up charges and given the option of paying a fine to be released or the case will drag on forever.

If Bennett is fined, Mugabe can, with a straight face, still refuse to swear him in on the basis that he is a convicted criminal.

More likely, however, Bennett's case before the courts will get postponement after postponement and will drag on until the end of this unity government.

Mugabe has done it before. Remember the court cases in which the MDC was challenging General election results, including Mugabe's own previous win over Tsvangirai by around 400 000 votes?

Those cases dragged on in the courts until the next elections were due, which made them redundant.

So it will be with Bennett's case.

Before the "news" of last week, Mugabe's position was that Bennett would not be sworn in because a court case was pending. It was also his position that the Deputy Minister of Agriculture-designate would not be acquitted.

Nothing has changed. But the Prime Minister and his party, seeing that they have been defeated on this, and wanting to save face, have leaked Mugabe's refusal and spun things to hoodwink people into believing that things have changed.

It is an amateurish attempt at spin, and we see right through it.

Tsvangirai is becoming very good at this.

He has also done this with the "cars-for-MPs" scandal. Despite the fact that the MPs have refused to return those cars that are dripping with the blood of MDC supporters, the issue is now forgotten, dead. The media has gone quiet.

Instead, the media's attention has been diverted to try and concentrate on the fight between Gono and Tendai Biti.

Some of us, however, refuse to be hoodwinked like this. We reveal yet again, right here and right now, that, despite the Prime Minister's orders, despite the MDC's claim to a higher moral ground, their MPs have defied the Prime Minister and continue to scrounge around in the moral gutter together with their ZANU PF soulmates.

ZANU PF has bought the MDC-T and their MPs lock, stock and barrel. The opposition party is now owned by Mugabe. He, in very close consultation with Gideon Gono, has managed to figure out the price tag for the souls of the MDC-T and their MPs.

Those bloody cars are still with the MPs, nothing had been done about the Prime Minister's order to return them. Gono and Mugabe, meantime, have offered even more cars to even more MPs, since not everyone got one the first time around.

Jacob Zuma Snubs Morgan Tsvangirai

Morgan Tsvangirai has phoned Jacob Zuma's office to request an invitation to the newly-elected South African president's inauguration on Saturday. SA Foreign affairs say that they have invited Mugabe because protocol dictates that only Heads of State and Heads of Government are invited.

Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's Prime Minister and leader of the MDC-T which is now in a coalition with Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF has called the office of Jacob Zuma begging for an invitation after he was left off the invitation list.

According to the Independent of South Africa, Tsvangirai was not invited because he is not a Head of State. Mugabe, as Head of State in Zimbabwe, has instead been invited.

The paper reports that Department of Foreign Affairs in adamant that, according to protocol, only Heads of State and Heads of Government are invited, hence no invitation was sent to Tsvangirai.

South African Foreign Affairs spokesman, Ronnie Mamoepa is quoted by the paper as saying the extension of an invitation to Prime Ministers were to be done by the presidents who had been invited.

In other words, he is saying that Mugabe is the one who, if he so wished, could extend an invitation to Tsvangirai for him to attend as part of Mugabe's delegation.

I think that the fact that Tsvangirai phoned Zuma's office to ask to be invited means that Mugabe has not asked his Prime Minister to accompany him.

Apparently, Raila Odinga, Prime Minister of Kenya, is also in the same predicament.

Things could change, of course and we could well hear that Mugabe has decided to take Tsvangirai along with him after all.

But as things stand right now, it is only Mugabe who has been invited and Tsvangirai is clearly unhappy about this!!!

By saying that only Heads of State and Heads of government are invited, the South Africans are basically saying they do not recognise the Prime Minister as a Head of Government.

Which, I suppose, is correct, since Mugabe chairs cabinet (government), which means he is both Head of State and Head of Government in Zimbabwe. Because he retained his Executive Presidency he retains both titles.

I wonder what this makes the Zimbabwean Prime Minister? Just another Minister? I said in February this year that Tsvangirai's true position is that of First Minister in Mugabe's cabinet and this is being borne out now.

The story is carried by the Independent Online website today and is entitled "Uninvited Guests Cause Havoc"!

Meantime, Dr Simba Makoni has sent a message of congratulations to Jacob Zuma and the ANC on their victory in the elections.

The Zimbabwe Independent Newspaper Confirms Accepting Money From Gono

This is a photo of the Zimbabwe Independent newsroom. The paper has confirmed in today's issue that they got money from Gono "to buy newsprint". But questions surrounding whether this has compromised the paper's reporting on Gono (especially with regards to his fight with Finance Minister Tendai Biti) remain.

The Zimbabwe Independent, which I revealed on this blog last week had accepted money from Gideon Gono, confirmed the accuracy of that statement in their Editor's Memo in today's issue.

The paper really does not address the issue, only saying that Gono himself has previously revealed the information and that it is not a secret.

Granted, it is not a secret and my story also made revealations about how Gono gave government money to his own paper, The Financial Gazette, which money he immediately claimed back from the paper in his personal capacity as shareholder. He claimed the paper owed him dividends.

At issue, however, is not whether the paper accepted or not (they did and they have accepted and confirmed this). Rather, the issue now is whether acceptance of that money has compromised the paper.

It clearly has, is what I think. It is a fundamental issue of principle that "he who pays the piper calls the tune".

I base this on several publicly available issues:

Last week's issue carried a story that said "double standards" had been "exposed" in the ongoing "cars-forMPs" saga.

In this story, the paper simply parroted Gono's justification and aided and abetted him in his attempts to incite the MPs to rebel against the MDC-T especially, which has made an issue out of this vehicles thing.

It was Gono himself who first highlighted the so-called double-standards in his supplement in the Herald. It was Gono who first called it "double-standards". That story published by the Independent last week was NOT, therefore, news. Gono had made it news on Monday and the paper simply took Gono's position and republished it.

There is a depper issue at stake here. The paper says the money they got from Gono was a "loan". We all know about those BACCOSSI loans. They were effectively free money, given out in Zimbabwe dollars, payable back after a year or so in Zimbabwe dollars at a ridiculously low interest rate.

Because of inflation that affected the Zimbabwe dollar, that money, by the time it is due to be paid back, would be so ridiculously little that even a street kid could pay it off on behalf of The Independent, using proceeds from washing cars in the city centre.

By any definition, therefore, the extension of that loan is a favour from Gono to the paper.

All businesses were struggling back then because of infaltion and it is not the taking of money that is the issue.

No.

The problem comes when the acceptance of that money leads to the compromising of reportage and objectivity. Go back and read Gono's statement published in the Herald on Monday and then read the story the Independent published last Friday on the "double standards" and tell me whose position the paper was defending there.

The writer of the Editor's Memo in today's issue (it's not Vincent, the Editor of the paper) claims some people thought the article was against Gono!!! Yet the paper does not publish a single article, letter or SMS saying this.

Their website, on the other hand, is full of comments that ALL indicate that everyone saw that the story was pro-Gono, even defending him!

The Editor's Memo concentrates instead on a statement by Webster Shamu, the (ZANU-PF) Minister of Information and Publicity who threatened those who report on proceedings in Cabinet meetings with unspecified action. It remains silent on the issue of objectivity with regards to Gono and fails to publish an explanation on the funds they got.

We do not begrduge them the money. They needed it and were in a fix. Like I said, all companies were. But this should not have been at the expense of the objectivity in the way the paper reports.

Of course, the issue of one of their staffers having a house bought for them by Gono as well as the issue of some of the stories on the Reserve Bank Governor being written by the RBZ PR department were always going to be denied.

Yet the benficiary of that house knows very well that just this week, he phoned Gono to complain that the Governor was "exposing" him. Apparently, he thinks my source is Gideon Gono himself!

But those are side issues.

By any stretch of the imagination, acceptance of cheap funds from Gono by the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper means that they are now beholden to the Governor. We would have wished it to be otherwise and we would have wished for the paper to demonstrate this by refusing to play Gono's game of inciting MPs against ministers in order to divert attention from the real issue with those cars from the RBZ.

The paper failed to do that in the current issue.

I must point out that The Independent retains my respect still. They have played and will continue to play an important role in holding public officials to account.

They remain perhaps the best newspaper in Zimbabwe (except when they report on Gono).

By the way, have you noticed that the Prime Minister and his party have now succesfully hoodwinked the people on the issue of these cars? They have gone silent.

Newspapers who should be informing the public (including relatives of MDC-T activists who were killed in June, some in those very cars) have all gone silent about the issue.

The MDC MPs are still driving those cars. They have refused to hand them back.

Tsvangirai has been defied and greed has won out over principle and ethics.

I repeat what I have previously said: those cars are stained with the blood of MDC activists. What the acceptance of those cars by the MDC-T means is that they consider that blood worth less than the comfort and prestige attached to those cars by the party and its MPs.

THOSE CARS HAVE NOT BEEN RETURNED and instead of investigating, naming and shaming the MDC-T MPs who are still driving them, the press is being complicit in ignoring this very fundamental issue of morality.

SADC Continues To "Fix" Tsvangirai

It was at this SADC Heads of State Meeting (where Mugabe attended as the Head of State of Zimbabwe and seen here flanked by Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania and the absolute monarch of Swaziland, King Mswati III), that SADC leaders openly declared their continued contempt for Morgan Tsvangirai.

The presidents of Angola(through a representative), Namibia, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique, the absolute monarch of Swaziland, the Prime Minister of Lesotho openly declared at the last SADC Heads of State meeting that the regional body should do absolutely nothing to help strengthen Morgan Tsvangirai in Zimbabwe.

This was on March 30, apparently, at a SADC Heads of State meeting in Swaziland.

It has emerged that Jakaya Kikwete, the president of Tanzania, whom I told you very last last year had personally called Mugabe with regards the disappearance of Jestina Mukoko and Gandi Mudzingwa, had made a very sensible suggestion at the meeting, which is what prompted the open declarations by these leaders, who appear to be led in this opinion by King Mswati of Swaziland and Angola.

Angola's Dos Santos has ruled Angola since 1979. He has not attended any of these regional meetings in years and is becoming increasingly reclusive. He runs his country, like Mugabe, through his network of Army Generals, who hold real power in Angola, together with Dos Santos.

I have previously told you to watch very carefully the relationship between Zimbabwe's ZANU PF and Angola's powerful army, but that is another story.

Kikwete, whom the state media called a "friend and ally" of Tsvangirai in January this year, after that call to Mugabe which I published here in December last year, had suggested that the easiest way to help Zimbabwe would be for the regional grouping to help the country pay off its relatively paltry debt to the IMF.

Kikwete argued that, by doing this for Zimbabwe, SADC would not have to come up with the urgent US$2 billion that Zimbabwe's Minister of Finance, the MDC's Tendai Biti, says is needed. That two billion would then be accessible from the IMF, which still insists that Zimbabwe must pay off its debt before it can get balance of payment support and more loans.

King Mswati apparently retorted that Tsvangirai had shown all through the negotiations that he has contempt for the regional grouping and for Africa in general, preferring to "hobnob" with Western countries instead. Tsvangirai must therefore go and get that money from his friends in the west, Mswati said.

He is said to have claimed that Mugabe will not be affected at all by SADC's failure to support Zimbabwe with funds.

Sure enough, to date, SADC has proved unwilling (or unable if you go with the public statements) to make any tangible moves to help Zimbabwe leave behind its travails.

It is an interesting revelation this and shows you just what sort of forces are stacked against Prime Minister Tsvangirai, who is still insisting that he will not pull out of this government with Mugabe, no matter what.

This is also the clearest indication yet that some SADC leaders are deliberately sabotaging Tsvangirai, whom they have never forgiven for his shoddy treatment of the regional grouping.

Mswati, especially, is still sore that Tsvangirai rebuffed him at that meeting in Swaziland, to which the Prime Minister refused to travel, even after the Swazi monarch offered to dispatch his private jet to pick him up in Zimbabwe.

Tsvangirai was pushing for SADC to pressure Mugabe to give him a passport and refused to travel without it. This was before he was sowrn in as Prime Minister.

This latest revealation is also bolstered by the memory of that scathing letter to Morgan Tsvangirai from Thabo Mbeki, who told MDC-T leader that he had contempt for African leaders and thought that countries in Europe were better friends of Zimbabwe than African countries. Mbeki reminded Tsvangirai that "Zimbabwe is geographically located in Africa"

The letter, you will recall, led to Tsvangirai saying he had cut off all communication with Mbeki and no longer wanted him as mediator. But the SADC leaders insisted that Mbeki was still the Facilitator and refused to indulge Tsvangirai.

It is worth noting, however, that Kikwete, who, in my opinion is the most progressive president on the African continent today, had an excellent point.

Zimbabwe can access huge amounts of money from the IMF and the World Bank if it clears its arrears, which are said to be around US$400 million. The IMF has always said that its objections to helping Zimbabwe were based on two things: policy and the outstanding debt.

Now the IMF is praising the policies of the new government, which leaves only the issue of the outstanding arrears. If these are paid off, the IMF will have to find another (new) excuse to deny Zimbabwe access to balance of payment support.

This will expose the real motive behind the refusal to support Tsvangirai's coalition government with Mugabe and could well discredit the Bretton Woods institutions in the eyes of many many countries.

It would have been sensible to accept Kikwete's proposalas as it is the only one that has a snowball's chance in hell of actually helping the reputation of this Coalition government.

But it appears that SADC presidents are still holding a grudge against Tsvangirai.

The Scoops Continue!

Arthur Mutambara is seen here with harassed, assaulted Zimbabwean farmer, Ben Freeth. We broke the story about the intended recall of Mutambara by his party right here on this blog last week on Wednesday.

This blog continues its fine tradition of publishing scoops and inside information that is being proved true left right and centre. Just in the last week we brought you two such scoops.

On Wednesday, I published a story scoop here telling you news about the imminent "firing" of Arthur Mutambara, Zimbabwe's Deputy Prime Minister. The very next day, on Thursday, Zimbabwe Financial Gazette carried that story on their front page!!

Then on Friday, we brought you the story about the Reserve Bank Zimbabwe Governor asking all his staff to return their cars to the Reserve Bank Sports Club so that he could offer even more cars to even more MPs.

On Sunday, two days later, the Standard confirmed that story and did an even longer piece on the issue, saying some of the RBZ staff had come to work without their cars for fear that these would be “acquired” forcibly from them.

Also in the last week, I had the pleasure of dealing with extremely professional people, who clearly take pride in their work.

Joan Yarnold of Media24 Magazines contacted me saying they were doing a feature story on Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, his trials and tribulations and especially concentrating on the grief he has suffered recently, the double tragedy of the deaths of his wife and grandson.

Joan had come across a picture of Tsvangirai holding one his grandsons on this blog. He contacted me to request permission to use it. (Which no Zimbabwean "online newspaper would have done. They would have just stolen it like they steal all my articles).

I directed Joan to the Prime Minister's office, since the picture is clearly part of Tsvangirai's family album and I hold no copyright on it.

Within an hour, Joan had got back in touch with me to say that the Prime Minister had said Media24 should go ahead and use the picture on my blog.

I tell you, the professionalism was refreshing!!

I mention this because I am increasingly feeling pity for some online “newspapers” who, for example, besides stealing the story about the intended firing on Arthur Mutambara from this blog and publishing it on their own sites, also rather pathetically tried to pursue the story, to make it their own and to misled the reading public in the process.

As you are by now aware, these so-called online newspapers subsequently published a "follow-up"story saying that one of the instigators of the rebellion against Arthur Mutambara, Job Sikhala, had been fired or suspended from the MDC party led by the deputy Prime Minister.

It turns out this is nothing but a pack of lies. Sikhala himself, as well as the disciplinary committee of the Mutambara MDC, both denied that any such action had been taken!!

But this pack of lies has already been swallowed by gullible readers, mostly those who hate the smaller MDC for no reason except that the men in it, people like Welshman Ncube, rebelled against the dictatorial tendencies of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and broke away from the main MDC.

These are the same people (it is a group of only twenty or so blinkered Tsvangirai fanatics) who hound websites on the Internet in a forlorn and lonely battle to salvage the reputation of the Prime Minister and his MDC who are now so firmly in the pocket of Robert Mugabe that they are now the dictator’s currency, with which he pays to get out of the isolation the world had imposed upon him.

It is pathetic, really, to see how, while they try (without success) to shout down voices like mine that seek to examine the failures of the MDC in office (they are not in power, only in office), these twenty or so online fanatics (some masquerading as "journalists") swallow these lies published by “newspapers” who pander to their myopic and blind following of the discredited MDC-T . They gleefully read the lies about the firing of Sikhala, absolutely ecstatic that they had now finally found something to take attention away from the failure of their own MDC-T in government.

Well, thank heavens for people like the Zimbabwean professionals at SW Radio. They, like true professional journalists, immediately got in touch with both sides of the story. Sikhala denied that he had been handed a letter suspending him from the party. The MDC itself also denied that it had suspended the Sikhala.

Here is what you need to understand about the dynamics of this phenomenon of Zimbabwean online “newspapers”:

Most of them are one-man bands run by someone holding down a full-time job in the diaspora and trying to make money online through advertising. They probably do not even have enough money to make phone calls back home to verify their stories. They don't have the phone numbers of the political players in Zimbabwe. They have, effectively no way to report from within Zimbabwe.

This has led to them publishing lie after lie after lie. You will recall that earlier this year, the newly appointed Minister Welshman Ncube told a conference that “online journalists and newspapers” lie so much that they have lost all credibility with anyone who is serious about finding out what is happening in Zimbabwe.

This explains the venom that you now see directed at me personally by some of these online papers, even as they steal my stories from this blog and publish them as if I am one of their columnists!

Like I have said before, the only online newspaper that has asked for permission to reproduce my articles is the Zimbabwe Mail. TalkZimbabwe have also approached me, but this is normally on a story by story basis. Everyone else is simply stealing the content and republishing it. Some make a pathetic attempt to insert an “introduction” to my story (which is normally just disparaging comments on my article, without engaging a single fact in it) before reproducing it in its entirety!!

We are now in the process of making moves to ensure that the theft of our copyright material on this blog is brought to an end once and for all. And you can expect that this battle will get very nasty. I fully expect it to get personal, with all manner of personal smears against me. It will be nasty because we are going after the motivations of these online thieves – money (which they get from reputable advertising programmes run by ethical companies like Google, who do not take kindly to anyone making money from their advertising using other people’s copyrighted content).

But we have to protect our intellectual property from people who are to lazy to think or work to make something of their own publishing platforms.

Despite all this, I am happy to report that this blog continues its meteoric rise in terms of readership and remains ranked Number 1 in Zimbabwe and in the top 100 000 in the world. Good going for a one-man effort, which is what a blog is. We have never pretended to be a newspaper, we just have a good nose for scoops.

Expect more scoops. And expect more people to attempt to stop you from reading the truth that we publish here.

I myself never read any of the online stuff, except for SW Radio, Nehanda Radio, VOP, Zimbabwe Mail and yes, the Zimbabwe Times as well as Zimbabwe Metro. Other resources I use now and again are mukoma.com and foreign publications.

No other Zimbabwean online paper deserves my attention, especially since time is so precious here in Zimbabwe these days!!

Meantime, I take my hat off to the professionals at SW Radio who have brought us the truth and exposed the lies being fed gullible people (who had already started rejoicing) on the Sikhala/Mutambara saga.

How Mugabe Has The MDC Where He Wants Them

"Hmmmm, how will make sure this never works" - Mugabe is plotting still and all the "problems" within the GNU are serving a purpose, but it is not the power, as the MDC, its supporters and almost everyone else thinks.

Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe, must be very pleased with himself.

I did tell you in February that Mugabe's sentiments, expressed in a birthday interview with ZTV, that the payment of civil service salaries was not "sustainable" because there was no money was basically an admission that he would behave atrociously all the way through this GNU and hence ensure that no donors came in with money to support its operations.

It is turning out that way.

The MDC has fallen into the trap of thinking that all these fights are about power. They are not.

Mugabe is terrified that the Coalition Government will actually bring results, strengthening Tsvangirai's hand in the process and putting him in a very strong position for the next elections.

Mugabe's purpose in sending the MDC on a wild goose chase after power and positions, the delaying tactics he is playing, the continued persecution of MDC supporters - all this is deliberately designed to ensure that the GNU does not deliver any tangible results and disadvantages Tsvangirai.

Mugabe knows that as long as he continues to behave as he is doing now, foreign funders, the sole hope for a turnaround in Zimbabwe, will keep their hands firmly in their pockets.

That suits him just fine.

Come the end of three or five years, when the next elections are held, he wants to be able to turn to the people of Zimbabwe and tell them that the MDC were given a chance to prove themselves in government and failed.

That is one part of the strategy.

The other part is for him to tell the people that foreign funders are opposed to Land Reform and unless and until land is returned to white farmers, Zimbabwe is in the international doghouse. This, he will say, was the rerason why they refused to support their "surrogate", Tsvangirai in the Coalition government with funds to turn the country's economy around.

The Mass Public Opinion Institute of Zimbabwe has just concluded a comprehensive survey of urban and rural Zimbabweans that confirms that frustration with lack of delivery is already being blamed on Tsvangirai and Mutambara. Mugabe gets away scot-free in this.

(In fact, one of the most common sentiments, very shocking to any democrat in Zimbabwe, is that it is better to stick with ZANU PF at next elections. I urge you to get the results of that survey from MPOI if you can, it will open your eyes to the sentiment in the country much more than reading online propaganda ever will!)

Now, as you well know, pretty much everybody in Zimbabwe is agreed that Land Reform is necessary and can not be reversed.

Even the white farmers from whom land has been forcibly taken without compensation, agree with this.

By telling people that no help will come until land is returned to white farmers and pointing to MDC's failure in government as evidence of this at the next elections, Mugabe is betting that people will then throw their hands in the air and say, "In that case it is hopeless".

This works against the MDC because it is seen, even by its supporters, as having the favour of western powers. Hence, the impression that the MDC support from the West is based on the hope that Land Reform will be reversed would be fatal, because it will cast doubt on the motivations of those western powers who are seen to favour the opposition party.

The result will be voters abandoning all hope that the MDC would indeed be able to get financial support from the west if they get into power. They would not be able to get it if the condition is that they must reverse Land Reform.

This is because it is unthinkable for the MDC to return farms to white farmers without sparking civil war in the country.

So, the continued bad behaviour by Mugabe has nothing to do with protecting his power. It has everything to do with the next elections, weakening the MDC in the eyes of voters. As long as the MDC can not deliver on its promises, as long as they are paralysed by the diversions of power-struggles, the world is not stepping in.

Like I said, this plays into Mugabe's hands.

The puzzle though is why Tsvangirai can not see this. Why are the MDC allowing themselves to be caught up in this nonsense? It is quite clear this is a battle they are not going to win. So what's the deal?

The trappings of office have become so comfortable that they are willing to limp along for the rest of the life of this GNU creature, even if they emerge from it completely discredited, shattered and mortally wounded?

Your guess is as good as mine.

By the way, it is my birthday tomorrow, 28 April, so I will be living it up, do not be surprised if there is no post to the blog as a result.

And also, ComOne's internet connections basically went offline on Sunday, which means, for those who rely on the Government gateways for internet and especially those who use those wireless modems that had become popular in Zimbabwe, there is no internet.

I left those days behind me a long time ago. My Internet Service Provider connects directly to satellite, so I am immune to those interruptions now!!

Is The Gun Tsvangirai Using To Shoot Himself In The Foot Loaded

Morgan Tsvangirai arrives at Chinhoyi Stadium on Saturday to address supporters who had gathered for the 10th anniversary of the formation of the MDC. Ten years: which also means, according to the MDC constitution, which restricts the president of the party to two five-year terms, Tsvangirai must now step down. But, like Mugabe, it appears the Prime Minister is refusing to go. Handiende!

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai told a gathering in Chinhoyi (which has gone for some weeks without water and is seeing an increase in the ancient, embarassing disease of cholera) that his and Mugabe's "Inclusive" government is working fine.

"There is nothing Mugabe does without me approving," he said.

Really?

What about Gideon Gono? The appointment of permanent secretaries? The gutting and disembowelling of Nelson Chamisa's Information Communication Technology ministry? The continued prosecution of MDC activists including Tsvangirai's very close aide, Gandi Mudzingwa? The continued arrests of his supporters?

Was it not only two weeks ago that a policeman told the MDC-T MP for Chipinge, while arresting him at a funeral of an MDC-T supporters to "go and report to your Prime Minister"?

This was with his approval?

All of these things Mugabe is doing, and is Tsvangirai saying that they are being done with his approval?

It appears so.

You see, the fact that the Prime Minister refuses to face reality, buries his head in the sand like an ostrich and insists that there actually is such a thing as a "coalition" running Zimbabwe is the reason why this government is going to fail.

What exactly has Tsvangirai seen to convince himself that things are moving in the right direction? Mugabe's continued intransigence is a good sign and augurs well for the future?

MDC supporters are being arrested in Mbare, Buhera, Chipinge, Mt Darwin and many other centres in Zimbabwe. He thinks this is moving in the right direction?

Did Mugabe not tell Tsvangirai as recently as Monday last week that he (Mugabe) is the one in charge and can make any changes and appointments and gutting of ministries as he sees fit?

Yet the Prime Minister tells gullible suppporters in Chinhoyi that there is nothing Mugabe does without his approval.

The danger is that he will be believed, and his supporters will start thinking that their own continued persecution and prosecution is being done with the approval of the leader of their party.

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

Meantime, can the Minister of Finance get to the bottom of the four or five buckets of diamonds that are in the vaults of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe?

Whose are they?

What are they being used for?

Seeing as a few are being sold at a time to finance a parrarel government being run by Generals and ZANU PF, is this not proof positive that Mugabe is intent on ensuring that the MDC-T finds its own sources of funds to run government, while the money from the Chiadzwa diamond fields is used to bolster and strengthen ZANU PF.

At the same time, we must not forget that some of that money if finding its way into the pockets of individuals.

Clearly, the MDC-T is not in control, otherwise they would have known about those buckets of diamonds and investigated them.

Or perhaps they do and, seeing as they are totally powerless when it comes to the Generals, the Defence Forces and the entrenched interests of ZANU PF, there really is nothing much they can do except look the other way?

Which would of course, mean that they are not in any way part of this government.

Let us face facts: MDC-T and MDC-M (both PF) are nothing but the errand boys of ZANU PF, being sent overseas to get the finances to resurrect the economy.

Beyond that, they can not claim to be a part of this government. Beyond that, they absolutely no power to do anything.

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And at the same rally in Chinhoyi, Tsvangirai basically admitted defeat on the continued land invasion controversy. His bluster of previous weeks, threatening to "arrest farm invaders" (he has as much authority to order the police to arrest anyone as he does to order the sun to stop shining) has now given way to reality.

Tsvangirai told the rally that his government will now focus on those who have multiple farms (they are all ZANU PF and will tell him to take a hike) as well as those who are not producing anything on their farms (ditto).

The issue of continued invasions has now been put to the side. Now Tsvangirai has set himself up for embrassment on another front.

I just hope the gun he is using to shoot himself repeatedly in the foot is not loaded.

Denford Magora's Zimbabwe Blog

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