Mugabe Lands Another Punch On Tsvangirai

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai playing buddy-buddy with newly sworn-in Vice President John Nkomo in Harare last month. The Prime Minister has egg on his face again today after announcing one of Mugabe's "promises" as fact to his supporters, only to have ZANU PF announce yesterday that the MDC was simply "making noise"! Although his supporters refuse to see it or accept it, the Prime Minister in way over his head.

Harare, Zimbabwe, 23 January 2010


Robert "The Solution"Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, has gone back on yet another promise to Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's hapless Prime Minister and Mugabe's ally in the coalition government currently ruling Zimbabwe.

This time, Mugabe is going back on his word concerning the appointment of ambassadors from the MDC-Tsvangirai party.

When an "agreement"was reached between Mugabe and Tsvangirai over Zimbabwean ambassadors, Tsvangirai announced that the Zimbabwe president has agreed that other MDC-T ambassadors would be appointed "as and when vacancies arose"in the Zimbabwean embassies around the world.

As it turns out, the appointment of Simon Khaya Moyo as Chairman of ZANU PF (Mugabes party) last month meant that a vacancy was created for a Zimbabwean ambassador to South Africa.

Naturally, the MDC-T thought that this was an opportunity for them to send a person from their party to Zimbabwe's embassy to Pretoria and they made this public last week.

Not so fast, says ZANU PF now.

Simon Khaya Moyo himself, speaking at a ZANU PF Youth League event in Harare yesterday in his new capacity as Chairman of ZANU PF, announced that the Pretoria ambassadorial post would be given to a ZANU PF person.

So much for Mugabe's argument that ambassadors were not political appointees but civil servants who were "apolitical"!

Khaya Moyo told his audience:

"All the noise about the South African ambassadorial position is useless because ambassadors are appointed by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.

"The diplomatic posts that were allocated to the MDC formations were enough as they were prescribed in the GPA."

For some time now, I have been cautioning against the MDC supporters' tendency to believe every little announcement of Mugabe's "promises"from Morgan Tsvangirai as if these have already been implemented.


As was to be expected, I have been called all manner of things for my pains, to the extent that I now get a little disappointed if anything is written about me without it mentioning that I am against everything Tsvangirai does or says!!


But the proof that my skepticism is well-founded has come in time and again. Still, MDC supporters believe that we should all celebrate when Tsvangirai announces that Mugabe has agreed to appoint MDC-T Provincial Governors (it never happened and is unlikely to happen), will appoint more MDC-T ambassadors when and if vacancies arise (now we know this will not happen) and so on and so forth.....

Fundamentally, it has not sunk into the heads of MDC supporters that their party and their leader have squandered the political capital given to them by the people of Zimbabwe in March 2008. It has not sunk in that, despite winning the March 2008 election, psychologically, Morgan Tsvangirai has told himself that he will never be president and has no problems bowing and scrapping before Mugabe in order to be given crumbs of power from Mugabe's table.

Of course, the MDC will never admit this in public, but privately, even Tsvangirai's own staff in the Prime Minister's office say "he is tired and he has mellowed".

ZANU PF knows this.

People within Mugabe's party, as I have revealed before, say that the the Prime Minister is now simply the leader of another ZANU PF faction vying to replace Mugabe. This statement, which I found hard to believe at first, is now being borne out by the fact that the Prime Minister is playing ZANU PF politics.

Recently, he has been seen cosying up to ZANU PF Kingmaker Retired General Solomon Mujuru, perhaps politically the most powerful man in Zimbabwe today after Mugabe himself. This comes a few months after Mugabe went ballistic over secret meetings held between Tsvangirai and Mnangagwa, Mugabe's presumed heir-apparent within ZANU PF now, as I reported here on this blog in an article entitled: Mugabe Goes Ballistic Over Tsvangirai, Mnangagwa Secret Meetings.

The Prime Minister seems to be warming up to ZANU PF and playing the ZANU PF succession game, complete with succession politics.

There is no doubt that he is in way over his head, with ALL ZANU PF senior politicians saying that Tsvangirai has now been "neutralised".

They would say that, wouldn't they.

Who wouldn't, after hearing the following statements from Tsvangirai:

• "President Mugabe is indispensable and irreplaceable" (said in an interview in London)
• "Mugabe is not the problem. He is the the solution."
• "The West must get over its obsession with Mugabe."
• "Mugabe is genuine...!"

And lots more statements like that.

In capitulation after capitulation, the Prime Minister is quite clearly guided by one thing and one thing alone: safeguarding whatever little power decides the leader of the MDC must have. The Zimbabwean Prime Minister is also quite clearly guided by the desire to ensure that those who stood by him in his fight against Mugabe are rewarded with plum posts and perks.

Everything else, including the problems facing Zimbabwean, is plainly playing second fiddle to Tsvangirai's desire to continue featuring in office, even though he may not be in power.

No protest will come from the MDC over this latest reneging on a promise by Mugabe.

The MDC appear to now have accepted that this is the way they will survive, while hoodwinking supporters now again by threatening "pull-outs"that are not really pull-outs, announcing "intentions"by Mugabe that they know will never be fulfilled but will be celebrated by their gullible supporters as statements of fact.

Fact remains: like it or not, Mugabe has just landed another punch on Tsvangirai.


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