Slowly getting scared of the MDC
April 6, 2009
Tanonoka Whande
THE Government of National Unity (GNU) has been in existence for less than two months now. Since February the main actors in this government have been contradicting each other at almost every turn.
We have three unnecessary presidents, along with three Prime Ministers who are superfluous to our requirements; all complemented by more than 71 cabinet ministers and countless permanent secretaries.
It appears that they are tired already and needed to seek renewal. They all descended on Victoria Falls over the weekend.
As a Catholic I am familiar with retreats.
When priests are under pressure and need invigoration and renewal they go on a retreat. Listening to and carrying the transgressions of all the sinners can leave any priest drained and powerless.
The Oxford dictionary says a retreat is “withdrawing from confrontation with enemy forces”. It is also “a withdrawal to a quiet or secluded place” or just “a period or place of seclusion for prayer and meditation”.
Which one of these descriptions best fits Zanu-PF and the MDC in Victoria Falls?
Was it prayer and meditation; withdrawing from confrontation with enemy forces or simply the first stop of the GNU gravy train?
Less than sixty days into office, the work horses of Zimbabwe’s government of national unity are so tired that they need to go on a retreat.
And they are did it at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe’s most expensive tourist destination.
The MDC Information Department announced that a working retreat for the Zimbabwe cabinet was to be held in the tourist resort town from Friday, April 3 to Sunday. The announcement was made by the MDC not by the government.
The statement, from the Prime minister’s office, went on to say, “Officially opened by the President, Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the retreat will be presided over by the Prime Minister, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, and attended by all cabinet ministers, their deputies and Permanent Secretaries.”
Permanent secretaries? Which ones?
Some of the current ones are to be replaced soon. So why “train” employees who are about to be replaced?
A weekend retreat, they call it. What can be achieved in two days that they have failed to achieve in two months?
Meanwhile, the Zimbabwean government is beating its chest because that pathetic organisation called SADC “approved” an US$8.5 billion bail-out for Zimbabwe.
South Africa and SADC made it clear, though, that they do not have the money but would lobby foreigners on behalf of Zimbabwe.
I have always admired destitute beggars who beg on behalf of other beggars. Are Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai asking poor Lesotho to contribute money to entertain this blotted government’s ministers, their deputies and permanent secretaries at Victoria Falls?
What is wrong with the Masasa Training Centre or the Quality Inn in Harare as venues for such a meeting?
The government of national unity is asking the world for money and yet they are already spending it on themselves before that money is even received on behalf of the people.
Meanwhile, the teachers rightly complain about their meagre salaries. Medical personnel want their efforts adequately recognised. Not all schools and clinics are open and cholera has not been eradicated.
And the MDC now suddenly calls Mugabe “Comrade” and together they go to Victoria Falls on a jaunt. They call it a retreat?
Tsvangirai must show more sensitivity than this. The MDC has now certainly become a clone of Zanu-PF. What the hell is going on now?
Elias Mudzuri, do you remember us? Do you remember how we stood by you at a time you showed us that as Mayor of Harare you were for the people? What is this now?
Today, the MDC is taking Mugabe to Victoria Falls; tomorrow the MDC will take Mugabe to Europe, Great Britain, the United States and all those countries which helped Tsvangirai supposedly to champion the people’s cause.
The cycle starts again, but this time with Tsvangirai’s connivance. The MDC leaders are allowing themselves to be robbed away from us.
While MDC’s Elton Mangoma appeals to the South Africans for investment, Mugabe and his half of the government are busy invading farms, instead of encouraging a sense of responsibility and instilling a sense of security of tenure in the nation to attract the much needed investment.
While Finance Minister Tendai Biti trumpets confidence that the IMF will help our nation, government ministers go on an unnecessary so-called retreat to discuss nothing more than what they have discussed in cabinet and failed to implement.
What makes the MDC confident that whatever they discuss at Victoria Falls will be implemented when they still fail to prevail over Mugabe’s half of the government on important issues?
Are they also going to discuss Mugabe’s stand against Roy Bennett? So far the MDC seems pleased to dabble in both worlds – to cooperate with Zanu-PF while ignoring important issues under the guise of cooperation within the government of national unity.
The MDC must now fight its battles with Zanu-PF in the public arena. They have made enough secret deals with disastrous consequences and it is now time to give priority to the people. The MDC needs to show us the difference between them and Zanu-PF.
The MDC cannot continue to please Zanu-PF at the expense of the people and the mandate given to it by the electorate.
Mugabe and Zanu-PF are serving their supporters well by continuing to invade farms, refusing to release innocent MDC captives and clinging on to positions they should have relinquished under the GNU agreement.
Meanwhile, the MDC continues to compromise and to ignore issues of great concern to the people.
Now, the MDC has joined the gravy train for no real good reason other than to spend money that could be used for better purposes in a badly wounded nation.
The government does not appear to care. The MDC should have thought of the implications of all their actions before they took the plunge. They continue to give away the very advantages that they should be using to bargain with.
I am slowly getting scared of the MDC.
The only consolation, though, is that I am not as scared of the MDC as I am of Zanu-PF…yet.
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It is unfair for journalists to distort the truth and engange in the deliberate peddling of lies in the way Tanonoka Whande is doing.Such type of journalism was confined to the herald during the Jonathan Moyo era as Information Minister.
According to the GPA,the Prime minister, heads the committee of ministers and directs them in their day to day deliberations.The ministers in other words report to Tsvangirai. It therefore follows that the preparations and announcement of the retreat was supposed to come from the Prime Minister’s office!! Why did Tanonoka make a meal out of this? The retreat was held at Elephant Hills Hotel in Vic Falls and not at (Norfolk) Quality International Hotel in Harare because the Elephant Hills was a better venue which provided the privacy and business atmosphere that was required.
In anyway, if the Elephant Hills Hotel is in Zimbabwe, what is wrong with using it as a venue? Tell me, how do we promote domestic tourism as Zimbabweans if our own government officials can not even feel free to use the facilities in their own country? Since the retreat was funded by the World Bank, it was best it be held at a peaceful, quiet and private place.The Elephant Hills was the ideal place and not Msasa Training Bereau.This was a very important meeting which was donor funded and people had to be serious and the environment had to be conducive.
The retreat came up with a plan of action with specific key result areas relevant to specific ministries but not confined to specific people. So the training of acting perm secretaries does not mean that new perm secretaries shall not be appointed.
Accusations that Tsvangirai is supping with Mugabe the devil do not help anyone anymore! Should people in Zimbabwe stop thinking and just do nothing because Mugabe is there? Who does not know that Mugabe destroyed Zimbabwe and still wants to go on? So should we all leave the country to crumble and wait for Mugabe to die first before we rise up to save our country? Is Tanonoka Whande surely oblivious of all these facts above or he is deliberately only interested in misleading the public?
As Zimbabweans, we must rid ourselves of this “I know it all” attitude as has been displayed here by Tanonoka Whande. Look where Jonathan Moyo is because of knowing it all!!
I agree with Greg Mlambo . What is the alternative Hwande ? Let our country burn and crash and then what ? We should stop being petty and be mature . Can you tel me honestly that moving forward the MDC cannot win elections after a new constituition? When there is the rule of law, when the economy is in a better shape and by showing maturity and working with their old adversaries the MDC will now lose support?
We should be looking at the reality on the ground and stop commenting like we have arrived from Mars . We genuine MDC supporters in Zimbabwe are very very happy with progress being made and we have every confidence that things will be better for the country and our party . You will not even know what party activities are going on in the various constituents right now. We are busy. People should not say we can not allow an egg to hatch because the kids are hungry or in Shona “Tokanga mbeu nokuti mhuri ine nzara” (roast seed and eat because the family is hungry).
We should stop being professional pessimists and critics and look on the positive side .
We have reached a different stage of the struggle and we have to move on . Even if the MDC was ruling alone we coudl still expect some problems here and there. What more in a GNU .
Problems are there to be solved and we should give these parties a chance . That’s what we have at the moment whether we like it or not. And we have to make it work not for the benefit of MDC or Zanu-PF but Zimbabwe.
Hwande still expects Tsvangirai to be at constant loggerheads with Mugabe and vice versa . Please grow up and I expect better from you. I respect you highly since your articles with the Daily News but now you seem to be losing the plot. Sometimes I wonder if most comments are coming from people in Zimbabwe right now.
Right now in Zimbabwe you rarely come across such pessimists but there are a few here and there. But generally most people are positive about developments on the ground.
This brother (Whande)hit the nail on the head. The truth is because we are suffering from confrontation fatigue we choose to hope for the best with this political shot-gun wedding consumated on the high noon (Four Funerals and a Wedding). Let’s face it, there is no difference from the way things are going policy-wise. It now looks all too clear that Mugabe (Gushungo) might have been right all the time about the spineless and hapless nature of this ‘opposition element”.
Apparently for all their grandstanding as defenders of human-rights, alll they truly wanted was a meal ticket in the shameless privatization of state resources and nothing was going to stop them.Not even their friends still locked up in the Chikurubi Gulag. A lot of the MDC people have already been irretrievably compromised by a few stupid things like cars, furniture, stolen-farms and even for good measure a Miss Rural, Miss Tourism contestant to keep the brothers busy for the wrong reasons.
Fools, fools and its still April. Welcome to the new lessons in plunder at Gono National University (GNU) We deserve and need a new way.
Mr Whande, l am sorry if MDC misled you. Some of us have always been trying to warn you and your colleagues. Unfortunately all we get is abuse each time we express concern about Morgan Tsvangirai and MDC’s agenda. We expect to hear from you soon now that MDC is beginning to frighten you. Remember we are in April 2009.
And Shingirai, the MDC retreated in order to confront Mugabe? Thought they retreated to confront the isssues, no?
The problem has always been that MDC is an eclectic collection of opportunistic malcontents who had missed the gravy train the first time around and have identified a niche to make good while it lasts…they are in this for their personal ends, that’s why they are resonating so well with Mugabe and company. Look how worried they are about their Hero status even as the real heroes of this struggle, the Gand’hi Mudzingwas et al suffer incarceration co-presided by one of their own who was quoted saying he is getting on famously with his co-minister…these guys give opposition politics a bad name.
it seems like most of the arm chair critics/readers are based in the diaspora.those of us at home and seeing change,though slow really appreciate what is happening. There are some of you who wanted to see the suffering of the masses continue and wish the new project to fail. Some would like to create a third force that will take on a new war against Mugabe and Tsvangirai disguising themselves as liberators only fooling the international community so that they continue to enjoy free handouts and their asylum status claiming all is not well at home.yes the GNU is two months old, lets give it a chance and hope.some of those we read writing on-line have benefited immensely from ZANU pf in the past.we know this and its only a matter of time before we expose them. They now talk about two months Tsvangirai in power and yet turn a very blind eye to Mugabe’s 29 years of total destruction the economic, political and social life of Zimbabweans.