To Hell with SADC!
November 9, 2008
By Clapperton Mavhunga
IMAGINE a group of men – or males who call themselves men – standing up with legs in their trousers, on their own two feet, and declaring, each with his own two lips, that one party which has usurped all power, and another which has none, must establish two home affairs ministers, “one appointed by Zanu-PF, one by the MDC”.
Just imagine that!
“The SADC was asked to rule and SADC took a decision and that’s the position of SADC. Now it’s up to the parties to implement”. So says someone who is supposed to be the secretary-general of this organization of pathetic leaders, who cannot stand up to Mugabe and tell him a home truth that will free a nation of 12 million!
Over the past few days, we have heard some sabre-rattling coming from south of the Limpopo River.
“This is becoming a matter of extreme concern to us and we will be taking quite a hard stance to make sure that agreement is reached,” cabinet spokesperson Themba Maseko told reporters.
“We believe that South Africa and the region cannot be held to ransom by three parties that are failing to reach agreement on the allocation of cabinet posts”, he said, going further to suggest nobody would leave SA soil without a deal.
The world, the suffering masses of Zimbabwe, and even the trees heaved a collective sigh of relief: at last Pretoria was ready to confront a tyrant. Skeptics held their peace. Could it be that the ANC was now ready to put pressure on the MDC instead of capitulating to Mugabe?
Now we know.
Surely, SADC must think that the people of Zimbabwe are fools. They must surely think that we do not see what is naked before us: that, for some reason, the struggle for freedom in Zimbabwe is just about cosmetic power. Do they really know that power is a means to the people’s freedom?
Well, we regret to inform SADC that their attempt to play power games using Zimbabwe as a toy, with the people as a rope in this tug-of-war game, will not be acceptable. If all these males who congregated in South Africa do not realize it already, this latest act of treachery against the people of Zimbabwe will attract economic consequences. Most of Zimbabwe’s neighbors have a choice between blind solidarity and pragmatism. If they choose to sink with Mugabe, the world will be more than willing to grant their wish.
SADC is inviting its own collapse, because it is now clear that it is in the pocket of a party rejected by the people of Zimbabwe.
We do not expect charity from SADC; all we ask is for the region to do what is right. For a very long time the region has formed a cabal of tyrants blocking every path we have chosen to pursue a peaceful, democratic change.
We have never asked anything other than neutrality for us to confront our tyrant; instead SADC has become the 12th player in the opposition team.
Politicians – males who are simply not man enough to confront their tyrannical neighbor – have defied the commonsense of their citizens, who understand and empathize with the plight of Zimbabweans. They think we must be insane to turn against a liberator, even as they realize that even the debris of liberation has been eaten by the tyrant’s rage.
To whom now do we turn?
We cannot count on our neighbors, because even if ordinary citizens in those countries feel for us, their political leaders are paling around with our tyrant.
We cannot count on the goodwill of our African leadership, half of whom tremble in the presence of our tyrant.
We cannot count on the sanctity of the ballot because our tyrant believes that the gun is supreme over elections. To whom now, tell me? Whom?
Who would not want to emulate Barack Obama and become president at 47?
Who among us would run away from the power of knowing they can bring change through the ballot and elect a government of their choice?
Who among us would not want a square meal for his children, his wife, her husband, or parents?
Who among us deserves to die like a fly, squashed flat against the wall and levelled to nothingness by those whose only qualification is the gun barrel?
Are we not also human beings?
Tell me, Comrade Mothlanthe, Comrade Armando Guebuza, Comrade Jakaya Kikwete, Comrade Bingu wa Mutarika, Comrade Rupiah Banda, Comrade Eduardo dos Santos, Comrade Hafikepunye Pohamba, Comrade Joseph Kabila. Tell me.
Are we the proverbial sacrificial lambs; pests at the very least, to be killed with pesticides as if governance is pest control?
Meals at the tyrant’s most charitable, to be roasted and then eaten even while our next door neighbors watch.
Rope in the tug-of-war game of politicians like you, who care for nothing but power and money.
For far too long, Zimbabweans have conducted a civil discourse, determined not to take the path of the gun. Harsh critics say it’s an excuse for cowardice. Now your friend, our tyrant, arrests brave mothers fighting with plates, pots and spoons on the streets of Harare, while asking for nothing but food in the shops and money at the banks, their own money, to feed their dying children.
Tell me, SADC presidents, what happens when people’s backs are against the wall, when the very same people who must guarantee whether they live or die the next day turn out to be their predator’s company?
Because, quite frankly, if what you mean by talks is to force a man who was elected by the majority to submit to a tyrant the people overwhelmingly rejected, there can be no worse betrayal than that.
When desperation creeps in tomorrow, SADC better take full responsibility for the consequences. We have lost many relatives already to HIV/AIDS simply because donor money was embezzled by the same regime you protect.
Is it worth it to be complicit to genocide, to the deaths of entire families due to lack of drugs, simply to protect one 84-year old tyrant? To whom do those who have lost their relatives, who are now orphans and who have lost so many siblings, ask for help if an entire region connives against 12 million citizens to protect a single tyrant?
For whom is SADC if it is not for citizens? It boggles the mind for several males to congregate and declare that they will send a peacekeeping force to faraway Congo, even as a crisis is brewing right on their borders that may actually trigger a war to destabilize an entire region.
That is what is at stake in forcing Mugabe to compromise, not Tsvangirai. SADC is barking up the wrong tree.
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Freedom cannot be handed on a plate especially by Mugabe. Ask Nkunda of DRC. The oppressors will try to hang on to the privileges by maintaining the status quo so its time we launch a liberation struggle for none but ourselves can set us free.
Yes we can!!!
Kappa and Riche Mac,
You’re missing the point. For you this is a “game” with the political ‘players’ dribbling each other. So tell me, who is the ball, huh? For most of those Zimbabweans it is a matter of life or death. Do not assume that everybody who criticizes Mugabe is an MDC supporter.
It is simply that they see something horribly wrong with the status quo. Now, if you enjoy cheering on a dictator using every trick to stifle freedom and starve people to death, go on. But do realise that at this stage the views of the suffering masses and those of the MDC stand in the same corner. The March 29 election is proof of that.
Even if people who contribute here support the MDC, it’s their right and they are doing so because of the record of tyranny over the last 28 years, which SADC seems to tacitly endorse.
SADC seems to believe that Mugabe’s views matter more than the millions of the people suffering because of Zanu-PF’s handiwork since the ‘political independence’ in 1980. If you believe in the moral rectitude of that position, go on, but the people’s patience is beginning to wear thin. Fortunately, you have the luxury of writing using a pseudonym, so you’re covered.
Your bigotry is beyond repair Clapperton.
You address not a single one of the issues I raised, instead resorting to the same baseless charges I referred to in my response to you.
Where, for instance, do I “cheer on a dictator”? And where do I even suggest nobody has a right to support the MDC?
Shadows, Clapperton, are what you are flailing your fists at.
Mavhunga
WE ALL KNOW WHAT SADC SHOULD HAVE DONE. ONLY A BLIND MAN WOULD NOT SEE THE WISHES OF THE MAJORITY OF PEOLE OF ZIMBABWE.
Kudos to you brother, for yet another well written and straight to the point article.
From your words, ” We have never asked anything other than neutrality for us to confront our tyrant; instead SADC has become the 12th player in the opposition team.”
The issue that was on the table at the last meeting ” actually a joke of a meeting and a waste of time and tax payers money”, was that of ministries. And SADc did not deliver.
Brother Mavhunga , you do not have to explain further, as your words are loud and clear like Obama’s acceptance speach: CHANGE IS WHAT WE NEED!!
i like my pseudonym and am proud of it. It allows me to voice my opinion without who I am or what I am known for taking away
from my words. That is the cover I seek. I will try and keep this respnse short.
To answer you bluntly Clapperton. In the game, power is the ball. If people are power then the people are the ball. I am not in Zimbabwe. I was in Zimbabwe earlier this year just after the elections to bury my father and visit my aunts grave to pay my respects.
They both died of things that don’t kill. My father died because the ambulance people wanted $5 Trillion in cash when banks were giving people One hundred thousand. Doctors wanted USD20 for a consultation and pharmacies had no medicine, regardless of the forex you had. After arriving at the hospital, in the back of a hired truck, it took one hour for the nurses to realise the man was dying. Needless to say, their last ditch efforts yeilded nothing. He was buried on a Sunday. Quotes from funeral homes were going up everyday. A casket that cost $80 Trillion on Friday was $230 Trillion on Saturday. Cash or RTGS.
None were available. It was not easy to bury him.
I don’t blame the doctors or the ambulance guys. I blame Mugabe. Mugabe killed my father, him and his cronies. People who use ‘if’ are not usually serious. But sometimes I wonder how things would have been if the results had been respected. Maybe my father would still be alive. But that is just a wish and is neither here or there.
Mugabe doesn’t know me, he doesn’t know my father. When he is in his office or in the Sheraton or at Sandton centre, he is not thinking about me. Dare I say that Mutambara or Tsvangirayi are thinking about me. But lets assume that they are thinking about me.
If they are thinking about me, then why the hell won’t they wake up and start playing the game like they want to win it. Noone cares about the people dying except the people losing their loved ones. Noone cares about the tortured or the mudered.
They have been told already and many more times after that. What they care about is what you bring to the table. The MDC needs to get out of lala land and start playing real politics. This wishy washy legitimacy and morality stuff must be tossed out of the window. This is what I meant in my contribution. They need to get out of opposition mode, they have the majority in parliament and cabinet. A bit of politics will secure Mutambara in place. A bit of politics will leave Mugabe naked.
They will do nothing to the system from outside. They need to be inside it. They can start domestic by excerbating the cracks within ZANU. They should make a concerted effort to destroy the previous unity accord. There should be a systematic rousal of the middle ranking officiers of the security cluster. They should find the folly and the weaknesses of the characters in the JOC and use them to their advantage. Telling newspapers about what bad people they are only makes money for the newspapers.
Newspapers that will be used as cigarettes and toilet paper the next day. A realisation that a ministers position is ceremonial will help.The MDC should be busy turning the directors and secretaries of these ministries.
If hypothetically, they got all the security ministries, ZANU would make those ministries ungovernable. How? Becasue the ministries are staffed by decicated cadres in strategic positions like messengers, janitors, receptionists, typists. Because of the labour law in Zimbabwe, it is very costly and difficult to fire a civil servant. You cannot restaff a whole ministry.
How many times have finance ministers changed? Has the ministry stopped running? Ministers expire every five years. Internationally the MDC should reinvent itself as a party seeking to further Africas economic interests (and maybe social).
Copying Zambia, Botswana or Lesotho will only further alienate them from more hardline leaders looking for a bigger piece of the global economic cake. In times like these, especially when you are the terrorist, you need friends who can help, friends who matter.
I get my information from forums like this one, from the newspapers and what people talk about. The MDC has no friends in Africa. They need friends in Africa. Friends who can lobby behind doors, because like it or not, diplomacy is at work, that is how Mbeki does things, behind closed doors, in dark corners and empty corridors. Appealing to a world that let 800 000 Rwandans die is just not going to cut it even moreso when they are busy trying to save their own economies.
Maybe I should blame the MDC for killing my father. Their naivety is costing many lives.
regards
Kappa
To Kappa, a true human being and a pragmatist
When as a blogger you write something that elicits the sort of response you have given me, you know that you are communicating. Moreso when the personal losses that forces some of us to write, feel outraged, and compelled to express out anger turn out to be shared, and even dwarfed by the pain of others.
One of the frustrations I have is that, on the evidence of the MDC’s enormous blunders going into the September 15 agreement (which quite frankly is “Global” only in name), even when analysts both on the streets and in academia take their patriotic time to warn the leadership about certain things, they go on to do exactly what we are warning against.
Now, in the last election, one of the successes of Barack Obama was that he had a wide network of bloggers, internet watchers, and TV media people ready at a second’s notice to gather information on what the McCain campaign was putting out and also not just refuting but providing the inner circle of Obama’s campaign with leads on strategy.
I regret to say that, even with all the massive vibe of internet discussion and impassioned analysis like what you have just given, I seriously wonder if the MDC really reads, listens, or sees what is free advice.
I think it is the political culture in the country to assume that everyone is interested in taking their own position and become president, MP, party spokesman, and so on. What these politicians do not know are the touching stories like your own family’s, where even if I went back home, out of a family that was once 9 siblings, all you will find is an anthill full of graves, with perhaps your own marked by the empty space.
Kappa, I seriously wish those who think some of us are in this for one party or other would realize that all we seek is a chance to love our loved ones, to go on with our lives while they take good care of matters of state. For some of us, almost the entire family has been wiped out for the same reasons you give, and it is beginning to get to the point where you wonder whether you’re alive when all of your beloved have died, and all you dream about every day is them, alive and well.
Sure to Hell with SADC. We the people of Zimbabwe have every right to say who governs us. SADC doesn’t have a right over our voice clearly spoken in March!
Who is SADC anyway? A bunch of dictators! The so called Montanhe is 2008 biggest joke! Sad indeed for the suffering people of Zimbabwe. But guys, I hear MDC is to meet Friday to discuss the way forward. Surely there is nothing to decide. Reject the SADC dead position…fullstop
Who is SADC anyway? A bunch of dictators. Montanthle is a joke. SA can u please wake up to what kind of leadership you have. Cant belive these hopeless fellows!
It is sad a situation Clapperton. If it is true that we are a docile people then the leaders should bear that in mind. If the MDC cannot outfox Zanu-PF now, there is little to no hope for any sort of improvement.
I have no idea whether sending SADC and the AU to hell will work. It will require some big “courage’ and wisdom from the MDC, especially and creating a situation that allows other serious African leaders to echo their concerns. The people are bruised and battered.
Regards
Kappa