Church document dishonest – Mutambara(07-12-06)

onomic and political crisis of unprecedented proportions. Any initiative that seeks to foster and develop solutions to this crisis must be supported. Whenever any group of Zimbabweans gets together in pursuit of such initiatives, it must be hailed and encouraged. The state of our country and pain of our people demand nothing less. Consequently, in spite of its initial exclusion from this particular Church initiative, the MDC is solidly supportive and wishes to be actively involved,” said a statement from the party’s information office.
However, the party believes the churches’ process in crafting a National Vision for Zimbabwe was fundamentally flawed, and characterized by dishonesty, manipulation, and lack of inclusiveness.
Critical stakeholders in the form of civic organizations, political parties, and church organizations (e.g., NCA, Crisis Coalition, MDC, ZCTU, ZINASU, Christian Alliance, National Pastors Conference) were not engaged nor consulted prior to the launch. To compound matters, there were falsehoods in the media, which were never retracted, about some of these groups being consulted. The lack of involvement of key players led to the spectacular failure of the document launch, where it ended being a Zanu (PF) orgy in self-indulgence, it says.
“In addition, some of those organizations engaged were shown versions of the document that were different from what was eventually launched. This led to complaints about duplicity and manipulation from the Catholic Jesuits, and Bishop Pius Ncube. The perception is that people and organizations were being used to legitimize a dubious agenda,” says the statement.
The party accuses Mugabe of trying to buy time and says the people of Zimbabwe will not be part of any efforts to sanitize the dictator. It emphasises that bad governance, political legitimacy, economic mismanagement, corruption, and political dictatorship, all due to the absolute failure of Robert Mugabe and Zanu (PF), lie at the root of the nation’s problems. Misdiagnosis of a problem will lead to wrong solutions.