SHOULD WE GIVE HIM ENOUGH ROPE?

Tsvangirai’s passport is only one example. It is an example that has brought the issue to international notice, and that is good.

If the Old Man’s stubbornness is the rock on which the agreement founders, that is OK. It wasn’t a very seaworthy craft from the start and it has carried us as far as it can now.

We can’t see the way forward clearly, but there is a way. Time is against the Old Man. Left to himself, he will hang himself. But how many people will die before he succeeds if we just wait? People are dying of hunger now the food supplies have run out. People with AIDS are the first to die of hunger and the risk is greater that they will die of avoidable illnesses for lack of medication. People are still being beaten and tortured . . the list goes on.

But we have made progress. He was made to sit down with the MDC and talk. If he doesn’t listen, then he is the one in the wrong.

The SADC leaders can’t avoid the evidence of that.They have shown they can ignore anything that is said, but this time they have been forced to come here because he prevented our elected leader from going to their meeting in Swaziland. They can’t avoid recognising the significance of that.

If they can produce a better agreement, that would help. An improved version of the 15 September agreement would need to spell out who gets which ministries, and who has the last word when there is a deadlock in the Cabinet or the Council of Ministers or between them. Is the final word with the President or the Prime Minister?

Then comes the difficult bit. Who will make the Old Man keep the agreement? We have given him enough rope to hang himself and he’s doing that, but terribly slowly.

If he wrecks it, then a new agreement must put power more clearly in the hands of the people we voted for.

We might shorten the time and reduce the number of people dying while we wait, if we can show the SADC leaders to go for a new agreement now.

They, and our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, below the rank of general in the army or assistant commissioner in the police, might be able to help persuade him that hanging himself quickly is less painful than hanging himself slowly.