Thanks to Robert Mugabes reign of record-breaking incremental destruction, my country is struggling to redeem itself from the abyss of infrastructure collapse, so much that even hardcore urbanites like me have to make do with irritating wood smoke just to have a warm plate of sadza [Zimbabwes staple maize meal paste].
And that was without additional injury to the back breaking exercise. A week ago, I was stung by a small black scorpion on my big toe as I chopped firewood to beat Zimbabwes notorious power outages.
The sting, while irritating, passed off just like any other experience of living in modern-day Zimbabwe under the Jurassic governance of the primeval Zanu (PF).
Thinking back, I imagined that Morgan Tsvangirai was persuaded to take Robert Mugabe into his political boot, wherefore the old trickster settled at some dark corner until MDC fell into a stupor of artificial comfort. But now, Tsvangirai has been inevitably stung while he least expected.
Plotting evil
Instead of focusing on the business of building high yielding relations, Mugabe continues to plot evil against our nation hiding behind questionable legalism. According to a recent Zimbabwe Situation news online report, . Mugabe is entitled under the law to assign functions to ministers, [but] he still has to consult his partners in government on the allocation of the ministries, according to the GPA. In complete defiance of this noble proposition, Mugabe unilaterally takes it upon himself to strip MDC-held ministries of essential powers.
Apparently, the biggest challenge confronting Tsvangirai is not the quality of Zimbabwes coalition government, given that most such arrangements are products of large-scale compromise. Agreements are made on the basis of partner credibility, honesty, consistency and transparency, traits which Zanu (PF) is not exactly endowed with.
Most progressive analysts will agree that Tsvangirai knew exactly the nature of the partner he was committing himself to, that is why he needed to have a comfortable stock of antidotes to deal with Mugabes chicanery. More importantly, Zanu (PF) is a completely discredited partner, headed by one Robert Mugabe who comprehensively lost the March 2008 Parliamentary Election, only to be salvaged by an equally discredited one-man masquerade in June of the same year.
Cherry-picking responsibility
According to Professor Arthur Mutambara, the Global Political Agreement [GPA] is the only source of Mugabes presidential legitimacy. In fact he would have proceeded to add that had SADC taken the right decision to call for a more organised, African Unity-supervised presidential re-run, Mugabe would now be confined to overdue retirement at his Zvimba rural home. It therefore is astonishing by what authority Mugabe cherry-picks ministerial responsibility, if it were not that he is of a tyrannical genre obsessed with power. I have argued time and again that our Zimbabwe government is too big and expensive, hence the shifting of ministerial powers would, on any other day, have little impact on service delivery. And yet if you really put Mugabes juggling under the spotlight, he is only interested in ministerial adjustments that entrench his hegemonic hold on political power.
What is left now is for both Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his deputy, Arthur Mutambara, to place an inexpensive political device that should shatter once and for all, Mugabes life-presidency ambitions. Both MDC cadres must come out of their friendly accommodative shells and tell Mugabe to fulfil all the provisions of the GPA.
The gist of my argument is that Robert Mugabe lost the election, thus has no moral high ground to play god. Five million Zimbabweans have given both MDCs the mandate to govern, so the one-man political dance of the discredited Robert Mugabe has no authority or legitimacy to give five million voters a single sleepless night.
If both Tsvangirai and Mutambara are weak, they should immediately hand over their power Nigeria style to more capable members of their parties. This weakling image of subservience they are portraying does not augur well with our expectations. It could also endanger their 2012 electoral standing in their constituencies. Mugabes unpopular mandate expired in 2000, so any compromise on the part of Tsvangirayi and Mutambara is blight on the noble fight against ZANU-PF fascist dictatorship. Luckily, we now know there is a scorpion in our boot. www.kubatana.net
Post published in: Opinions