Yet Tsvangirai’s party has announced plans to contest the by elections for 14 seats which have become vacant after expulsion of Tendai Biti’s UMDC parliamentarians. To press for electoral reforms, the MDC-T is threatening a lawsuit, as if that ever helped.
Tsvangirai’s quandary is that if he presses on with elections, he will look undecided. If he backs off, Zanu (PF) will win all 14 seats, ensuring an even bigger majority in parliament.
Tsvangirai’s second dilemma is on Western targeted sanctions. He has implored USA to lift sanctions on Zimbabwe, saying that he wants Mugabe to have no excuse for failure. America has not wholly imposed an embargo on Zimbabwe. Washington still provides aid. It is Mugabe and his wife Grace they don’t particularly fancy.
Ballot-stuffing aside, one reason for Tsvangirai’s 2013 election defeat was Zanu (PF)’s orchestrated smear campaign. Rather that hit back, Tsvangirai hung himself up as a piñata, for Zanu (PF) to beat up. Tsvangirai was portrayed as the proponent of “sanctions” which have, as Zanu (PF) put it, ‘brought untold suffering on ordinary Zimbabweans.’ The chief problems are corruption and poor governance. A case in point, Mugabe’s failure to audit land use or to account for mining revenue is in no way linked to sanctions.
Tsvangirai might boost public approval if he convinces Obama to lift sanctions. But by doing so, all he might achieve is the reinvigoration of Zanu (PF). Mugabe will buy more helicopters for his campaigns and bolster his ill-equipped police and military – the brutal machinery which has kept him in power for 35 years – and more importantly, the country’s First Shopper will return to the shopping malls of New York, where for 15 years she has been banned.
Tsvangirai is learning to give as much as he gets. MDC-T spokesman, Obert Gutu recently made insinuations about Maziwisa’s ‘controversial personal lifestyle’ – a veiled anti-gay slur. The cornerstone of the Movement for Democratic Change is tolerance, equality and freedom of association. The MDC-T may have decided that tit-for-tat is the way forward, but Tsvangirai now runs the risk of becoming another Mugabe.
Post published in: Analysis