Lance also asks her about the problems rocking Dr Simba Makoni's Mavambo Movement, which she is part of. Dr Chung explains why she made the decision to support Makoni's presidential bid last year. Would she ever be tempted to join the MDC?
Lance: Hello Zimbabwe and welcome to another edition of Behind the Headlines. My special guest this week is Dr Fay Chung as you will know she is a former Education Minister serving 1988 right up to 1993. Dr Chung thank you for joining us on the programme.
Dr Chung: My pleasure.
Lance: Right nowthe starting point, political developments in Zimbabwe. We have a coalition government that has hit the ground running, what do you think are the prospects of this new arrangement? Is it going to work?
Dr Chung: I very much hope that it will work because it will give the country a breathing space. I think all parties have talked about an election in about 2 years time and I think a 2 year breathing space when we have peace and we can recover from some of the drastic suffering..(inaudible) valued by Zimbabweans as a whole and makes me optimistic and hopeful that this inter-party agreement will work.
Lance: Mm this new arrangement obviously has been blighted by what have been described as violations. We've seen the detention of people like Roy Bennett, Jestina Mukoko till recently before she was released. Do you think all these are issues that will harm the arrangement?
Dr Chung: Well I think they are very unfortunate, because I think it is important for these abducted and detained people to be released as soon as possible. I think that is absolutely essential. But I guess what is happening is each side is flexing its muscles to show they are still in power or they can make a difference and this is what we see.
Lance: But obviously Zanu PF has focused on trying to get targeted sanctions removed and they are not doing enough some would argue to convince skeptical western countries that things have changed. For example, I mean why would you be asking for targeted sanctions to be removed while you have Roy Bennett locked up in Mutare jail? I mean what's the reasoning there.
Dr Chung: Yeh, well I think each side is trying to please its constituency to show that they still have power to do what their particular constituency thinks is important. But I do agree with you that the targeted sanctions will remain as long as we have people imprisoned without trial. I think it is essential that these people be released as soon as possible. I don't see these targetedah what are called restrictions; I don't think they will go away, without some movements being taken along those lines.
Lance: Now looking at your C.V, Dr Chung, very impressive in terms of your contribution to Zimbabwe. Minister of National Affairs Employment Generation and Cooperatives, Minister of Education Sport and Culture, Deputy Secretary for Administration in the Ministry of Education Sport and Culture. What is your relationship now that you are in a sense out of Zanu PF, how are you interacting with your former colleagues?
Dr Chung. Oh, I am still very friendly with colleagues who are working with me. I think we feel that change is needed at this time. I think if I look at people who were with me in the liberation struggle, who were with me in the early years of the independent government, I still have very good relationships with them. I don't have any problems with them and they don't have any problems with me. So I don't see personal relations as a problem. I think most of them do feel that Zanu PF somehow lost its way over the last decade I think and I think this is a consensus opinion, not just myself but within Zanu PF people, I think people are quite critical of the fact that we have not had succession over the last 10 years when obviously succession was necessary, that we allowed a lot of decay to take place. You know, I mean the cholera is one, the decay of the medical system, the decay of the education system, the closure of so many industries, I think all that is noted by everybody. It's not a secret; you know it's staring you in the face.
Lance: Last year you were one of the early public supporters of independent presidential candidate Simba Makoni, a decision that maybe surprised a few.
Any particular reason you chose to back Dr Makoni?
Dr Chung: Oh I thought it was very important to come out with people who are serious about solving the country's problems in Zimbabwe in a technically sound way. In a way Simba is an extremely brave person to have come out the way he did. And also he is a technocrat, I mean he is a competent person and it was important at our stage of development to say lets look at the problems we facing in the country rather than which party are you and we are going to bash you down if you are the other party. And we are saying no there are solutions and we have to go for the solutions. So I think it was very important to move away from the polarization of the two party system were each side feels.on the Zanu side they say the MDC is a representative of the imperialist forces and from the MDC side they say Mugabe is a dictator and so on, so we have to move from that kind of over-zealous, over simplified and half truths really on both sides to go to find ways to solve the real problems we face and I think Simba is offering that way.
Lance: And are you still involved with Simba's project or you doing something else?
Dr Chung: Oh yes I am still heavily involved and in the midst of working out how to form a political party, cause so far we have Zanu PF and the two MDC formations but we feel its important to have another political party which is independent of both and that is what we are in the midst of doing.
Lance: In terms of problems that have rocked the Mavambo project. I mean we had retired Major Mbudzi convening a press conference with his colleagues and saying Dr Simba Makoni had been removed at the helm of the organization.
Umm how has that matter been resolved so far?
Dr Chung: Ah well I don't think it's resolved because Mavambo had not yet been formed into a political party so I don't know how you can remove someone from a non existent political party that's one problem. I think the other is fighting over resources particularly money and cars. I think Simba is by nature a very cautious person in terms of how money is used, in terms of the regulations Vis a Vis cars. So that is very much the quarrel that he was too slow in forming the party and he was to release the money and cars to people. As you know in Zimbabwe people fight over these cars and I think that is one of the issues we have today. So I think it's a good thing really that Major Mbudzi and Ibbo Mandaza and others have chosen to leave Simba.
Simba on his side is continuing with the formation of the party. So I don't see..I guess in the end we might have two parties coming out but with Simba we still have the majority of people who followed him through the bid he made to challenge Mugabe and Tsvangirai for the presidency.
Lance: Now last year I spoke to former Home Affairs Minister Dumiso Dabengwa, in fact I think it's this year, and he said the reason why he supported Simba Makoni, it was a rescue operation and they wanted to prevent either Morgan Tsvangirai or Robert Mugabe from winning outright and this is what led to the run-off some are saying. Is that a fair assessment of the role Simba Makoni played because some are saying he acted as a spoiler and created the run-off?
Dr Chung: I don't think he was a spoiler, I don't believe that at all. I think the issue was that he saw that neither of those two candidates was offering a solution. You know they were kind of organizing against each other mainly on the basis of personality. Up to now you know I think I can say without fear of contradiction that neither Zanu PF nor the MDC have clear long term policies or strategies for improving the situation in this country. And what you hear really is we want a return to what it was like in the 1980's but I think that is not a proper solution. We can not return to the so-called good times of the 1980's. I think actually that is a delusion.
I think we need some new solutions which neither have come upwards. That is were Simba comes in, to offer a new vision of where we are going to. I think the older generation really harks back to restoring the good times which of course were based on the good inheritance of the Rhodesian days but I think there are problems with the Rhodesian days because the Rhodesia was perfect only for a minority, at that time a white minority. But after independence you had a black minority enjoying all these advantages but the majority of the people were not able to gain very much from either the Rhodesian system or from the post independence system. I mean of course in the education, health, clean water supply they were better off for lets say the first decade or so. But after that even that went backwards you know, health care is gone backwards, education has gone backwards, and off course water supply has ended up in cholera. So I don't think we have a clear vision of were we go to from those two parties.
Lance: Well those two parties as you say are now in a coalition government.
Clearly both are eyeing the elections in 2 years if we are to have a new constitution. Who do you think will come out the winner from this, Zanu PF or the MDC?
Dr Chung: Well I think if MDC plays its cards well and shows a lot of progress in the two years its future will be very comfortable. So I think it 's very much up to the MDC to show what it can do in two years. I think if it does not show great progress in the next two years then the kind of doors open for new parties and in fact that's what I foresee really at the next election we will have more parties than we have now. I can see new candidates coming in. New parties forming because the old parties may not be offering proper answers to the challenges we have.
Lance: Would you ever be tempted to join the MDC?
Dr Chung: Well I think MDC has a very solid working.the urban working class base and I think it has had very good support from the trade unions. So in that way I do see it as a progressive party. I think because it formed as an opposition to Zanu PF and based on an analysis that the problem is a person, that is Robert Mugabe. It became fairly confused because, you know, it seems very often the policy is if Robert Mugabe is removed all the problems will be solved, so I don't believe that at all. I think there is much more to be done in Zimbabwe than just removing one person. And I think also kind of focusing on a personality muddies the analysis because I think we have very poor analysis on both sides you know and in some MDC side you kind of hear if we had not done land resettlement we would be okay, that is wrong analysis. From Zanu PF they think that MDC spoilt everything by getting too much support from Britain and America. Well I think that is partially true in that some of the kind of confused messages that we get from MDC is from getting too much support from too many different groups both inside and outside the country. You know there have been very favoured in terms of those internal and external support and I think these different groups have wanted their different messages to be the most dominant ones, you know. Let'
s take the two main groups, the trade unions on the one side and the white commercial farmers on the other side. In a way they are very disparate groups but they are the two groups which are the most prominent in supporting MDC. So I think there certain types of mixed messages which come out. Umm.so your question is would I join MDC, well I think at the present moment I definitely would not.
Lance: That was Dr Fay Chung joining us on Behind the Headlines and certainly she has a lot to say on Zimbabwe and we hope to get her again for a part two. Dr Fay Chung, thank you for joining us.
SWRadio Africa
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