(TALKZIMBABWE) Tsvangirai lied about funding - Leon

Tsvangirai lied about funding - Leon
Floyd Nkomo
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:32:00 +0000
MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai (L), Tony Leon (R)

THE leader of the Movement for Democratic Change party, Morgan Tsvangirai lied that he was not soliciting and receiving funds from South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance donors, claims a former South African opposition party’s leader in his new book.

A report by South Africa’s Independent Online (IOL) quotes Democratic Alliance leader, Tony Leon in his newly published book entitled On the Contrary, as saying that Tsvangirai received some donations from the Democratic Party members at or around the time the Fast Track Land Reform Programme started in 2000.

Tsvangirai was paid huge sums after he had indicated that he was “courageous and level-headed,” enough to topple the Zanu PF government according to Leon, but later changed his tune and started criticizing the DA.

Leon, South Africa’s longest-serving leader of the parliamentary opposition, had earlier showed publicly his support for the opposition leader.

Leon at the time said “if there was no intimidation the Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai would trounce Mugabe.”

“While expressing in private the need for opposition co-operation across the Limpopo, he later publicly changed his tune and started singing in the anti-DA/DP caucus - doubtless encouraged by the ANC,” Leon was quoted as saying by IOL.

Tsvangirai is said to have refused in public that he was obtaining such donations when in fact he was soliciting them in private.

Leon says Tsvangirai was saying one thing in private and another in public and this revealed a “troubling inconsistency” and lack of “strategic coherence”.

Leon made the headlines when he visited Zimbabwe during the time of the Constitutional Referendum in February 2000. This was after Tsvangirai had visited South Africa a month before. The Minister of Information and Publicity, Professor Jonathan Moyo said that Leon was trying to bring racism back into the country by meeting commercial farmers while some MDC leaders were in South Africa to drum up support for a motion in a South African parliament against Zimbabwe.

Moyo was quoted saying that Leon's visit is a bad omen for the country as he was ‘illegally’ funding an opposition party in the country – a charge Tsvangirai denied then. He threatened to sue Leon for allegedly defaming him by writing to Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon saying Zimbabwe had not agreed to stop violence by war veterans invading white-owned farms.

Moyo angrily denied having ever said Zimbabwe had not agreed to end violence on the farms.

A story covered on June 24 2000 by IOL quoted the MDC leader denying any involvement with DA funders in South Africa. Speaking in 2000, in his home town of Buhera, Tsvangirai denied an allegation by state media that he was being funded by “whites in South Africa”.

"My goodness, why should it still be like that?" Tsvangirai was quoted as saying at the time. "The MDC is a Zimbabwean party ... run by Zimbabweans,” he said after casting a vote at the 2000 parliamentary elections where he stood against his cousin, Zanu PF’s Kenneth Manyonda who was also governor of Zimbabwe's eastern province of Manicaland

At the time, Tsvangirai told journalists that Zanu PF's claim that the MDC was funded by whites outside Zimbabwe showed the ruling party was suffering from an “inferiority complex.”

“Zanu PF suffers from an inferiority complex. They believe that once you are in the company of whites they control you,” said Tsvangirai at the time.

The latest revelation by Leon will come as a blow to the MDC leader who has always maintained that he never received funding from foreign sources.