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(NEWZIMBABWE) Interview: Jonathan Moyo Part II

Interview: Jonathan Moyo Part II
by Munyaradzi Huni
19/10/2009 00:00:00

This is the second and final part of a two-part discussion [See Part One] between the Sunday Mail's Munyaradzi Huni (MH) and Professor Jonathan Moyo (JM), the Tsholotsho North MP who recently re-joined Zanu PF after being an independent for four years:

MH: Professor Moyo, some journalists, especially those from the private media houses, are very uncomfortable with your return to Zanu PF. You are accused of destroying the private media (especially the closure of the Daily News) by crafting what they call “Draconian laws” like AIPPA and impoverishing hundreds of journalists together with their dependants. What is your message to these journalists?

JM: Look, a lot has changed in our country today and it is no good living in an unhappy past and so we all need to move on and to leave that past behind us. I accept that, as imperfect beings, life is about improving on our past imperfections so as to make a better future. But if it is true that there is any journalist who is actually uncomfortable with my return to Zanu PF, as you say, then that clearly demonstrates their intolerance of my freedom of association and their pathological hatred of Zanu PF than anything else that is useful. What business is it to them what party I belong to? To that extent, the journalists you mention have a serious problem because they are fake and phoney.

One of these fake and phoney journalists is Luke Tamborinyoka, a former scribe at the Daily News, who predictably left that newspaper to become a full-time chequebook propagandist in the MDC-T’s information department and who recently wrote a scurrilous piece in an anti-Zimbabwe British propaganda sheet called the Zimbabwean in which he officially responded on behalf of the MDC-T to my revelations of the operators, operations and funding of his party’s parallel government by demonising me “a celebrated political harlot” simply because I have exercised my freedom of association to rejoin Zanu PF which is the only political party I’ve ever known.

Now if journalists like Tamborinyoka are uncomfortable with my rejoining Zanu PF to the point of demonising me as a political prostitute, then what do they make of the glaring fact that virtually everyone in the MDC-T leadership, including its parliamentarians and Cabinet ministers, have been in and out of an assortment of parties, including but not limited to UNFP, Zupo, PF-Zapu, Zanu PF, Zanu Ndonga, Frolizi, UANC, Zum, DP, ZIP, Forum Party, UPP, Rhodesia Front, Rhodesia Action Party, NUF, CAZ, and many others?

Going by the depraved logic of journalists like Tamborinyoka, the fact that the MDC-T leaders, including Tsvangirai who has to this day not returned his Zanu PF card, have previous party affiliations, means they are a conglomeration of turncoats and political prostitutes and that the MDC-T is therefore nothing but a political brothel!

Should the need arise to name and shame them, it will be done without fear or favour. So, yes, there may be some uncomfortable journalists in that brothel, like Tamborinyoka, who are not happy about my rejoining Zanu PF, but surely, that’s no reason to take them seriously.

As for the notion that I introduced so-called Draconian media laws, my view is that you are talking about a now-tired and collapsing falsehood. As we speak today, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) as well as the Broadcasting Services Act remain in our statutes not as introduced by me but as enacted by the Parliament of Zimbabwe and recently as amended by the current major three political parties, namely, Zanu PF and the two MDC formations. If the journalists you mention are uncomfortable with my return to Zanu PF against this background, then you can see that they are the worst example of insecure people who fear fear itself. I don’t expect professional journalists to be like that. If you are afraid of fear, then you have yourself to blame.

The specific claim that I closed down the Daily News and that I impoverished hundreds of journalists and their dependants is laughable. Many of the journalists who claim to have been impoverished by me have, in fact, used that claim to profit from it by, among other things, getting all sorts of scholarships and lucrative jobs in NGOs while also moonlighting as journalists for a plethora of publications and even foreign governments.

Others have gotten all sorts of dubious media and human rights awards while others have used the phoney claim to justify fraudulent asylum applications. There may be exceptions to this, but it is true of most of the cases of the journalists who allege to have been impoverished by me. Otherwise the claim that I closed down the Daily News has disappeared with the emergence of facts about how the Daily News was actually closed down in 2003, but I have seen the claim now resurfacing with reports of my return to Zanu PF.

As a matter of fact, no newspaper in Zimbabwe was closed down before the crucial 2002 presidential election. The Daily News was there in 2002, but it could not win the election for its hopeless presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, who some Rhodie racists and their Western backers now see as Nobel Prize material when they have been abusing him to make war in Zimbabwe exemplified by their continuing illegal economic sanctions that are battering ordinary people.

After the 2002 presidential election, the US government under George W. Bush publicly declared that it would seek illegal regime change in Zimbabwe using the media and NGOs. The Daily News took advantage of that and challenged the media registration laws in the Supreme Court but lost, leading to its closure in October 2003 on grounds that it was operating outside the law.

Anyone who believes that it was my problem for the Daily News to decide to operate outside the law and to seek the Supreme Court to condone its fugitive behaviour is mad. All of us must take responsibility for our decisions and actions and those who were in charge of the Daily News in 2002 and 2003 must be held accountable without scapegoats. By the same token, anyone who thinks a foreign government can make a hostile declaration that it would use the media and NGOs to seek illegal regime change, as did the US against Zimbabwe in 2002, and not get a legal response from a Zanu PF government is equally mad. AIPPA, which is in our statutes books for Zimbabwe and not for any person, was a legal and constitutional response to naked and brutal US and European aggression and there would be more and better of the same response under any similar circumstances in future.

Make no mistake about that. Zimbabwe will never be a foreign policy extension of imperial America or neo-colonial Europe under the false cover of media or political reforms. Never, ever! And this has nothing to do with who is or is not in power at any given time. It’s just something that our history will never accept. You should also remember that while many of the people who liberated this country are now gone, many more are still alive and with us and they will not allow their dream to be shattered by imperialists and neo-colonialists using their local fronts. This we must all understand for the sake of democracy and peace.

So my message to the journalists you mention is that they must learn to place blame where it belongs and they should not be afraid of fear but be honest to the principle of the rule of law, fair play and the pursuit of objectivity. More importantly, journalists must disabuse themselves of the notion that media is a special institution as if it is owned and run by angels from heaven when you and I know only too well that some if not most of it is owned and run by some of the most corrupt people on earth who are not ashamed of seeking dirty money and evil political influence by hiding their corruption and greed under the hollow claims of Press freedom.

All of us, whether we are politicians, journalists, teachers, scientists, pastors, bishops, students, parents, children or just citizens, we must live and be judged by one standard: the truth and nothing but the whole truth. In the case of Zimbabwe, good journalists must know that this is a country of liberation and they must show some respect to the fact that many of the liberators are still with us and they must not provoke conflict by selling out by preferring Uncle Sam’s brown envelope to the truth.

MH: On the political front, you are being accused of engaging in the “politics of confrontation” through your articles in the media, yet because of the inclusive Government “it is time for the politics of engagement”. What is your comment?

JM: I am tempted to laugh my lungs out, but since you look very serious, let me respond. I recall reading recently a news opinion in a financial weekly that published an oxymoron that I am incapable of “being combative without being confrontational”. I can assure you that the legions of artistes, musicians, the football community, teachers, students, professionals and ordinary people I have worked with over the years and with whom we have together accomplished a lot would never agree with the political view that I prefer confrontation to engagement. In any case, confrontation is a form of engagement and sometimes it is necessary to be confrontational when you are dealing with unrepentant imperialists, neo-colonialists and their lackeys.

What I know is that there is a time for everything: a time to be serious, a time to be confrontational in the face of aggression, a time to be nice, a time to laugh, a time to cry, a time to love and a time to die. All this is according to God’s creation and there is nobody created by God who only has time for one thing. No. So as a matter of human nature, my disposition depends on the conditions I find out there. I just am not prepared to be a happy slave.

MH: Professor Moyo, Zanu PF has lost its majority in Parliament. Where do you think the party is going wrong and do you see Zanu PF winning any election against the MDC, especially in the urban areas?

JM: Because now I am back again as a member of Zanu PF, I would rather deal with the part of your question about where the party is going wrong in the light of its loss of a majority in Parliament following the March 29 2008 elections inside the party for its exclusive benefit. But I also know that I have in the recent past made some public statements addressing precisely that same issue and I have no reason to change my position today on that because it came from the heart.

Surely, if you go into a general election with a two-thirds majority and you come out with less than a simple majority, as did Zanu PF in 2008, you have every reason to be very worried because you are politically dead, so to speak. I have called this political death Zanu PF’s “Lazarus Moment” based on the Lazarus experience in the Bible which I am sure you are familiar with. Zanu PF’s dilemma since the last election is how to rise up from political death.

This is a very serious dilemma; and it requires a serious, honest, self-reflective and continuous assessment matched by an equally serious and comprehensive ideological and policy response. When a political party has been in power for some 30 years, as is the case with Zanu PF, there’s an almost natural tendency to be complacent and for its leadership to take itself and the politics and the economy of the country for granted as arrogance, laziness, factionalism and corruption take centre stage while the masses suffer. This tendency, whose essence is the betrayal of the revolution, the people and their cause, invariably leads to a “Lazarus Moment” in which a founding and revolutionary party like Zanu PF falls into a political coma that comes across as a “political death” at the polls as its members and general supporters lose their confidence in the party and its factionalised and complacent leadership.

Some founding political parties in our region have failed to get out of their “Lazarus Moment” and these include United National Independence Party (Unip) in Zambia, Kenya African National Union (Kanu) in Kenya, Malawi Congress Party (MCP) in Malawi whose political comas have become political deaths.

Tanzania’s Tanganyika National Union (Tanu) faced the same fate, but got out of it much stronger by reinventing, modernising and democratising itself as the now fairly vibrant and seemingly unbeatable Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). Zanu PF’s “Lazarus Moment” has been compounded by the determined and sustained illegal regime change project of the US and EU and the impact of the illegal economic sanctions they’ve imposed.

Against this background, and without downplaying the challenges before us, I definitely believe that, with its profound liberation history and given the fact that many of the liberators who know the party’s founding vision are still with us, Zanu PF can, must and will get out of its “Lazarus Moment” and be the kind of party that the majority of Zimbabweans, and our fallen heroes, want it to be for the sake of safeguarding the legacy and gains of our heroic liberation struggle.

This means that Zanu PF can indeed win the next election, including in some urban areas, and I believe that it will do so if everyone in the party is prepared to shun factionalism and petty politics by rekindling the party’s original dream and modernising it through a lot of hard work and clear commitment to serving the people. Zanu PF’s problems are entirely internal as evidenced by the rise of factions and these problems are indeed resolvable because factionalism is by definition against Zanu PF’s long-standing ideology, nationalist principles, people-centred policies and history.

What is important to underscore is that while a faction can take control of party posts or structures by election, hook or crook, it is not possible for any faction to win a general election. It is also important for Zanu PF to understand that, putting aside the predictable propaganda to the contrary, the inclusive Government is indeed led by Zanu PF through President Mugabe and the time to be constructively bold, confident and expressive about this fact has come in order to ensure service delivery to the people.

MH: We hear during one of your discussions at the Bulawayo Press Club you said “President Mugabe should die in office”. Do you really believe this or you are just trying to please the President so that you get an influential post in Zanu PF?

JM: Well, I guess you did not hear well or the sources you heard from did not report correctly as it often happens in such emotive matters. I actually did not say what is now alleged I said, although I do not mind the allegation because it does capture the spirit of the question I raised even if it does so in a dishonest way. What actually happened is that Nkululeko Sibanda of the Standard asked me an emotive question following my presentation to the Bulawayo Press Club seeking to know whether I still wanted President Mugabe to retire and be accorded respectful status as a retiree as I had said in the run-up to the 2008 general election or I had now changed my tune and was singing a different song now that I had rejoined Zanu PF.

I reminded Sibanda that I am a composer and not a singer and that I therefore was not singing a new or any song as I have never sung any song before. As to the substance of Sibanda’s question, my intervention was that I had a question of my own to answer his. And my question was as follows: Zimbabwe’s independence and nationhood has four indisputable founding fathers, namely, President Mugabe, the late Vice-Presidents Joshua Nkomo, Simon Muzenda and Joseph Msika; and given that the late three Vice-Presidents all died in office and that by the time they died they were not performing the functions of the high office they held as a result of having been incapacitated by their respective illnesses, they nevertheless retained the dignity of their offices and died with that dignity, honour and respect as founding fathers.

Given this compelling background and our unique history as a country, why should the only remaining founding father, that is President Mugabe, be treated differently from the three who have left us while in office and with the dignity of the office even when they were no longer discharging the responsibilities of their office?

That is the scenario I painted and the question I asked. I did not proffer any answer to this question. But I noticed that everyone at the Press Club that day, including the Standard’s Nkululeko Sibanda, took my question very seriously and the obvious conclusion in the room was palpable although not uttered.

My comment was that I wished Zanu PF comrades would consider the political implications of this question seriously and that I thought their consideration would reveal that the expectation of, and even demands for, President Mugabe’s retirement have not only been misplaced but they have also led to unfortunate factional politics in the party with the consequence of costing Zanu PF its majority in Parliament. A party that is riddled with factions cannot attain a two-thirds majority in Parliament and risks even losing a simple majority. Factions have no political capital. The resurgence of factions in Zanu PF has everything to do with unrealistic expectations of and demands for President Mugabe’s retirement.

While there are understandable if not necessary transitional leadership issues that Zanu PF must indeed address, there is an urgent need for a smarter strategy of doing that without being driven by or locked into politically suicidal expectations and demands for President Mugabe’s retirement. That is what I said and if you examine it in a thinking way, it is very different from the obtuse and vulgar report carried by the Standard newspaper claiming that I said “President Mugabe should die in office”. That’s nonsense because it is not for me to say. Where and how anyone of us will die is in God’s hands and not mine or yours. My advice is that you should not rely on the Standard for the truth.

I am even sure that those hateful Standard editors, who ethnically insulted me as a chameleon in the same story giving rise to your question, twisted and misrepresented Nkululeko Sibanda’s report not least because my remarks on this matter were made at Bulawayo Press Club in the presence of many journalists and NGO activists who can confirm what I have just recounted about the incident.

So, yes, here I am still asking the question: Why should President Mugabe, as one of the four founding fathers, three of whom are now gone while in office but who were not doing the work of their office by the time of their death, be treated differently?
Would a different treatment for President Mugabe strengthen Zanu PF and the country or weaken them?

What needless price has Zanu PF already paid not just at the polls but also in terms of its internal cohesion and unity by seeking to treat him differently at a time when Zimbabwe is facing formidable external threats that are exploiting Zanu PF’s succession-driven factions? Just like I did at the Bulawayo Press Club I choose to keep my own answers to these questions to myself, but I am happy to raise the questions whatever the predictable consequences of being misunderstood or demonised as demonstrated by the nub of your question.

Anybody who thinks I raised this question at the Bulawayo Press Club to get an influential post in Zanu PF has no idea about how Zanu PF works or how President Mugabe makes his appointments and certainly does not know me at all. There is a need for our national discourse to be robust and informative as opposed to remaining captive to the unthinking media which has caused a lot of damage to our national psyche through the peddling of crass propaganda.

MH: Do you think the three political parties (Zanu PF, MDC-T and MDC-M) are in the inclusive Government wholeheartedly or there are games being played behind the scenes to wrest power from each other come elections time?

JM: Your guess is as good as mine about why the three parties are in the coalition government. What is however obvious is that this is a government of necessity and not a government of choice because of the inconclusive outcome of the March 29 2008 general election which did not produce an outright winner. It is as simple as that. It is notable that the coalition government has succeeded in reducing political tension mainly if not only because some elements that were fomenting trouble are now part of the government and we should be thankful for that.

But the downside is that there is now growing evidence, which has not been impeached by anyone, that the MDC-T is using its presence in the coalition government to setup an illegal parallel government crafted, run and bankrolled by the US and the EU through proxy NGOs and that this parallel government has opened shadow government offices in Harare and Bulawayo and is discriminating against civil servants by paying its incumbents top-up salaries ranging from US$700 to US$7 000. The organisations and individuals behind this illegal effort are now known, some of them are working in Zimbabwe while others are in South Africa and elsewhere.

If these treacherous MDC-T individuals and their subversive foreign handlers and NGOs think they will get away with their regime-change plot, then they most definitely ain’t seen nothing yet. Zimbabweans want one government and they expect its Cabinet Ministers and civil servants to work together for the sake of the country. There is still a lot of time for that to happen but only if some busybodies from some hostile foreign interests could leave us alone.

MH: There are efforts to revive Zapu in Matabeleland. Do you think these efforts will yield any fruits?

JM: I don’t know what you mean by “yielding fruits” but what we have here is people exercising their democratic rights which came with our hard-won independence, thanks to the Patriotic Front forces from Zanla and Zipra. Among the people behind what you say is the revival of Zapu you will find illustrious sons and daughters of the soil, such as Dumiso Dabengwa and Thenjiwe Lesabe, who sacrificed everything they had for our liberation. These heroes cannot today become villains simply because they see things differently or just because they want to do things differently. No. We will continue to honour and respect them for what they did to liberate us.

Of course, because there is strength in numbers, I would much rather have heroes like Dabengwa and Lesabe remain with their peers and colleagues in Zanu PF where the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo left them. I know this is the feeling of many others in Matabeleland and across the country, especially among the majority of the rank and file of the former PF Zapu who remain in Zanu PF.

But again we just have to respect and salute the likes of Dabengwa and Lesabe because they were heroes yesterday and they are heroes today as they will be tomorrow.

One point though I wish to clarify is that whereas you say there are ongoing efforts to revive Zapu in Matabeleland, I am sure you also know that, as a result of the unity of the liberation forces under the Patriotic Front ahead of the Lancaster talks in 1979, we had PF Zapu, and not Zapu and Zanu PF and not Zanu contesting the independence elections in 1980 and continuing as such thereafter even when our country experienced regrettable disturbances during the Gukurahundi period. In December 1987 PF Zapu and Zanu PF signed a Unity Accord and they subsequently formally merged in December 1989 under the present Zanu PF. Although it had some unresolved implementation issues, that Accord was a milestone for all times.

There has been no formal or any other systematic or organisational change to this history. Meanwhile, there have been endless attempts to revive Zapu as there have been to revive Zanu over the years but there have never been any attempts to revive PF Zapu or Zanu PF since their fate and destiny were sealed together by the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo and President Robert Mugabe in 1987.

So if people try and revive Zapu or Zanu, that’s their democratic right but that has nothing to do with PF Zapu or Zanu PF who remain together as the only true revolutionary, nationalist and Pan-African party in Zimbabwe the form of Zanu PF.

MH: Lastly, how difficult has it been to explain to your family your return to Zanu PF?

JM: Oh my God, I wish you had not asked that rather sensitive and personal question. All public decisions and actions are by definition very problematic at home and my situation is no different. Even though some of them don’t want to tell me this lest I get too carried away, I know in my heart that all members of my family, especially my wife and children, believe in supporting what is best for me.

They are not political themselves, although one of my five daughters is promising to be a politician, but they understand that I am very much involved in the public life of our country.

They also understand that short of forming my own Zanu PF party, which would be an impossible order, it was natural for me to rejoin Zanu PF because they know that my beliefs and closest friends are Zanu PF.

Even so, our families are deeply personal and not political so they cannot be taken for granted at all by anyone in public life. As such, I know I have a lot of explanation to do to my family mainly because of the background of what happened in 2004 and 2005.

When one of my daughters asked me why I was rejoining Zanu PF and thus, in her view, risking losing at the next polls when I could join the MDC-T which she said seems to have better prospects of winning the next election, I told her emphatically that for me it would be far better to lose an election with revolutionary nationalists and Pan Africanists than to win it with reactionary sell-outs who suffer from the false and treacherous belief that the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe started in 2000.

I drew my daughter’s attention to the fact that the incompetence of the MDC-T leadership was now on full display for all to see as that party faces inevitable decline while, having survived the March 29 2008 elections by a whisker, Zanu PF was now under the spell of an unstoppable resurgence whose outcome will be a resounding victory in the next general election.

Labels: INTERVIEW, JONATHAN MOYO

posted by MrK @ 4:04 PM