Maravi

(HERALD) MDC-T: Mediocrity disguised as excellence

MDC-T: Mediocrity disguised as excellence
Wednesday, 02 March 2011 19:32

THE asquint defences by the MDC-T information department each time any of the party's many shortcomings are exposed have become so much of babble and the blame-it-all-on-Zanu-PF philosophy has been so overplayed that no sane person pays attention to it anymore.

In a debate facilitated by the founder of pirate radio station SW Radio on February 23, writer Blessing Miles Tendi made three assertions that proved to be unpopular with the MDC-T, not so much for lack of credibility but for their lack of apologetics that the party is so much used to when it comes to programmes run by SW Radio.

Tendi first asserted that he gathered from an interview with former South African president Thabo Mbeki that the original position of the GPA talks was to create a ceremonial Presidency and an executive Premiership.

He revealed that Thabo Mbeki had told him that Welshman Ncube and Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga shot down that proposal because they could not put up with the prospect of Tsvangirai having executive powers - all based on the well known rivalry between the two MDC political formations.

Secondly, Tendi asserted that while Zanu-PF entered the GPA talks proposing a five year deal, it was the MDC-T that shot down the idea and pushed for a two year deal renewable on conditionalities.

In a typical and traditional flip flop, it is the same MDC-T that is now relentlessly pushing for a five year deal in power - even arguing that the 2008 elections were free and fair so much that the winners should be allowed to finish their five year term without the inconvenience of an unwanted election.

This is despite the fact the same election has been discredited by the same party whenever such posturing has been seen to be politically convenient.

Thirdly, Tendi made the assertion that Thabo Mbeki had revealed to him that Tsvangirai once asked for an hour to "go and consult" with his party members on a sticking matter during the GPA negotiations.

He then reportedly went out and phoned the US Embassy from where he had a lengthy "consultation" conversation with US ambassador James McGee.

Meanwhile, it is reported that Zimbabwean intelligence operatives eavesdropped and recorded the conversation which they then passed on to South African intelligence officials, who in turn "put the transcript on Mbeki's laptop".

Tendi also claimed that Mbeki had revealed to him that he took the taped conversation to Sadc leaders, most of whom were reportedly not amused with Tsvangirai's "pathetic" behaviour.

The MDC-T Information Department immediately released a characteristic awry rebuttal of everything to do with these assertions.

First to be discredited and vilified was Thabo Mbeki himself.

The man was accused of "unexplained and historical lack of respect for Tsvangirai", among many other charges that included "the destabilisation of the MDC in 2005."

Then it was time to shoot the messenger. Tendi earned himself the Western coined caption of "Zanu-PF apologist" - a phrase reserved for anyone who falls short of glorifying the MDC-T as a "party of excellence", especially when such failure happens to manifest on a public forum.

George Shire was fuming on the same debate about how Lance Guma keeps calling him by that unwanted phrase and even suggesting that he was a relation to Air Marshal Perrence Shiri, the Commander of Zimbabwe's Air Force, an assertion that Guma hopes can cause problems between Shire and British authorities.

This writer once decided to join other Zimbabweans in asking Betty Makoni about her Girl Child Network project.

She was on one of Guma's radio programmes.

The ferociously savage Guma decided it was time to introduce this writer as "a well-known Zanu-PF apologist", even trying to drag Makoni from the asked question so she could answer like she was addressing a "violent thug" from Zanu-PF. To her credit, Makoni largely stuck to the question and avoided politicising an otherwise very civil question.

The incivility of MDC-T activists like Guma, and that of its officials like Nelson Chamisa and many others is quite axiomatic, and it expresses itself so often whenever a voice outlining any form of reservation about the MDC-T and its leader is heard.

Tendi argued in a response to MDC-T attacks on his person that the only explanation that can be given for the rancorous culture in the MDC-T is the "mediocrity" of its leadership and strategists.

Guma is convinced that Tsvangirai is incomparable to any other politician in Zimbabwe and that the MDC-T is matchless. This writer concurs absolutely.

Never in the history of Zimbabwe has such a mediocre and naive politician been as famous as Tsvangirai is, and surely no political party will ever match the directionlessness and illusionary grandeur of the MDC-T.

The biggest problem in the MDC-T is that they mistake the strength of their masters for their own.

They mistake the ruinous power of the country-wrecking illegal Western sanctions for their own might.

They mistake the dollar power of their masters for political innovativeness. Stripped of Western financial backing, the leveraging pressure from the illegal pro-MDC-T Western sanctions, and the vainglorious rhapsodising by the glory-singing Western mainstream media, the MDC-T is a political outfit led by absolutely hopeless characters with incontestable ineptitude.

In 2000 the MDC joined the NCA in discrediting the draft constitution that had been taken to a national referendum and they jointly and successfully campaigned for a "NO" vote.

The main motivation for this action was to create a public spectacle of a muscle show with Zanu-PF - deliberately taking the opposite side of the ruling party in an immature show of foolhardy defiance.

This writer was part of the process that came up with this draft constitution and recalls very well that the majority of activists and politicians from the MDC did not even bother reading a single paragraph of the draft, as they pre-occupied themselves with antagonising President Robert Mugabe for appointing the 400 members of the Constitutional Commission - of course after recommendations from various sectors of society.

In trying to humiliate President Mugabe, what the MDC did was to say NO to presidential term limits, NO to a phased land acquisition programme that would have empowered the state to compulsorily acquire land before redistributing it to the masses, and indeed the MDC voted back the very Lancaster House Constitution they and the NCA had said they so much wanted removed.

So, they secured the current unlimited presidential terms, something they say they cannot stand, they ensured that land was acquired collectively at once by the masses "jambanja" style before the state could distribute it to the people, and of course they awakened Zanu-PF from a deep complacency and slumber that could have benefited the MDC immensely if only the "YES" vote had prevailed that February of 2000.

Welshman Ncube, the founding Secretary General of the MDC has since publicly admitted that it was a huge error on the part of the MDC to campaign for a "NO" vote.

He said to Blessing Miles Tendi in an interview, "We wanted the whole loaf but we ended up with nothing".

If such appaling strategising does not define mediocrity then nothing else does.
The founding of the MDC itself was in itself another definition of mediocrity.

The infatuation of forming a coalition of Communists, Trotskyites, Socialists, sectoral groupings of students and workers, civic groups - all funded and directed by neo-liberal elites from the Westminster Foundation in partnership with hard core neo-colonial capitalist white commercial farmers (vehemently backed by racist hard core Rhodesians) was always going to backfire, and the four MDC splinters we have today are only a natural occurrence.

After the MDC was founded and launched with such an awkward composition, Tsvangirai was still hard struck by the zeal of the novice even at the party's first anniversary in 2000.

Departing from a poorly prepared speech, he did something not only poorer but politically disastrous.

He unexpectedly copied the chorus of student politicians who had joined the MDC ranks.

The youngsters were coming from "the island of knowledge" (university); where one could get away with saying anything that crossed the mind, especially when "adumbrating" before the ever-undiscerning and easy to impress union.

Like an aspiring teenage student seeking "political office" in the Student Representative Council at one of the tertiary institutions, Tsvangirai shocked a packed Rufaro Stadium when he said, "What we would like to tell Mugabe today is that please go peacefully, and if you don't want to go peacefully we will remove you violently".

The slightly cleverer people who were sitting at the high table advised Tsvangirai to call for a press conference and correct his blunder "before it is too late".
Indeed it was too late because Tsvangirai was rightly arrested and charged with "plotting to remove a constitutionally elected government by force".

The fact that he escaped conviction on a technicality does not take away the reality that his political blunder was costly to the MDC in general and to his own credibility as a capable leader.

Then there was another charge of treason after Tsvangirai engaged a Canadian based public relations consultancy firm without doing any background checks.

He was video-taped in a discussion about eliminating President Robert Mugabe and the very consultants he had hired turned him in.

Again Tsvangirai escaped conviction on a technicality but again the reality of his costly blunders continued to haunt the MDC.

Just how a party leader intending to form a government would engage complete strangers as consultants without even doing a simple Internet search to do a basic back ground check beats logic. But that is the mediocrity that Miles Tendi was talking about.

Then we had the numerous and ever-flopping attempts for "mass action" and "mass stay aways" between 2000 and 2004.

One such call was for something Tsvangirai and his colleagues called "The Final Push" - and this writer was there at the corner of Kenneth Kaunda and Third Street in Harare; where the march was supposed to begin.

The city was completely deserted and only six people turned up for the "massive march".

They ended up hunting for coffee in town.

If such poor strategising does not constitute mediocrity and if such history does not explain why Mbeki or anyone else may have a "low opinion" about Tsvangirai then indeed all of us seriously risk ending up being part of the mediocrity.

If indeed Thabo Mbeki has a low opinion about Tsvangirai, that attitude is so well explained by the character of Tsvangirai himself.

There was Fidelis Mhashu on BBC Hard Talk programme promising to return land to ousted white commercial farmers and we still have someone calling the MDC a "party of excellence". Talk of excellent mediocrity and there would be raucous consensus.

Then there was the 2005 MDC split over the issue of Senate elections.

The Senate is still there and intact, and the MDC-T has over 20 Senators sitting in it today.

So what was the point of splitting the party over something that could not be changed, and more so something that Tsvangirai himself would later become so fond of?
Using the Senate elections debate to measure who had a better ego between Morgan Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube was not such a brilliant idea, especially on the part of Tsvangirai; the man who fought ruthlessly both Ncube the person and also the majority of his own national executive council who had on the day gone along with Ncube's position of favouring participation in the Senate elections.

One can talk of the foolishness of the so called "Defiance Campaign" of March 11, 2007 , itself historic for Sadc's incisive perception of events after Tsvangirai tried to trade his bruises for heroism.

Sadc simply saw beyond the bruises and called for removal of sanctions and non-interference in the affairs of Zimbabwe.

One can talk of the 100 percent flop after Thokozani Khupe and Tsvangirai called for another "stay away" after the March 29, 2008 election.

Khupe said people had to stay away from work "until (election) results are released".
Literally, not even a single person heeded the call.

The political environment of the day did not allow for such an action and someone in the MDC could have predicted that; if only there was someone with half a brain in there.

Then the results were released, a runoff election for the presidential race was scheduled for June 27 the same year, and the campaigning began.

Tsvangirai felt the heat with five days to go and he did a runner right into the Dutch Embassy in Harare, locking himself in there with a dramatic story about his life being in some sort of danger.

Analysts and observers cried loudly that the choice of where to run was absolutely foolish from a political point of view.

It simply reinforced that the MDC-T was Western directed and run, something Sadc countries do not really want to hear, let alone see.

Morgan Tsvangirai later went to spent about sixty days with Ian Khama in Botswana and again not many people believed the story that the man's life was "in danger" was eloquent enough to be believable.

If the MDC-T does not see that its call for sanctions against the people of Zimbabwe has not only divided and polarised the country, but is also increasingly exposing the Western funded and directed party as a problem child to Sadc and the AU, then the party leadership in the MDC-T is indeed a hopeless lot. SADC leaders are more anti-MDC mediocrity than they are pro-Zanu-PF.

The MDC keeps supporting sanctions at a very wrong time. The mood in the country is for economic stability and no-one wants the "forgettable times" repeated, especially 2008.

Supporting sanctions and failure to condemn them is an insult to the people of Zimbabwe who have suffered so much under the MDC-T's illegal regime change sanctions.
We had Nelson Chamisa one day claiming the MDC-T had "done more in two years than what Zanu-PF did in 30 years". Such naivety would be forgiven if Chamisa was still at Harare Polytechnic trying to impress overexcited fellow students.

Not in a post-independence suburb like Kuwadzana and before adults way older than him and in full knowledge of the massive post-independence strides made by the people of Zimbabwe and their Zanu-PF government.

If the mediocrity in the MDC can be doubtable in terms of strategy and policy, it cannot be the same when one looks at the calibre of people appointed to high ranking positions in government by the party.

This writer was reading credentials for Zimbabwe's current envoys to Germany, Sudan, Australia and Nigeria and one wonders what the matter is when reading things like " was a staunch MDC activist", "contested 2005 elections" or "was part of the Prime Minister's Chief of Protocol's Office", something that surely does not even exist.
Being unschooled is not a sin in itself, but it still comes with professional mediocrity.

This is the mediocrity that the MDC-T does not want to be reminded about.
Rather they want all of us to glorify the opprobrious rants from the MDC-T information department as wisdom, blaming all the shortcomings of the "party of excellence" on the Central Intelligence Organisation and Zanu-PF, and all of us agreeing that Tsvangirai is indeed blameless and extremely intelligent.
Veduwe kana tashayiwa excellence ngatiite yekudrawer papepa.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.ukThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or reason@ rwafa warova. com or visit www.rwafawarova.com.

Labels: BLESSING MILES TENDI, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, REASON WAFAWAROVA

posted by MrK @ 5:16 PM