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(HERALD) Lindiwe Zulu should just shut up!

Lindiwe Zulu should just shut up!
Saturday, 16 July 2011 23:37 Opinion
Prof Jonathan Moyo, MP

Lindiwe Zulu is at it again.

Have you noticed how some electoral cowards and their supporting retinue of media miscreants in the UK, US and EU led regime change campaign are trying to take their now documented treachery to a new sickening level by resorting to a new, crude and desperate regime change tactic that is deceitfully designed to induce a Sadc-sneeze whenever there’s a nationalist cough in Zimbabwe?

If this latest anti-Zimbabwe tactic has not yet come to your notice, consider two very illuminating incidents which occurred over the past week: one incident happened in Hwange last Sunday when the Police asked an MDC-N leadership team which was reportedly coming from some unsanctioned public meetings it allegedly held in Victoria Falls to report at the Hwange police station in order to explain itself; and the other incident took place in Harare last Wednesday following a meeting of the Zanu-PF politburo which called on GPA principals to urgently review and streamline the timelines of the so-called election roadmap recommended by GPA negotiators to enable the holding of harmonised presidential, parliamentary and local government elections this year.

Here’s the upshot of what happened around the first incident. Last Sunday, virtually the entire top leadership of the MDC-N was campaigning in Victoria Falls in Matabeleland North in a convoy led by, and built around the ministerial resources of, Professor Welshman Ncube and his key ministers in the GPA government. The convoy, which included Minister Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, had reportedly been taking its slim chances in Victoria Falls to harvest from Morgan Tsvangirai’s disintegrating structures throughout Matabeleland whose members are deserting the MDC in as yet untold members.

It is important to record in passing that Tsvangirai’s MDC formation is losing support in Matabeleland in a big way because the majority of people there are finally coming to grips with the fact that Tsvangirai is not a fit and proper person to meaningfully address the genuine interests of the region within a national context.

Apart from losing support from enraged members of his own MDC faction who feel marginalised by his primitive politics of patronage dominated by what is now known as the “BGB factor” in the MDC-T, Tsvangirai has irretrievably enraged the people of Matabeleland by raising issues of devolution and Gukurahundi in ways that are inflammatory and divisive in ethnic terms.

People in Matabeleland now understand that Tsvangirai always talks about devolution and Gukurahundi as regional and ethnic issues and only when he is in Matabeleland and thus does not see devolution and Gukurahundi as national issues. This is why Tsvangirai never talks about devolution or Gukurahundi when he is in Buhera at his village or when he is anywhere outside Matabeleland. To Tsvangirai, devolution and Gukurahundi are Matabeleland issues and he raises these issues only when he wants to inflame them to incite the people of Matabeleland in the hope of getting the kind of cheap political votes he has gotten before.

But things and times have changed and the people of Matabeleland are now wiser than ever before about the Renamo politics of the MDC-T and Tsvangirai’s Dhlakama type of leadership. This is why Professor Ncube’s MDC-N imagined that it could harvest from the legions of defecting MDC-T members in Victoria Falls last Sunday. When Ncube’s convoy drove around Victoria Falls on the day, it did so in manner that excited many onlookers and thus made it reasonably difficult if not impossible to distinguish between them and the few MDC-T members who wanted to defect to Ncube’s faction.

The fact that Ncube’s MDC had not applied for the required police permission to hold public meetings to receive the MDC-T defectors in terms of the law and that created an unnecessary risk to public order which could have otherwise been avoided for obvious reasons. When Ncube’s convoy was on its way to Bulawayo between Victoria and Hwange and the Matabeleland North Police got wind of this situation from desperately worried MDC-T officials who lodged complaints including in Harare with the MDC-T’s Teresa Makone who is Co-Minister of Home Affairs, they naturally wanted to get an explanation from Ncube’s MDC whose convoy they encountered for the first time in Hwange at a roadblock whose location is known as permanent to motorists who ply that road.

According to available public evidence which has not been refuted, nobody was arrested at the roadblock. The Police simply and politely asked the convoy to drive to the Hwange police station. While at the station, nobody was arrested or charged with any offence. All the police did was to ask Ncube and his fellow team leaders to explain their situation which they did amicably after which the MDC-N convoy proceeded to Bulawayo without any incident. Again, nobody was arrested or detained.

What is shocking and totally unacceptable is that immediately after encountering the roadblock. Ncube and his GPA cabinet ministers got very excited in ways that went beyond the political. While there are as yet untested claims that Welshman Ncube called his in-law President falsely claiming that he had been arrested in a misguided political bid to tarnish Zimbabwe, his colleague Priscilla Misihairabwi Mushonga, who is a cabinet minister and GPA negotiator for the MDC-N, did in fact call one of President Zuma’s facilitators — Lindiwe Zulu — who immediately telephoned several authorities in Zimbabwe including Zanu-PF negotiators about an arrest that never was.

Lindiwe Zulu is said to have advised her superiors and called other Sadc authorities she’s linked to about an alleged arrest of the MDC-N convoy which in fact never took place claiming that it was threatening the GPA and the so-called Sadc election roadmap.

All this was precipitated by a false and inflammatory call to Lindiwe Zulu by Minister Priscilla Misihairabwi Mushonga. Her call proves that she is not a fit and proper person to be a cabinet minister because she has no confidence in the constitution and laws she was sworn to uphold as a minister and as an appointed Member of Parliament. A minister who behaves in such a treacherous manner on the basis of false information is a danger not only to herself and her political party but also to Zimbabwe and is as such a threat to our national security.

As for Lindiwe Zulu, the public evidence of her continuing damage to not only to Sadc’s long history of regional impartiality and solidarity but also profoundly deep bilateral relations between South and Zimbabwe continues to mount. Meanwhile, only time will tell where and how all this dirty stuff will finally end save to say that the enduring spirits of Mbuya Nehanda and Lobengula never lose.

What makes this bad situation worse is that while Lindiwe Zulu entangled herself behind the scenes last Sunday in an alleged arrest of MDC-N leaders which in fact never took place, and while she abused the same cover of darkness behind the scenes to make all sorts of threatening phone calls to some Zanu-PF negotiators and other authorities in Zimbabwe and within Sadc in a manner that negatively impinges on Zimbabwe’s sovereignty, she found a reason to go public last Wednesday following the decision by Zanu-PF’s Politburo not to accept the election roadmap timelines recommended by GPA negotiators.

A pro-regime change daily newspaper, run by a self-indulgent owner whose pursuit for cheap money and penchant for shocking double-standards and breathless contempt for the truth, quoted Lindiwe Zulu as attacking the Politburo’s decision and foolishly proclaiming that “In as far as elections (in Zimbabwe) are concerned, there are certain processes that need to be followed, among them implementing everything in the election roadmap”.

The question arises for the umpteenth time: why has Lindiwe Zulu taken it upon herself to respond to decisions of the Zanu-PF Politburo and through the oppositional media which is funded by the UK, US and EU to effect illegal regime change in Zimbabwe? Why has Lindiwe Zulu become such a recklessly willing friend of Zanu-PF’s enemies who is always available to comment negatively after every Zanu-PF Politburo meeting but never does the same after any MDC meeting?

Lindiwe Zulu’s media claim that elections in Zimbabwe should be held only after the implementation of everything in the roadmap is particularly ridiculous given that she should be the first to know that there’s in fact no agreed election roadmap for Zimbabwe. Yes, there’s a document that was first signed by the negotiators on April 22 as a potential basis for an election roadmap but the majority of items in that document are not agreed and remain as such to this day. The fact is that there’s no agreed roadmap for elections in Zimbabwe.

And so how can Lindiwe Zulu describe a document of disagreement as an election roadmap with everything that must be first implemented before an election? Is that not another way of seeking to subvert electoral democracy in Zimbabwe by using subterfuge to ensure that elections in the country are not held in the interest of electoral cowards and regime change media miscreants?

he point should be made once again that Lindiwe Zulu is supposed to be the spokesperson of the facilitation team and not a Sadc spokesperson and certainly not an anti-Zanu-PF spokesperson which she has clearly become through the pro regime change media that now routinely use her as their reckless mouthpiece.
What makes Lindiwe Zulu’s latest outburst particularly unacceptable is that it echoes regime change sentiments declared four weeks ago in Bulawayo by Washington’s Uncle Tom in Harare Ambassador Charles

Ray who was reported by the media saying that “Sadc is working on the issue of Zimbabwe elections and I don’t see any reason why some political party (Zanu-PF) is pushing for elections this year. Elections should be held at a time when every Zimbabwean is free to participate”.

Compare this regime change trash with Lindiwe Zulu’s claim in her attack of the Wednesday Politburo decision to ask the GPA principals to review and streamline the election timeline recommended by their negotiators in which she said the election “should be held when the environment is conducive, when all parties are happy and when the institutions that are supposed to run the elections are in place”.

Are these the views of an official in the facilitation team or these are the views of Washington’s Uncle Tom in Harare coming through the mouth of an African sell-out who continues to fail to tell the difference between facilitation and dictation and who continues to fail to understand that, even in terms of the GPA let alone the Constitution of Zimbabwe, the determination of who shall rule Zimbabwe and how they shall do so is the exclusive and sole prerogative of the people of Zimbabwe alone.

Washington’s Uncle Tom in Harare also said four weeks ago that “there is no way you can build a house from the roof. You have to start from the foundation going to the top. So I don’t think removing Mugabe will change anything.” Why has Lindiwe Zulu not commented on this affront to the election roadmap? Is it because she agrees with it as reflected by her attack on Zanu-PF’s Politburo last Wednesday or what?

Where is her fairness and where is her balance on behalf of the facilitator?

While objective neutrals ponder this, the time has come for everyone else to understand that negotiators only negotiate recommendations and not binding decisions that tie the hands of GPA principals or those of the political parties that they lead. Lindiwe Zulu’s assertion that “. . .The roadmap was crafted by the negotiators, who represented their parties and it was adopted not only by the Troika, but the whole of Sadc.

We therefore, expect the roadmap and also the GPA to be implemented before the elections are held”.

But this is a green lie because there’s no agreed election roadmap. It is nonsense for anyone let alone Lindiwe Zulu to claim that the Sadc Organ Trokia and the whole of Sadc adopted a non-existent election roadmap.

Labels: JONATHAN MOYO, LINDIWE ZULU

posted by MrK @ 6:32 PM