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(TALKZIMBABWE) Tsvangirai: gay or anti-gay campaigner?

Tsvangirai: gay or anti-gay campaigner?
Posted by By Our reporter at 4 November, at 07 : 05 AM

Although Zimbabwe is no longer part of the Commonwealth, it is now public knowledge that Commonwealth heads of government were meeting in Australia in the last weeks of October.

Evidently, Downing Street ‘put pressure’ on Commonwealth governments to reform their human rights legislation at that recent CHOGM meeting. British prime minister David Cameron warned that Britain will block aid payment to countries which fail to overturn bans on homosexuality.

He told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show that he raised the issue of gay rights with ‘a number of African countries’ when he attended the Commonwealth meeting. It, therefore, came as no surprise, then, that Morgan Tsvangirai kick-started his gay crusade in the British capital London through the same BBC platform where he chose to announce his U-turn on his previously stated stance on gays last March when the MDC-T leader came out in support of President Robert Mugabe’s well documented stance on gays.

Tsvangirai, at the time, stated: “Women make up 52% of the population … There are more women than men, so why should men be proposing to men?”

Tsvangirai’s opponents have always claimed that he is a British puppet, a claim that Tsvangirai has struggled to do away with. Never mind his flimsy attempt to defend his latest U-turn by claiming: “I want to put finality and closure to an issue that has been misinterpreted, the issue of the so-called gay rights. My beliefs on this issue are a matter of public record.

My beliefs manifest themselves in my practice …” the only thing that the public is sure of is that Tsvangirai has no fixed position on anything.

Tsvangirai’s timing and his choice of platform to announce his U-turn on the gay rights issue is very suspicious.

The fact that it came about in the same week that Downing Street, was piling pressure on governments, that had anti-gay laws, threatening to cut aid to them raises more questions than there are answers.

Tsvangirai has not only made a U-turn on his stance on gays, he has taken to promoting David Cameron’s position taking the gay rights issue in Zimbabwe on his campaign trail.

The MDC-T leader has notched it up a level by suggesting that gays are persecuted in Zimbabwe he chose Pashu a remote village in Binga for this pronouncement something which puts him on the right side of his sponsors.

Only those in the MDC-T seem to be puzzled by what Tsvangirai is doing. For most of those who have watched Tsvangirai struggle to stay afloat at ‘the deep end’ of politics, this is nothing out of the ordinary Tsvangirai is much known for his flip-flopping and failure to stick to a previously stated position on almost all things.

Afterall was it not Tsvangirai’s right hand man Bennett who once, described Tsvangirai as a weak political operator who “does what the last person tells him to do?

At every election we have always heard the (‘we will we won’t’ take part in this election song) from his MDC-T party. Indecision is not just a common theme but a permanent feature in the Movement for Democratic Change.

One cannot help but wonder whether Cameron’s threat to cut aid to countries that will not end bans on homosexuality has motivated Tsvangirai to all-of -a- sudden jump out and be a gay rights campaigner, I am sure this has nothing to do with Cameron’s utterances about attaching more strings to British aid, that countries that receive British aid adhere to proper human rights (Gay rights).

This move by Tsvangirai is a no-vote winner in Zimbabwe were deep prejudices are rife. The question is why is Tsvangirai doing this?

I seriously do not believe that he just woke up pro- gay just like that. Is he dancing for his supper?

Brilliant Pongo is a journalist based in the United Kindgom. He can be reached via bbpongo@yahoo.ca

Labels: 2011 ELECTIONS (ZIMBABWE), BBC, HOMOSEXUALITY, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NEOCOLONIALISM

posted by MrK @ 1:32 PM