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(HERALD) Election Watch 2012: The MDC-T Perspective

Election Watch 2012: The MDC-T Perspective
Thursday, 19 January 2012 08:48

The last time this writer engaged Senator Obert Gutu on his routine publications on political commentary was when he wrote about the indigenisation policy and what he thought of its chief presiding executive, Minister Saviour Kasukuwere.

Then Senator Gutu profusely expressed his allured admiration for Direct Foreign Investment as the panacea to economic growth for Zimbabwe, arguing that FDI would “inevitably” grow the economy to a point where local entrepreneurs would also “inevitably” pop up from our midst. It was an argument akin to telling a man to wait for roast chicken to fly into the mouth. That wait can only be forever.

The piece was an effort by Gutu to spin Morgan Tsvangirai’s Marondera shallow attack on the indigenisation policy, pretty much as uncalculated as Fidelis Mhashu’s infamous promise to return Zimbabwean commercial farmland to dispossessed white farmers.

Recently, Obert Gutu commented with a lot of disapprobation on the pending 2012 Election. This was on Tichaona Sibanda’s pirate radio program “Election Watch 2012”.

Givingan exposition of his intentions and goals, Tichaona Sibanda gave a revealing preamble of the interview transcript to would be readers.

The pliant journalist said Gutu “fears that as long as ZANU-PF remains with its tenacious hold on instruments of state power like the police, the CIO, the army, and also the national radio and television stations, it might not be possible to have free and fair elections.”

This is the kind of preamble you do when you want to imbue the reader towards a desired perception, to manipulate the reader’s mind so that they read your script from your viewpoint and not their own. Lance Guma is a master of this art and this is why he would phrase a question like this: “Betty Makoni, here is a question for you from the Australian based ZANU PF supporter and Mugabe apologist Reason Wafawarova. He asks……”

Tichaona Sibanda and Lance Guma both work for a media unit that requires them to facilitate a Mugabe-targeted regime change agenda, and as such they have to be impressive in carrying out this mission.

The interview began with Sibanda asking about electoral reforms that have or have not taken place during the lifespan of the current inclusive government.

Gutu authoritatively stated that “the problem we have in this country is that there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation, most of the time it is actually deliberate misinformation.”

This could have been an honourable response if only the allegations were not limited to blaming ZANU-PF and Zimbabwe’s public media, exonerating and even applauding guiltier parties like the very pirate radio station to which Gutu was giving an interview.

We are dealing with private media units that once went absolutely crazy about baseless and defamatory allegations of infidelity targeted at personalities like the Reserve Bank Governor at one time, but now they are dead silent on factual substance about the philandering ways of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai; who has evidently bedded not less than half a dozen women since the death of his wife just over three years ago, jilting and ditching some of them in the process. Of course these media units will deliberately misinform the Zimbabwean public that “we do not cover petty personal affairs in people’s private lives,” unless of course when these alleged private affairs involve people associated with ZANU PF.

It would be absolutely appropriate and correct for a Zimbabwean paper to run a screaming headline “Our Prime Minister is a Fornicator!” one morning, only because that is the fact. But for media units like The Daily News and SW Radio the sin has been committed by the wrong person.

Senator Gutu went on: “We are still a very long way from having what one might want to call a level playing field for the purposes of holding an election that will pass the test of legitimacy.”

Surely we cannot be anywhere near such a level playing field for as long as political parties engage in acts of political violence at intra and inter party levels. And there is absolutely no way such a level playing field can ever be achieved for as long as political parties like the MDC-T continue to be funded and directed by foreign powers like the United States and Britain.

There is no way we can ever achieve a level playing field for as long as some Zimbabwean political players are isolated from some international platforms through illegal travel bans and murderous illegal economic sanctions unilaterally imposed by the West.

Senator Gutu raised issues to do with unfinished business regarding the Electoral Amendment Bill, the Human Rights Commission Bill, and the debate over polling station-based voting system versus multi-station voting system where one can vote anywhere within a ward or a constituency. In a true democracy this debate must administrative and not political.

Both the MDC-T and ZANU PF are simply after pursuing illicit political interests on this matter.This is why Gutu and his party would also want to retrospectively apply the Human Rights Commission Bill to 18 April 1980, but not as far back as 1890, when the descendants of the MDC-T’s current funders carried out heinous crimes against our people.

According to Senator Gutu, only the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission can come up with an “accurate, credible voters’ role.” It is ironic that the Senator in the same breath says the Commission is infested with pro-ZANU-PF intelligence and security agents.

Gutu might find it expedient to describe Zimbabwe’s voters’ roll as “shambolic,” which it is; but it must be noted that this description only pops up when the MDC-T is trying to run away from the prospect of an imminent election, and it is absolutely silent when the same party wants to misinform us that Morgan Tsvangirai “won the election hands down” in March 2008. It appears the “shambolic” voters’ register is of no consequence when it gives Obert Gutu or anyone else from the MDC-T electoral victory, suddenly becoming an issue whenever the same party disagrees with anything else related to elections.

Gutu describes the contentious issue of civic society carrying out “voter education” as a “deal breaker” for his MDC-T. He mentioned in particular Zim-Rights, ZESN, Zim-Lawyers for Human Rights and NANGO, organisations he described as “the democratic train,” and he correctly pointed out that “ZANU-PF distrusts these civic organisations”.

Does the MDC-T trust these organisations for human rights interests or for political interests? Does ZANU PF distrust these organisations for human rights interests or for political interests? Do these organisations pursue a human rights cause in their relationship with the MDC-T or they pursue a political relationship? Are the strained relations between these organisations and ZANU PF of a human rights or political nature? These are the unanswered questions that Senator Gutu chose to overlook in his preoccupation of vilifying his political opponents from ZANU-PF.

He rhapsodised further: “The whole issue is about ZANU PF being scared of losing power.” But why would ZANU PF be comfortable of losing power to people they view as traitors for their undisputed sponsorship from Western powers? Losing power to a British-sponsored political party is indeed a scary thought and ZANU PF are better off doing something about it if at all they are the revolutionary party they say they are – entrustedwith safeguarding the gains of post-colonial independence.

This writer is not sure if the Senator was serious when he said: “So you will notice that they are keen in having all other non-governmental players not being given an opportunity to carry out voter registration.” Who on this planet gives that role to non-governmental strangers?

And what is this “voter education” that the civic organisations want to “teach” people about? Making a political choice and expressing it through an X on a piece of paper is not a process that should “take a lot of funding” for a relatively highly literate community like Zimbabwe, especially after having carried out nine general elections since 1980 to date. It may just be a question of the voters being educated in a way the civic organisations do not like, and we must determine if that is of any importance to the people of Zimbabwe.

In a clear case of contrived meanings Tichaona Sibanda juxtaposed Morgan Tsvangirai’s victoryless lead in the March 2008 first-round presidential race with the victory of Michael Sata in Zambia, going on to ask Gutu if Zambia taught us a lesson or two about “transfer of power”.

Whichever way one looks at it, Morgan Tsvangirai never won any election. He only led in votes without winning anything out of it, simply because the lead was not good enough to warrant a win. This is what Gutu calls winning “hands down”.

So there was never a need to transfer any power after the March2008 harmonised election, and as such there was no “failure” to transfer such power.

It is like the unfounded lie that the MDC-T is “the largest party in Zimbabwe” when the party garnered only 43% of the majority vote to ZANU PF’s 47% in the 2008 March elections.

Senator Gutu made politically motivated predictions of violence to push home his point of opposing elections in 2012. It was a simple case of “there will be violence if ever we allow elections to take place,” without much objective analyses to the prediction.

The claim that there is “total blackout on TV” and on “all activities” to do with the MDC-T is frivolous and as pretentious as the vainglorious title “Doctor” to the name Tsvangirai. Gutu used this title at least five times in the interview. We can only pretend that Tsvangirai is a Doctor of anything, and that is the best we can do for the man. The less said on this the better.

Gutu accused The Herald of “lampooning our leader” and portraying him as “someone who can’t be trusted.”

Despite the fact that this writer has read substantial positive coverage of Tsvangirai in The Herald, it is surely not the media’s fault that the man “can’t be trusted.” This is a legacy solely created by Tsvangirai himself. He is the man who called for ruinous sanctions on his own country, the man who habitually flip flops on policy, who arbitrarily boycotts political processes, a man who notoriously opposed the land reforms in 2000, a man who recently expressed unexpected support for gay rights in Zimbabwe, and he is the man who portrayed himself as a philanderer who is not only promiscuous, but who also jilts and ditches women after stinging them.

Gutu ended by saying “ZANU PF and violence are synonymous”. Maybe this is why Welshman Ncube chronicles a sad narration of Morgan Tsvangirai-led intra-party violence that used to happen when Ncube was still Tsvangirai’s Secretary General.

It may also explain why the late Tonderai Ndira and his thug colleagues just fell short of callously murdering Trudy Stevenson in Tafara in 2005. And ZANU PF’s “violence DNA” probably explains why the MDC-T Bulawayo provincial elections were so bloody just a year ago.

Was this writer not chased by two MDC-T marked vehicles in a hot-pursuit road chase in 2003 for simply driving an NYS marked vehicle along the Bulawayo-Gwanda Road? And if truth be told, was Senator Gutu himself not recently threatened with violence by youths from the MDC-T’s Harare Province for his alleged demeaning of Morgan Tsvangirai through Wiki-Leaks?

Do we pile all this primitive culture of political violence on ZANU PF just because ZANU PF has its own undisputable share of the culture which the West selectively chooses to see and often exaggerates? How would we ever heal?

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

· Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.

Labels: 2011 ELECTIONS (ZIMBABWE), FDI, INDIGENIZATION AND EMPOWERMENT ACT (ZIMBABWE), NEOLIBERALISM, OBERT GUTU, REASON WAFAWAROVA

posted by MrK @ 12:55 PM