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(SUNDAY MAIL ZW) MDC and the manifesto of alibis
Saturday, 01 June 2013 14:36

History of alibi

Na Jehovha Mwari akadaidza munhu, akati kwaari, uri pari?
Naye (munhu) wakati, ndazwa izwi rako ndiri mumunda, neni ndatya, ngokuti ndainga ndisina
kupfeka, saka ndadzihwandisa
Na Mwari wakati, ndiani wakakutaurira kuti wakashama? Hauna kupfeka?

Wadyasu kumuti wendakupanga kuti usazodya?
Nomunhu wakati, Handisini, Mambo, ndaita izvi. Mukadzi wemwakandipa kuti agare neni ndiye wakandipa michero yomuti uyu, ini ndokuzodyawo.
(Genesis 3: 9-13)

Reader’s Digest’s Family Word Finder defines the word alibi as follows:

“The defendant had an alibi for the night of the crime: defence of being elsewhere (at the time important things happened or decisions were made); excuse . . . An alibi is a legal term, a claim that an accused person was elsewhere at the time a crime was committed . . . Today alibi is used informally to mean excuse but carries the connotation that the excuse is contrived.”

Contriving an excuse

The informal meaning of alibi is that it is a contrived excuse. To contrive is to make up, to fabricate, to invent, to concoct, to scheme in an unconvincing manner.

God’s audit and Adam’s report

When God the Creator came to audit the affairs of Eden, Adam concocted an unconvincing alibi, the first unconvincing alibi.

Adam told the Creator that he was not a decision-maker. So he would not take responsibility for what had happened. The most critical decisions had been made by the woman (Eve) with the advice of the snake!

In 2013, the people of Zimbabwe, the voters, will be taking an audit of the last four years and more before deciding whether it is going to be Zanu-PF or the MDC formations who will be invited to form the next Government of Zimbabwe, to make strategic and fateful decisions on the future of Zimbabwe and on behalf of Madzimbahwe.

Already, on May 17 2013, at a national policy conference, MDC-T re-issued its manifesto of alibis through Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, as follows:

“We are the new brooms, we sweep the cleanest . . . Zanu-PF are yesteryear people. Yesteryear people cannot provide answers to problems faced by today’s people. Today’s problems need new people, new ways and new ideas.”

And what were the new ways and new ideas for which Madzimbahwe are supposed to vote the MDCs into the next Government of Zimbabwe? Quoting Tsvangirai again on May 20 2013, The Daily News provided the supposed answers which are supposed to form the core of the MDC-T manifesto, saying:

“We have already won” the 2013 elections and saying to voters: You will have no choice but to vote for the MDCs because: “Zanu-PF is finished, haiko (it no longer exists.” (Daily News, May 18 2013).

So, I hope the reader is getting the shape of the emerging MDC manifesto of alibis:

First, it says the MDCs cannot account for what they did or what happened since the formation of the party in 1999 or since the formation of the inclusive Government in February 2009 because: “We are new brooms.” We were not there. Only yesteryear people are accountable. We are today’s people.

Therefore we do not have to account to history.
Second, it says, come elections 2013, the MDCs will be all here “sweeping the cleanest” and Zanu-PF will not be there because haiko already!

In other words, only Zanu-PF must be there to take responsibility for what happened in the last four years and before. But it should not be there, it cannot be there, and it will not be there, to be elected to form the next Government of Zimbabwe!

Were the MDCs not there in the last four years of the inclusive Government?
Is it true that the MDC formations are just new brooms? Is it true that they sweep the cleanest?

In fact the MDC formations in 2008 and 2009 demanded what they called “key ministries” during the bargaining for Cabinet posts before the formation of the inclusive Government. They wanted “key ministries” on top of dozens of city councils and other local councils which they already controlled, including Harare, Chitungwiza, Mutare, Bulawayo and Masvingo. The MDC formations held rallies and marches during which they told the same voters: “Tavapanyanga;” and they mocked Zanu-PF; saying. “Tongai tione!” Now that we are in control.

In order for the reader to see for herself or himself that the MDC alibi is a lie, it may help to buy any copy of the official Parliamentary Debates for the House of Assembly for the period 2009 to 2013.

The MDCs got their wish and obtained substantive ministerial control of the following key posts and ministries:
Prime Minister;
Deputy Prime Minister;
Second Deputy Prime Minister;
Finance;
Industry and Commerce;
Economic Planning and Investment Promotion;
Regional Integration and International Co-operation;
Health and Child Welfare;
Public Works;
Education, Sport, Arts and Culture;
Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs;
Information Communication Technology;
Energy and Power Development;
National Housing and Social Amenities;
Public Service;
State Enterprises and Parastatals; and
Water Resources Development and Management.

I have already noted that for more than four years these ministries were surrendered and entrusted to the MDC formations in addition to the many city and town councils which they already controlled before February 2009.

New brooms sweeping the cleanest?
So, the MDC-T policy conference on May 17 2013 came out with two things for which Madzimbahwe are supposed to vote MDC-T:

“Zanu-PF is finished,” and “We are the new brooms, we sweep the cleanest.”(Daily News, May 18 2013).

Unfortunately, the very same foreign-sponsored papers meant to market the MDC formations can no longer ignore the glaring realities and stories which directly contradict the claims of the same parties.

So it was, that on April 22 2013, a Harare resident wrote to NewsDay: “Harare city now an eyesore. — I have observed that the city of Harare (which an MDC-T council runs) is now an eyesore because of (mountains) litter deposits.”

The very same day a Harare resident’s complaint about mountains of rubbish in the city was published in NewsDay. The Daily News also published a long story called “Harare grapples with typhoid, 4 killed, 3 600 infected in fresh outbreak.”

The main reason given for the persistent recurrence of cholera and typhoid in the city was the failure of the city council to provide clean piped water. The council has failed to repair even the water systems it found in place. One cannot then expect new systems constructed over the last four years.

Both the ministry responsible for water and the city council fall under MDC-T! The situation is so bad that MDC-T mayor of Harare Mr Muchadeyi Masunda is now called “Masundarara,” the rubbish pusher!

Yet his boss, Mr Tsvangirai, is telling Madzimbahwe: “We are new brooms, we sweep the cleanest.”
Illegal Anglo-Saxon sanctions as an alibi for MDCs

The reason why the MDCs have to pretend that they were not part of a decision-making government executive for more than four years is because those four years demonstrate moral, managerial and intellectual bankruptcy and incompetence. Nothing demonstrates their moral and intellectual bankruptcy more than their involvement in the illegal Anglo-Saxon sanctions imposed on the people.

Illegal sanctions imposed by Britain, the United States, European Union, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are the MDC formations’ most important alibi in the sense that sanctions would enable these puppet parties to betray and destroy Zimbabwe effectively while denying any responsibility.

The basis of the Western-sponsored regime-change politics in Zimbabwe was that the MDC formations, with the assistance of the Western illegal sanctions, would destroy the economy and the national liberation legacy of Zimbabwe first and then rebuild the economy and create a new “democratic society” based on financial aid and ideological tutoring from the British, the North Americans and the Europeans. In the last elections in March and June 2008, Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T boasted that it expected the financial assistance from the white empire to amount to more than US$10 billion!

At the time the MDC formations were stealing poor people’s votes by promising massive Western donations for reconstruction, we did our best to point out that the opposition parties were lying to voters. But it was difficult for the ordinary citizen to see that he or she was being lied to. It was immoral and corrupt to ask for sanctions to destroy a country and then boast that the regime-change sponsors would donate US$10 billion to rebuild it.

The notion that illegal sanctions would be lifted and the Zimbabwe economy would recover miraculously as soon as a few MDC ministers were appointed to “key ministries” also demonstrated naiveté and incompetence.

The MDC leaders did not know or understand the history of sanctions, they did not understand the history of Anglo-Saxon “interests” in relation to African interests, and they did not understand the Zimbabwe economy. That is why even to this day the MDC formations are still concocting alibis on the sanctions issue.

The media effort to misrepresent British, US and EU sanctions against Zimbabwe as just “travel bans” started in 2001 when the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (Zidera) was still a Bill in the US Congress. But the MDC formations would rather deny the existence of such published evidence.

The spokesperson for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the late Learnmore Jongwe, appeared with me on ZTV’s “Talking Business” programme on September 21 2001 where he swore that Zidera was just a declaration of targeted travel bans with no effect on the economy or the ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe, except insofar as it was going to help make Zimbabwe a more just and more democratic society.

Former MDC-T spokesperson Nelson Chamisa repeated exactly the same lie seven years later on ZTV’s programme “Zimbabwe Today” on May 21 2008. Lawyer Douglas Mwonzora and current spokesperson for the same party repeated the same lie on the same ZTV programme on June 1 2008; he was followed by another lawyer and now MDC-T Deputy Minister Obert Gutu on the same ZTV programme on June 8 2008. Gutu was followed by MDC-T’s economic advisor Tapiwa Mashakada who repeated the very same claims on the same ZTV programme on August 3 2008.

On November 7 2008, the lie took a different turn. It was repeated on behalf of the MDC formations by the Swedish Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Sten Rylander on ZTV’s Talking Business programme where Rylander was the sole unchallenged guest.

I need not state that former UK Ambassador Mr Andrew Pocock and former US Ambassador Mr Christopher Dell had also been repeating the same lie over several years. Dell’s successor did the same.

For instance, the 2009 farewell interview granted by the then out-going Ambassador of the USA, Mr James McGee, was quite telling.

McGee’s interview yielded three important points which affect our national reconciliation efforts as people of Zimbabwe:

The first point McGee made was that there is a separate understanding on the purpose of sanctions between one of the parties in the inclusive Government and the governments of the Anglo-Saxon axis that imposed the illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe.

McGee said: “I have not heard the head of the MDC-T, Morgan Tsvangirai, calling for targeted sanctions to be removed. They (MDC-T) are quite aware on what we want to do with the sanctions . . .

The pressure will remain . . . The MDC-T is aware that lifting sanctions is counterproductive . . . The sanctions are successful and will continue to be in place.” They will be in place during the up-coming referendum and the subsequent elections!

The second critical point was that the United States of America was itself facing an economic crisis which caused unemployment and the suffering of more than five million persons in the last six or seven months of 2009. In this regard, Zimbabweans should not expect the massive US financial aid which MDC-T promised the voters of Zimbabwe in the 2005 and 2008 elections. Then the MDC justification for inviting the sanctions was that the Western sponsors of the MDC formations would provide massive aid to rebuild the economy as soon as these formations took office in government.

Four years passed but nothing of the sort happened.
The third point was that US foreign policy is based on continuity and consistency despite the rhetoric of “change.” Therefore while insisting on benchmarks to force Zimbabwe to change its policies abruptly and drastically in order to prove that “reform” and “inclusivity” have been accomplished, the Obama administration would respect and uphold the Bush administration’s illegal and ruinous sanctions law called the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (Zidera) whose main purpose was originally to help former Rhodesian white settlers “recover” from the African land reclamation movement land which has been acquired for resettling landless and dispossessed Africans since 2000.

Labels: MDC

posted by MrK @ 5:31 PM