I wanted to take power by force: Tsvangirai
Friday, 21 October 2011 00:00
Herald Reporter
MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai says he thought of taking up arms to force himself into power after failing to outrightly win the 2008 presidential election.
Mr Tsvangirai said this in his recently published book: "Morgan Tsvangirai: At The Deep End" that he was surprised to learn there was going to be a presidential election run-off.
"For a moment I did not know what to do," he said. "I had no arms of war. I lacked the necessary wherewithal to force myself into power to fulfil the people's wish."
Mr Tsvangirai got 47,9 percent of the vote in the first round when the Electoral Act required one to garner more than 50 percent to be declared a winner.
President Mugabe got 43,2 percent while Mr Simba Makoni was third with 8,3 percent.
Little-known Langton Towungana was a distant fourth on 0.6 percent.
The failure by any of the candidates to get the required majority vote meant there was going to be a run-off between President Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai.
But Mr Tsvangirai said he was not aware of the provisions of the Electoral Act.
"What was this run-off business all about?" said Mr Tsvangirai, adding: "I was unaware that the law had been changed to deny a winner without 50 percent plus one vote to take over government."
"It must have slipped my mind at the time when it went through Parliament. I did not know that in such an event, a run-off would be needed between the two leading candidates."
Mr Tsvangirai said he had already formed a government.
The Electoral Act says:
"(3) Where two or more candidates for President are nominated, and after a poll taken in terms of subsection (2) no candidate receives a majority of the total number of valid votes cast, a second election shall be held within 21 days after the previous election in accordance with this Act."
Analysts said it is surprising that Mr Tsvangirai was not aware of the run-off yet some senior members of his party like secretary-general Mr Tendai Biti were talking about it at the time.
In fact, Mr Tsvangirai says in his book that Mr Biti announced him a winner well before the election results were made public and said there was no need for a run-off.
[That's Tendai Biti trying to steal the elections. - MrK]
University of Zimbabwe lecturer Professor John Makumbe blamed lawyers who are members of MDC-T for failing to advise Mr Tsvangirai appropriately.
He said the lawyers in MDC-T should be embarrassed by Mr Tsvangirai's revelations.
"It's not all people who read the Constitution and understand it," said Prof Makumbe.
"Tsvangirai is surrounded by lawyers. How could they not advise him that there is a possibility of a two-stage election?"
A political analyst, Mr Goodwine Mureriwa said: The ignorance that Tsvangirai displays is amazing. We are a very educated nation and cannot expect to be led by a person who does not mind to study the consequences of a major event like an election that he participates in."
Mr Mureriwa said Mr Tsvangirai was expected to have acquired experience from his time at the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions even if he "did not attain higher educational qualifications".
Another political analyst, Mr Alexander Kanengoni, said it was shocking that Mr Tsvangirai did not know of such a fundamental law governing presidential elections.
"It is surprising that he did not know about that," he said.
"People will not deny it if he is said to be of low intellect because he is admitting it by failing to study provisions of a law in which he is an interested party."
MDC-T spokesperson Mr Douglas Mwonzora said Mr Tsvangirai was being sincere that he did not know of the provisions of the Electoral Act.
"As you can see that his book is a memoir and people tell the truth about their lives in such books," he said.
"The idea is not to pretend what you are not. Perhaps he was not advised about the necessary clauses."
The provisions for a run-off were introduced into the Electoral Act in 2004, with the full participation of Members of Parliament from MDC.
With five days to go to voting day, Mr Tsvangirai announced that he was boycotting the presidential run-off held on June 27, 2008 after claiming that his supporters were being harassed.
His announcement was, however, declared a legal nullity since the election had started in earnest and the poll was held and won by President Mugabe.
Labels: ALEXANDER KANENGONI, ELECTIONS, GODWINE MURERIWA, JOHN MAKUMBE, MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI
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Bring NATO to account over civilian deaths: US lawmaker
Wednesday, 24 August 2011 02:00
Saif al-Islam
A US lawmaker fiercely opposed to NATO's role in the Libya conflict called yesterday for the alliance's military chiefs to be held to account under international law for the death of Libyan civilians. This follows two nights of uncertainty over the goings on in Libya - who was winning and the whereabouts of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his family.
There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that at 4:35pm, rebels had stormed Gaddafi's main Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli. Gaddafi's compound covers a large area in the centre of Tripoli.
Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, said of NATO's role in Libya: "Otherwise we will have witnessed the triumph of a new international gangsterism."
He said NATO forces had flouted UN Security Council resolutions in acting as "the air force for the rebels, who could not have succeeded but for NATO's attacks" and had "illegally pursued regime change."
"NATO's top commanders may have acted under colour of international law, but they are not exempt from international law," he said.
"If members of the Gaddafi regime are to be held accountable, NATO's top commanders must also be held accountable through the International Criminal Court for all civilian deaths resulting from bombing."
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed alarm at the number of civilian casualties in the conflict, including those inflicted in NATO air strikes.
The air attacks have drawn harsh criticism from members of the UN Security Council, including Russia, China, Brazil, India and South Africa, who say the action goes beyond UN resolutions.
Gaddafi's whereabouts were still unknown, although Russian chess federation chief Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said he spoke to the Libyan leader yesterday by phone.
Gaddafi said he was still in Libya, and was in the company of his son Mohammed, who reportedly escaped from house arrest by the rebels yesterday.
One of his sons, Saif al Islam, who was earlier reported to have been arrested made a surprise appearance in Tripoli and met foreign journalists early yesterday morning.
"I am here to refute the lies (that he had been arrested)," he said.
BBC described Saif al-Islam as "confident and full of adrenalin". He said the rebels had fallen into "a trap" and would be defeated.
"You have seen how the Libyan people rose up together, men and women, to break the backbone of the rebels, rats and gangs yesterday and today," he was reported to have said.
He then took reporters on a drive in an armoured convoy through areas of the city still under the regime's control including the Gaddafi family compound and military barracks where scores of men waited to receive guns to join the fighting.
"We are going to hit the hottest spots in Tripoli," he said.
NATO ambassadors meeting in Brussels yesterday to discuss the way forward said the alliance's warplanes would continue airstrikes over Tripoli.
According to an RT report, Britain's MI6 officers have been engaged in drilling Libyan rebels, helping them to establish a proper military plan for an assault on Tripoli.
Yesterday, British newspapers revealed that the UK not only detached spies and former SAS gurus to train militants, but was also providing them with ammunition and night-vision goggles, advanced communication equipment and no less than 1 000 sets of body armor.
The Telegraph published an article about MI6 consultants working in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi "for weeks", culminating in the raid on the Libyan capital.
Needless to say, the technical military capabilities of the British air force were supposed to take the most active part in these plans, which they actually did on Saturday night, bombing out four Libyan communications centres and destroying artillery positions and tanks on the streets of the Libyan capital.
Even British warfare professionals were surprised at the speed with which the rebel forces were advancing deep into Gaddafi's defences, only to find out later they have been lured into a trap.
The rebels had actually smuggled guns and ammunitions, as well as fighters, into Tripoli beforehand, so when the hour came they just rolled through the streets in increasing numbers and met practically no resistance at all.
Meanwhile, local political observers say the Nato-led bombardment of Tripoli and debate in the international media as to which country will have greater control of the country's oil exposed the greedy nature of the West and its allies.
Political analyst Mr Alexander Kanengoni last night said this explained why NATO is at the forefront of the battle for Libya today.
"They (NATO) are fighting on the side of the rebels and want to get the rebels in power. NATO is putting 60-70 percent effort and the rebels the remainder," Mr Kanengoni said.
He said the frenzy in the international media on Libyan oil has exposed Europe invaded that country to siphon its resources.
"If you listen to news from international media channels today, all they talk about is oil. They talk of rebels getting control of oil. They talk of rebels exporting oil to Europe and nothing else," Mr Kanengoni said.
He said it was now clear to everyone that in the event that Gaddafi was toppled, Europe and its allies, would run Libya through a puppet regime.
"The West will run Libya on behalf of the rebels just like what they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan," Mr Kanengoni said.
Another political analyst, Dr Maxwell Hove said the West had always wanted Gaddafi out of power for that reason.
"They think they have won the prize. It is not a secret. They want the oil. They want to take over and make sure they get the oil," he said.
Europe, said Dr Hove, believed Libyan oil was "some kind of sweet oil easy to process unlike what they get from Saudi Arabia".
He said even if the rebels were to take over, they "do not have the capacity to run Libya on their own without foreign backing.
"It would suit Europe even better if the rebels are unable to run Libya. They will literally take over and suck all the oil," said Dr Hove.
This, he said, was tantamount to the re-colonisation of Libya and took a swipe at those African countries that voted for the 1973 UN resolution that paved the way for an invasion by NATO on the pretext of protecting civilians.
"It will haunt them forever now that there is a new movement to recolonise Africa," said Dr Hove.
Mr Goodwine Mureriwa said it was apparent that the toppling of Gaddafi would not mean the end of NATO participation in Libya.
"NATO'S objective goes beyond that. The ouster of Gaddafi will see them taking control of Libyan oil. There is already a scramble for that oil by the US, UK and France," he said. --- Herald Reporter-The Guardian-RT- AFP.
Labels: ALEXANDER KANENGONI, MUAMMAR AL-GADDAFI, NATO
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Tsvangirai dishonest on land issue
Monday, 25 April 2011 22:10
By Alexander Kanengoni
During the Easter holidays, I bumped into two old friends and two views about Zimbabwean politics that I found interesting. The first guy seemed extremely worried about what I write and asked whether they had not put me on the sanctions list yet.
I was bemused. Actually, I had never contemplated that possibility. If that is what it takes to have your name put on the sanctions list, it's crazy. Just to express your point of view? Isn't that the democracy they preach to us day and night?
My friend advised me to take my foot off the pedal a bit and take it easy, leaving it to others to run with it.
It wasn't quite the same with the second guy. I met him by accident along the First Street mall, and we both expressed surprise how long it was since we last met. In fact, several years.
But he quickly added that it wasn't the same regarding me, because once in a while, he reads me in the papers.
We talked for some time and just before we parted he remarked that he would continue to keep to the side-lines, waiting to see what happened next.
My two friends' political position is the same, they are happy to remain outside.
I cannot, because I have always been inside.
The Rhodesians peddled the myth that everyone who joined the struggle was forced, I wasn't.
Ian Smith claimed we were the happiest Africans on the continent. I joined the war on my own volition.
I cannot stop expressing my views publicly when we fought a war so that people would do just that.
But then, Ian Smith was a mad man. He believed it would take us more than a thousand years to be free.
Which brings me to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Independence Day message that came out in the press last week.
It was an interesting message.
Whilst it tried to support the reasons why we went to war, it got confused at the end, but that was not surprising, knowing Morgan.
The message talked about freedom, justice and prosperity as the cornerstones of the war for independence.
No one would disagree with that, but how do you achieve those objectives?
How do you make the people prosper?
If the Prime Minister believes that the issue of land only popped up 20 years after independence as he claims in his message, he is being deliberately dishonest. The issue of land was always at the heart of our fight for freedom.
[To quote the MDC leader from this Independence Day message:
" Twenty years after independence we were told that the land would set us free. The same land was later grabbed by avaricious politicians and the well-connected in our society.
Now, thirty years after independence we are being told by multi-millionaires and multiple farm-owners that indigenisation will set us free. By this they are not referring to broad-based empowerment of the ordinary man and woman, but the looting and plunder of national resources by a small, parasitic elite. " - MrK]
The First Chimurenga, in 1893, was fought over the land. The Third Chimurenga, more than a century later, was all about the unresolved issue of the land. How then could the Second Chimurenga, in between, be about other things excluding the land?
The PM talks dismissively about the land in his message too. He says 20 years after independence in 2000, we were told land would make us prosper but that didn't happen. Well, such a view from Morgan Tsvangirai is not surprising.
His contempt for the land reform programme was evident when he once described the newly resettled farmers as mushrooms erupting all over organised white commercial farming areas.
The Lancaster House Conference almost broke down over the issue of the land, Morgan surely knows that.
So, he is only being dishonest when he says the issue only cropped up in 2000.
And then, his message goes on to dismiss the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme as a ploy to enrich the already rich elite, presumably the Zanu-PF leadership.
The question becomes - how do you make people prosper without empowering them? How do you make them prosper without opening up entry into mainstream economic activities for them?
Minister Kasukuwere has many times given Schweppes as an example of the success of the indigenisation programme, where the employees successfully negotiated 51 percent shareholding equity.
It is most likely that some of the beneficiaries at Schweppes are members of the MDC.
He cannot deny that!
The most likely people to resist the economic empowerment programme are our erstwhile colonial masters, the Rhodesians and the British; because they still believe all the resources in the country rightfully belong to them.
As an African, one would not expect Morgan to participate in, let alone champion such resistance and yet he doesn't.
It is for this reason that we say Morgan and his MDC are driving a foreign agenda. That is why we say Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC are being used by imperialism. These are the kind of views that one of my friends doesn't want me to express publicly.
In fact, he went on to say that he found what I write more enjoyable if it wasn't politics.
Later, I wanted to know what his real political position was; his motivation.
It's not true that one can remain outside and have no political point of view; it's impossible. So my friend was being dishonest.
He just didn't have the courage to tell me he did not agree with what I write, no matter how sensible it might sound.
My nephew, also an avid MDC supporter, put it in a pleasant and surprising way.
He said he no longer read what I write because he found it difficult to disagree with it.
For example, the American ambassador, Ray Charles, cannot deny the fact that he is black and that his grand parents were probably slaves, can he? And, that our fate in history is basically the same!
Or the fact that the West is in Libya not for humanitarian concerns but purely for their selfish desire for oil!
What we are witnessing with the West is a 21st century version of the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884, the scramble for resources from the Third World.
The French came quite strongly in Libya and the Ivory Coast.
If they tried to do the same regarding Zimbabwe, the British would nudge them gently on the side and smile menacingly.
The message would be clear: Take your hands off, Zimbabwe is British. And the French would oblige.
With the creation of the EU, the possibility of war in Europe has been virtually eliminated.
Instead, they have transferred their wars to our territories. We are fighting their wars and they only enter on our invitation. That is what is happening in Libya.
That is what happened in Ivory Coast, inviting them to re-colonise us! What sort of people are we who are not proud of their African identity? People fawning for the white man's perpetual leadership?
And here at home, the MDC is foolishly agreeing to be used to do exactly that, agreeing to an agenda for our re-colonisation; what a tragedy!
Does Morgan not have the capacity to understand this or he just doesn't care? The British are more interested in our resources than the so-called humanitarian situation.
Europe is running out of raw materials and they are prepared to go to war to get those resources where they are available in the world.
The contemporary popular parlance is: getting them by "ginya".
And yet, there are some amongst us who are literally inviting the British and the West to come and invade us.
I hope they can see the scale of the destruction and the enormous loss of human life happening in Libya.
And the West doesn't care a hoot. And so would the British.
In fact, for them, it would translate into a boom for their depressed construction industry and economy when they have razed Zimbabwe to the ground and start to rebuild it.
That is what the Americans did in Iraq and they are making the rich pickings. Who would want to be left behind?
They went to Libya hoping to do a quick job.
More than two months later, they are still bombarding the country and contemplating sending ground troops, and there shall be more destruction of property and loss of life and the solution still not in sight.
One hopes that those people who are foolishly stopping short of calling for such an invasion to happen here would survive to tell the horrible story.
Those who have survived the liberation war know that war is all about destruction of infrastructure and property, killing of people or getting killed, nothing else.
It is difficult to keep quiet when we are faced with such a horrible prospect. It is also difficult to keep quiet when the Prime Minister misrepresents some basic issues like that of the land.
You feel obliged to point it out to other people for the sake of the record. Or perhaps, for the sake of those who might ignorantly believe him.
Giving land to the people and economically empowering them to own and control their economy is the surest way to make them prosper.
You cannot talk about them being free when they continue to be poor.
The war to empower the people, just like the liberation war, requires tough fighters and not pathetic pretenders who returned before they got to Chimoio because the going had become tough.
I hope I have not offended my two friends from the past.
Labels: ALEXANDER KANENGONI, CHIMURENGA, INDIGENIZATION AND EMPOWERMENT ACT (ZIMBABWE), LAND REFORM, NEOCOLONIALISM
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Spare us the theories Biti
by Alexander Kanengoni
30/09/2010 00:00:00
THERE is something helpful about the debates that Nathaniel Manheru has started. They allow us to talk to each other across the political divide, no matter how much we may disagree. It is another critical way to embrace one another. It may also teach followers of different political parties not to resort to violence when they disagree. About a week ago, Tendai Biti allowed us an interesting glimpse not only of his mind but also that of his party.
Judging by what he said in a contribution to The Herald last week, it appears MDC-T is at last trying to be nationalistic; to shake off the burden of the Rhodesian-driven white agenda.
They have no choice if they want to remain politically relevant.
You could see a serious and honest attempt by the man to try and understand where we are going in relation to where we are coming from. It is generally true what he says though, that head teachers and their assistant teachers spearheaded the armed struggle to dislodge Rhodesian settler-colonialism. But his argument that they did not have the capacity to rule immediately raises an interesting point.
If they had the capacity to accomplish such a task, which was not mean by all means, they surely could use the same capacity to run the state.
Let's be realistic, it would be wishful thinking to expect these chaps to hand over power to some "armchair revolutionaries" from London and Washington. The sort of people that Jean Paul Sartre, in his preface to Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, described as a "manufactured elite and white-washed, walking lies".
I first knew Tendai Biti in the early nineties when we were both directors at a small donor-funded film making organisation and my immediate impression of him was that he wanted to behave more white than the whites that we worked with.
And I thought that was tragic for such an intelligent young man. A year or so earlier, I had had the same sinking feeling at the Book Cafe where John Makumbe stood up to tell us the most unforgettable discriminatory incident he faced in his life was during Rhodesia in the then Gwelo, when he was mistaken for a white boy and asked to pay double for a hair-cut.
John Makumbe, our poor friend from Buhera! I had thought he would talk about how we taunted and made fun of his lot as we herded cattle in the veld. I had thought he would talk about how we shunned his lot at school, refusing to sit next to them in class until the head teacher intervened. Instead, he chose an incident where he was mistaken for a white boy and he called that discrimination! What a tragedy!
Listening to the people that Sartre refers to as walking lies: listening to them talk in their slurred voices, you get the distinct impression they expected us to walk from the bush and hand them power to run the state.
Biti gives the disappointing impression that the decolonisation process, which Fanon describes as a programme of complete disorder, did not require much intellect at all, only brow. He is obviously wrong. This is perpetuates the myth that the people involved in the process were rowdy and unschooled; the perception that is being peddled about our own war-veterans.
By the way, Amilcar Cabral and Franz Fanon that he quotes as undisputed authorities and analysts of the post-colonial African state and its class dilemmas, were guerrilla fighters themselves. Cabral was the leader of the liberation movement that dislodged Portuguese colonialism in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Islands.
Fanon was a medical doctor with the liberation movement that dislodged French colonialism in Algeria.
It is not entirely true that liberation wars were fought and led by teachers and head teachers.
Herbert Chitepo was a lawyer. Joshua Nkomo was a trade unionist. Eddison Zvobgo was a lawyer. Edson Sithole was another lawyer. Herbert Ushewekunze was a medical doctor. There was no way that the liberation war could be fought and won without a plan and a clear agenda to rule.
The agenda was to free the people and uplift their lives. Kenneth Kaunda called his agenda Zambianisation. Julius Nyerere called his Ujamaa. If we have made mistakes in our drive to empower the people, we will correct the mistakes as we forge ahead.
We went to war to empower the people. That has always been Zanu-PF's agenda. The land reform programme was translating our agenda into practice. The current indigenisation programme is a continuation of translating that theory into action. Unfortunately for Biti, it's a programme that he found already on the table and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The only way to empower the people for posterity is to let them control the means of production: the land, the industries and the mines.
There is nothing mystical about running the state as long as you have a clear agenda. Burkina Faso's Thomas Sankara and Ghana's Jerry Rawlings are examples of popular leaders who achieved their success on the back of clear political agendas. Everywhere in the free world, people control their economies and destiny. No one is an exception, even South Africans.
It was the clarity of our political agenda that we survived the debilitating sanctions that people like Biti were foolish enough to ask the West to impose on us. He cannot deny that. The West is still astounded we survived the vicious onslaught. Gideon Gono's printing press at the Reserve Bank stayed permanently hot to save the country from collapse. He might be of peasantry background, as indeed we all are, even those that grew up on the farms, but the fact is he is a practical man with practical solutions that saved the country.
Nigel Chanakira got a taste of his own medicine: it needed Zanu PF to pull him to safety from the jaws of Rhodesian capital.
The same shall apply to a host others that Biti alleges are victims of Zanu PF DNA even though most of them are mere window-dressers in corporate organisations they have been put as custodians of white capital. There is nothing to emulate about activities that were going on at the ZSE at the height of our economic crisis.
It became abundantly clear that the ZSE had become part of the regime change agenda. It fuelled inflation to astronomical levels by facilitating selling of millions of shares using non-existent money. Gono's wailing press was far better because it ensured the survival of the state.
Their action did the exact opposite: to bring the state down to its knees and destroy it. How can Biti call people engaged in such activities the shinning generation of the new Zimbabwean businessmen that Zanu PF denied the chance to grow? What sort of growth does he mean?
A neighbour who works for a multinational company, someone that I have never really spoken to besides the routine, good morning, came to me the other day and I was surprised. I had always known him as an ardent MDC supporter and I believe he had also, always known me as Zanu PF supporter.
A long time ago, I tried to reach out to him but I sensed his hostility and kept away. It's true, you know. Personally, I didn't mind he was MDC but he seemed to mind I was Zanu PF. That's what I thought, perhaps I was wrong.
Anyway, he came to me the other day and got straight to the heart of the matter. He said there was a crisis at their workplace because the company had brought someone; he called him a sweeper, from New Zealand to become general manager when there were better qualified local people. I didn't know what to say. "The President is right", he continued angrily.
I was dumbfounded. He threw his arms into the air. "These people never change", he said. They needed someone like our president. It's the sort of company we all would love to see taken over. A-h-a, so the eagle had finally realised it could fly?
Jacob Zuma gave a disappointing interview on SABC two days ago. He talked as if he was not the president of the ANC and South Africa. There is a point where collective decision making ends, where the leader ultimately stands up and takes responsibility and says: I want the party and the government to do this.
That is what being a leader means, not to continually defer answers to fundamental questions to some organ of the party or government. Perhaps he had no answer to the critical question of empowerment of his people. He might try to run away from the dilemma of his people's continued disempowerment but it will soon catch up with him. So Tendai Biti can save us those high-sounding pronouncements and lofty social theories. All I can do is happily remind him that the head teachers and their teachers are already implementing those theories.
We read Fanon and Cabral and many other revolutionary writers under trees and in the rain in Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique, with guns slung over our shoulders. We also read thoroughly, Karl Marx and internalised his theories.
That is when we learned that socialism is not so much about sharing wealth as it is about creating it. And that all this is predicated on the ownership and control of our resources.
Welcome aboard. But remember, you are not bringing anything that the teachers and their peasant followers don't already know.
Alexander Kanengoni is a Zimbabwean author. This article was originally published in the Herald
Labels: ALEXANDER KANENGONI, DECOLONISATION, INDIGENIZATION AND EMPOWERMENT ACT (ZIMBABWE), NATHANIEL MANHERU, NEOLIBERALISM, TENDAI BITI
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