(NEWZIMBABWE) Tsvangirai-led MDC finished: Sikhala
06/11/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
THE MDC formation led by Morgan Tsvangirai - the party which has troubled president Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF for more than a decade - has crested and will now only go down, MDC99 leader Job Sikhala claimed Wednesday.
Speaking at a press conference in Harare where he announced his MDC99 was joining the newly formed NCA party, Sikhala said he was part of the team that founded the MDC knew how the organisation was run.
“Some of us know that thing; we are the founders of it and we know how it is run. We know that it has reached its end. So it is imperative that we take a different political route,” he said.
Sikhala said he had decided to join hands with the NCA because they shared the same ideology.
He also moved to emphasise his differences with the two MDC formations.
“In terms of ideology of course there are quite a number of things that we differ. I don’t want to talk about Morgan Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube; those are my former colleagues that I worked with,” Sikhala said.
Sikhala accused the two MDCs of singing from the same hymn book adding that, during the term of the coalition government, they were in total agreement with Zanu PF, a party they “were fighting since 1999”.
“Unfortunately it came to haunt them at the recent elections,” he said.
The formers St Mary’s legislator said he would not attend the planned MDC founders’ convention.
“When they were in the inclusive government enjoying crumbs falling from king Nebuchadnezzar’s table they never thought about inviting us to a convention,” he said.
“They were having their convention with Mugabe and today because they are in trouble they want now a convention; for what purpose, and for what reason at all?
“They must go and have their convention with Mugabe (Arthur) Mutambara and (Welshman) Ncube.”
Labels: JOB SIKHALA, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, MDC99
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Sikhala winds down MDC99, joins Madhuku
06/11/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
FIERY former St Mary’s legislator and MDC99 leader Job Sikhala has dissolved his party and the joined new NCA political outfit led by university law lecturer, Lovemore Madhuku.
Sikhala told journalists at a press briefing Wednesday that he had been working with Madhuku since the constitutional referendum early this year.
“We have agreed that the MDC 99 merges with the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) to come out with one political movement that will contest power against the current political set up in our country,” he said.
“We realised our relationship is fruitful during the referendum when we advocated for the rejection of the then new draft constitution. As the MDC 99 we have decided to join hands with Professor Madhuku and we are now in the process of integrating our structures.
Asked what position he would be assuming in the NCA, Sikhala was however, evasive.
“We are sharing executive powers until the congress next year. The issue of positions will be resolved then.
“The entire MDC 99 executive and the National Taskforce of the NCA will be running the affairs of the party in the meantime. We are married by the same idea that gave us 179,000 votes at the referendum and we want to grow that number,” Sikhala said.
He said the NCA will be a social democratic party with Pan-Africanist leanings.
Of Madhuku, Sikhala said: “He is a sound man very nice to work with and we have had no any differences.
“Since we started working together during the period of the referendum up to present if there is any power hunger in him we will see as we move forward but at the present moment l haven’t yet noticed it.”
The NCA, which campaigned for a new constitution over the last 16 years, opposed the new charter adopted by the last coalition government, has since been transformed into a political party.
Sikhala, who served as secretary for defence and intelligence in the united MDC then led by Morgan Tsvangirai left the party along with then secretary general Welshman Ncube in the infamous October 2005 split.
He however did not stay long leaving to establish his own political outfit MDC 99.
Labels: JOB SIKHALA, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, MDC99
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Ex-mayor ditches MDC-T for Madhuku's party
09/10/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
FORMER Marondera mayor Farai Nyandoro has joined the Lovemore Madhuku-led National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) political party, ditching the MDC-T.
Nyandoro, who contradicted MDC-T claims that the July 31 vote was rigged insisting the party authored its stunning defeat through the imposition of candidates, told NewZimbabwe.com Wednesday that frustration had forced him to abandon ship.
“I have left the movement a bitter man; I was being frustrated and haunted since 2010 when the party suspended me,” he said.
“What frustrated me is lack of democracy and constitutionalism within the party which I loved so much. For instance, the party constitution clearly states that if one is suspended his case should be heard within 14 days and this was not the situation in my case.
“I was suspended in 2010 and up to now I still remain suspended without a proper disciplinary hearing.”
Pouring his heart out, Nyandoro added: “What also pains me is that I almost lost my life to political violence in the early years of 2000 when it was a taboo to contest in Mashonaland East province under the MDC banner.
“But I stood put after being beaten to death at Eagle Turner by Zanu PF supporters when I contested the elections for Ward 2 Marondera rural.”
In August Nyandoro blamed the MDC-T’s defeat on factionalism, the imposition of candidates and “bootlicking”, contradicting claims by the party leadership that the polls had been rigged.
“We went the election a divided lot in Mashonaland East Province. The leadership was aware of what I am saying; imposition of candidates cost the party, and it is a fact,” he said then.
“Our party used to belong to the poor, it used to belong to students and workers but of late we saw the party being hijacked by the elites, those who have money, and this did not go down well with the electorate.”
NCA spokesperson Madock Chivasa confirmed Nyandoro had joined the party.
“A lot of such people are coming to join the party, and it is happening in all the districts throughout the country. What I can tell you at the moment is that we are going to have an audit of our membership just before the congress in March next year to establish how has joined,” he said Chivasa.
In jumping ship for the NCA, Nyandoro joins a number other disgruntled senior MDC-T members who have also ditched the party.
They include Emmanuel Chiroto the former deputy Harare mayor, Felix Magalela Mafa, Aaron Chinhara who lost the MDC-T primaries for Redcliff, Samuel Sandla Khumalo who wanted to represent the MDC-T in the Magwegwe constituency and former Sunningdale councillor Musa Macheza.
Interim NCA leader Madhuku has been engaging the MDC-T rebels since announcing his intension to form a political party.
Labels: FARAI NYANDORO, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MAYORS
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Tsvangirai ‘betrayal unforgivable’: Madhuku
Happier times ... Morgan Tvangirai with Lovemore Madhuku at a campaign event
29/09/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
NCA LEADER Lovemore Madhuku has hit out at ex-premier Morgan Tsvangirai, accusing him of helping foist on the country a constitution that was “more repressive” than the Lancaster House independence charter.
Madhuku, who has been dismissed as a Zanu PF sympathiser by former allies in the MDC-T, was addressing the NCA’s three-day congress in Harare where delegates agreed to transform the organisation into a fully-fledged political party.
“I will never forgive Tsvangirai and his party for leaving the people with a heavier burden than before; they left us with a more repressive constitution than the old Lancaster house constitution,” he said.
The NCA – which has campaigned for a “new democratic constitution” over the last sixteen years – was one of the organisations that helped found the MDC in 1999.
But relations between Madhuku and Tsvangirai soured after the MDC-T leader agreed to join President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF party following the violent 2008 elections.
The NCA chief was to become a spikey critic of the prime minister after the MDC-T leader endorsed the constitution adopted following a referendum in March this year.
Critics dismiss the new charter as a self-serving political compromise between Zanu PF and the MDC parties.
Madhuku said the MDC-T did not even understand the constitution they helped craft which was demonstrated by the many legal blunders the party made as it tried to deal with the fall-out from its defeat by Zanu PF in the July 31 elections.
He said MDC-T officials had labelled him a Zanu PF sympathiser after he called them out for erroneously interpreting the constitution on various issues including the election of mayors.
“They do not know what they wrote. This is why they are always approaching the wrong courts,” he said adding MDC-T officials had “slept” while Zanu PF officials crafted the new constitution.
“Don’t waste your time going to Douglas Mwonzora (MDC-T spokesperson and former Copac co-chairperson) or Tendai Biti (MDC-T secretary-general and former GPA chief negotiator) if you want to understand the constitution. You have to go to (Finance minister Patrick) Chinamasa,” he said.
About 300 delegates attended the congress which ended on Saturday including MDC99 leader, Job Sikhala who, Madhuku said, had “interests in the new party”.
Madhuku also introduced disgruntled MDC-T members, among them Amon Chinhara from Redcliff as well as former Harare deputy mayor Emmanuel Chiroto saying they were also interested in joining the new party.
The party will be led by an interim committee chaired by Madhuku until a substantive leadership is elected at a congress which has been slated for March next year.
Labels: CONSTITUTION, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI
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(NEWZIMBABWE) MDC-T rebels to join Madhuku’s party
25/09/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
MDC-T members who contested the last elections as independents will seek to join the new party expected to be formed by National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) chair, Lovemore Madhuku, it was confirmed this week.
The rebels formed the Independent Candidates Coalition (ICC) ahead of the July polls after failing to contest the vote on the MDC-T ticket due to what they described as gross irregularities in the conduct of the party’s primary elections.
The MDC-T successfully petitioned the courts to block them from using its open palm symbol and pictures of party leader Morgan Tsvangirai arguing they would confuse supporters ahead of the elections which it then lost by a landslide to Zanu PF.
Tsvangirai refuses to concede defeat, claiming the elections were rigged but some MDC-T activists say the imposition of candidates by the leadership undermined the party’s chances.
Meanwhile, the disgruntled members held a meeting in the Midlands city of Gweru early this week where it was agreed they would seek to join Madhuku’s prospective party after realising they had “no future in the MDC-T”.
Key figures who attended the meeting include Emmanuel Chiroto, Felix Magalela Mafa, Aaron Chinhara who lost the MDC-T primaries for Redcliff, Samuel Sandla Khumalo who wanted to represent the MDC-T in the Magwegwe constituency and former Sunningdale councillor Musa Macheza.
“We formed a six member steering committee at the meeting whose responsibility among others would be that of crafting a position paper stating what we want in the new political party,” one of the officials told NewZimbabwe.com.
“We have realised that there is no future for us in the MDC-T. The party imposed candidates on our constituencies in the last election meaning that we are no longer wanted; hence the decision to join the Madhuku-led political party.
“Our steering committee will meet in Bulawayo to fine tune the draft position paper before the NCA congress. They will also meet Madhuku before the launch of (his) party for the presentation of the final position paper.”
Madhuku has confirmed he would step-down from the NCA which has been campaigning for a new constitution and opposed the charter adopted by the last coalition government saying it was not people-driven.
The NCA will hold its congress in Harare at the weekend where a decision will be taken on whether to transform the organisation into a political party.
“The first point of discussion would be the future of the organisation,” Madhuku said told reporters this week.
“If the organisation decides to use civic methods, which have failed, then I am stepping down but if we are to form a political party then I believe the current leadership would want to pursue our quest to have a democratic constitution.
“We are not abandoning our agenda, that is of a new democratic constitution and we simply want to use other avenues through a structure like a political party.”
Labels: LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, PARLIAMENT (ZW)
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(SUNDAY MAIL ZW) EU ambassador in trouble
Sunday, 08 September 2013 00:00
Munyaradzi Huni
The European Union Head of Delegation to Zimbabwe, Ambassador Aldo Dell’Ariccia, has sparked a diplomatic row with Harare after he wrote a letter to the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court requesting to hold a meeting with judges from the Electoral and Constitutional courts “to exchange views on electoral petitions.”
The request for the meeting has been described by the outgoing Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs, Cde Patrick Chinamasa, as “totally unacceptable” in diplomatic circles while a legal expert has said the move by the ambassador was “very shocking” and based on total disrespect for African institutions.
In his letter dated, August 29 2013, addressed to the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court, Mr Walter Chikwana, Ambassador Dell’Ariccia wrote saying:
“I would hereby like to kindly request your support in facilitating the organisation of meetings with members of the Constitutional and Electoral Courts in order to exchange views on electoral petitions.
The delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Zimbabwe would be available for such a meeting between 3, 4 and 6 September 2013.
“The following persons will participate to the meetings on behalf of the European Union:“— Mr Giles Entikap, charge d’affaires
“— Ms Vazquez-Horyaans, head of section
“— Ms Isabelle Ribot, attaché
“— Mr Armin Rabitsch, consultant
“— Ms Gaelle Deriaz, consultant. . .”
On September 3 2013, Mr Chikwana responded:
“Reference is made to your minute dated 29th of August 2013.
“Your letter was forwarded to the Honourable Chief Justice who has authorised me to give the following response:
“Members of the Constitutional Court and Electoral Court do not hold meetings with anybody other than the litigants or their legal representatives regarding matters that are pending before the respective courts.
“Accordingly, it would be inappropriate for me to facilitate the meeting you have requested.”
While Ambassador Dell’Ariccia was trying to conceal his “undiplomatic” request through the letter to Mr Chikwana, a junior officer in his office, Mr Entikap, was busy implementing an even more provocative Plan B that left Cde Chinamasa seething with anger.
Last Wednesday Mr Entikap led a delegation comprising the EU officials listed above to a meeting with Cde Chinamasa at the Zanu-PF Headquarters where he misrepresented facts, saying the delegation comprised of experts on electoral issues.
The delegation was meeting Cde Chinamasa in his capacity as Zanu-PF deputy secretary for legal affairs and they left the meeting an embarrassed lot after they were dressed down.
Speaking to The Sunday Mail last Friday, Cde Chinamasa explained:
“They presented themselves to me as experts on electoral issues who had been mandated by the EU to make assessment of our electoral system. They said they make such assessments the world over and they wanted to interact with me over our electoral system, which is what happened in that meeting.
“At the end of the meeting, they then asked, through Mr Entikap who was accompanying them, if I could clear a meeting of this group with judges of the Electoral Court and judges of the Constitutional Court.
“I must say, I blew my top. It’s unheard of that you have people coming to meet with your judiciary over matters which are before them or even on any other matter. Judges do not decide policy, if issues to be discussed were about policy.
“I was very angry that they would have the temerity to ask for a meeting with judges before whom are election petitions.
“I told them off that this was unacceptable because they are seeking to influence the courts in their consideration of matters which are before them.
“And that they are seeking to sway them in a particular direction and that they are undermining, by their very request, the independence of the judiciary. This is a matter which goes to the core of the judiciary.
“I don’t even meet the judges even as minister and no one else in Zimbabwe does that and yet you have these people from the European Union, which we all know has basically condemned our elections, coming and wanting to meet these judges when all of us know that there are election petitions pending.
“So I told them off. What I didn’t know was that when they said they wanted me to clear the meeting, they had already written to the Chief Registrar requesting him to facilitate the meeting.
“Fortunately, the registrar responded and he gave them the correct position. A court cannot have meetings to discuss cases pending before them with people other than the litigants if they are not represented or with their legal representatives. Where they are not represented, yes, the court can meet the litigants, but where they are represented, it’s not even right for the court to meet litigants alone without the presence of their legal practitioners. It’s unheard of. What has been sought here is basically uncouth, undemocratic and it undermines the independence of the judiciary.”
Cde Chinamasa accused the EU of double standards, saying the request clearly showed that the regional grouping has no respect for the country’s institutions.
“This is coming from the very countries which boast of promoting the rule of law, which boast of promoting the independence of the judiciary and they are on the forefront of undermining our judiciary. You can understand the double standards, the duplicity of these countries. They don’t respect our institutions. They wouldn’t do this in their own countries or allow anyone else, let alone anyone else from outside their countries, including ambassadors to meet their judges to discuss cases which are pending before those judges. So it’s very clear that they have no respect for our institutions and they practise double standards,” explained a visibly angry Cde Chinamasa.
He said after discovering that their sinister move had been shot down, Mr Entikap later apologised and left the meeting embarrassed.
“When they discovered that their request had provoked me, they said, ahh, no we understand. They were apologetic, but very embarrassed. They seemed quite surprised by my quick and angry reaction. They were shocked that I responded in that fashion, but it was a correct response. We should not allow other people, other countries to come and undermine our institutions here,” said Cde Chinamasa.
One of the country’s top lawyers, Mr Terrence Hussein, expressed shock that Ambassador Dell’Ariccia had the guts to write such an undiplomatic letter.
“I am really, really, surprised that the ambassador did such a thing. It’s unheard of to do that. The Zimbabwean ambassador to Belgium or any other country for that matter, an ambassador for any country can never dream of writing such a letter to the Chief Justice of any country because it’s undiplomatic.
“If there was any need, the ambassador should have written to the Minister of Justice, who is the political face of the justice system in Zimbabwe. The Supreme Court of the US or any country in the world would not accept such a letter from an ambassador or anyone. It’s just not done. I don’t know whether it’s ignorance or what, but on this one, the ambassador was badly advised,” said Mr Hussein.
Constitutional law expert Professor Lovemore Madhuku at first was too stunned to hear that Ambassador Dell’Ariccia could do such an “unthinkable thing.”
“It’s really shocking that the ambassador did that. I just can’t believe it because the request does not make sense from both the diplomatic and legal point of view. I, however, think this request was done out of disrespect of institutions that exist not only in Zimbabwe but Africa. Such a thing is unthinkable outside Africa. The judiciary does not discuss any matters with anyone.
“If anyone wants to know what the judges think, he or she reads the judgment on the particular case. Judges are not allowed to discuss pending or cases resolved by themselves. That way the independence of the judiciary is guaranteed,” said Prof Madhuku.
He said the response from the Chief Justice was “correct in principle but was too polite for this kind of interference. I think the Chief Justice should have ignored the letter and hand it over to the Executive which was supposed to tell the ambassador to go to hell.”
The undiplomatic request by Ambassador Dell’Ariccia comes hard on the heels of the “blatant lie” by the British Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Ms Deborah Bronnert, who made claims on Sky News soon after the July 31 elections that 10 000 voters were assisted to vote in a constituency where 17 000 voters cast their vote.
Ms Bronnert had been stung by Zanu-PF and President Mugabe’s resounding victory and when she was confronted to substantiate her claims, she failed to do so, drawing brickbats from many Zimbabweans.
“This (disrespect for African institutions) is a new form of imperialism that Africa should fight with the same determination and stamina that was shown by those who fought to liberate the continent,” concluded Prof Madhuku.
Labels: ALDO DELL'ARICCIA, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, PATRICK CHINAMASA
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(TALKZIMBABWE) MDC-T lawyers ignorant or deliberately dishonest: Madhuku
This article was written by Our reporter on 2 September, at 19 : 57 PM
THE new Constitution dictates that a mayor must be selected from elected councillors and the MDC-T’s reading of the Supreme Law is wrong, Professor Lovemore Madhuku has said.
The National Constitutional Assembly chairperson – a Constitutional Law expert – expressed shock at the ignorance of the Constitution by the MDC-T who participated in the constitutional exercise.
The MDC-T vigorously campaigned for a “Yes vote” during the referendum and even boasted of being the brains behind the new Constitution whose provisions it does not seem to understand.
The MDC-T selected outgoing Justice and Legal Affairs deputy Minister Obert Gutu – a lawyer – as Harare mayor. It has also picked National University of Science and Technology lecturer Mr Mandla Nyathi as the new Bulawayo mayor. It went further and appointed its Chitungwiza deputy spokesperson Mr Isaac Manyemba as mayor for the dormitory town.
“Under the new Constitution, you cannot be a mayor if you are not an elected councillor.
“The Urban Councils Act still provides that any person may be elected as mayor like what happened with Mr Muchadeyi Masunda but that position has now been invalidated by the new Constitution in Section 265 (2),” Professor Madhuku said.
Mr Masunda was elected Harare mayor when he was not an elected councillor using provisions of the Urban Councils Act because the new Constitution was not yet promulgated.
Reads Section 265 (2) on general principles of provincial and local government: “All members of local authorities must be elected by registered voters within the areas for which the local authorities are established.”
Professor Madhuku said the interpretation of the above section hinges on the meaning of the word “member”.
“A person cannot be a member of a local authority without having been elected.
“The only persons elected currently are councillors and only one of the councillors may become a mayor.
“Section 265 (2) admits of no other interpretation except that which says a mayor is a member and therefore must be elected by elected voters,” he said.
Professor Madhuku said lawyers within the MDC-T were either ignorant of the Constitutional provision or were deliberately being dishonest.
“I was deliberately keeping quiet in the hope that some lawyers in the relevant political circles could raise that key provision.
“They were neglecting or choosing to be dishonest and we have to set the record straight,” he said.
In appointing mayors, the MDC-T argues that Section 272 of the new Constitution allows it to do so.
Section 272 (1) states that, “At its first sitting after every general election, a provincial council must elect a chairperson from a list of at least two qualified persons submitted by – the political party which gained the highest number of National Assembly seats in the province concerned”.
Professor Madhuku dismissed the MDC-T argument saying Section 272 “has nothing to do with councils” as it applies to a different layer of governance.
“For you to be a mayor the initial step requires you to be an elected councillor. Section 265 (2) is one of the elements in the new Constitution designed in the spirit of devolution. No one should exercise power without some input from voters,” he said.
Professor Madhuku said the “little devolution in the Constitution” would militate against the decision by the MDC-T leadership to impose a mayor in Bulawayo who is not from the people.
Outgoing Local Government, Urban and Rural Development Minister Ignatius Chombo has since indicated that he will block any efforts by the MDC-T to appoint mayors outside elected councillors.
But last week Mr Tsvangirai’s office was adamant arguing its position on the matter was the correct one quoting Section 272.
“The new Constitution clearly stipulates that at the first sitting after every general election, a provincial council must elect a chairperson from a list of at least two qualified persons submitted by a political party which gained the highest number of National Assembly seats in the province.
“The Zanu-PF minister’s evil intentions to fight and destabilize the MDC-led councils are malicious and are bent on causing disharmony in the MDC local authorities’ leadership.
“It is obvious that since 2000, (Minister) Chombo has been at the forefront of destabilising the MDC-led councils with a view to causing popular disaffection against the MDC leadership,” read a statement released by the outgoing Prime Minister’s Office.
Labels: LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Accept you lost, Madhuku tells Tsvangirai
Friends no more ... Morgan Tsvangirai with Lovemore Madhuku at a campaign event
05/08/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
NATIONAL Constitutional Assembly leader, Lovemore Madhuku, has urged outgoing premier Morgan Tsvangirai to concede defeat saying there was no justification for questioning the outcome of last Wednesday’s elections after “voluntarily participating” in the vote.
The MDC-T party says it will, this week, mount a legal challenge against the elections which extended President Robert Mugabe’s 33-year rule by another five years after he trounced Tsvangirai, winning 61 percent of the presidential vote against 34 percent for his rival.
Tsvangirai has refused to accept the result, claiming Mugabe and his Zanu PF party carried out a “monumental fraud”.
However, Madhuku told a press conference in Harare Monday that the MDC-T leader should concede defeat and help move the country “out of the permanent election mode it has been for several years now”.
“It is the NCA’s firm view that the complaints raised against the 31 July 2013 poll by the losers do not raise anything new and cannot be used as a basis for rejecting the results of an election in which they participated voluntarily,” said Madhuku.
“It is not desirable to encourage a state of affairs in our country where political parties participate in an election with only two scenarios: either they win or they dispute the result. Losing must always be one of the scenarios. In the circumstances for this particular election, the complaints must be taken into account for the next elections and for the reform agenda which remains very much incomplete.
He added: “The NCA, on its part, is convinced that the votes cast on 31 July 2013 were the votes counted and announced. The NCA does not know the reasons for that pattern of voting. The essence of an electoral system based on a secret, one person one vote is that each of the voters can only be sure about the vote he or she has cast. Provided that the votes have been cast freely, the result is binding.
“The way forward is to focus on moving the country forward while preparing for next elections. The interests of this country require that we all move forward focusing on building the economy of the country, deepening its democratic systems, promoting peace and unity and encouraging all of us to participate in the public affairs of our country.”
Observers from the African Union and the regional SADC grouping said the vote was “free and peaceful” but the local Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) said the election was “seriously compromised”, claiming up to a million people prevented from voting.
However, Madhuku, who has previously been dismissed by Mugabe as a one-man band, claimed that ZESN was just “one individual with a letterhead”.
“I also read a statement (on elections) by organisations that only have a letterhead and one human being. You have a very good letterhead and you use that letterhead to just rush to say the elections are not credible and so forth,” he said.
“These are the people that have cheated the losers. They do not leave Harare. They do not know what the framework of this country is like. They do not interact with people. It is not right to develop an attitude developing in many civil society organisations right now where they believe it is just a pen and putting it on internet and just proclaiming that they were not credible.”
Regional powerhouse South Africa has since endorsed the elections, joined by Kenya, Namibia and Tanzania. Botswana however questioned the fairness of the vote and demanded an audit of the elections.
Western countries, led by the US and the UK, have also condemned the elections with Australia calling for a re-run of the vote in a development that raises doubts about the possibility that sanctions, currently suspended, could be lifted.
Madhuku said the position taken by the West suggests that they wanted a particular outcome.
“The West is coming up with what had been said by the American Government, what has been said by the British Government and Australian Government. It is quite disturbing when you get those people saying they (elections) were not credible and they seem to be suggesting that they will not recognize the outcome,” he said.
“The unfortunate effect of that is that it would appear that the West would then be seen as having wanted a particular result and that is unfortunate but we stand by our position as the NCA that the country must move forward.
“We must put the election behind us; simply accept the result. Go back to the drawing board, re-organise for the next elections and let the country move forward. We want peace in this country. We should all be proud of the fact that we have not had violent elections.
“The statement coming from the West may encourage people to start going out in streets and so on. The reason for going on streets must not be on the elections. It must be on other issues to do with bread and butter or to deepen our democracy.”
Labels: LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI
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(TALKZIMBABWE) Madhuku: Tsvangirai is ‘narrow minded’ and Biti is ‘arrogant’
This article was written by Our reporter
on 9 June, at 02 : 55 AM
Professor Lovemore Madhuku has described the MDC-T leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, as a “narrow-minded”.
The National Constitutional Assembly chairperson also said that party’s secretary-general, Tendai Biti, is an “arrogant politician whose political ambitions are destroying the MDC-T from within.”
Prof Madhuku also disclosed that members from both MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai and secretary-general Tendai Biti’s factions have been making a beeline to his offices.
The outspoken NCA leader said that his meetings with the disgruntled MDC-T members have left him convinced that Biti has ambitions to succeed Tsvangirai as party leader in 2016.
While MDC-T officials vehemently deny that the party is riddled with factionalism and that Mr Biti is leading what has since been dubbed “Project 2016”, Prof Madhuku makes interesting revelations.
He claims that some members of Biti’s faction are mulling the idea of extinguishing the little hopes that Tsvangirai has of winning the presidency in the forthcoming general elections so as to facilitate Biti’s ascendancy.
“I have come to know that Biti is leading a faction within MDC-T and he is working with people like Eddie Cross.
“If the MDC-T loses this election, they have to blame Biti and no one else because he is not advancing Tsvangirai’s interests,” he said.
“Biti is intolerant to divergent views and he can do anything to silence dissenting voices.
“I think he must form his political party that will push the line that investors are more important than the electorate,” he said.
Prof Madhuku said Tsvangirai is no saint either, describing the MDC-T leader as a “narrow-minded leader” who has not transformed from his days as a trade unionist.
He said the policies being pursued by the MDC-T are empty and aimed at continuously making Zimbabweans hewers of wood and not masters of their own destiny.
“The policies such as Juice are a clear sign that this guy (Mr Tsvangirai) is narrow-minded and sees everything through the eyes of a trade unionist.
“How else can one explain his devotion to taking everyone to the factory?
“Some in his party are still mentally colonised because they are saying we should not own our resources but concentrate on attracting Foreign Direct Investment.
“(President) Mugabe is right when he says those who colonised us are still interested in colonising us.
“Their intention is to colonise us through their companies,” said Prof Madhuku.
MDC-T spokesperson Douglas Mwonzora described reports of factionalism in his party as fictitious.
Labels: DOUGLAS MWONZORA, EDDIE CROSS, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NEOCOLONIALISM, TENDAI BITI
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Tsvangirai not above the law: Madhuku
02/06/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
NATIONAL Constitutional Assembly (NCA) chief, Lovemore Madhuku, has said Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was liable to contempt charges after accusing the country’s top court of overstepping its mandate when laying down a timeframe for new elections.
Tsvangirai – who has been pushing for new elections to be delayed to September – slammed the Constitutional Court when it ruled Friday that the new polls must be held by July 31.
“(The) ruling by the Supreme Court setting an election date is evidence that the court has overstepped its mandate,” Tsvangirai said immediately after the ruling was handed down.
“The Supreme Court has no power whatsoever to set an election date. In the true spirit of separation of powers, an election date remains a political process in which the executive has a role to play.”
But Madhuku said Tsvangirai’s remarks showed the MDC-T leader and his party were “ignorant of the law.”
“It is clear that what the Prime Minister has done is contempt of court. There is no doubt about that. He now wants to be seen as being above the law,” Madhuku said in an interview with the Herald Newspaper
“These people (Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party) are just ignorant of the law. They can destroy anything that stands in their way of political ambition. If it is the Supreme Court they will throw it away. If it’s ruling without Parliament they can do that.
“This is a very dangerous attitude for the country. They must know that constitutionalism is to have a good constitution in place which you must follow. Decisions relating to legal disputes are resolved by the Courts and Courts alone.”
Harare lawyer Terrence Hussein, who represented Mugabe in the case added: “The suggestion that the court overstepped its mandate is absolute nonsense.
“If there is anyone overstepping their mandate, it is the Prime Minister who should know better than to challenge the legal authority of a constitutional body. The court has the authority to act in the manner it did.
“The highest court has made a determination. The only way to overturn that decision is by having an Act of Parliament nullifying that decision. No other authority, even SADC, can do anything about it.”
Tsvangirai, who had opposed plans by Mugabe for an early election, recently toured the region to urge SADC leaders to press his rival over the implementation of further reforms before the polls can be held.
The regional grouping – which has helped facilitate negotiations between the coalition parties – is due to hold a summit over the elections this month.
Madhuku however, said the court ruling meant that the summit would now only discuss ways of funding the elections.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said the country does not have the estimated US$130 million needed to finance the elections.
“(The SADC summit) can only discuss about other things but not the proclamation dates while principals can only discuss about the actual dates,” said Madhuku.
“At the end of the day under the current circumstances, it is better for Zimbabwe to have a bad election than having no elections at all.”
Labels: LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Thatcher, Chavez and the signs of our times
17/04/2013 00:00:00
by Munyaradzi Gwisai
WHAT a month it has been since the March 16 referendum on Zimbabwe’s new constitution!
The giant of the global neoliberal classes, Margaret Thatcher, departs so soon after the Bolivarian titan of the most radical working people’s revolution in the last 50 years, Hugo Chavez, dies.
President Robert Mugabe’s spokesperson, Nathaniel Manheru, donning a fake Marxist cap, comes out guns blazing against International Socialist Organisation (ISO) revolutionaries, in defence of a mooted middle class-run opposition party by Morgan Tsvangirai’s oldest intellectual advisor, now adversary, the National Constitutional Assembly’s Professor Lovemore Madhuku. What is happening?
Telling is it not, that when millions across the globe mourn Chavez, the ditty “Ding-dong ding-dong the witch is gone” tops BBC charts and the British ruling class is not sure whether to honour this Colossus of the global neoliberal ruling classes with a state funeral or a ceremonial funeral? A lesson, perhaps, for this self-appointed ideological guru of the Zimbabwean national bourgeoisie, who sings himself hoarse shouting that a Tsvangirai bourgeois democratic comprador state will be a second Rhodesia – all too powerful for the masses to take on because it will hang on the aprons of the mighty imperialists.
The quandary the British ruling class finds itself in is not exactly surprising. You don’t carry out triumphal marches when Rome is burning! From Greece, Spain and Italy yesterday, Portugal, Cyprus today, and is it France tomorrow, the original heartland of capitalism writhes in painful and unending death argons, that potentially imperil this economic order, globally.
The situation has been worse for the comprador minions. Today Hosni Mubarak, formerly the giant of a ruthless and tyrannical African comprador ruling elite, lies dying in an Egyptian military prison hospital sentenced to life imprisonment. The billions of American dollars, subsidising the biggest and most powerful military machine in Africa, could not save him from rampaging and hungry youthful plebeians and proletariats ravaged to the bone by neoliberal capitalism.
And similarly, the other western comprador darling, Ben Ali, could not survive the same class storms in Tunisia. Peering over the events in the land of Hannibal, the Libyan dictator correctly read the situation and tried to rally his peers to the barricades shouting that what he saw in Tunisia was no less than Russia 1917 and had to be stopped at all costs. Unfortunately and fatally for him, his calls were in vain.
No Nathaniel, Rhodesia, the child of a then much stronger era of capitalism, is gone and is not coming back…kare haagari arikare. What frightens the ruling classes today is much more serious stuff, an existential threat: that is a global social revolution arising from the generalised and systematic failure of the capitalist system as dramatically heralded by the 2008 – 2009 global economic crisis. This Great Recession has revealed the fundamental problem of today’s society.
The economic relations that made capitalism so powerful have become outdated because of the massive development of technology and productive forces. A system based on production for profit, wage slaves, private property and the nation state and now dominated by fat cat financial capitalists, is structurally unable to absorb the massive and cheap products coming from highly advanced and globalised production systems concentrated in China and a few other places.
For the rest of the world, a de-industrialised wasteland becomes the new reality in which jobs and livelihoods are massacred as the real economy contracts and only the speculative financial capitalists prosper. This is the world that Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought into being and which is now coming apart at its seams.
The only solution is to socialise the global means of production, end the nation state and produce for human need and not profit. But capitalism cannot do that without abolishing itself. So all it can do is now look after its own through neoliberal austerity savagery against workers, rural farmers, youths, women and the urban and the rural poor – what MDC’s Tendai Biti calls “eating what we hunt.”
But ordinary people are waking up to the reality that only the politicians and the rich seem to be eating – and thus a storm of massive and unprecedented class struggles and social conflicts has been unleashed across the world. The pioneering revolts being in the weakest chain of the link, the Global South, namely the anti-IMF structural adjustment revolts of Africa, Asia and Latin America of the late 1980s and 1990s as well as those of Eastern Europe, the climax of all the above, probably being the Venezuelan revolution of the mid 1990s led by Hugo Chavez.
Thereafter, the crisis and revolts, reached the belly of the beast – Seattle, Genoa etc, and subsequently in the post-2008 Great Recession era reached a new qualitative stage – globalised crisis and revolts happening simultaneously and interchangeably in the global south and global north – a completely new phenomena which laid for the first time the basis of globalised resistance, as first reflected in the lowest level by the World Social Forum process.
Thus from Tunis, Tahir Square, Madrid, New York to London, back to Lagos, Mumbai, back to Chicago and latest and most explosively Marikana, thereby vindicating Nigerian revolutionary Baba Aye’s aptly titled “Era of crises and Revolts.”
And if Manheru was honest, it is the same fear that motivates his seemingly unlikely defence and apparent attempts at luring Prof Madhuku, the NCA and other nationalist-leaning sections of the middle classes and national bourgeoisie to form, in the now looming post-Mugabe era, a cross-party nationalist but still bourgeois and elite bulwark against this inevitable and rising storm of the working classes and the poor, urban and rural.
The professor who would not be a Ramaphosa
Beyond the current Mugabe/Tsvangirai or MDC/Zanu PF binary, Manheru envisages, post- Mugabe, a monumental cross-party re-organisation of local elites or ruling class re-alignment, between the nationalist sections and the bourgeois democratic but western-leaning comprador neoliberal sections. Kenya is the model, where Daniel Arap Moi’s protégé, Uhuru Kenyatta, under the cover of the Jubilee Alliance, has successfully led a resurrection of the old KANU, against the western supported comprador CORD alliance of Raila Odinga.
Incredible that the latter, the so-much loved pioneer of opposition politics in Kenya starting with FORD, even jailed for six years on treason charges, should today lose to this princeling of the once so-reviled KANU dictatorship, “the Mount Kenya Mafia.”
As in Kenya, the two major emerging poles amongst elites will be a western-leaning neoliberal and comprador consortium anchored by a Tendai Biti-led MDC-T but drawing from Zanu PF “moderates” that Manheru says are already fighting their battles from within for now. On the other, is possibly a more radical nationalist and national bourgeois-based coalition. At the heart of this will be the current Zanu PF nationalist hardliners, Mugabe’s true heirs, but also drawing from formerly pro-MDC middle class elites who are now moving in a nationalist and anti-imperialist direction.
This re-alignment amongst our elites is already underway, pioneered by Simba Makoni, Dumiso Dabengwa and today Tracy Mutinhiri, in one direction, and Prof Jonathan Moyo, Gabriel Chaibva and now it seems Prof Arthur Mutambara in the other direction. But post-Mugabe, the flood-gates will open, involving very very big fish from Zanu PF, who indeed must be encouraged by the warm embrace Mutinhiri has received.
For Manheru though, the real big fish from the other side, for any future emerging nationalist coalition is Madhuku. And correct he is. Arguably, after Tsvangirai, Madhuku is the most popular political figure of the pro-MDC oppositional forces, certainly amongst its rank and file – the heir apparent who could, if he so chose, easily brush aside all the current pretenders to the Tsvangirai throne, very much as Cyril Ramaphosa has done in the ANC.
But Madhuku has walked away, seeming to have chosen a different route, increasingly assuming not only a rabid anti-MDC stance, but preparing to launch his own party, post-elections, on a clearly nationalist and anti-western basis, a fact that has incensed Nathaniel’s antithesis twin, Muckracker, of the Zimbabwe Independent.
Like Manheru, Madhuku instinctively realises that given the above described swelling social class storms buffeting modern capitalism, especially the western variant, and in which the questions of the day will be resolved by iron and blood, the future does not belong to comprador western puppetry. The fate of Mubarak, Ben Ali and now Odinga shows as much. A fact which exposes the key weakness of Manheru’s claim of a strong neoliberal Tsvangirai state.
Parties of elites that will stand a chance are only those that make a partial disengagement with imperialism, especially the west, and based on a national bourgeoisie that will try and re-establish a fresh and hopefully better social contract with the still strong Chinese/BRICS block. But also ones that make some economic concessions to the revolting masses, that neo-liberalism refuses to make.
Mugabe, crucially through the radical land reform, and now the indigenisation agenda, pioneered such approach, after being stung by the 1996 – 2000 anti-neoliberal revolts, and has been richly rewarded with unlikely survival, unlike the likes of Kenneth Kaunda, Kamuzu Banda etc. Today Kenya again re-affirms this.
Drooling at how the KANU dictatorship has resurrected itself through such class-re-alignment strategy, Manheru too dreams the same for the nationalist hard-core of the Zanu PF regime, thereby poking Thomas Mapfumo’s “vakomana muchamhanya” in Mamvemve. And how sweet are such dreams in which, like the learned Greek slaves of the Roman empire eventually rewarded with peculium and libertus, Manheru too, finally emerges from the drudgery and shadows of mere bureaucracy and moves to the main stage and thus into light out of today’s back-stage of darkness or manheru!
Not to lose the plot, the above is the same reason Manheru rails so passionately against the ISO for its call on radical trade unionists, workers, women, students, youths and the urban and rural working class not to be deceived even by seemingly radical but still elite dominated parties and alliances, current and to emerge.
Instead, inspired by the Venezuelan trailblazer which is the only way bus drivers can turn into presidents, they must remain focused on building their own mass anti-capitalist and revolutionary parties and movements, towards, yes, that imminent reality that sends chills of fear down the spines of Manheru’s masters: “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Using the above dialectical analysis of the global crisis of capitalism and the class revolts it is unleashing, Manheru’s attack on ISO for allegedly aligning with the comprador MDC and not the nationalist Zanu PF becomes shallow. Just as he admits that both parties are not homogenous and in fact in future a re-alignment of their elite elements likely, the same applies to ISO.
It is perfectly legitimate for revolutionaries to seek to build a long term relationship with the radical rank and file working class base of the MDC, by not alienating them on a transitory issue like the coming elections, when the bourgeois-democratic question arising from the Zanu PF dictatorship still looms large. The radical rural peasantry remains a project for the future, as such class remains yoked to the nationalist Zanu PF petite bourgeoisie, due to “the halo” of the liberation war, land reform and above all Mugabe.
The more realistic and strategic platform is the urban working class, but which is still also yoked to Tsvangirai. Not surprising because the MDC and he are products of their own inspiring class struggles. But the above swelling class and social struggles mean that this may not remain so for long, as the Vote No results in towns show, moreso under a neoliberal Tsvangirai presidency, which will finally and fully expose him and the MDC for their betrayal of the masses.
In a post-Mugabe near-future of growing and open class war, or Thomas Mapfumo’s “Varombo kuvarombo Vapfumi Kuvapfumi,” the possibilities of re-uniting the urban and rural struggles of the masses, which got so tantalisingly close in 1997, can once again become real. Defeating Mugabe and his dictatorship will most likely spur major working class confidence, likely to be translated into an eruption of social and class struggles, if history is anything to go by, as the defeat of the Ian Smith-Abel Muzorewa colonial regime did in 1980, unleashing a massive wave of rank and file strikes and farm invasions.
This is the dialectic of the necessary compromises radicals sometimes have to make. Thus we learn from the Russian Putilov mutineers going in alliance with the Czarist pawn, Father Gapon in 1905 or the Bolsheviks in 1917 rushing to the barricades to defend the equally comprador Kerensky government against reactionary Kornilovists. The other lesson being, perhaps as Joseph Mutero and the Zvishavane Sounds’ Mutongi Gava Maenzanise would warn Munhu, under conditions of real or threatened absolute tyranny, all democrats, regardless of weighty differences over constitutional affairs, must rally together, or all risk facing the fate of Ken Saro Wiwa and Moshood Abiola.
Thus Manheru’s real fear, like capitalists the world over today, is this coming storm of the hungry and rising masses, led by the workers. But masses whose struggles are still to deliver the mortal blow against the capitalist system because, disoriented, and class consciousness in its infancy, and without yet real mass global revolutionary movements of their own, they sometimes and often mistake who is the real devil on the cross. Thus it’s not only been an era of revolts but the barbarism that Rosa Luxembourg warns of, evident in post-Saddam Iraq, Kenya 2007 and Syria today.
Only lived experience and actual struggles under the leadership of the modern proletariat will de-colonise the mind and hasten the sure coming real and defining battles against this historically fated but still fighting ruling class. It is the dawn of the next society, communism, which Manheru sees on the horizon and so much fears, and tries to forestall by his feeble railings. The compass lies not with Alexander Herzen but Bolsheviks supporter, Maxim Gorky and his “Mother”!
Thus radical workers, youths, rural farmers, activists and revolutionaries must not be deceived by the above re-alignment of class forces amongst the elites, even seemingly radical ones – it is their own class parties they are building and re-aligning for looming future class battles against the working classes. The focus must remain the construction of working people’s own radical anti-capitalist and revolutionary parties and movements built on a regional and global basis, to properly equip our side in the coming battles and which war, history teaches, is for us to win. And thanks to Manheru for his advice to our side.
In his tongue in the cheek condemnation of “Gwisai’s Germany” via Rosa Luxemburg Foundation agency, he gives back-handed but nonetheless real advice to today’s working class. Of course, while the RLF as a socialist based foundation may give solidarity internationally, the point of this ideologue of a party still receiving largesse, reportedly from the Moxtons of this world and previously the Tiny Rowlands, IMF and World Bank, is valid.
As Madhuku has also correctly pointed out, the western imperialists fund in order to maintain global hegemony. So too, is it dangerous for trade union and social movements, radicals as well as revolutionaries to turn permanent, strategies hatched out of desperation from the imploding economic social order of the hyper-inflation years. No genuine radical trade union, student or social movement let alone revolutionary movement will be built from donor funds or bosses funds, whether given directly or indirectly through NECs etc.
The lessons from the World Social Forum, including the Zimbabwean one, and the Anti Privatisation Forum and Landless Peoples Movement in South Africa, is that such funds destroy internal movement democracy and accountability of the leadership to the rank and file and enable middle class gate-keepers to pacify and sell out struggles and movements to hostile capitalist forces.
Hard, painstaking it may be, but the working classes will have to build and fund their own movements, from the bottom to the top. But doing so in the concrete knowledge that, as Marx and Engels so precinctly revealed, the wheels of history are now moving quicker and quicker for Manheru’s masters to meet their ultimate fate, one which the Iron Lady after such haunting tribulations at the end of her reign was clearly not up to facing again.
Let Manheru and the rich classes that he sings his supper for, tremble – the working class demands its space on the global and historical stage and its time has arrived!
Munyaradzi Gwisai is a former MP and country representative of the International Socialist Organisation. E-mail him: munyagwisai@gmail.com
Labels: LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, MUNYARADZI GWISAI, NATHANIEL MANHERU
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(TALKZIMBABWE) Tsvangirai: weak leader receiving bad advice
This article was written by Professor Jonathan Moyo on 7 April, at 00 : 43 AM
Is President Robert Mugabe required to issue the proclamation fixing the date of the next harmonised general election in consultation with Prime Morgan Tsvangirai — who must give his consent — in terms of Schedule 8 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe which defines the legal basis of the GPA government?
The answer is No. Absolutely not. There’s no legal requirement of that kind at all in Schedule 8 or any other part of the Constitution.
This is notwithstanding widespread propaganda peddled by the MDC formations, their media mouthpieces, their NGO affiliates, their donor supporters who have wasted US$2,6 billion in their regime change agenda over the last four years and their so-called legal experts — who apparently have become more concerned with making money than making legal sense — Wwho have each and all been falsely claiming that President Mugabe must in terms of Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 19) Act, 2009 seek Tsvangirai’s consent before fixing the polling date of the forthcoming elections and the date of the sitting of the nomination court for those elections.
Section 20.1.3(q) of Schedule 8 of the Constitution clearly provides that “The President may, acting in consultation with the Prime Minister, dissolve Parliament”. It is very clear from this equally clear provision which has been seriously misunderstood that the reference in question is to “the dissolution” of Parliament and not to “the proclamation of an election date” or “the fixing of the date of the sitting of the nomination court” for that election.
One does not have to be a lawyer to see or understand the constitutional difference of night and day between a Presidential dissolution of Parliament on the one hand and a Presidential proclamation fixing the polling date and fixing the date of the sitting of the nomination court.
Yet and rather astonishingly, there have been self-indulgent and in fact misleading claims whose pathetic fallacy has been that President Mugabe has been seeking to dissolve Parliament without consulting Tsvangirai in alleged violation of Section 20.1.3(q) of Schedule 8 of the Constitution. For example — in his embarrassingly failed bid to be joined as a fourth respondent in the by-elections case that was won by President Mugabe last Friday — Tsvangirai falsely told the High Court under oath that “I take note that the applicant (President Mugabe) has indicated that he will dissolve Parliament and call for harmonised election on or before or before the 29th June”.
There was however, as there still is, no evidence either before the court or in the public domain of President Mugabe’s alleged indication that “he will dissolve Parliament”. President Mugabe has been very aware that Parliament will be dissolved by operation of the law on June 29. The only issue which has been exercising his mind as his sole constitutional responsibility about which he does not have to consult anyone and which he has not decided is when to fix as the date of the harmonised elections and as the date of the sitting of the nomination court.
In the circumstances — and with reference to the current discussions or debate on the matter — it is very clear that President Mugabe did not seek the dissolution of Parliament in the recent High Court case on by-elections which was decided in his favour last Friday as that would have been meaningless given the legal position that Parliament will be automatically dissolved on June 29 by operation of the law.
Indeed the President has not sought any dissolution of Parliament and he will not seek it simply because he does not have to seek it at all in view of the compelling fact that the dissolution of Parliament is inevitably coming on June 29 by operation of the law whose effect does not require any consultation with anyone let alone Prime Minister Tsvangirai who appears to be dying to be consulted.
It is therefore necessary for everyone, especially the usual noise-makers who have a bad habit of speaking with open mouths and shut minds, to understand that Section 20.1.3(q) of Schedule 8 of the Constitution which provides that “The President may, acting in consultation with the Prime Minister, dissolve Parliament” is no longer a relevant law in practical terms because its GPA effect has been overtaken by events on the ground. This is because the impending dissolution of Parliament at midnight on June 29 does not have to be decided or proclaimed by President Mugabe as it will be automatically done by operation of the law.
Parenthetically — and for the avoidance of doubt as to why Section 20.1.3(q) of Schedule 8 of the Constitution was enacted — the dissolution of Parliament would have been an issue had it become necessary within the life of the GPA well ahead of the mandatory expiry of the constitutional life of the current Seventh Parliament on 29 June. When the GPA was signed by Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations on September 15, 2008 the general understanding was that the three parties would form a coalition government that would not last the full duration of the life of the Seventh Parliament with the expectation that there would be a general election some 24 months or so down the line. That eventuality which was quite possible would have necessitated an early dissolution of Parliament by President Mugabe which would have required him to consult Tsvangirai in terms of Section 20.1.3(q) of Schedule 8 of the Constitution which is a direct product of the GPA.
But with less than 100 days to go before the automatic dissolution of Parliament on June 29 by operation of the law, Section 20.1.3(q) of Schedule 8 of the Constitution is literally now water under the bridge. What remains to be decided and proclaimed by President Mugabe — without a constitutional or even GPA obligation to consult Tsvangirai — is the fixing of the date of the forthcoming elections and the date of the sitting of the nomination court for those elections. It is needless to say that the proclamation will of course have to take into account the constitutional fact that Parliament will stand automatically dissolved on June 29.
In the light of the foregoing, why have Tsvangirai, his media mouthpieces, his legal experts, his NGO affiliates and his donor founders and funders been falling on each other pretending that President Mugabe is contemplating dissolving Parliament without consulting Tsvangirai as Prime Minister when that is far-fetched nonsense with no legal basis? There are a number of reasons that explain the circus in Tsvangirai’s embattled camp.
Firstly, Tsvangirai and his MDC are facing electoral defeat and they can see it right in their own faces and they can feel it in their terrified hearts while they can understand it in their shut minds notwithstanding their open mouths which are spewing gibberish full of false bravado. The writing is on the wall, the forthcoming elections will make Tsvangirai and his MDC history. The most telling explanation why this is so was given by former MDC-T MP and University of Zimbabwe law lecturer Munyaradzi Gwisai who was widely quoted in the media last week saying Tsvangirai and his MDC “had the lost the advantage of the protest vote” that they enjoyed up to 2008.
Gwisai observed that, “Obviously the advantage of the protest vote of 2008 for the MDC is gone. The corrupt behaviour of its councillors and (cabinet) ministers has eroded that” rhetorically asking, “How do you expect workers to be encouraged when we have Elton Mangoma, a senior MDC minister supervising a ministry that dismisses a workers’ leader, Angeline Chitauro, for demanding a living wage when we have minister Paurina Mpariwa, failing for four years to issue minimum wages for domestic workers and other employees; when we have minister Lucia Matibenga refusing to meet public servants and the neo-liberal policies of finance minister Tendai Biti have not endeared the MDC with the people”.
Echoing Gwisai’s sentiments, another University of Zimbabwe law professor Lovemore Madhuku has boldly declared that “the MDC-T is no longer the people’s party that we formed in 1999. We cannot follow a person (Tsvangirai) who thinks the MDC is his personal project”.
When a political party is facing clear and present electoral defeat as is the MDC T, it typically does strange and irrational things by clutching at straws. The MDC T’s false claim that President Mugabe is planning to dissolve Parliament without consulting Tsvangirai in terms of Section 20.1.3(q) of Schedule 8 of the Constitution which is now water under the bridge given the impending automatic dissolution of Parliament on June 29 is evidence of an embattled party facing electoral defeat.
Secondly — and because it is facing inevitable electoral defeat — it is now clear that Tsvangirai’s MDC has been deserted by its legion of regime change experts that used to swamp its ranks. This is why Tsvangirai did not have quality legal or technical advice when he exposed himself by making an ill-advised court application in the by-election case which left him with egg on his bemused fat face.
Thirdly — and in the absence of his previous high powered foreign team of experts that have deserted him — Tsvangirai is having to make do with his clueless political advisor in the donor funded parallel structures of the Prime Minister’s office, Alex Magaisa, who is a lawyer by training and who taught the subject at Kent University in Britain before joining Tsvangirai in the deep end but whose understanding of law and politics in Zimbabwe has left more than a lot to be desired by merchants of regime change.
Magaisa is the clumsy architect of Tsvangirai’s embarrassing court application filed by Chris Mhike of Artherstone which had to be withdrawn in a huff before it was heard due to its fatal legal incompetence. WMagaisa claimed in some online media last Friday that Tsvangirai’s failed intervention to be included as the fourth respondent in the by-elections case won by President Mugabe was “a victory for good sense and democracy” and added falsely that “the Prime Minister correctly exercised his right to prevent the circumvention through judicial process of the general understanding that the setting of dates for harmonised elections is a matter of consultation between the principals of the GPA”.
There are two notable features of Magaisa’s comments that are quite disturbing given his office. One is that his proposition that “defeat is victory” is indeed uniquely MDC-T and it has been the root of electoral violence in Zimbabwe since the formation of the MDC-T in 1999. The other is that Magaisa’s fatuous claim that there’s a “judicial process of the general understanding that the setting of dates for harmonised elections is a matter of consultation between the principals of the GPA” proves that he is no better than a bush lawyer because there is no such judicial process and no law with that requirement. As already pointed out, the only law there is comes from Section 20.1.3(q) of Schedule 8 of the Constitution which provides that “The President may, acting in consultation with the Prime Minister, dissolve Parliament”.
But this law is not the same as the law enabling the President to proclaim the date of the election and the date of the sitting of the nomination court. In any event, Section 20.1.3(q) of Schedule 8 is no longer a relevant law in practical terms because its GPA effect has been overtaken by events on the ground such that Parliament will be automatically dissolved on June 29 not as a result of any action by President Mugabe but by operation of the law. The fact that Magaisa does not know this tells a complete story about the chaos, confusion and incompetence that are ruling in the MDC-T ahead of the forthcoming elections and explains why knives are reported to be out for the besieged Magaisa who is finding it difficult if not impossible to figure out what to “gaisa”.
Fourthly, the Magaisa saga and its court fiasco in the by-elections case last week raise serious questions about the internal state of affairs in the MDC-T and about why its secretary general — Tendai Biti —did not proffer better advice, counsel and legal leadership given that he is a lawyer of considerable standing in the national legal fraternity compared to Magaisa who has proven himself to be a clueless political disaster disguised as a Kent lawyer with little to show on the contested ground for his online reputation.
What was Tendai Biti’s role as the MDC- T’s secretary general and as a lawyer in his own right in the conceptualisation, construction and filing of Tsvangirai’s ill-fated court application in the by-elections case that President Mugabe won? Did Biti agree with the patently unwise application? Why has Biti remained so loudly silent on this very important constitutional matter? Is Biti not aware that there’s a difference between the dissolution of Parliament and the proclamation of an election date? More specifically, is Biti not aware that the dissolution of the Seventh Parliament will be by operation of the law on June 29 and that therefore President Mugabe is constitutionally enjoined to decide on the election date and to fix it along with the date of the sitting of the nomination court without consulting Tsvangirai?
While Biti ponders these and related questions, there is no need for him to explain the import of Section 20.1.3(q) of Schedule 8 of the Constitution which stipulates that “The President may, acting in consultation with the Prime Minister, dissolve Parliament”. It is very clear that this provision whose consequence has been overtaken by the fact that the Seventh Parliament will be automatically dissolved on June 29 has nothing to do with “the proclamation of an election date” for the forthcoming elections or “the fixing of the date of the sitting of the nomination court” for the election. The dissolution of Parliament will be a done deal by operation of the law and this means Tsvangirai can forget about being consulted by the law while the proclamation of the date of the election in view of that dissolution is going to be done by President Mugabe as his constitutional prerogative whose exercise or discharge does not require him to consult Tsvangirai either in terms of the current Constitution, or the GPA or the new Constitution which will be used to run the forthcoming elections.
Labels: 2013 ELECTIONS (ZW), JONATHAN MOYO, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI
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MDC-T inciting violence: Madhuku
Tuesday, 05 February 2013 14:52
Tinashe Farawo
National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) leader Professor Lovemore Madhuku has accused the MDC-T leadership of fanning violence ahead of the 2013 harmonised elections by using hate language against the party’s political opponents.
Prof Madhuku told The Sunday Mail soon after a Press conference in Harare today (Tuesday) that top party officials “usually take turns” to intimidate anyone who opposes their views.
He said such intolerance was retrogressive, citing slogans targeting particular individuals as constituting hate speech.
He fingered MDC-T secretary-general Mr Tendai Biti and his deputy, Mr Tapiwa Mashakada, among the culprits. Both Mr Biti and Mr Mashakada could not be reached for comment.
“We have heard very disappointing statements from their top leadership. They want us to believe that everyone who is against them is not standing for the country. The language is abusive.
“When we attended the funeral of Professor John Makumbe in Buhera, senior party leaders like Mashakada and Biti took turns to portray any Zimbabwean who does not subscribe to their thinking as unpatriotic.
“They used different words to describe all those who are against them. We do not expect such language. I was shocked by the level of intolerance. That kind of language is irresponsible considering that we are approaching elections.
“I think they are doing a disservice to the country. They are not representing the interests of the people. They have not done anything since they joined the inclusive Government; they have not even created employment.”
Addressing the Press conference, Prof Madhuku said the NCA was against the Draft Constitution compiled by the Constitution Select Committee, arguing that its crafting was not people-driven.
Labels: LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, MDC VIOLENCE
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Madhuku a Mugabe fanatic: MDC-T
21/11/2012 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T party launched an astonishing attack on NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku on Wednesday, accusing the constitutional law expert of being a fanatic of President Robert Mugabe. The MDC-T reacted angrily to Madhuku’s criticism of its leader over the stalled process to write a new constitution for Zimbabwe.
Madhuku, speaking at a conference for church leaders in Harare last Friday, had suggested Tsvangirai’s handling of the impasse was “childish”. He said the two MDC factions were being outflanked by Mugabe who had approached the issue with the “highest level of sophistication and intelligence”.
But in a statement, the MDC said Madhuku – whose NCA is opposed to a political party-led constitution – was “simply confused”.
“It is one thing for Professor Madhuku to constructively criticise our president and it is another thing to hurl empty insults at president Tsvangirai as if someone is on a Zanu PF payroll,” the party said.
“It is regrettable that Professor Madhuku does not seem to appreciate this impeccable reasoning on the part of president Tsvangirai. It is even more astounding that Madhuku does not appreciate the very positive achievements in this constitution.
“Maybe this is because he rejected this document before it was even written. This, in our view is a serious misinterpretation of the processes guiding the constitution making. The professor’s judgment is seriously impaired by his fanaticism on Mugabe and is indeed misguided.”
The three main parties in Zimbabwe’s coalition government are split on how to proceed with the new constitution following the release of the first draft in July.
A conference held in Harare last month recommended amendments to the draft, but the parties could not agree on the changes, with the MDC factions saying the draft should go as is to Parliament while Zanu PF has taken the position that the principals – leaders of the coalition parties – should sit and make amendments.
The Global Political Agreement, the pact underpinning the coalition, says all three parties must agree on the draft before taking it forward to a referendum, but such an agreement looks unlikely.
Madhuku said last Friday: “There is likely going to be a stalemate and, as usual, the MDC card is to blame Mugabe. A time will come when Mugabe says, ‘They have blamed me enough and this is how things are supposed to be done: going to elections under the current constitution!’
“Look at them (Zanu PF), what they have done. After the release of the draft constitution in July, the MDC said the document must be taken to the Second All-Stakeholders’ Conference and Zanu PF came up with its amendments.
"During the stakeholders’ conference, the MDC told its delegates that on every sentence they should say, ‘as it is’. On the other hand, Zanu PF pushed its amendments through. They will say the delegates have said it, who are you not to accept what the delegates have said? That is the highest level of sophistication and intelligence on the part of Zanu PF whether we like it or not."
But the MDC-T says the correct course is to keep the constitution a parliamentary process “in which principals must play a minimalist and largely facilitative role” – although this stance has so far stalled the project.
“In terms of the Global Political Agreement, COPAC must submit its draft and report to parliament. Only then can the executive through the Minister for Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs get seized of the document in preparation for the referendum. Any changes to this process are tantamount to rewriting the Global Political Agreement,” the party said.
Labels: LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, MDC FACTIONS
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Madhuku blasts Tsvangirai
Sunday, 18 November 2012 00:00
Sunday Mail Reporters
National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) leader Professor Lovemore Madhuku has criticised Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai for blaming President Mugabe and Zanu-PF for supposedly hampering the smooth flow of the constitution-making process, saying all national leaders should take full responsibility for political processes in the country.
Addressing church ministers on constitution-making in Harare last Friday, Prof Madhuku said it was morally wrong for the MDC-T leader to absolve himself and his party from challenges that might beset the country while heaping the blame on President Mugabe and Zanu-PF.
He said Mr Tsvangirai demonstrated "childishness" following disagreements over the Draft constitution. Prof Madhuku’s remarks came as the Prime Minister told MDC-T supporters at a rally at Murambinda Growth Point in Buhera yesterday that he was not going to meet President Mugabe over the Draft constitution.
He said the document should go straight to Parliament.
"I cannot sit down with (President) Mugabe to discuss the constitution. No, it should go to Parliament not to Tsvangirai and Mugabe," he said.
"When the referendum comes we are saying vote yes. Those who oppose this Draft with all its improvements are sending us back to Rhodesia.
This constitution is good but it is not perfect. It is not excellent."
Prof Madhuku on Friday said Zanu-PF is a sophisticated party with a lot of experience and intelligence.
He said President Mugabe would be justified to call for elections under the existing constitution if the writing of the new supreme law falls through.
"There is likely going to be a stalemate and, as usual, the MDC card is to blame Mugabe. A time will come when Mugabe says, ‘They have blamed me enough and this is how things are supposed to be done: going to elections under the current constitution!’" he said.
". . . Look at them (Zanu-PF), what they have done. After the release of the Draft constitution in July, the MDC said the document must be taken to the Second All-Stakeholders’ Conference and Zanu-PF came up with its amendments.
"During the stakeholders’ conference, the MDC told its delegates that on every sentence they should say, ‘as it is’. On the other hand, Zanu-PF pushed its amendments through. They will say the delegates have said it who are you not to accept what the delegates have said? That is the highest level of sophistication and intelligence on the part of Zanu-PF whether we like it or not."
The University of Zimbabwe law lecturer said national elections were inevitable.
"There is no doubt that elections are due next year. . .Elections are definite because it is dangerous to extend the mandate of this inclusive Government," he said.
Meanwhile, the Constitution Select Committee (Copac) says Zimbabwe will most likely hold its long overdue referendum on whether to stick with the Lancaster House Constitution or replace the Copac Draft in January next year.
In separate interviews, Copac co-chairs expressed doubt at the possibility of holding the referendum before the end of the year.
MDC-T co-chair Mr Douglas Mwonzora said it was now impossible for the negotiators to finalise the Draft constitution for it to be presented to Parliament.
"The referendum is not possible because the year is about to come to an end. We still have to reach a stage of presenting the Draft to parliament before we go to a referendum. Because of all this, I believe it will only be reasonable to have a referendum in January," said Mr Mwonzora.
Mr Mwonzora said that the Second All-stakeholders’ Conference report has been released and reveals that the delegates that scrutinised the Copac Draft constitution were a divided lot — a clear sign that there is still a long way to go before a resolution is reached.
"The January date which I believe is very possible, depends on the political will of the political parties. The report of the Second All-stakeholders Conference shows that there was no unanimity to the wholesale changes to the constitution.
"We first have to achieve unanimity and that will take time. After we are unanimous, we will take the Draft to Parliament. After Parliament then we can go to a referendum," said Mr Mwonzora.
Zanu-PF Copac co-chair Cde Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana believes that a referendum can only be achievable this year if the Draft constitution deadlock is broken within a reasonable timeframe.
"I remain optimistic, but a lot depends on how soon we will be able to break the deadlock. We need to speedily resolve all the sticking issues that have created this impasse. If we get over that then we can hold a referendum.
"My belief is that taking the document to Parliament would be a formality because Parliament is made up of the political parties that are pushing for a new constitution. If it becomes late for a referendum this year then I am confident that we will have it in January," said Cde Mangwana.
MDC co-chair Mr Edward Mkhosi refused to comment, saying he was attending to a personal engagement.
Labels: CONSTITUTION, COPAC, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI
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MDC-T ‘Yes’ campaign futile: Zanu PF
09/09/2012 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
ZANU PF has dismissed as “scandalous” and “futile” Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s weekend launch of a ‘vote yes’ campaign for the draft constitution, insisting
the document cannot be put to a referendum without the endorsement of all the three GPA parties.Addressing MDC-T supporters at the campaign launch in Harare, Tsvangirai ruled out further negotiations on the Copac draft. He said the constitutional reform process must be taken forward to a referendum leading to new elections. But Zanu PF officials said the MDC-T campaign was futile as long as there was no agreement between the GPA parties.
Said politburo member, Jonathan Moyo: “In the first place, this just shows that these guys have taken time-wasting to new heights because you cannot call on Zimbabweans to say ‘yes’ to nothing.
“The only draft that can be taken to a referendum should be agreed upon by the three parties to the GPA. Anything else is nothing and for Tsvangirai to say ‘yes’ to nothing is scandalous.
“Maybe this is a way of practising his wedding vows. If he wants to say ‘yes’ to (new love) Elizabeth (Macheka), he should not bother the rest of us.”
Tsvangirai weds Elizabeth next Saturday.
Zanu PF spokesman, Rugare Gumbo, added: “The MDC-T has an agenda to disrupt the constitution-making process.
“They are fully aware that they cannot go it alone and hold a referendum. Only the President has the legal mandate to call for a referendum. Theirs is a futile exercise and it will plunge them into the deep.”
The MDC formations have since endorsed the draft and are pressing for the document put to a national referendum.
But Zanu PF wants its proposed amendments discussed by Mugabe, Tsvangirai and MDC leader Welshman Ncube who are all due to meet on Monday. Tsvangirai, though, ruled out any further discussions.
“I am surprised by people who are saying the three principals are going to meet to discuss the draft constitution,” he said.
“I will not be part of that . . . I am saying let’s move forward because we are done with the draft. The Speaker (of the House of Assembly) should organise the Second All-Stakeholders.”
Ncube also said his party was already campaigning for a ‘yes vote’.
“We are holding our own rallies to support the draft,” he said.
“We accept that the process is not yet complete but we are also acknowledging that this draft was accepted by the select committee and the management committee where all the three parties signed for the draft so we cannot ignore that process.”
National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) chairperson, Lovemore Madhuku, said the MDC campaigns were premature.
“How do you call for a Yes Vote when the Second All Stakeholders’ Conference has not yet been carried out and the process of taking the draft to Parliament has not yet been done?
“It means that the MDC-T is not recognising these two important stages and is dismissing them outright.
“It confirms that the draft which they are supporting does not have the views of the people but it is their own constitution which they are campaigning for.”
Labels: CONSTITUTION, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC, NCA
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MDC-99, NCA close ranks over constitution
08/08/2012 00:00:00
by Jeffrey Moyo
THE Job Sikhala-led MDC-99 closed ranks with the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) to dismiss the country’s draft constitution as the work of politicians, and not the people as the document purports.
Sikhala said: “The protagonists who have been participating in the writing of the constitution have stated that the draft came out as a result of negotiations between the three political parties in the inclusive government.
“So if this thing has been a negotiated document, it means that this is not the constitution that belongs to the people of Zimbabwe, it is a three-party document which they agreed among themselves to be a document which they think represented the views of the people of Zimbabwe.”
Zimbabwe’s draft constitution – three years in the works – appeared stalled early last month following disagreements between the three parties over various provisions.
In the end, the document was sent to the parties’ negotiators who also led the power sharing talks in 2008 to smooth over the cracks.
NCA leader Lovemore Madhuku, whose organisation has campaigned since 2000 for a “people-driven constitution”, said the draft constitution was flawed.
Madhuku said the Parliamentary Constitution Select Committee (COPAC) which steered the constitutional reform had failed in its public duty, citing the failure to make publicly-available a so-called “national report” which acted as a guide to the drafters following nationwide public consultations.
Madhuku said on Tuesday: “We have made it very clear that we will not accept the new constitution. Where is the national report? It was expected to be there before the draft and at the moment we were supposed to be analysing what the people said and how it was incorporated into the draft but procedure was flouted and this is not acceptable.”
Sikhala and Madhuku – speaking seperately – also voiced opposition to a provision that would increase the number of MPs to 250 from the current 210 to accommodate more women. Both men say the parties could have achieved gender balancing without the need to create 30 more special seats for women.
“We don’t expect the return of a bloated parliament in our country; we already spend 73 percent of our budget on public sector pay,” Sikhala said.
The combative MDC-99 leader denied suggestions that his party was supporting Zanu PF, which is demanding amendments to the draft.
“Actually 85 percent of the draft’s content is supportive of Zanu PF ideas,” Sikhala said.
“This is a product of Zanu PF’s incestuous relationship with the other MDC formations.”
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T party and the Welshman Ncube-led MDC have both resolved to back the new constitution while insisting that they will block Zanu PF attempts to renegotiate certain clauses.
Zanu PF’s politburo meets in Harare on Wednesday night – the third such meeting – to try and come up with a position on the draft.
Zanu PF claims the drafters deviated from the "national report", further slowing down a process which has consumed over US$40 million.
Labels: CONSTITUTION, COPAC, JOB SIKHALA, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MDC FACTIONS
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'Zim's reforms shouldn't be about getting Mugabe out'
By Bivan Saluseki in Harare, Zimbabwe
Wed 01 Aug. 2012, 10:40 CAT
ZIMBABWE'S constitutional law expert Prof Lovemore Madhuku says it is wrong for Zimbabwe's reform agenda to be set around getting President Robert Mugabe out of power. And one of Zimbabwe's political think-tanks, Dr Ibo Mandaza, says Zimbabwe is far from a worst case scenario in terms of adherence to democratic tenets.
During a roundtable discussion with representatives of selected influential SADC media in Harare on Monday, Prof Madhuku said President Mugabe was aware that the West, some media organisations and the opposition wanted him out of power as their reform agenda.
"Everything is about Mugabe getting out. And he does not want to get out. He knows people want him out. That has been the difficult part. Everything is about Mugabe getting out. It's not what society ultimately wants. And that is the biggest mistake," Prof Madhuku said.
He said there was need to look beyond President Mugabe and address issues that would ultimately put in a leadership people desire.
Prof Madhuku suggested that reforms should revolve around having a good constitution and devolving power from the presidency.
He said he gets irritated with the agenda of embassies such as the US where every discourse was about getting President Mugabe out of power.
"I get irritated. I don't think we can get anywhere with such kind of reform," he said.
Prof Madhuku said reform should be deep and genuinely engaging of all parties.
He said the opposition was playing a very irresponsible role of just 'saying help us get Mugabe out.'
Prof Madhuku said currently, the US wanted free and fair elections in Zimbabwe without looking at the contents of the constitution which to him was a dishonest approach.
He said currently, the draft constitution provided for more powers of the President but the US was not talking about it because they were just concentrating on removing Mugabe.
Prof Madhuku said there was need to change the international perception of Zimbabwe in the SADC region.
And Dr Mandaza said despite the economic problems, Zimbabwe was far from worst case scenario in terms of democracy.
He said problems in Zimbabwe were being highlighted because of the country's geopolitical position.
Dr Mandaza said Zimbabwe had one of the most informed societies and the resources including a resilient citizenry.
He, however, said party lines had become very blurred in Zimbabwe and the ultimate focus was to get President Mugabe out irrespective of where they were getting their support.
Dr Mandaza said if President Mugabe was out of the equation, it would be very difficult for the opposition to manage power amongst themselves.
"They have failed to assert the reform agenda," he said.
Dr Mandaza also said even ZANU PF was dying at the hands of President Mugabe.
"It's not the party of liberation anymore. The UNIP experience appears to be what awaits ZANU PF. Here, there will be a possible emergence of a new party of under 50s," said Dr Mandaza.
Labels: LOVEMORE MADHUKU
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'Zim's reforms shouldn't be about getting Mugabe out'
By Bivan Saluseki in Harare, Zimbabwe
Wed 01 Aug. 2012, 10:40 CAT
ZIMBABWE'S constitutional law expert Prof Lovemore Madhuku says it is wrong for Zimbabwe's reform agenda to be set around getting President Robert Mugabe out of power. And one of Zimbabwe's political think-tanks, Dr Ibo Mandaza, says Zimbabwe is far from a worst case scenario in terms of adherence to democratic tenets.
During a roundtable discussion with representatives of selected influential SADC media in Harare on Monday, Prof Madhuku said President Mugabe was aware that the West, some media organisations and the opposition wanted him out of power as their reform agenda.
"Everything is about Mugabe getting out. And he does not want to get out. He knows people want him out. That has been the difficult part. Everything is about Mugabe getting out. It's not what society ultimately wants. And that is the biggest mistake," Prof Madhuku said.
He said there was need to look beyond President Mugabe and address issues that would ultimately put in a leadership people desire.
Prof Madhuku suggested that reforms should revolve around having a good constitution and devolving power from the presidency.
He said he gets irritated with the agenda of embassies such as the US where every discourse was about getting President Mugabe out of power.
"I get irritated. I don't think we can get anywhere with such kind of reform," he said.
Prof Madhuku said reform should be deep and genuinely engaging of all parties.
He said the opposition was playing a very irresponsible role of just 'saying help us get Mugabe out.'
Prof Madhuku said currently, the US wanted free and fair elections in Zimbabwe without looking at the contents of the constitution which to him was a dishonest approach.
He said currently, the draft constitution provided for more powers of the President but the US was not talking about it because they were just concentrating on removing Mugabe.
Prof Madhuku said there was need to change the international perception of Zimbabwe in the SADC region.
And Dr Mandaza said despite the economic problems, Zimbabwe was far from worst case scenario in terms of democracy.
He said problems in Zimbabwe were being highlighted because of the country's geopolitical position.
Dr Mandaza said Zimbabwe had one of the most informed societies and the resources including a resilient citizenry.
He, however, said party lines had become very blurred in Zimbabwe and the ultimate focus was to get President Mugabe out irrespective of where they were getting their support.
Dr Mandaza said if President Mugabe was out of the equation, it would be very difficult for the opposition to manage power amongst themselves.
"They have failed to assert the reform agenda," he said.
Dr Mandaza also said even ZANU PF was dying at the hands of President Mugabe.
"It's not the party of liberation anymore. The UNIP experience appears to be what awaits ZANU PF. Here, there will be a possible emergence of a new party of under 50s," said Dr Mandaza.
Participants noted that the narrative of Zimbabwe was one of the most intensely contested in the world.
Labels: CONSTITUTION, LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MUGABE
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Tsvangirai: The growl of a disembodied politician
Friday, 04 May 2012 22:09
Why is the Prime Minister sounding irritable these days, hardly a fortnight into his latest engagement? One would have thought with a coolant right in the home, our foremost minister would approach life sedately, approach it with coolness, calmness.
Not this week. He used the World Press Freedom Day to detonate fresh farts of anger and frustration, wholly aiming it at Webster Shamu, the Minister of Media, Information and Publicity. He did much more. He doled out threats, empty threats against a minister towards whose appointment he has zero say.
He admitted to as much, in the process revealing his own effeteness in the inclusive Government. He did much worse. He divided the inclusive Government, thereby abjuring the little symbolic authority he could have invoked for some modicum of control, for some modicum of empathy.
No worse insult
“I cannot fire a Zanu-PF minister, but if Shamu was an MDC minister, I would have fired him . . . I am saying to President Mugabe, Shamu should be fired.” Well, Shamu will not be fired, certainly not at the bidding of Tsvangirai. Shamu cannot be an “MDC minister” either, whatever that means. With the history Minister Shamu has, the rich history of struggle, measured against the sparse history of our man from Buhera, measured against the quisling politics of his party, it is a bit of an insult to wish such a ghastly prospect for Shamu. A bit of cruelty to wish Shamu, a war veteran, to answer to a man with such a dour of a history that our Prime Minister has. Indeed a history pockmarked by so many questions.
Costly inadvertence
Tsvangirai spoke about “MDC minister” and I wondered what that meant. I still wonder, to this hour, what that phrase means. Was the man abrogating the inclusive Government, in the process implying the imminence of elections? That would be good, very good, as it would suggest he is now at one with his boss, the President. Until now, Tsvangirai appeared to have been in denial, busy blowing insipid life into a thoroughly moribund political structure we call the inclusive Government. It is utterly dysfunctional, has been for quite a long while, too long a while for the goodness of this country.
If there are “MDC ministers”, that means there is no inclusive Government. That also means there is no Prime Minister. Only a president of some made-in-Britain quisling party called the MDC. By that nomenclature, that appellation, Minister Shamu has been discharged from any obligations, including ever responding to Tsvangirai in any of his pretences as the Prime Minister of this country.
I hope this is not an unintended consequence of Tsvangirai’s reading of bald speeches he least grasps, least understands before delivering them. If it is, too bad for him. As the Nigerians say, it is the first word that gets to Chukwu!
Ignorance with a loud mouth
But his diatribe had amusing moments. “There is no law in Zimbabwe,” opined our Prime Minister, “that obliges public officials to supply relevant information when requested to do so by the media or to respond to questions put to them. It is necessary to come up with a national information policy that deals with these issues.”
Really?
A man who has been prime minister of this country for three solid years, a man who has pontificated about Aippa from sunrise to sunset, from beginning of year to its end, such a man who promises us a new beginning, a new day, but who does not know that the country has such a law in place already, has had such a law since 2000? And that clauses covering his concerns are in fact hard behind the sleeves of Aippa? And that it is that portion of Aippa which his party wants re-christianed Freedom of Information Act? Does this man read? Do his speechwriters read? How does such ignorance supervise Government?
So many clues
Could that provide a clue to why the man does not know that the Standing Rules and Orders Committee, SROC for short, of which he is a part, actually participated in the setting up of the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe board which he claims Minister Shamu is refusing to reconstitute? Could that explain why he wants the ZBC board reconstituted outside parameters set in the law, parameters founded on political ambitions, never on the wishes of the Zimbabwean people. Where in the laws of this country is it a requirement that Shamu shall dissolve the ZBC board all to staff it in a manner that represents and pleases Zanu-PF and the MDC formations?
Which law is he deriving his so-called instructions from? Or he wants the ministry to run like Harvest House? And if elections have to wait for the constitution to finish, why can’t the so-called FOIA which as subsidiary law must get its cue from the same constitution which triggers elections? Why can’t this man be coherent? For once? Or limit himself to things that do not require thinking? And what is the symbolism of his addressing an occasion convened by a chapter of a Namibia-based
NGO funded by a Hungarian-turned-American capitalist? And doing so in some township called Kuwadzana which is under an MDC MP who happens to be “an MDC minister” and Shamu’s opposite number in party affairs?
Wasn’t the governmental ZMC sponsoring a national event towards the same end? Why wouldn’t the Prime Minister come to a national platform to talk about goings-on in Government? Does not the Prime Minister have on his desk a copy of a request for money needed to fund the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust, a copy of a letter sent to another “MDC minister” called Tendai Biti?
He wants Shamu to fund ZMMT from his wallet? Or wants him to launch another institution which will wither on the vine? Is this a strategy of attacking Zimpapers which, as a subsidiary, will bear the burden of funding its own “mother”. Give Zimpapers needless cost centres so you weigh it down for its competition to take full advantage of? Let someone tell the man he is stealing on a quarry that has seen, that is wide awake.
Compounded tensions
The issue though is not only to raise all these questions, important though they may be. The issue is to explain Tsvangirai’s unhinged conduct, to explain the pressures around him which are making him so irritable, so irrational, so irascible in the season of supposedly tempering love passion. It is in exploring such dimensions to his personality than one begins to wade into the larger politics of the country.
Towards the end of last month, Tsvangirai used Lovemore Madhuku to manage the compound tension between him and his colleagues in the MDC, between him and his party’s makers or donors from the West, indeed between him and his affiliates, principally the ZCTU. He is a man under tremendous pressure, a man unsure of his political future. And since all of the above factors are unanimously anti-Zanu-PF, he seeks rallying them behind him through a lifting altercation with Zanu-PF, their collective hate pet. We are sure to see more such provocations in the intervening weeks and months. But let me, dear reader, situate the whole matter for you.
Banking on metaphysics
Out of desperation, the MDC strategy for elections is principally partly providential, partly resting on Zanu-PF’s own foibles and blunders. The party is in daily prayer, literally, praying for a bad omen. It hopes the hand of God or the arm of the clock may remove or rest the Zanu-PF presidential candidate for it. Its daily prayer is that the President gets smote by the hand of God. Hence this hysteria in the MDC-linked media. Hence this resort to phony bishops from afar in the hope of dire prophecies.
In that regard, the party functions in the realm of, and is banking on metaphysics, on the divine or the occult. Coupled by hopes in the hand of time. The party’s hope is that time and illness incapacitates the President, which is why it has been playing a delaying game. Keep stretching the constitutional process until 2013; keep wailing inconclusively about outstanding issues until 2013. Let time bring its own infirmities into the whole electoral equation so the way is cleared for Tsvangirai.
That is the MDC hope, a hope so worrisome to Americans who see this as evidence of the absence of a winning strategy.
But the President recently whispered something into the ears of the Prime Minister who now knows the game may not be delayed much longer. Soon we are going for elections and there is little the Prime Minister can and will do. And he knows it. Indeed he is acknowledging this through his increasingly partisan pronouncements, his jittery conduct, his mounting irritability such as we saw at World Press Freedom Day.
Impolitic professorial disclosures
But all this is inter-party pressure. What is wearing down the Prime Minister is what is happening around him, within his own party, between him and his sponsors who have other ideas for his future and that of the MDC party. He is desperately trying to manage that most fluid situation, and part of that management was subcontracted to Professor Madhuku.
Madhuku was spot on in his disclosure last week, disclosure which was only news to those who are not in the know. What I had not budgeted for was the level and degree of candor in the professor’s disclosure. He went impolitic, went too far in his disclosures. For that you cannot help but admire him. Crises are diffused by extraordinary disclosures, or so he thinks: “There is a mentality throughout Western embassies that MDC-T must be led by an academic . . . They have confided in and consulted me on the best candidate to lead the party instead of Prime Minister Tsvangirai . . . We know that they are sponsoring a lot of programmes at Harvest House in a bid to have an academic lead the party.”
Succession is foreign issue
What Madhuku does not know is that these Westerners have consulted wider than him alone. They have been flying the kite and many saw it as it lamely sought to take off, lamely sought to defy the gravity of Zimbabwe’s peculiarly heavy and damp politics.
Madhuku only needs to remember that before Western eyes, we are all in the same basket of buffoons, political infants who can be played one against the rest. And it is not fortuitous that the succession game is playing out in all political parties in the country. Succession is not a Zimbabwean issue. Rather, it is an issue raised on behalf of Zimbabweans by outsiders who seek to patch up their political experimental constructs which have failed to oust Mugabe for a decade and two. Mugabe must make way, they demand.
But Morgan Tsvangirai does not measure up, they opine. Their latest bid, again desperate, is for cross-party alliances, which is why they need to create a pool of unwanted or rejected politicians across parties, so they build raw material for new, amalgamated politics.
Madhuku must know that, surely? He used to be in the same game, which is why he believed NCA had embedded its membership in opposition parties, principally the MDC-T, for the duration of its time-honored stay in the quasi-civic chrysalis. It is this project which has foundered, forcing him to cast his lot with MDC-T, on whose ticket he must now run. But succession politics do not belong to the native. Was it Fanon who said the mind of the oppressed native is not his own; rather it is an artifact of the oppressor?
Saving Tsvangirai to save himself
What Madhuku did not disclose is that apart from the fact of his own bankruptcy as the NCA, he is having to jump into the political fray now or never. His prospects as a quasi-political outfit are as good as extinct. And he has no financial wherewithal for the NCA, or for anything else outside of established political parties which are also struggling for foreign patronage. But his entry into formal politics is fraught, very fraught. He is jumping in to save Tsvangirai in order to save himself. That is as complex as the matter is.
He has made it known that he is not ready to pit himself against Robert Mugabe, never will be. To do so, he says, is to pit oneself against history and its icon. It is to swim against the tide. Mugabe is a founder president and only fools run against beginnings of a people, against symbols of nationhood. His real wish is that Mugabe’s reign comes to a speedy end, so his own time may come soon enough. To that end, he wants an instrument which is not himself, with which to set aside one Robert Mugabe, possibly with zero collateral damage on himself. “It will be difficult for us to have support to take Mugabe out of power, Tsvangirai still has that. There are also ambitious people in MDC-T. There is a mentality in politics that to replace Mugabe is how polished you are and how well you can argue and anyone who talks well, but it’s the popular factor that counts. That’s what I want the Western colleagues to know.”
A win for whichever outcome
Cleverly, Madhuku is vouching for Tsvangirai’s candidacy for two reasons. He is blocking the ascendancy of a more youthful leader from within the MDC, a more youthful leader who may be a lawyer like himself, but who unlike him, may have the extra edge of a relatively more solid political grounding than his own, a grounding built while he himself was busy masturbating in the NCA.
And he took too long in self-excitement, not knowing when to stop. Today he walks away with the taint of running an organ of the MDC aground, running it dead. That smacks of failure, the more so given that NCA was a part hatchery for the MDC. But the rise of a youthful leader now to displace Tsvangirai would prejudice
Madhuku’s own chances, his generational chances. After all, African politics are notorious for granting extended longevity to incumbents who could easily run for the life of a generation.
Secondly, he is motivating Tsvangirai to be that instrument for facing Mugabe, with whatever outcome. A Tsvangirai who wins the elections will then mentor him for eventual successions, or battles towards it. He is courting goodwill in case of a happy outcome, which is why he is fighting in the corner of the Prime Minister against the Prime Minister’s internal enemies, real or imagined. A Tsvangirai who loses — as is most likely — will have denied Madhuku’s peers a headstart all the same. That, too, is good enough.
Disembodying the politician
What all aspirants in MDC are clear about is that a Tsvangirai who is badly mauled by Robert Mugabe in the next poll will inevitably bow out of the leadership of the MDC. Forever. And Tsvangirai himself seems to believe it too, if his recent prayer in Masvingo is anything to go by. Time, he said, was running out for him, he said, asking pastors to pray hard for him to become the country’s next president, lest he misses it for life.
Equally, Biti’s recent comments are very instructive: “In Morgan Tsvangirai we have a leader who is essentially the face of the struggle, the face of change in Zimbabwe. He is clearly the undisputed — un-disputable leader (sic) of the change struggle in Zimbabwe.”
I do not need to tell you, gentle reader, that both youthful leaders are echoing each other; that both are reading from the same script, indeed that both seek to pamper the villager towards his total defeat hoping to pick up the pieces, hoping for rich openings for their futures. And you notice both are touting Tsvangirai the person, neither speaking of Tsvangirai the electable programme. By extolling Tsvangirai the person, Madhuku is killing Tsvangirai the politician with possible constitutional agenda which Madhuku thinks shall raise his own presidential prospects.
The wily Biti is more far-flung, something which the local media missed completely from his address in America. Or could be the local media never got a transcript of all he said. Biti pitched and situated himself within clear policy initiatives. He was expansive in his address, continental in fact. That he failed to speak for the continent, or to interpret the continent’s history whose dates he repeatedly messed up, is another matter. But his efforts were clear, as also were his cross-references, his multi-disciplinary thrust, however poor it was. He was angling for statesmanship, courting accolades for it. He wanted to sound knowledgeable, clever, witty and neo-liberal. If he failed, it was not for lack of trying.
Unveiling own prospects
More significantly, while appearing to extoll Morgan the person, he moulded himself into a damning foil for the man whose leadership he professed to kowtow. It was so cleverly done that few read it. The Morgan he moulded in that presentation was a mere face, mere charisma, but whose intellectual powerhouse resided outside of his body. A disembodied politician bereft of programmes which he himself held galore. And he wasted no time in unveiling them: Vision 2040, ICTs, ECTs and more spectacularly JUIP, which he said stands for jobs, upliftment and investment for you, itself a countermand to Indigenisation working within the neo-liberal framework so lovely to American ears. Now, that is the first time DUPE, sorry JUIP, was being unveiled. And in America, not here. And by MDC’s secretary general, not by its president and presidential candidate. It is called stealing the thunder!
Never mind its baldness. That is not the issue. The issue is that Biti draped his own worth in programmes, something he wouldn’t grant Morgan. In his acknowledgment of the high and might of the event, he showed his wide tentacles in American politics and personages, making it clear he had a solid foothold that needed no face, that needed no president. All this he did before a critical, funding audience, the establishment’s proxy audience meant to probe leadership possibilities in Zimbabwean politics.
You get the sense of a party president who is being set up for failure, but who is also unsure of who will stand by him in a difficult future. He can only be irritable, against such uncertainties.
Running against illness
It is quite true the Western world is sponsoring many projects against Tsvangirai. This started a long time ago, peaking at the party’s Bulawayo Congress where Tsvangirai should have been disemboweled politically. All these investments have been fast-forwarded and there is a lot that menaces Morgan from within. A lot too, that menaces him from without.
The preferred young Turks will continue to weigh their chances for an instant jump, or for temporising. Of course one of them has receding health, itself an actuating factor which could drive him precipitously. But he, too, can do things while waiting. Measured by the scale of health, most of MDC’s candidates, current and aspiring, are in fact more mortal than President Mugabe. Most are ill, terminally ill. But that is a matter for a bolder day!
The genii of new rules for primaries
Without, the Prime Minister has to worry about a torrent which Zanu-PF has unleashed, the torrent of new rules for party primaries. The percipient in the MDC were quick to notice this when Zanu-PF tried out these new rules in Mashonaland West. Iconoclastic, these new rules are set to reverberate across parties, in the process rattling existing structures.
It is already happening in Zanu-PF which had already budgeted for such upsets as a formulae for its own renewal. It can only be worse for those who are force-marched towards these new rules by circumstances.
Already rattled by factionalism, these new rules can only wreak havoc in the Prime Minister’s party whose sitting MPs were already up in arms over constituency development fund investigations. Was this the Prime Minister’s way of eliminating unwanted MPs, using an outgoing minister-MP from his own home area?
MDC is too fragile, is not tensile enough for the strains and stresses which come with the new rules. The current media excitement over Zanu-PF primaries is set to hit MDC with fourfold ferocity. That raises deep anxieties in the party’s helmsman.
The dim prospects of a deadening era
I will not talk much about MDC’s failure to evolve a matching or countermanding Programme to Indigenisation. Nor talk about how unhelpful it is to deploy Eddie Cross to respond to Indigenisation. I will not talk about ZCTU, MDCs civic face and how distraught it is presently. The Prime Minister is quite aware and appears to have accentuated ZCTU’s divisive potential by preferring one faction to another. Clearly, labour will not be a helpful plank for his party, something that frustrated him at the Misa event.
And since he has sounded a requiem to the inclusive Government through his attack on Zanu-PF ministers, even his hold in Government will grow more and more tenuous. His threats of a Rwanda-like legal pogrom is childish and deters no one.
Few if any in Zanu-PF relish the prospects of serving under him. Real professionals cannot brook the deadening contrast of serving under a dead-man-come-to-life by way of literacy, after such a cerebral era such as they have enjoyed under Mugabe. His would be a tepid era, and few with real gray matter upstairs envy it, look forward to it.
And he has a lot more to answer by way of betraying people’s wishes than any politician can ever garner in a long political career. Besides, he is making the mistake of visualising himself as Zimbabwe’s Kagame. He is not. He cannot be. For he is only a poor Morgan, the flotsam and jetsam of Zimbabwe’s treacherous politics. Icho!
* nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: LOVEMORE MADHUKU, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY
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