By Bernard Bwoni
Tsvangirai’s address
at Chatham House was as inspiring as an empty bottle. It was hollow and
substance-free to be more precise. He started off by talking about the ‘’debilitating
economic problems Zimbabwe is facing which are ‘supposedly’ symptomatic of a
deep-rooted political crisis stemming from a disputed election’’. What? The
election was exactly a year ago and Tsvangirai is hanging on to a done deal convincingly,
freely and fairly won by the ruling party. Even Tsvangirai’s then Secretary
General Tendai Biti was honest and admitted that they lost to the well-oiled revolutionary
machinery and that the MDC-T was ill-prepared, lacked a convincing strategy and
was totally out-manoeuvred. The elections were widely endorsed by African
election observers from SADC, AU and COMESA as free, fair and credible and instantly
given the not-credible seal of approval by the EU and USA. Instead of
Tsvangirai coming forward and laying down his proposed strategy for the country’s
current economic challenges his address was a mishmash of sweeping statements
minus any specifics. It was his usual ‘stolen election mantra’ and a veiled
invite for further interference from what he casually terms ‘the international
community’. He dragged on about the past elections, the so-called disputed
polls and his futile and meaningless quest for the voters roll to be made
public.
The Chatham House
address by Tsvangirai was clear as mud, to put it kindly it was tired, devoid
of any substance and pointless all together. How is Zimbabwe going to benefit
from this lacklustre lecture, a repetition of the usual MDC-T themes of
demonising the ruling party and mobilising western support for own self-serving
motives? It sounded like a manipulative child enlisting the favours of a parent
by telling on others. The whole address was predominantly about what the
government is not doing and no mention whatsoever of what the government should
be doing to improve the economic fortunes of the country. There was no
presentation of the shadow strategy to the country’s economic woes. It seems
the speech was specifically meant to appeal to his usual donors and ‘international
community’. It was all doom and gloom and this is from a man who was in the
government of national unity for five years and the economic challenges he was
going on about he failed to address when he had the opportunity then.
Tsvangirai went on to
lecture the audience on how ‘Zimbabweans have no faith in the government in
Harare because they know they did not vote for it’’. I am not sure if
Tsvangirai is aware that over 60% of Zimbabwe’s electorate voted in favour of
the ruling party? I am not sure if his entourage told him? The opposition
disputed the election results and were well within their rights to challenge
the result and file a petition at the Constitutional Court which upheld
President Mugabe’s victory. The International community (another term for the US
and Europe) expressed and have continued to express reservations publicly on
the ‘credibility’ of the electoral process which has meant delays in their
re-engagement with the Zimbabwe government. During this dreary address
Tsvangirai provided details of what he fondly termed ‘’global players and stakeholders’’
and what they had to say about the supposedly ‘disputed’ election. The names were
exclusively ‘international’ and included US Secretary of State John Kerry,
Former UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs
John Baird, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr and Germany Foreign Minister
Guido Westerwelle and of course the ever-submissive government of Botswana.
This list is telling and true reflection of Tsvangirai’s naivety and unhealthy
preoccupation with what he terms ‘the international community’. The names
Tsvangirai provided here are from countries that did not participate in the
monitoring of the general election. There are no names of the African countries
that actually monitored and concluded that the elections were free, fair and
credible. Tsvangirai’s address was not reassuring, at most a public quest for
readmission to the elite neoliberal circles he so thrives in. Here is a man
regurgitating the party line of ‘chaos in Zimbabwe, come and rescue us those
from the ‘international community’
Tsvangirai also made
a futile attempt at mentioning the state of the economy and here is where lines
should be drawn and Tsvangirai should stick to what he knows best. I have no
idea what that is but he should stick to that. In his address he provided the
audience with some spurious and ill-researched economic indicators from the
World Bank’s Doing Business Report ranks. He confidently tells the audience
that Zimbabwe was 133 out of 143 countries and your point Mr Tsvangirai? What
Tsvangirai does not realise about these Doing Business indicators is that they
are highly subjective and not symptoms of the economic downturn facing the
country. He also made some sweeping statements about the liquidity crunch, FDI
flows into the country and he also mentioned a US$1 billion figure that was ‘spirited
out of the economy barely a week after the election’. What Tsvangirai did not
address was his continued stay in the state provided dwelling in the plush and
leafy Harare Dales and his expensive playboy lifestyle on the high seas. Now
those are economic indicators worth exploring from a man who claims to be the
champion of the economically abused Zimbabwean people.
In the final part of
his address Tsvangirai made some frail attempts at ‘mapping a way forward’ and
his first statement was about national dialogue and from that he seemed to be
eluding to another government of national unity. Tsvangirai termed it ‘an
internationally brokered national dialogue of all stakeholders’ and we know
very well who he is referring to when he talks about the ‘international
community’. He chastised the government’s Look East policy saying it had not
yielded direct financial support. Hence why earlier it was indicated that
Tsvangirai should stick to what he knows best whatever that is. It is an open
secret that China is currently the country’s biggest source of FDI. Figures
from the World Investment Report (2013) indicate that FDI inflows from China in
2013 amounted to in excess of US$400 million whilst those from the EU countries
fell below the US$100 million mark. Even the EU has been borrowing money off
China. So Mr Tsvangirai I ask again, under those circumstances would you not
look east?
Tsvangirai continued
with his painfully tedious monologue about dialogue and re-engagement with the
EU yet seemed oblivious to the fact that the government of Zimbabwe has
remained widely open to positive re-engagement with all its international
development partners, former and present. Following on from the landslide
victory in 2013, the government has put emphasis on economic revival. There has
been a genuine commitment to address the issues of re-engagement with the
‘international community’, employment creation and regenerating the desolate
and dilapidated infrastructure. The finance minister Patrick Chinamasa recently
went to the IMF and World Bank as part of the re-engagement process and to
reopen lines of credit and attract the much needed direct foreign investment.
The IMF has placed Zimbabwe on a Staff Monitoring Programme (SMP) as a
condition for re-engagement with Zimbabwe if successfully implemented. The
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry delegation was also recently on EU wide
re-engagement drive.
Lastly Tsvangirai
went on to lay down ‘the conditions’ for the removal of sanctions saying ‘removal
of sanctions without a framework that plods and entices the nation towards full
democratic values’. This is very disturbing and we have history to back this
claim. The sanctions are illegal and should never have been imposed in the
first place. It is Tsvangirai and clueless lieutenants who advocated for these
devastating economic sanctions and when he starts like this the nation should
seriously start to worry.
No comments:
Post a Comment