Time for national wisdom to prevail

So Morgan Richard Tsvangirai has become so desperate that he has found it politically profitable to blatantly and irresponsibly incite his members to unleash violence by getting them to view the forthcoming harmonised presidential, parliamentary and local government elections as a declaration of war?

This very serious and troubling question has become important and urgent for those charged with the responsibility of law, order, peace and national security in our country who must now be vigilant following Tsvangirai's outburst last Thursday when he shocked even his most ardent supporters by declaring that the forthcoming election will be equal to war if it is not preceded by what Tsvangirai nebulously described as "minimum conditions for a sustainable election in Zimbabwe". What has given the matter greater urgency and importance is that the very same Tsvangirai, who has a knack for approaching serious national issues with an open mouth and shut mind and who always demands minimum conditions in every election, claimed in a revealing South African television interview with eTV's Africa 360 programme over the weekend that if the GPA were to be fully implemented Zanu-PF would be driven out of power without an election because in Tsvangirai's view every GPA reform is designed to get Zanu-PF to cede power.

Tsvangirai confidently boasted to Chris Moroleng, his eTV interviewer who could not hide his shock at what he was being told, that "if we were to implement the GPA Zanu-PF would be history". Moroleng, who is a well-known MDC-T sympathiser, was left with no choice but to challenge Tsvangirai by telling him that given his subversive interpretation of the GPA, Zanu-PF's take on the GPA must be correct because no political party should be expected to implement an agreement whose purpose is to remove it from power outside an election.

But Tsvangirai's take on the GPA has of course been more than helpful. We now all know what is going on here. The cats are out of the bag and they are all dead. Nobody will be fooled by Tsvangirai and his cronies anymore.  This is because there's now a very clear connection between, on the one hand, Tsvangirai's statement inciting violence made in Harare last Thursday that his embattled MDC-T, whose support base has been spectacularly dwindling over the last three years, will take the holding of elections this year as a declaration of war and on the other hand, his claim to eTV over the weekend that the full implementation of GPA reforms is intended to see Zanu-PF out of power without an election.

Tsvangirai's view of the GPA and his position on reforms as instruments for removing Zanu-PF from power and his threat of war should there be an election before Zanu-PF is driven out of power through GPA reforms clearly explain the music behind the chorus against elections being sung by Zimbabwe's usual detractors. These detractors include the increasingly clueless MDC-T and its Western founders and funders in the donor community along with their media and NGO mouthpieces who are mindlessly opposed to the inevitable holding of free and fair nonviolent elections this year and who keep incredulously barking at a moving train with preposterous claims that there should be a raft of reforms and the so-called full implementation of the GPA before elections.

Against this backdrop, there are four necessary points which should be made clear.

First, Tsvangirai must be investigated by the relevant law enforcement authorities and held to account without fear or favour for his shocking statement that President Mugabe's call for elections this year is tantamount to a declaration of war as reported in yesterday's Daily News whose screaming and inciting headline was "Mugabe wants war". That is a totally irresponsible and unacceptable statement whose clear and unquestionable motive is to instill public fear, engender alarm and despondency, scare away tourists and investors and incite violence to destabilise Zimbabwe and is therefore criminal and thus intolerable.

The time has come for law enforcement authorities to do their job without fear or favour as required by the law and as expected by the public across the political divide.  There should be no sacred cows in the enforcement of the law against those who incite or use political violence and that is the only way the scourge of political violence will be stopped in Zimbabwe.

Whether we have elections or not, nobody should be allowed to make politically irresponsible statements such as the one made by Tsvangirai last Thursday whose deliberate criminal import is to incite political violence or to create alarm and despondency in the country for his own personal political gain.

President Mugabe is empowered by the Constitution to call for elections and when he says there will be elections this year he surely cannot be said to be declaring war as

recklessly claimed by Tsvangirai who should know better as the country's Prime Minister. The fact of the matter is that Tsvangirai has developed a sickening habit of daring law enforcement authorities at every turn in order to undermine their authority while giving the impression that he is untouchable or is somehow above the law simply because of his name and the support he says he enjoys from Sadc and Western countries that have tended to give him the benefit of doubt with impunity even when he has deserved none at all. Enough is enough.

Second, it is useful beyond description that Tsvangirai used his eTV interview over the weekend to make it very clear to all and sundry that his call for the full implementation of the GPA and related reforms before the holding of elections is only designed to get Zanu-PF out of power before the elections. Those in Sadc, the AU, UN and especially among the Western countries that have imposed illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe must henceforth take note that, thanks to Tsvangirai's revealing admission to eTV, everybody now knows that the whole chorus for reforms before elections under the false cover of the full implementation of the GPA is after all an ugly code for removing

Zanu-PF from power outside national polls.
This is now public and therefore very clear beyond denial following Tsvangirai's eTV interview over the weekend. In the circumstances, it would be foolhardy for anybody anywhere to think that Zanu-PF will be associated with any reform, whether under the cover of the GPA or any other pretext, designed to get the party out of power outside an election. That will just not happen and trying to make it happen by force or subterfuge would be of course catastrophic by definition.  It is therefore now necessary for everyone to genuinely, democratically and peacefully move towards elections without playing provocative games.

Third, Tsvangirai's public admission in his eTV interview that the full implementation of the GPA is intended to make Zanu-PF history by getting it out of power outside an election necessarily means that Zimbabweans must now proceed with extreme caution in the making of a new Constitution for the country under the poisonous Copac process.

Given Tsvangirai's shocking eTV revelation over the weekend against the backdrop of the importance of a constitution not just as the fundamental law of the land but more crucially as an intergenerational covenant for all times, the time has come for Zimbabweans to be responsible and bold enough to put a stop to the current constitution-making charade by giving it more time well beyond the forthcoming elections to expose it to thorough and wider national debate and critical scrutiny beyond the confines of Copac whose conduct has left more than a lot to be desired and beyond the vagaries of the so-called Inclusive Government whose politics of intrigue and delinquency have known no bounds.

The time for national wisdom to prevail has come. There's just no reason why the constitution-making process should be hurried and most certainly there's no reason why it should be concluded before the next elections. None whatsoever!

Instead, it is now necessary to save the derailed Copac process by coming up with a Zimbabwe Constitution-Making Bill to ensure the integrity of the process beyond the type of intrigue disclosed by Tsvangirai in his eTV interview over the weekend. The Bill would also save the Copac process by taking it beyond the intrigue of UNDP politics around which there's now clear and unassailable evidence of gross and unacceptable foreign influence in the drafting process through an ANC lawyer called Hassen Ebrahim seconded to Copac by the UNDP.

While Cde Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana can say whatever he wants in defence of Ebrahim's treacherous role in Copac, the simple fact is that no foreigner should have been involved in the drafting process let alone that Ebrahim's involvement was not done in a transparent way given that Zimbabweans were never told about Ebrahim's critical participation in Copac's drafting of our proposed constitution which they would have opposed from the start.

Yesterday Copac placed an advertorial in the Press unashamedly acknowledging that "Mr Ebrahim has worked with both the Select and Technical Committees and provided a survey of best practices and advice on various constitutional issues". So this foreigner is the provider of the so-called international best practices that the drifting drafters used to compromise the Copac draft by more than 70 percent?

This is just scandalous, unacceptable and even treasonous to say the least.  How can Copac let a foreigner seconded by the UNDP to do this kind of critical work and expect the nation to be quiet about it?  If a survey of international best practices was necessary, surely it should have been done by Zimbabweans. Our country does not have a shortage of legal scholars and other relevant social scientists when we have the likes of Professor Lovemore Madhuku whose legal scholarship and nuanced understanding of our political and constitutional history cannot be compared to that of the UNDP's Ebrahim from South Africa. Why is Ebrahim where Madhuku should have been? Why? Who is the sell-out behind this scandal?

There's a lot of subversive nonsense from Ebrahim's "survey of best practice" that has gone into Copac's draft constitution even after the so-called corrections done to the widely condemned first draft and that nonsense has left a dirty foreign stink which is just not acceptable whatever Cde Mangwana says today or tomorrow. The Copac process has become a national disaster that cannot be allowed to continue.

Fortunately, our country does not have a constitutional crisis and does not need a new constitution to do anything.  As admitted by US Ambassador Charles Ray last week, Zimbabwe's current Constitution provides for freedom of expression and assembly and for the holding of free and fair elections.  The challenge we have is the political behaviour of political parties and some politicians who have in the past used unacceptable political violence. That behaviour has not been produced by our Constitution and can thus be tackled in its own right without being confused with our current Constitution. It is also important to always remember that more than 80 percent of the views of the people gathered during the Copac outreach programme essentially endorsed the current Constitution as amended 19 times since 1980. What this means is that there's absolutely no reason to hurry the Copac process in order to conclude it before the forthcoming elections when we have a more than adequate constitution for that purpose.

Fourth and finally, Zimbabweans and indeed others who wish our country well will no doubt be thankful that Tsvangirai's dramatic public admission â€" that he, his MDC-T and some in Sadc whom he did not name view the GPA as specifically designed to get Zanu-PF out of power outside an election â€" was broadcast two days after President Mugabe told a meeting of the Zimbabwe Chiefs' Council in Bulawayo on Thursday that after an inconclusive election on March 29, 2008 and a subsequent presidential run-off election that was boycotted by Tsvangirai and which was marred by allegations of widespread violence, Sadc and African Union leaders strongly felt that there should be another election but that steps had to be taken to calm the political environment in order to create an environment conducive for a nonviolent election.

President Mugabe said the step that was taken and which was agreed by the political leaders in Zimbabwe and supported by Sadc and the AU was the GPA. While Tsvangirai sees the GPA as an instrument for getting rid of Zanu-PF with Sadc and AU support, something manifestly subversive and of course impossible to achieve, President Mugabe views the GPA for what it is: an instrument for calming down the charged political environment of June 2008 to eliminate political violence by engendering peace and tolerance in the country to get political parties to see each other as political opponents with a common belonging and not as enemies dedicated to exterminating each other.

You do not have to be a rocket scientist to appreciate that President Mugabe's characterisation of the GPA and its purpose is more nationalist, more statesmanlike, more Sadc, more AU and more responsible than the one given to eTV by Tsvangirai over the weekend to the utter embarrassment not only of President Zuma as the Sadc facilitator but also to the shame of Sadc and AU leaders who will find it impossible to agree with Tsvangirai that the GPA is intended to get rid of Zanu-PF.

In any event, Article XXI of the GPA supports President Mugabe's position in that it put a 12-month moratorium on the holding of elections in general and by-elections in particular from September 15, 2008 for the three GPA parties to "give our people some breathing space and a healing period" before having elections again. This is the only Article in the GPA which specifically relates to the holding of elections and there's absolutely nothing in this Article which is exclusively about elections, and nothing in any other part of the GPA, for that matter, which says elections after the formation of the so-called Inclusive Government would be held only after the implementation of GPA reforms or even only after the making and adoption of a new constitution under Copac. Nothing!

Yet the 12-month moratorium imposed under the GPA has long expired. Elections are now due in terms of the GPA and without preconditions fronted as reforms.  Even the High Court of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo has ruled that by-elections should be held to fill electoral vacancies and the number of the affected constituencies would now constitute a mini-general election thereby necessitating a full general election. As such, the only outstanding GPA issue now is the holding of harmonised elections which some Sadc and AU leaders would have wanted held soon after June 2008 but which had to be delayed for at least 12 months when the GPA was signed on September 15, 2008.

When all is said and done it appears that Tsvangirai whose leadership failures, poor judgement and immoral personal indiscretions have cost him dearly with the electorate is now afraid of facing President Mugabe at the polls. That is why Tsvangirai would rather have  Sadc and AU leaders get rid of Zanu-PF, failure of which he would rather have war in Zimbabwe than have elections in the hope that the Western countries that founded and still fund his party and which have imposed illegal economic sanctions against the country would use that war in place of elections to declare and recognise Tsvangirai as the legitimate representative of the people of Zimbabwe as has become their strategy of choice in their continuing imperial quest for regime change in developing countries especially in those with critical natural resources such as oil and minerals.

While Zimbabweans ponder this clear and present danger, many heard Tsvangirai tell his eTV interviewer that he is younger and healthier than President Mugabe. Notably he did not say he was smarter, in fact he effectively conceded that the President was far more astute than him. That Tsvangirai is younger than President Mugabe is of course as obvious as the fact that he is so irresponsible and so reckless in his personal life that he is known to have unprotected sex outside marriage to the extent that he either has exposed himself to HIV or has exposed his female victims to the same such that his health status will remain an issue until he goes for a public HIV test. Until then Tsvangirai cannot convincingly claim to be healthier than anybody.