When white factor becomes irrelevant

as Manheru's Zanu-PF house of cards collapses


Nathaniel Manheru seems to have now recovered from the battering that Zanu-PF got at SADC, Luanda, that he was able to put his fingers to the keyboard, but he is now sounding even more delusional as would be expected of someone who represents an idea whose time has passed.

One has to read for themselves the lengthy piece to which we are directly responding. But we will dispense with him in a few lines because the length of his articles is not related to the amount of substance in them.

He says Zanu-PF adopted dollarization well before the inclusive Government as a way out of the run on the national currency by forces of imperialism. But surely, as one of the beneficiaries he must be aware that the government abandoned the currency as a way of burying the evidence of corruption which had caused the Zimbabwean dollar to lose value. At the time that it was abandoned the Zimbabwean dollar was trading as several zillions to the US dollar.

Press reports of "dealers" with trunks of brand new bearer cheques straight from Fidelity Printers who were found trading them at the 4th Street Bus Terminal and in the streets of Bulawayo are still available on the internet. Other dealers crossed oceans with their dollars and were never heard from again.

Some are still in the Reserve Bank masquerading as perfect gentlemen and devout Christians, yet they were printing bear cheques simply to sell them for US dollars which they kept in trunks at their home, only to deposit in their accounts after they changed the currency.

Suddenly we see US dollar millionaires springing up everywhere, building mansions and buying SUVs √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨" the crime having been buried in the change of currency.   

The people who are suffering because of the crime are the poor and the pensioners who had no access to the US dollars and whose pensions and Zimbabwe dollar accounts were wiped out. They are still paying for the wealth that was transferred to the Zanu-PF bosses who were running the government by making their life-savings worthless.

So, yes Zanu-PF should rightfully claim credit for dollarization, and should be held accountable for the impoverishment this has caused for ordinary Zimbabweans in the rural areas who have nothing to sell to make the US dollar. They are relying on hand-outs from NGO and they have bartered almost all their livestock, that is if the livestock had not already died because of lack of dipping or because of the destruction of pest control infrastructure in game areas.

Tendai Biti cannot be blamed for their poverty as he is only the Minister of Finance to manage the finances that are raised through taxes and ensure that they are used in the most efficient possible way, without incurring expenses which the government cannot pay for.

The only questions that may be asked of him is whether he is doing enough to collect taxes from all the "dealers" driving around in latest SUVs but whose income-tax returns do not show that they are earning enough to support themselves.

The fact that the coffers are now empty cannot be blamed on Biti but on those who are managing departments that are supposed to bring in the revenue â€" industry, mining, agricultural production, manufacturing. But we all know what Zanu-PF's policies have done to all these sectors.

So Manheru is lying to the nation when he says that the Biti's "outbursts on Chiadzwa" are because of failure on his part to restart the economy. It is Zanu-PF that is bankrupt of ideas except to deceive Zimbabweans with indigenization promises in order to gain their votes in the next election. It is Zanu-PF that is selling off the nation's crown jewels for a song because the proceeds are going into their private bank accounts and a war chest for the next election.

Zanu-PF is indeed, as Manheru strenuously makes the point, ruling. But it is doing so by force and not by the people's will - which explains why Manheru measurers our progress towards elections by the "national political temperature" rather than by democratic benchmarks agreed by SADC the AU for holding of elections.

The MDC has said why bother having elections if people are not going to be allowed to express themselves freely, before, during and after the election. And this position has been accepted by SADC, by the AU and by the International Community.

Whether Manheru admits it or not, Zanu-PF has been beaten at its own diplomatic game in SADC and at the Africa Union, which explains why Zanu-PF has said in its congress resolutions that elections are going to be held in 2011, then back-paddled to 2012, and now Manheru is telling us that 2012 is actually a metaphor that could mean whatever Zanu-PF wants it to mean, because it is ruling!

Forcing Zanu-PF to back-paddle like that were not "little victories" as he would have his readers believe, but significant blows to the face of a party that won independence, and has ruled for 30 years, with diplomatic friends in every corridor of every multinational agency and Embassy.

It won Independence, not because of the superiority of its ideology, but because independence was a historical imperative that was supported by every black person in Zimbabwe and by the already independent rest-of-Africa. That it took as long as it did was due to power-hungry and greedy pseudo-revolutionaries killing and sidelining each other until they had eliminated the real revolutionaries.

The back-paddling was all as a result of heavy defeats on the ground with the people where Zanu-PF cannot hold a rally without threatening people to go and attend, yet MDC supporters will walk for miles in their best clothes to attend an MDC rally.

And the blows in the diplomatic field were just as heavy, at the last five SADC Summits. Culminating in the Luanda Summit where they were told in no uncertain terms that elections can only be held after the leveling of the playing field.

They are still hoping that they can create conditions under which they might be able to win an election, but they are increasingly finding that the only formula that will work is the one they used in 1985, in 2000 and in 2008 â€" terror, which explains why they do not want to dismantle their terror bases and are buttressing them with diamond income that is controlled by soldiers!

It is the only way they can win, but they are also increasingly aware that such a blatant bludgeoning of the opposition is no longer acceptable or possible in light of the SADC and African Union resolutions.  So Manheru has now retrospectively invented what he is calling a strategic retreat by Zanu-PF, one in which SADC was used to protect it against "foreign sniper fire" and the MDC formations were co-opted.

"By bringing Sadc into the whole governing equation, Zanu-PF made its political stabilisation formulae a regional issue, in the process mobilising SADC against the West. Today SADC speaks against sanctions. That compromise arrangement was needed to give Zanu-PF a breather, to grant our stressed nation some respite. Above all, the compromise was needed to incorporate the MDC formations into the national anti-sanctions campaign, itself the principal agenda post land reform. The price was power-sharing, itself some little payment for Zanu-PF, but a staggering, befuddling reward for the two formations."

This is the new story invented by Zanu-PF's premier propagandist, trying to negate the fact that his party has been out-maneuvered in every political and diplomatic forum. Yes it may be true that some MDC members have tested the "sweetness of power", but not to the extent of not wanting elections, as Manheru is trying to sell.

They all want free and fair elections so that Zanu-PF may finally be put where it belongs - in the dust-bin of history.  Thus the slogan: Let's Finish It.

That the MDC has sometimes been forced to denounce sanctions, is taken by Manheru as some sort of co-option of the MDC, yet it was a condition that was imposed by Zanu-PF in negotiations for the GNU, a condition which the MDC realized it would lose nothing if it agreed to it, and allow the GNU to be formed. The MDC knows that it did not impose the sanctions, so those who imposed them would still have the final say. No matter how its representatives speak against sanctions, it will never make Obama, Cameron or Angela Merkel blink on sanctions, until a democratic dispensation is achieved, in their eyes.

The principled position taken by the MDC is that no matter how long it takes, we are going for a democratic dispensation, even if it means we do not have elections this year or next year â€" until the elections can be held in free and fair conditions where the voters can express themselves freely, which is the point of elections.

All that Zanu-PF can celebrate is that it has managed to delay the inevitable defeat at the polls, but that is because of the humanity of the MDC, particularly its, President Morgan Tsvangirai, who has said he was not going to walk into state house over the dead corpses of his supporters.

Manheru should stop deluding himself about outflanking the Americans and the Europeans on sanctions, which he says are now haunting them as they are no longer wanted by the MDCs whom he says were the intended beneficiaries.

It is delusion for him to say Zanu-PF has built a national consensus against sanctions. The MDC position remains that removal of sanctions on Zanu-PF bosses and their companies should be commensurate with the level of democratic transformation they allow in the country.

He further deludes himself that Zanu-PF has convinced the nationals of Zimbabwe of the evilness of sanctions, yet Zanu-PF's so-called anti-sanctions mobilization floundered in front of our very eyes. And it is only this week that there was a report that after a Zanu-PF minister had finished denouncing sanctions, an elderly woman asked how it was that sanctions were only stopping her high blood pressure tablets from coming into the country, yet they were allowing the Ministers' SUVs to be imported.

In other words even the povo is now seeing through the illusion of sanctions which Zanu PF has tried to create. And far from blaming the MDC for failing to perform in the economic ministries, even a street-kid understands the MDC's message, that it is Zanu-PF which is frustrating investors through its unreasonable indigenization, or share-grabbing, which does not create any wealth or jobs.

The workers and the unemployed who cannot get medicine or reliable electricity in Harare know that it is Zanu-PF bosses who are not paying their Zesa bills; that it is because of their corruption that diamond revenue is not going into the national coffers to support the government's intended programmes; and they know that the MDC is failing to solve these problems because it is not being allowed to govern by Zanu-PF, which is holding the levers of power and refusing to hold free and fair elections.

These are the people whose opinions matter to the MDC, the ones from whom Manheru should be getting his opinions about the MDC, not Mark Scofield, who whoever he is, who would talk about the sevenâ€"year-old 2005 split as a factor in the MDC today; nor the CFU's Charles Taffs who must be very lazy if he does not know the MDC's position on Indigenisation, mining and land. But Manheru is being dishonest when he tries to use these as the measures of the popularity of the MDC.

He should go to his own home area of Buhera, or to Chiredzi, or Chipinge; that is where he will find old ladies and gentlemen from villages, putting on their best dress and walking five miles to go and see for themselves Morgan Tsvangirai or Nelson Chamisa and tell them their problems, because they know that they are the next government.

Alex Duval Smith or any western journalist may say that Mugabe has soared back to popularity because they have attended a function where a community is being given crumbs from their Chiadzwa diamons in the form of Community Shares, then she goes back to Meikles Hotel and writes her story.  In the same way Tony Hawkins can talk about Chinamasa's dollarization, because he knows, but if he disenchanted with the MDC, he would not be the first one who does not know the limitations of the MDC's powers in the Inclusive Government.

But the truth that is really hurting Manheru is what Roy Bennett has exposed. Call it "ranting" but Bennett has told the generals, to whom the man behind Manheru, George Charamba, is beholden, that their juniors are not with them, that they want to see security sector reform. The implications of that are too frightening for Manheru to fathom. No amount of propaganda will change this, and Manheru may put on a brave face, or concoct up new justifications for Zanu-PF's back-paddling, but it will not change the reality that Zanu-PF has lost the people, has lost the region, and is going to lose the next election.