Tsvangirai: A Self Serving Machine

Everyone agrees that one of the next President of Zimbabwe's urgent tasks will be to address the infrastructure. Some of Zimbabwe's infrastructure is worse than the Stone Age period. Some people have not flushed their toilets in more than four months as tapes have run dry. With all these problems mounting by the day, I have begun to wonder if there is an aspiring leader in Zimbabwe today capable of addressing this country's infrastructure woes.

A look at the current lineup of aspiring Presidential candidates to me reveals what I will term, "Self Serving Machines." For the past three decades, Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement of Democratic Change (MDC-T) has been the Headmaster of making noise. Instead of protesting against a position and offering an alternative solution, the guy has become a noise machine.

Today I want to caution Zimbabweans not to be fooled by the noise, drowned in the words change (Chinja!!). Anyone who wants to lead after Mugabe must share their resume with us. The resume must clearly state their vision for Zimbabwe and provide past experience that have prepared them for the President's position.

Today, the news media is flooded by complains that President Mugabe did not groom the next leader. Consider MDC-T; the party has been in existence from 1998. If Tsvangirai leaves the scene today as the leader of MDC-T, will there be an MDC-T party to talk about? If Mugabe invented the scheme of not grooming a successor, then Tsvangirai is perfecting it. What other ills will he perfect?

Anyone who displays the level of excitement being displayed by Tsvangirai real scares me. Let us not forget that Mugabe is supported by the armed forces and one should learn to ask the basic question, "Why?" In Zimbabwe, there are people who have become wildly rich by keeping their loyalty to Mugabe. These are the people who would love to see an election in Zimbabwe for obvious reasons. Yes the results will be announced in 48 hours and the elections will be deemed free and fair and yes Mugabe will have trounced Tsvangirai by more than 70%.

Mugabe has already announced he will accept the results. Tsvangirai does not imagine losing the election therefore is globetrotting telling the world Mugabe's position on elections. Is this not a repeat of November 2000 when Tsvangirai announced that, "Mugabe knows his time is up?"

Yet a month later, Mugabe stated clearly at his ZANU (PF) congress that, "No judicial decision will stand in the political way." He also said he was the law and the state. The implication is that Mugabe thinks he is the state and as far as I know, the state has never kept its word and I wonder why anyone thinks it will do so now.

My fear is that the work of the brave to bring a land of the free is being undermined by shortsightedness, self-interest, overzealousness, and abuse of power. Zimbabwe must first demand a checklist that clearly state how any aspiring candidate will address the crumbling infrastructure to ensure quality delivery of services.

I also support the view by Dr. Ayittey that Zimbabwe must demand a solution grounded in African culture. When a crisis erupts in an African village, the headman will summon a village meeting, where the issue is debated by the people until a consensus is reached. At the meeting people express their ideas openly and freely without fear of arrest or intimidation. Once a decision is reached, all including the headman are required to abide by it. These village meetings - an indigenous African political institution - are a commonplace across the continent. In recent years, this indigenous African tradition has been revived by pro-democracy forces in the form of "sovereign national conferences" to chart a new political future in Benin, Cape Verde, Congo, Malawi, Mali, Niger, South Africa, and Zambia.

In 1996, South Africa tried to export this model to the Middle East to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One would think South Africa's Ambassador would have made every effort to export the same model to its next door neighbor-Zimbabwe, where no such national conference has taken place.

If CODESA worked for South Africa, then CODEZI (a Convention for a Democratic Zimbabwe) will also work for Zimbabwe. CODEZI is the real African solution for Zimbabwe's crisis. South Africa should be ashamed of itself for peddling the current coconut GNU for Zimbabwe.