Conway Tutani should stop behaving like an MDC-T political commissar

Conway Tutani who some of us have learnt to tolerate despite his irresponsible writings every Friday has unfortunately mistaken lack of responses for his articles as a celebration of his competency and abilities in steering public discourse. He has become so relaxed that what began as a somewhat promising column has deteriorated into name calling with serious limitations in analysis, research and presentation of key national issues.The problem with columnists that are assured of  newspaper pages and are well protected by editors in that responses to their poor thoughts are not published is that they create dangerous writings that are as divisive as the one by Tutani on Frday 14 October 2011. The article, a clear sign that Tutani should take a break to learn more and read more so that he comes with a better understanding, appreciation and analysis of national issues. It is one article that newspaper columnists should not write just because they have to fulfil a fixture and commitment that they will submit articles and meet deadlines on particular days. Columnists should at one time or the others reflect on their writings and allow for feedback from their readers to be published as well. It does not help in the public discourse to be a guerrilla columnist in which you ambush and attack other citizens and you don not give them a  write to a response. If as a columnist you want to provoke public debate then you should also allow your views to also go under telescopic clinical analysis, until then that is when you will call yourself a bold writer who believes in media freedom. It is in this background that I challenge Tutani to cede the pages of his column for this week to allow for publication of this response to his article that was aimed at denigrating my party the MDC led by Professor Welshman Ncube myself as the National Organising secretary.

This response to Tutani is necessitated by a lot of misleading pronouncements in the article whose effects are far reaching on the way the public may perceive myself and the green party that I am part of. Also it has become necessary to engage Tutani because he has been hiding behind newspaper pages to pretend to be a neutral analyst yet it is coming out clearly that he is a hired MDC T assassin sent to take aim at us. If anything Tutani's column has become some form of the extension of the MDC T commissariat and he himself sounds like the party commissar or chief propagandist. It is however not fair to embark on guerrilla columnist. Political columnists should  come out clean on political affiliation and them we can engage properly with you including using the appropriate, language that we use against political commissars.

In his article, Tutani makes absurd and strange analysis on why he thinks some of our MPs are not being loyal. Part of his conclusion is that it could be the unsettling tone of this organising secretary. I really sympathise with him for such a cheap conclusion because he is trying to run away from the truth in that public domain that disloyalty amongst some of our MPs is a results of some hefty pay-outs to some of them in by the MDC T in to vote for Lovemore Moyo as speaker of parliament in the first election. It is on public record including some confessions that the MDC T took the MPs to Botswana and paid them to vote against Paul Themba Nyathi. It is also on public record as well that some of them have been enticed to pretend that they are with us, walk with us to the nomination court carrying our nomination papers in their hands but also with MDC T nomination papers in their back pockets. The idea being to secretly file MDC T papers and we are left with no candidates in those area. This is not fiction as it has happened before if Tutani wants to know he should find out how Senator Sinampande became MDC T candidate in 2008. So Tutani, commercial political activists are by definition unprincipled, trecherous and therefore always disloyal and dangerous to keep within your organisation. It should thus be known to Tutani and others that this MDC will flash out all molls so that it is not caught flat footed in the next elections.

Tutani also makes an assertion that the children of the late MDC Vice President the legendary Gibson Sibanda defected from us, truth is that membership of political parties in hereditary and the MDC has no oath with the late Sibanda family that all their family members will be part of our party. Those children are fully grown adults, who are beyond forty. So how can such fully grown adults be referred as children who should just do as their father just did.They are entitled to their freedom of association an that's it. Their being members of the MDC T does not translate to any loose to us, after all the late Sibanda never had a will that said all the family members should die MDC members. Besides that you defect from a party that you belong to but as for the two, they did not appear in any part of the membership records.As the national organising secretary of the party I checked records in all the party branches, wards , districts and provinces and they are not there so how do you defect from something that you are not part of. Surely Tutani you could have done much better with some bit of more research.

Perhaps even more interesting is how Tutani tries to project himself as a expect in statecraft by wanting to compare the MDC with COPE of South Africa without drawing any similarities. This floppy analysis only aimed at denigrating and projecting us as a dying party is pathetic to say the least. More derogatory is the other attempt to compare us to the Inkatha party in South Africa with some unwritten undertones that we are a tribal party. This mediaeval thinking of simplifying politics and parties into regional or tribal entities because they are led by people from certain tribes honestly has no space in the democratisation of Zimbabwe. Finally Tutani speaks of us firing four MPs the fact is that it three and if Tutani makes such factual eras how does he hope to be trusted with other things. I conclude that loyalty in political parties is the ability to refuse to undermine your own party by being a commercial political activist and  Tutani should accept this fact!

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Qhubani Moyo is the National Organising Secretary of the MDC led by Professor Welshman Ncube, he is contactable on qmoyo2000@yahoo.co.uk.