My Turn: From Mugabe must go to No, he stays!

HAVE you, dear reader, taken time to decode the messages from the personalised party, MDC-Tsvangirai over the GPA and this whole election business?

From the "Mugabe must go!" mantra that was the party's clarion call since its launch on September 11 1999 - our own 9/11 - which made Morgan a bin Laden equivalent, on account of the ruinous sanctions, it is now "Mugabe must stay!"

Yes Mugabe must stay, as there is no more talk of the so-called crisis of legitimacy.

The self-proclaimed party of excellence now wants President Mugabe in office till the cows come home.

This is why any talk of elections this year brings MDC-T out in goose pimples.

Unbelievable as it may sound, 'Mugabe must stay' is exactly what MDC-T leaders are saying by campaigning to have elections scheduled for later this year, deferred to 2013 or 2016.

Don't get me wrong dear reader.

I am not saying if elections are held, President Mugabe will go, no.

It just strikes me as odd that President Mugabe - whom the MDC-T casts as a treacherous dictator - is the one insisting on elections while Tsvangirai, the MDC-T and the coterie of Western-sponsored NGOs are all against elections.

This gang converged in Namibia where even political nonentities convened conferences berating polls.

Who then qualifies to be called a tin-pot dictator?

He who wants to put himself up for acceptance or rejection by the electorate or, he who brands a purported national party with his own name and sees red whenever the word election is mentioned?

You be the judge dear reader!

Now, to the notebook as my namesake at the pink paper loves to say.

Last Friday, Sadc leaders converged in Windhoek, Namibia for an extra-ordinary summit on Zimbabwe and Madagascar.

To the West and their acolytes, Windhoek was the venue where Mugabe was to be guillotined and have his head delivered to David Cameron or Barack Obama as a trophy to adorn the Oval Office or Westminster Abbey.

Reading reports in the private media and the viral online websites, a Martian would have been forgiven for thinking Sadc was some fly-by-night organisation conceived in Western capitals and, funded by the likes of Freedom House or Usaid.

That is, an organisation sworn to effecting regime change in Zimbabwe yet Sadc has a rich and proud history of outflanking neo-colonial machinations from the same forces that bankroll the MDC-T today.

From its formative days as the Front Line States that led the charge for decolonisation through the Southern African Co-ordination Conference to the present Southern African Development Community, Sadc has seen it all.

Sadc leaders, past and present, saw Afonso Dhlakama being raised by the Americans to fight Frelimo in Mozambique through his Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo).

They saw Jonas Savimbi being raised by the Westerners to fight Eduardo dos Santos and MPLA in Angola.

They also saw US-backed Ugandan and Rwandan rebels being raised to fight Laurent Kabila and his son, Joseph, in the DRC.

And, in most of these instances, including Lesotho, Zimbabwe and some Sadc member states had to deploy troops to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of these member states.

And again, most of the time, Sadc found itself fighting Western forces by proxy.

So, for someone to think that a region with such a proud history cannot draw parallels between MDC-T, Renamo and/or Unita is to doubt the intelligence and collective memory of the leadership in the region.

And now, as we build up to the tripartite Sadc-Comesa-EAC Summit in Pretoria, South Africa where Zimbabwe and Madagascar will be discussed on the sidelines of the June 11 Summit, the Zimbabwean private and South African apartheid press are at it again.

Suddenly South African President Jacob Zuma morphs into the West's pointman, not Sadc facilitator.

President Mugabe and Zanu-PF are reduced to askaris, and Tsvangirai and his MDC-T are thrust on the same pedestal with revolutionary parties like the ANC, Swapo, Botswana Democratic Party, Chama cha Mapinduzi, Frelimo and MPLA that spawned some of the leaders who will converge in Pretoria.

The MDC formations' reactionary agenda is packaged as dovetailing with the thrust of Sadc whose major objective is to spearhead the holistic decolonisation of the region.

That was just for background.

But, what is it that the MDC factions or fractions are complaining about regarding implementation of the GPA that warrants a summit on Zimbabwe?

In Livingstone, we were told it was alleged violence by Zanu-PF but, as events have since shown in the run-up to MDC-T's third congress in Bulawayo and elsewhere, violence is manifest in MDC-T.

If MDC-T leaders can pummel each other like that before cameras, imagine what they do to political opponents away from the public's eye?

In an interview he had with the Southern Times on the eve of the Windhoek Summit, President Mugabe revealed that the parties in Government had agreed on timelines to the next election.

Should the timelines fit into 2011, the President said, then elections will be held this year, but if not, then they will be held next year. No reasonable person can argue with that.

So, what exactly is MDC-T's gameplan in crying wolf to Sadc everytime?

Playing victim?

Creating self-fulfilling prophecies ahead of elections?

Whatever the reason, time spent crying wolf to Sadc would be better spent lobbying for the lifting of the ruinous economic sanctions that MDC-T leaders ironically never complain about to Sadc anyway.

Now that MDC-T is saying "Mugabe must stay," tongue-in-cheek, what are they saying to Tsvangirai?

Icho! to borrow an uppercut from Nathaniel Manheru.

caesar.zvayi@zimpapers.co.zw