WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-04-27 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
[I don’t trust Moyo. I think the MDC will do ok. I have reached a few conclusions about them. Leave Zimbabwe alone and let the MDC rule then we’ll sit back and judge. It may do better than you think. I don’t think the MDC should just be written off in a simple way. Jan]
By Fiona Forde
“But Jonathan Moyo is yesterday’s man,” my editor pointed out as we discussed the plight of Zimbabwe’s opposition forces. True, but the fact that the former Zanu-PF loyalist can run rings around the opposition, to this day, speaks volumes about the current political make-up.
On Wednesday evening Moyo joined Heneri Dzinotyiweyi of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Simba Makoni’s front man Ibbo Mandaza as part of the Mail and Guardian’s critical thinking forum for a debate on the election aftermath under the banner A crisis in Zimbabwe. What crisis?
For about 90 minutes, moderator Judge Dennis Davis kept the trio on their toes as he tried to tease out a decent debate about the Zimbabwean conflict. Yet he left little doubt that the crisis within the crisis is actually the MDC itself. Dzinotyiweyi, like other MDC leaders in the past few weeks, failed miserably in his attempt to inspire confidence.
There was nothing in his argument that reflected the kind of creative thinking that’s needed to break the deadlock right now. There was no vision worth talking of. No plan for tomorrow. No sketch of what a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe might look like under an MDC-led government.
“There was no infusion of vitality,” Davis added when we spoke the following day. “I just got the feeling that the MDC were being a bit too triumphalist rather than making some sense about what might lead the country through this dreadful period and move it on.”
To his credit, Dzinotyiweyi was hauled in at the 11th hour when more pressing engagements got in Tendai Biti’s way. He may have been an unknown MDC figure to his Johannesburg audience, but he stuck resolutely to his party’s line, harping on about their March 29 victory, their constitutional right to lead the country and the defective electoral commission that is preventing Morgan Tsvangirai from stepping into Robert Mugabe’s shoes.
Yet what Dzinotyiweyi and the movement failed to see was that the situation has gone beyond sweet victory, four weeks into an unprecedented post-election conflict. It’s no longer purely about who won what. This worrying situation is not solely about the MDC. It’s about pragmatism, not principle. It’s about a concerted effort, a unified force that will put Zimbabwe on the right transitional path.
And like Tsvangirai and Biti, Dzinotyiweyi refused to see it that way. As Moyo and Mandaza talked in reasoned tones about the need for a transitional government or some other such formation to break the deadlock, they left the MDC man far behind as he got stuck on the majority of votes he and his party believe were cast in their favour and the importance of setting the electoral record straight.
His party’s line has changed little in the past four weeks. We won. And we want Mugabe to put words on it, is all Tsvangirai appears capable of saying. And if he won’t, then we want you to help us, he tells his regional peers as he seeks to drum up support for his presidential aspirations.
But as Moyo and Mandaza tried to tell Dzinotyiweyi last Wednesday, we will never know who got what in that March 29th election and it’s futile to even try. No one knows what ever came of the original voting papers, or indeed the extra three million ballot papers that were printed in advance of the poll.
For more than three weeks now, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has been holed up at an unknown location as the counting continues. Meanwhile the country teeters on the verge of serious conflict, a situation that demands more creative thinking and leadership than the MDC appears capable of delivering right now.
“But we would explain that it [the count] was defective,” Dzinotyiweyi continued to argue. Clearly what is defective now is a party who hails itself as the only legitimate democratic front in the midst of a dictatorship yet who cannot see beyond securing their own place in Harare’s State House.
These are unprecedented waters and Zimbabwe could go either way in the next few weeks. The Chinese vessel may have left these choppy shores, but it has raised a number of questions in its wake. What kind of a stockpile is Mugabe sitting on? How regularly do these shipments arrive from China or elsewhere? Maybe the shipment was intended for resale in some other hot spot on the continent. Or maybe not.
And maybe it’s not Mugabe who refuses to throw in the towel. Maybe it’s his right-hand men, his staunch Zanu-PF loyalists and senior members of the Joint Operation Command who we believe are digging in their heels. Any intending government would do well to recognise that it’s better to have them on board and with you than against you in such a sensitive transitional period.
But the MDC is hell bent on going solo on this one. The keys of State House are not yet in their hands and already they appear drunk on power. Nelson Mandela could have done likewise back in 1994, but he didn’t, as Davis reminded Dzinotyiweyi.
Back then, the incoming president had the cunning to put a figure on the Inkatha Freedom Party vote in KwaZulu-Natal that many believe didn’t quite reflect reality. But Madiba knew it was better to have his opponents with him rather than leave them out in the cold. “And I wonder if there is anybody in the MDC with the political craft that Mandela exhibited back in 1994,” Davis pondered.
Cleary not. The MDC have embarked on their Plan B strategy of raising regional support because their Plan A failed a long time ago.
An opposition in Zimbabwe. What opposition?