Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Mukanya Makwira
25 November 2009
Harare — "HE that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else", said 18th century scientist, philosopher and statesman Benjamin Franklin.
As the inter-party talks about the "outstanding issues" drag on, Franklin's statement bodes well for the continued shenanigans of what has become the biggest stumbling block to the finality of the negotiations.
Indeed, MDC-T is a party of sorts.
Their list of outstanding issues grows by the day. This confirms their real motive as expressed by their secretary for information Nelson Chamisa; they want to grab power.
There can be no doubt there are certain words in the country's political vocabulary that have completely lost their meaning.
The term "outstanding issues" is now being prostituted by MDC-T in a bid to bring the collapse of the Government of National Unity.
The latest "outstanding issue" according to them is George Charamba, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity.
Charamba, a mere mortal, has become a bigger issue than the economic sanctions, give me a break. I do not vouch for Charamba or for anybody else for that matter, but for a whole party to bring in such flimsy issues is a joke.
His crime according to them is that he has been "fanning hate speech through the public media". What constitutes hate speech, if anyone can explain? What about the incessant vitriol that is churned by the various MDC-T functionaries in their media?
It must be understood that the anti-Charamba offensive is not all about the personality per se.
It is part of a wide media war, for which, the "unlikeable" George stands as a stumbling block, not to national dialogue as they want people to believe but his gatekeeping of national interests.
Having realised their reluctance to call for the removal of sanctions, Charamba has become a poorly thought convenient scapegoat.
Hypocrisy, hypocrisy has become the order of the day at Harvest House. Or is it a question of discord between the external hand that calls the tune and the piper?
That Charamba is a civil servant and should not dabble in matters political is a dry argument devoid of sense, rationale and reality.
Being the President's spokesperson, there is no way he cannot issue comments, on behalf of his principal. More serious, as the MDC led by Professor Mutambara has said is the issue of the parallel government set up by the Prime Minister.
He has taken a whole bunch of MDC-T functionaries into Government structures, while at the same time calling for Charamba's resignation.
Civil servants should not be political so that they can execute their duties impartially.
Ian Makone, the Permanent Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office, is not only a professed MDC-T financier, but also a very influential member of the party's national executive, kitchen cabinet and the party's national standing committee.
The same goes for the likes of Gandhi Mudzingwa and Emmanuel Chimwanda, both of whom have been appointed senior civil servants in the Prime Minister's Office and continue to hold very senior posts in the MDC-T top party echelons.
Charamba's political orientation is not subject to debate; he does not hold any position in Zanu-PF.
Not only is the MDC-T not following the letter and spirit of the Global Political Agreement, but also it has condoned criminality in the quest for narrow political ends.
So desperate to stuff the civil service with their functionaries was MDC-T such that they had the temerity to nominate party zealots with forged certificates.
Tsvangirai's personal assistant, Judith Munyaka, and appointed principal director Joseph Mungwari, an MDC-T spokesperson, were dismissed and demoted respectively on July 29, 2009 after the Public Service Commission discovered that they had forged certificates.
MDC-T has made a lot of noise accusing Zanu-PF of being insincere and failing to implement fully the GPA. What has not come out in the Western media and the party's mouthpieces is their reluctance or is it refusal to fulfil their own obligations as outlined in the GPA.
MDC-T has continued to be in denial mode over the existence of economic sanctions, whose removal was called for by the full Sadc Summit held way back on March 31, 2007 in Tanzania.
To buttress their argument, they claimed that the issue of "restrictive measures", as they prefer to call them, was outside their ambit as they had no control over the countries that imposed them in the first place. Really?
Instead of facing reality, the Prime Minister's Office has proposed a so-called "Public Outreach Dialogue" claiming that economic sanctions do not exist. Despite their spirited denials, evidence at hand points to the other way.
They were the authors and have had direct influence on the sanctions and decisions taken on Zimbabwe by the United States of America and the European Union.
Reporting to the US Senate Sub-Committee on African Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations on June 28, 2001, Senator Russell Feingold, one of the co-sponsors of the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Recovery Act, confirmed the direct involvement of Tsvangirai.
"Just two days ago, I met with Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe's democratic opposition (sic). He urged me to paint a too pessimistic picture of Zimbabwe at this hearing . . . " he said.
Ambassador-designate to Germany Hebson Makuvise, an MDC-T appointee, who also happens to have Zimbabwean and British passports, told this author that the MDC-T has already instructed Belgium not to accept an ambassadorial replacement from any other party except from the MDC-T following the untimely death of former ambassador to Belgium Ambassador Punungwe.
All this shows that MDC-T holds sufficient clout to influence the removal of the sanctions and should fulfil their obligations before the other parties move an inch from what they have done already.
The biggest threat to the survival of the GNU is the sanctions, pirate radio stations and the parallel government set up by the Prime Minister.
Promotion of hate and focusing on individuals is retrogressive because Zimbabwe is bigger than Bennett.
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