MDC-T’s web of deception

By Prof Jonathan Moyo, MP (05/11/09)

THE Russian proverb that he who digs a hole for another may fall in it himself best describes the jeopardy facing Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who is facing oblivion as a result of his hopeless attempts to dig a hole for President Mugabe by continuing to make false allegations that the appointments of Roy Bennett, the Attorney-General, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and provincial governors are outstanding GPA issues.

Eight months down the line and as the summit of the Sadc Troika on Politics, Defence and Security meets today in Maputo in an ordinary session which, among other things, will review the progress and challenges of the GPA Prime Minister Tsvangirai is in real danger of falling into the hole he has been digging for President Mugabe through untold deception.
Whereas all along, Tsvangirai and his Western backers have been using MDC-T media hacks to allege that the appointments of the Attorney- General, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and provincial governors are outstanding GPA issues which President Mugabe is allegedly not fulfilling, and whereas many well- meaning Zimbabweans and neutral observers who have not read the GPA have believed that the alleged outstanding issues are in the GPA, they are now somersaulting with a new twist to their allegation.
Now, in what is a clear but Machiavellian admission of deception over the last eight months, the new allegation is that the appointments in question are not in the GPA after all but are in a Sadc communiqué of January 27, 2009 which Tsvangirai and his media hacks claim is equivalent to and as binding as the GPA.
This is quite staggering. Here we are being told, as if we are children, that a Press statement issued by Sadc on January 27, 2009 has the same legal and political force as the GPA signed by the leaders of Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations on September 15, 2008.
Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara, who has developed an impulsive knack to be all things to all people by saying one thing during the day and the opposite at night, has joined the Tsvangirai wagon of deception by incredulously alleging, as he did shortly after meeting with President Joseph Kabila of the DRC on Monday, that the Sadc Press statement of January 27’s reference to appointments that the MDC-T claims to be outstanding is as binding as the GPA itself ostensibly because that Press statement is supposed to be the foundation that led to the formation of the coalition government on February 13.
For the sake of a perspective, it is important to keep in mind that deception has been the MDC-T’s medium of choice since the formation of the coalition government. The MDC-T has sought to deceive the nation that Tsvangirai is the head of government when he is not and has also used deception to claim that the Council of Ministers is the de facto Cabinet when it is not.
Early in the days of the coalition government, there was massive deception about meaningless 100-day action plans; deception about the so-called World Bank Multi-Donor Trust Fund which was, in fact, the treasury for the MDC T’s parallel government. There have even been deceptive claims that the MDC-T has a majority in Parliament when, in fact, it does not.
While the MDC-T’s tale of attempted deception over the last eight months is yet to be told, what is now clear is that if Tsvangirai, Mutambara and their lot honestly believe that the Sadc Press statement of January 27 is the foundation of the coalition government, then they truly need God to help them for they do not know what they are doing. It is ludicrous in the extreme for them to treat a Sadc Press statement as if it has the legal quality, force and status of a ratified and binding protocol.
In view of the foregoing, even though it was bad deception for Tsvangirai, the MDC-T, their foreign backers and media hacks to peddle a lie for eight months that the appointments of the Attorney-General, the Governor of the Reserve Bank and provincial governors were outstanding GPA issues when they are not mentioned anywhere in the GPA, it is worse deception for them to now claim that the same issues are mentioned with binding force in a Sadc Press statement of 27 January.
For the record, it should be recalled that paragraph 7(vi) of the said Sadc Press statement reported that the Extraordinary Summit in Pretoria had decided that "the appointments of the Reserve Bank Governor and the Attorney- General will be dealt with by the inclusive government after its formation". In this connection, it should be pointed out that there is no other paragraph in that Press statement about any other appointment besides those covered under paragraph 7(vi).
What this means is that neither the GPA nor the Sadc Press statement of January 27 mentions the appointment of provincial governors in any way whatsoever. In the circumstances, on what basis is the issue of their appointment supposed to be outstanding? While the negotiators may have indeed debated the issue of provincial governors and while they may have entertained various scenarios they considered possible or even desirable, the undeniable fact is that their appointment is not mentioned in the GPA or the January 27 Sadc Press statement.
Besides the fact that the appointment of provincial governors is not an outstanding GPA or Sadc Press statement issue, it must be remembered that the office of provincial governors is an integral and indivisible part of the office of the President and that, as his resident local government representatives, provincial governors report directly to the President.
To President Mugabe as Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces, provincial governors are to him local government equivalents of Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s permanent secretary.
Just like the Prime Minister insisted on appointing Ian Makone, who is an MDC-T member of his kitchen cabinet and is thus politically loyal to him, President Mugabe has the right to appoint Zanu-PF provincial governors of his choice who are politically loyal to him. If the President should make the mistake of appointing provincial governors nominated by Tsvangirai, just as the sun will rise tomorrow, he would have paved the way for illegal regime change by legitimating new local government centres for the expansion of the MDC-T’s US and EU-funded, run and controlled parallel government structures whose officials are getting top-up monthly salaries between US$700 and US$7 000 when the rest of the civil service gets less than US$200 a month.
Back to the January 27 Sadc Press statement, it should be understood that its paragraph 7(vi) does not mention Johannes Tomana and Gideon Gono by name as individuals who should be fired or replaced. Instead, and in very clear terms, paragraph 7(vi) of the Press statement says the appointments of the Reserve Bank Governor and the Attorney-General "will be dealt with by the inclusive Government after its formation".
The relevant question here is whether the matter has been "dealt with" by the coalition government. The answer is a big yes. Following the formation of the coalition government, President Mugabe has officially explained to the Prime Minister, the two Deputy Prime Ministers and the Cabinet that the appointments of the Governor of the Reserve Bank and the Attorney-General were done in terms of the law well before the formation of the coalition government and cannot be reversed for that reason. The fact that the MDC-T does not like the incumbents of those offices is not law but simply a political opinion to which the MDC-T and its supporters are entitled with no cause for a fuss.
As for Roy Bennett, the former member of the murderous Rhodesian Infantry and Selous Scouts in whose solidarity the MDC-T disengaged from the Government, he is not mentioned anywhere in the GPA or the January 27 Sadc Press statement. Rather, Roy Bennett is just an outstanding Rhodesian issue and only within the MDC-T which remains Rhodesian controlled some 30 years after the defeat of the Rhodie ideology of white supremacy in 1980.
The Rhodesians who control the MDC-T insultingly believe that the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe started in 2000 because that is the year of Zimbabwe’s historic and irreversible land reform programme. So, as a Rhodesian issue, Bennett is most certainly not an outstanding GPA or Sadc communiqué issue.
As such, Prime Minister Tsvangirai and his party and their foreign backers and media hacks have been engaged in a web of deception about what they have alleged to be outstanding GPA issues. In the plain language of our grandmothers, they have been telling blue-eyed lies in the treacherous hope that they would dig a hole for President Mugabe and Zanu-PF.
But now the MDC-T lies are not adding up or holding together in Maputo to the point where they have been forced to abandon references to the GPA under the laughable cover of the January 27 Sadc communiqué.
For many Zimbabweans who are eagerly awaiting the outcome of today’s summit of the Sadc Troika in Maputo, and who are aware of the litany of MDC-T deception since February 13, the time for the MDC-T to cease and desist from digging Rhodesian holes for the leadership of the liberation struggle for purposes of illegal regime change. Zimbabweans want the coalition government to work and succeed. Full stop.