The Zimbabwe Times
By Geoffrey Nyarota
14 August 2009

(Published in The Financial Gazette, 2006)
ANY Zimbabwean politician who despises those of his compatriots who are less academically inclined or accomplished than him invites the wrath of people who constitute the majority of the electorate.
While our country’s adult literacy figures are high by any standard, the highest on the African continent, men and women of outstanding scholarly achievement constitute a tiny percentage of the population of Zimbabwe.
Long before the October 2005 split within the ranks of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, the much-talked about lack of dazzling academic accomplishment of party leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had become a potentially divisive matter among the top hierarchy of the party. As a parliamentary committee worked on the draft of the 2005 constitutional amendments, which ushered in the controversial revival of the senate, the then MDC secretary for legal affairs, David Coltart, attempted to sneak in an amendment clause which would have barred non-degreed politicians from aspiring to be President of Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai was the obvious target of the proposed amendment. Coltart submitted the clause without the knowledge of Tsvangirai, who only got wind of the intrigues taking place behind his back after the proposed clause was rejected by the committee. The same Coltart now portrays himself as arbiter in the dispute which subsequently raged, pitying MDC secretary general, Prof Welshman Ncube against Tsvangirai and which Coltart quite clearly fuelled in its infancy.
Those within the leadership of the MDC breakaway faction who collectively despise Tsvangirai’s lack of higher education do not all possess the attribute of an impressive academic record, unless, of course, they now consider themselves well-read merely by their association with their learned secretary general. They must now feel an enhanced sense of accomplishment as they bask in the reflected glory of the academic distinction of Prof Arthur Mutambara.
Gibson Sibanda, Priscilla Misihairambwi-Mushonga and Trudy Stevenson, for instance, are politicians of modest academic attainment. Sibanda was a train driver before he became a trade unionist. Before him, Sir Roy Welensky, who became Prime Minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1956, was a former train driver and trade unionist as well. In his younger days he was Southern Rhodesia’s heavy-weight boxing champion.
While Harvard and Yale Universities are the veritable training ground for United States politicians and business leaders, academic prowess does not always translate into fine political acumen and socio-economic benefits for ordinary people. If the long-suffering masses of Zimbabwe have derived any direct benefit from the fine intellectual aptitude of their compatriots of profound erudition such benefit must be of miniscule proportion.
Names of individuals such as Prof Ncube, former Information Minister Prof Jonathan Moyo, education minister, Dr Stan Mudenge and Dr Tafataona Mahoso, chairman of the Media and Information Commission, as well as a host of other Zimbabweans, including the President himself, immediately come to mind.
They include the ultra-eloquent Dr Herbert Ushewokunze, the politically shrewd Dr Eddison Zvobgo, the cosmopolitan Dr Bernard Chidzero, now all late, Dr Nathan Shamuyarira, the eminently loyal Zanu-PF cadre, the gifted but lackluster Dr Simba Makoni and the once all-powerful Dr Charles Utete. Dr Naomi Nhiwatiwa, now in the Diaspora, Dr Ibbo Mandaza, who became disastrously imbedded with the CIO, the uninformed Dr Joseph Made, and of late the headstrong Professor Mutambara and the voluble Mr David Coltart also deserve mention in this regard. Prof Phenias Makhurane, Dr Themba Dlodlo and the illustrious Dr Frank Khumalo should also be cited.
Before her sojourn at Harvard Margaret Dongo was a political firebrand. On return from there the shrew in her had been tamed. As I write, two well-educated Zimbabweans, Prof Moyo and dispossessed entrepreneur, Mutumwa Mawere, are locked in disgraceful and mortal conflict. Having both benefited from Zanu-PF patronage in the past they are now engaged in mutually destructive combat on a Zimbabwean website, where they have taken to exposing as much as possible of each other’s allegedly sinful past, much to the delight of readers. Discerning observers must wonder, however, whether their combined energy cannot be exploited more profitably for Zimbabwe.
At the attainment of independence in 1980 the Mugabe cabinet was hailed as one of the most educated in the world. Today what benefits do Zimbabweans have to show for that rare collective distinction?
In fact, some of our learned professors have aggravated a national dilemma, whose origins can be traced back directly to the policies and actions of our much-degreed President and his equally erudite cohorts. Generally, the rest of Zimbabwe’s educated elite have a disturbing tendency to recline in the comfort of their armchairs while puzzlingly lamenting that President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa does not intervene to extricate their country from its current predicament.
It was in such circumstances of political lethargy among the educated that Tsvangirai overcame his own fear and academic handicap to challenge government’s growing authoritarianism and provide leadership to a robust opposition movement. If it wasn’t for the cunning intervention of the same scholarly Prof Moyo on behalf of the ruling Zanu-PF in 2000, the MDC’s campaign against dictatorship would have, in all probability, succeeded then. Once his subsequent divorce from Zanu-PF was finalized, the same Moyo announced that he was forming a political party of his own. The name eludes my memory. The party died in its infancy, however, despite Moyo’s much acclaimed education. He immediately assumed the role of self-appointed advisor to those established politicians whose parties remain the mainstay of our politics.
It is not the uneducated masses who relegated Zimbabwe, once the prosperous and bountiful breadbasket of southern Africa, to a basket case itself. The educated unleashed Gukurahundi on Matabeleland and peasants of limited educated suffered the dire consequences. The uneducated may have physically planted the bombs that destroyed the Daily News printing press, but they were assigned by the educated. It is not the unschooled who amended the constitution to create a de facto life-presidency before enacting the draconian AIPPA and POSA. It is a select few who now seek to further undermine Zimbabwe through senseless pursuit of the so-called Republic of Mthwakazi?
At the height of Moyo’s reign as Minister of Information, I was editor-in-chief of The Daily News. We published in the paper a touching letter to the editor. Submitted by a Bulawayo reader its content has remained indelibly imbedded in my memory.
“If that is what education does to people,” the correspondent opined with regard to Moyo, “I will not send my children to school.”
That notwithstanding, Tsvangirai, on the other hand, needs to address the cause of general disaffection with his leadership qualities. He must take cognisance of Joyce Mujuru’s remarkable achievement. When she arrived in Harare at the end of the war of liberation in 1980 she was barely literate. I hear that today, while still lacking political charisma, she has become a fairly articulate Vice-President, after she went back to the desk. As they say in Ndebele: “Ukufunda akupheli.” There is no end to the learning process.
Strictly speaking, however, while a reasonable level of education is a prerequisite, one does not need to be a man or woman of much book to be an effective leader. A more critical attribute is the capacity to attract experts in various fields of human endeavour in order to build a broad-based and multi-skilled team. A head of state cannot be expected to be a farmer, an economist, a surgeon, a lawyer, a metallurgist, a media expert, a military strategist and a sociologist, all rolled into one.
A significant weakness of the Mugabe administration has been the element of cronyism. This resulted in the appointment of Zanu-PF stalwarts to ministerial portfolios for which they possessed no relevant qualification or previous experience. Notable examples are the appointment of Enos Mzombi Nkala and Dr Herbert Murerwa to the crucial Ministry of Finance and the selection of the late Enos Chikowore to head the Ministry of Transport. Zimbabwe suffers today from the disastrous consequences. In similar fashion Mugabe shunted Victoria Chitepo and Joyce Mujuru subsequently to the Ministry of Information.
Above all, a political leader must demonstrate that not only is he or she in touch with the people, but that he or she is also prepared to make personal sacrifices for their welfare and benefit; not just for self.
From a different perspective, an entrenched lack of ethnic cohesion within the ranks of the political opposition will continue to bedevil the achievement of genuine democracy, development, peace, and prosperity long after Mugabe has departed, unless this dilemma is addressed squarely without delay.
To strengthen the position of the opposition in the face of a weakening ruling party, Tsvangirai must be magnanimous as he rides on the crest of what appears to be a current wave of political popularity. He needs to extend a hand of friendship and reconciliation to his erstwhile colleagues in the MDC executive in a bid to restore the MDC to its former national grandeur and supremacy.
On their part, Welshman Ncube and Gibson Sibanda must swallow their misplaced pride, especially now that it is apparent their largely ethnic-based break-away faction of the MDC stands limited prospect of generating a national political following, whatever Mutambara may say about the alleged irrelevance of numbers in politics.
Placing nation before self, all three politicians should reconcile their differences, whatever Coltart says now about the alleged violent disposition of Tsvangirai.
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Comments

10 Responses to “Politics, the educated elite and related matters”
 Mr K on August 14th, 2008 10:16 am
I can’t believe this is a 2006 article. Well done, Geoff. They say education is not synonymous with learning. Education is about grasping concepts while learning is a permanent change of behaviour. This explains why a lawyer like Emmerson Munangagwa is such a violent person. The education he got never translated into learning – it did not bring a change of behaviour! Check Prof Moyo- he never learns. I agree, the majority of our educated people are not learned at all.
I think the problem is premised on the generally skewed view that education brings success. Think of it, how many professors or other academics in business faculties in our universities actually have successful businesses? Learning is about adapting to the environment and then being creative in dealing with it. This is what Mr Tsvangirai has done. Bravo, Geoff!
 David Coltart on August 14th, 2008 11:59 am
Dear Geoff,
As an old friend and as a journalist of international repute I would have hoped that you would get your facts right regarding the Constitutional amendment introduced in 2005. Firstly the clause you refer to was not introduced or “sneaked in” by me – it was put in by our team of legal drafters reflecting the wishes of people as stated in the “What the people want document published in 2000″ – a fact that Tendai Biti was aware of and can confirm. Secondly when I saw the clause I took it out before it was tabled in Parliament because I knew it did not reflect our own policy. Thirdly ,even had the clause remained in the document it would never have applied to Morgan Tsvangirai because it related to a ceremonial, non executive President, which Morgan Tsvangirai would never have been.
I stress that all of this can be confirmed by Tendai Biti who was the seconder of the motion to introduce the Constitutional amendment in Parliament.
I hope that you will set the record straight and publish an appropriate apology to me.
Regards,
David Coltart

Dear David,
Please accept my most sincere apologies. My memory could be failing me, but I don’t believe this correction and clarification were made at the time when the article originally appeared in the Financial Gazette. Otherwise it would not have been repeated. Journalists, like doctors, lawyers, politicians, even those of international repute, occasionally make mistakes. While the mistakes of doctors are buried and those of lawyers are sent to Chikurubi, the corrections to the errors of journalists are published on the front page. Meanwhile, I would be most grateful if you kindly forwarded the correct version of the then proposed amendment. Again, please accept my very sincere apology.
Kind regards,
Geoffrey Nyarota
 moms on August 14th, 2008 1:34 pm
well said
 Petina Gappah on August 14th, 2008 4:53 pm
This is excellent stuff ,Geoff. Does anyone remember the Forum Party? Well-intentioned as it may have been, it was essentially an elitist project. Notwithstanding the comments made above by Mr. Coltart, one gets the sense that his party is likewise an elitist, top-down project, which is how the leadership can feel confident about imposing decisions on both their MPs and their electorate.
 Clapperton Mavhunga on August 14th, 2008 5:15 pm
… And since the Senator-in-waiting’s rebuttal of the Editor’s facts is in the public interest, could we also have the evidence published on this site so that we as citizens can clear the air on the issue. The Senator is to be commended on the very polite and civil manner in which he answered to the Editor’s position, where others would “nearly raise their feast”! Democracy does not start when change has happened; it comes in instances like these, where disagreements occurs without violent back and forth.
 Mutumwa Mawere on August 14th, 2008 5:21 pm
I find your comments above as unfortunate. You state as fact that I am locked in a disgraceful and mortal conflict with Prof Moyo. I am not aware of any mortal conflict that I have with Prof Moyo. It must be accepted that it is healthy to hold different views and I would not describe any different opinion I am have with Prof Moyo as mortal. Your choice of words is regrettable.
You then go on to state as fact that I benefited from Zanu-PF patronage in the past without providing any evidence supporting your baseless assertion that a political party whose financial standing is weak can end up being a benefactor to me. I have not received anything from ZANU-PF and I challenge you to provide evidence confirming your reckless statement.
I am not aware of any destructive combat with Prof Moyo other than your own combat with me for reasons that I cannot fathom.
You make the statement that I have a sinful past. It is interesting that you are now playing God. I think this is unbecoming of a journalist to make such reckless statement like this.
I do hope that you will take time to look at your own actions and words before you point a finger at others. The problems of Zimbabwe come from reckless people who show no regard for the truth but seek to create a higher moral ground when their own past suggests otherwise.
EDITOR: This article is not brand new. It was originally published in The Financial Gazette back in 2006. I am not aware that you are currently locked in any conflict with Professor Jonathan Moyo and this is not stated anywhere in the article. You may have forgotten this, but you and Prof Moyo were, at the material time, indeed locked in mortal conflict (my words) on the NewZimbabwe.com website. Please kindly refer to the article attached below.
As for your other comments, suffice it to say that you refrained from making them when my article was first published two years ago. Your silence suggested to me that you had no particular quarrel with the content. While it is true that journalists are expected to report facts as accurately as possible; it is equally true that they are also at liberty to express their own opinions on the facts they report. This article is an opinion piece, not a news story.
Finally, if I was to review my own past each time I feel compelled to express an opinion on any subject I would most probably never express any opinion on matters of public interest.
Kind regards,
Geoffrey Nyarota
Mutumwa Mawere is a paranoid attention seeker
By Professor Jonathan Moyo
Last updated: 05/24/2008 02:31:56
FOLLOWING the publication of Mutumwa Mawere’s article, “My problem with Jonathan Moyo” by this website on June 5, 2006, the editor of New Zimbabwe.com asked me to respond in the interest of balanced public debate.
My initial view was that it was unnecessary for me to respond because Mawere has taken an apparently personalized and even defamatory approach with no self-evident public relevance or value.
Also, as my article on the Budiriro by-election dealt with Zimbabwean politics, I did not see why I had to respond to Mawere who has made a declaration under oath before the courts in South Africa denying that he is a Zimbabwean and claiming that he is a South African in order to avoid extradition to Zimbabwe.
I therefore did not think I had to bother myself debating a South African over Zimbabwean politics. But after some further nudging from the editor, I have reluctantly agreed to respond in the interest of promoting transparent debate against what I still believe is my better judgment.
Because the issues raised by Mawere in his convoluted article are many, varied and very serious in so far as some of them are even defamatory, my response is necessarily elaborate and rather long.
Although Mawere’s article purports to be reacting to my piece, “Beyond the Budiriro by-election: the state of opposition politics in Zimbabwe” published by this website last month, I don’t think anybody who has read his article would dispute that it has anything to do with the Budiriro by-election or the state of opposition politics in Zimbabwe which were the focus of my piece.
There is an explanation for this. Reading between the lines of his article, I think the reason why Mawere took a personalized approach is not necessarily because he wanted to write about me as his main focal point. Rather, it is because he realized that my piece on the Budiriro by election generated considerable interest and debate among Zimbabweans and was thus a talking point.
Being the ever wily pyramid schemer that he is, Mawere wanted to appropriate that debate and interest by shifting its attention away from the critical issues around the challenges of opposition politics in Zimbabwe towards himself and his problems. In other words, he wanted the debate to be on him and about him as a paranoid attention seeker. This explains why his article is aptly entitled, “My problem with Jonathan Moyo”. The essence of his focus is Mawere’s problems and not Zimbabwe’s problems which were the focus of my article.
Therefore, although his article is all over the place and does not seem to have a coherent running theme beyond its unprovoked personal attack on me, Mawere’s unmistakable mission in the article is two pronged: Yet again for the umpteenth time he is presenting himself not only as an allegedly wronged business mogul whose alleged assets have been illegally expropriated in Zimbabwe but also as an alleged long standing champion of democracy in Zimbabwe whose exemplary efforts through his short-lived National Development Assembly (NDA) were thwarted by those he claims also expropriated his alleged assets.
It is this two pronged thrust of Mawere’s article which I wish to address first before dealing with three specific issues that are personal to me arising from his article in question.
Why does Mawere continue to shamelessly pose: (1) as a wronged business mogul who has been robbed of his alleged assets and (2) as a frustrated human rights activist who has been denied the opportunity to bring democracy to Zimbabwe by building the nation through NDA’s television and radio programs?
I think the answer is simply because he is a compulsive yet idle attention seeker who is prone to extreme bouts of paranoia during which he tells pathological lies that are shocking to decent and well meaning people. A case in point is his outburst not too long ago when he falsely claimed that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) had used proceeds from his alleged companies to pay off Zimbabwe’s arrears to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
We all now know that nothing of the sort happened. The RBZ by its own admission printed with the knowledge of the IMF more than ZW$21 trillion which was used to purchase forex from the parallel market to settle the IMF arrears. But as a paranoid attention seeker, Mawere tried to use the RBZ’s efforts to payoff the IMF debt to draw attention to himself by writing to the IMF and by making his letters public with false claims that proceeds from his alleged assets had been raided.
In the ensuing developments Mawere was for quite sometime in the news and sensationally so because if his claims had been proven true there would have been big time trouble for the RBZ. Yet Mawere’s claims were a pack of pathological lies told by a paranoid attention seeker and that is why the IMF ignored him. As a direct result of his pathological lies on this matter, the IMF as well as many other reputable and honorable people in society now view Mawere as a nuisance given to saying anything about himself, his alleged assets and victimization.
The paranoid attention seeking behind Mawere’s IMF debacle can also be seen from his false claims about the NDA. Because he is now presenting himself as a victim Mawere wants Zimbabweans, especially those in the opposition, to believe that the NDA was an institution designed to promote democracy in Zimbabwe against Zanu PF. Yet nothing could be further from the truth as I will show below.
I am also aware that Mawere has tried to give the impression that he was above Zanu PF politics and now claims that he snubbed the ruling party when he was offered a provincial position by the Zanu PF Masvingo provincial executive that wanted to co-opt him along with Daniel Shumba. But really there is no story here because the invitation was for Mawere to join village politics by clansmen since he was not being offered a national responsibility at ministerial level or a position in either the central committee or the politburo which he definitely would have accepted because he wanted and campaigned for positions like that.
There are only two major reasons why Mawere has sought to distance himself from Zanu PF by giving the false impression that he has always been a champion of democracy through the NDA. One is that there has had been a fallout with his Zanu PF political principals. The other, after making a lot of public noise in support of Zanu PF through the NDA and other forums, his name was included among individuals on the targeted sanctions list by Western governments, starting with the Americans, as a Zanu PF businessman benefiting from Zanu PF misrule.
This inclusion shocked him and he used his fallout with his Zanu PF political principals to start attacking the ruling party as a specific strategy of wanting to be removed from the targeted sanctions list. That’s when he started flirting with some MDC parliamentarians and making donations to the MDC which subsequently helped him to be removed from the sanctions list. If this is what Mawere means by fighting for democracy in Zimbabwe then he has a rather strange if not cynical view of politics.
Otherwise those who care to examine the record without prejudice will learn that Mawere’s NDA had nothing to do with fighting for democracy in Zimbabwe as it was formed as a Zanu PF political NGO with three overriding strategic purposes.
The first ZANU PF purpose of the NDA was to counter the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) in the hope of ultimately rendering it superfluous in national politics. This is why the NDA’s name was very close to the NCA with the difference that Zanu PF inserted a “D” for development in place of a “C” for constitutional reform. This difference was supposed to be important in demonstrating or calling attention to the fact that Zimbabweans were more interested in having national development than in having a new democratic constitution.
As such, the NDA was supposed to set a developmental agenda in place of a constitutional reform one. In this sense, it is ludicrous for Mawere to now claim that his NDA had anything to do with bringing democracy to Zimbabwe because that is a pathological lie. Also, unlike the NCA which is a membership based organization the NDA was a top down political creation with no membership support. That is why the NDA died with Mawere’s ditching of his Zimbabwean citizenship.
The second strategic purpose of the NDA had to do with creating some space for Mawere himself as an individual. At the time of the setting up of the NDA, Mawere’s Zanu PF political principals, whom he does not now want to be associated with, wanted him to be eased out of the business empire that he now says was his and his alone. This was not for political reasons as such but mainly because Mawere was said to be then interfering with business operations that were being run by salaried professionals on the ground.
Also, the professionals running the business empire were apparently increasingly viewing Mawere as a dangerous loose canon who was making all kinds of reckless political statements that were beginning to harm the businesses by attracting negative publicity as a paranoid attention seeker. The idea was that the business empire would make funds available to the NDA for Mawere’s convenience so that, as chairperson of NDA, he would use that platform to make political statements that would not damage
the business empire he had become associated with as a front.
The third strategic purpose of the NDA, designed by Mawere, is that it was supposed to serve the political interests and agenda of his political principals, especially regarding the succession battles within Zanu PF, because at that time he was still in good books with them and they did not then see him as a political threat or impediment. In this third strategic sense, Mawere had promised his political principals that the NDA would play a pivotal role in Zanu PF’s succession politics.
It was during this NDA period, and in connection with the third strategic purpose, that Mawere then setup the Tribune newspaper. In his article, Mawere opportunistically tells a pathological lie that the Tribune newspaper was banned to give it the same fate as the NDA. Yet he knows only too well that he sold the Tribune to Kindness Paradza as a direct result of his fallout with his Zanu PF political principles due to conflict of the control of the business empire that had been built through Mawere’s pyramid scheming. It is a matter of the public record that the Tribune newspaper fell foul with the law because of the failure by its new owners led by Kindness Paradza to declare that there had been a change of ownership after Mawere abandoned the NDA project as he prepared to wrestle the corporate loot away from his political principals.
In any event, none of the above three strategic purposes behind the creation of the NDA succeeded because that NGO flopped like a dead duck. While Mawere’s article gives the impression that the NDA failed because of what he says was my banning of its television and radio programs, the truth of the matter is that the NDA project flopped under the weight of the folly of its own strategic purposes. In particular, NDA flopped because Mawere and his Zanu PF political principals, not partners but principals, started fighting each other as Mawere sought to run away with the business empire for which he had been a front, claiming that it was his and his alone.
While the rest about the NDA saga is history, I must address the question of why the NDA television and radio programs were discontinued by ZBC. Mawere’s article gives the impression that I banned the programs because I did not want to see democracy and nation building. That is plain crazy.
I wish to state categorically that I fully supported the permanent discontinuation of the NDA programs on television and radio and I stand by that decision even today without any qualms whatsoever. When one has a public responsibility such as I had, you are not there to appease people like Mawere who are paranoid attention seekers by allowing them to do whatever they want just because they have powerful political principals in the ruling party or just because they have a lot of money in their wallets.
It was wrong for ZBC then to have allowed those NDA programs to be aired in the first place. This is because the NDA was a Zanu PF political NGO, and within Zanu PF itself it was a factional project, that was intended to counter the NCA and prop up Mawere’s political principals outside the rules of fair and democratic play. In the circumstances, we could not have been able to justify having NDA running weekly television and radio programs and not giving the same opportunity to the NCA.
The fact mentioned by Mawere in his article that the NDA had money to offer cash strapped ZBC is absolutely irrelevant because that is not the only important deciding factor in public or private broadcasting for that matter. After all, even the NCA had money just like the NDA. There are many other business people who also could afford to pay.
Even worse, the mafia and other criminals have lots of money too but that is no reason why they should be allowed to buy airtime to pursue factional and personal agendas through public airwaves under the pretext of nation building or promoting democracy.
Besides, Mawere had no known public broadcasting credentials to pose as a journalist or some kind of a Larry King on television. The whole affair was a terrible circus. Mawere would appear almost weekly as a guest on Radio One with Pat Manala answering all kinds of meaningless questions and leave that to become an anchor on television in the weekly NDA program “Talk to the Nation”. While this circus was consistent with the strategic purposes of the NDA as described above, it was not consistent with the professional and ethical standards of public broadcasting. So it had to be stopped and it was.
Yet Mawere wanted to be allowed to run amok on the airwaves simply because the NDA was a Zanu PF political NGO. He was understandably surprised and annoyed when he was given an emphatic no. He then took his case to his Zanu PF principals and complained bitterly against me, alleging that I was there to destroy Zanu PF from within and started campaigning for my removal as minister.
Matters came to a head when Mawere’s political principals brought the matter to the politburo where I was taken to task for “banning our own (Zanu PF) program on television and radio”. The allegations and attacks on me were very ugly and they were followed by a vicious whisper campaign impugning my personal integrity and character including idiotic claims that I am gay. But I stood my ground for the reasons I have explained.
When Mawere realized that he was not going to get any joy from using his political principals to put pressure on me through the politburo and their whisper campaign against me, he went to the High Court of Zimbabwe and cited ZBC and myself as respondents. The case was heard before fugitive Justice Paradza, a close ally of Mawere and confident of his then political principals, who ruled in Mawere’s favor and surprisingly ordered that the programs should be reinstated on air.
While the fact that Mawere won the case in court was not a problem at all because that was one of the two probable outcomes of the case, Justice Paradza’s order to reinstate the programs on air was surprising and in fact totally absurd. Since Mawere was alleging a breach of contract, upon finding in his favor, the Court was expected to then award him damages for that breach but not to order a specific performance such as that the programs should be put back on air as if the Court has competence to enforce that kind of performance.
All broadcasters around the world have a right not to air any material that conflicts with their standards or practices or which they cannot control. The decision as to which material to broadcast or not to broadcast cannot reside with any court. It is for this reason that we appealed against Justice Paradza’s strange judgment in the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe. That appeal, which at law had the immediate effect of suspending the enforcement of Justice Paradza’s judgment, is yet to be heard.
Mawere foolishly claims in his article that the program was not aired after he won in court because of what he alleges was my interference only because he is too ignorant to know that an appeal in the Supreme Court has the effect of suspending the judgment of a lower court until the appeal is heard and decided by the superior court. That is the rule of law and not interference.
Then there is the issue of Mawere’s endless claims that his alleged assets in Zimbabwe have been illegally expropriated. In his article, he astonishingly writes that “I am convinced that the Prof may have more to do with the expropriation of my assets in Zimbabwe than anyone else”.
This is scandalous defamation. Mawere should at least try to be more serious than this if he wants to be taken seriously by others. I honestly think this paranoid attention seeking claim alone is an example of the kind of combined ignorance, malice and stupidity that proves that Mawere’s hallucinations have taken his paranoid attention seeking syndrome to new levels that may end up requiring him to receive medical treatment.
I know that I have my own faults, and I also know that I have my own influence as an individual, but how on earth can I more than anyone else be said to be solely responsible for the expropriation of Mawere’s alleged assets? Is Mawere or anyone else close to him, not aware that these alleged assets have been expropriated, if that’s what has happened, by the Government of Zimbabwe that is led by Robert Mugabe?
If Mawere is convinced, as he claims in his article, that I more than anyone else am responsible for the alleged expropriation of his alleged assets, why has he not cited me as a respondent in any of his numerous court battles over the assets in question? Why has he not taken me to court given that he has dragged people to court all over the place in and outside Zimbabwe? Surely, it would have been in Mawere’s interests to have taken me to court a long time ago and not to wait until now to make such a scandalous and defamatory claim on newzimbabwe.com.
It is true that I was a member of the cabinet committee that was setup to look into the welfare of workers at SMM sometime in 2004. The reason I was a member of that committee is simply that, throughout my tenure as minister and because information was then seen as a crosscutting portfolio and because the department I headed was directly under the Office of the President and Cabinet, I used to sit in every cabinet committee. This ensured that my public statements were always correct in terms of articulating the position of the government on any issue. Therefore my being a member of any cabinet committee did not mean anything special or make me a key member as claimed by Mawere.
By the time a cabinet committee was set up to look into SMM welfare issues, something which was necessary because the workers were going unpaid and thus suffering causing political problems for the government, the legal process regarding the alleged expropriation of the alleged assets had long started. That legal process, which involved the courts, was handled through the offices of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and not by any cabinet committee. I believe this is still the case and I have never had, nor will I ever have, anything to do with what goes on in the office of the Attorney General or Ministry of Justice over Mawere’s alleged assets.
I am aware of references to Mawere, especially among New Zimbabwe.com forumites, as an exceptional entrepreneur or a wizard in business engineering. Well, those references could be coming from people from outer space who know something that mortals on earth do not know. Otherwise, I for one have never been aware of Mawere’s exceptional prowess as a businessman or an investor. I do not know of a single asset that Mawere has ever acquired through his own labor or through an honest business dealing using his own assets or resources.
Zimbabwe has over the years seen some true entrepreneurs who have used the little they had whether by way of their knowledge or personal savings to build business empires or real enterprises to admire. Among them I would include Strive Masiyiwa who first had Retrofit Engineering and later Econet Wireless driven by Masiyiwa’s engineering background and business acumen; Nigel Chanakira whose Kingdom financial enterprises speak for themselves; James Makamba who built Telecel and Shingi Mutasa who is doing wonders at Cresta hotel group and TA Holdings in general. I have also admired the sterling business efforts of bankers like Mthuli Ncube, Leonard Nyemba, Enoch Kamushinda and hard workers like Ben Mucheche whose buses we have all been able to see and use.
Without any prejudice, I believe these are examples of true and honest Zimbabwean entrepreneurs among many others. Mawere is not one of them. Anyone who believes that, through his own personal resources as an entrepreneur, Mawere ever owned SMM or any of the various other companies in the pyramid chain he schemed needs to have his or her head examined by a competent psychiatrist.
In the fullness of time—and that does not appear to be too far away—the full story of how Mawere came to be associated with such assets as SMM to the point of claiming their sole ownership will be told. There are a number of people who are beginning to tell the story from Mawere’s former political principals in Zanu PF, to his former business associates and workers and to his former several spouses such as his ex wife from Kenya who has been singing the blues of late.
While I have no doubt that their accounts will differ in terms of detail, they are nevertheless all painting one common picture that many already know: that Mawere is an expert at corporate raiding and corporate looting which he mastered from his days at the IMF where he worked for several years. After leaving the IMF, Mawere shared that knowledge with some leading Zanu PF politicians starting with the late Edison Zvobgo whom he quickly ditched in favor of Emmerson Mnangagwa and Robert Mugabe himself to whom at one time in the early days between 1996 and 2000 he had unlimited presidential access. There are witnesses to all this and more.
The passage of time will show that Mawere used these and other high ranking Zanu PF connections to set up all kinds of pyramid schemes through which companies like SMM were acquired and through which he used false pretenses and empty promises to collect monies from Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, some of whom are still angry with him to this day, as part of the building of what he now calls his sole assets.
Therefore, I don’t think there can be any doubt that Mawere is an outstanding pyramid schemer with an exceptional talent for corporate raiding and looting sometimes with the help of the State through his political connections in Zanu PF. Mawere deserves an award for his corporate looting skills.
Also, I don’t think there can be any debate that pyramid scheming requires business engineering, creative accounting and playing dirty politics through the media and whisper campaigns. I remember Mawere coming to me in 2000 with files on the insurance industry in Zimbabwe which he wanted me to use to write negative articles in the press for a fee to smear Old Mutual whose assets he was then keen to loot as part of pyramid scheme building through corporate raiding. There are witnesses to this including some people who were then very close friends of Mawere but who now are not. I refused to cooperate and told Mawere that I write from my mind and conscience and not from anybody’s wallet. I still have those files and his notes on them and I had a chuckle going through them just before writing this response.
In Zimbabwe, a key strategy of pyramid schemers and corporate looters—like Mawere who use or rather abuse State resources under the political security of patronage from their political principals—is to setup an intricate network of shelf and offshore companies around the world. That network is then used to extract and export key natural resources, especially minerals such as asbestos in Mawere’s case, and other commodities from Zimbabwe. Within this network of pyramid schemers, companies trade with, or export to and import from, each other. It is a network of under invoicing, transfer pricing, money laundering and outright smuggling all of which is otherwise known as financial or business engineering.
When pyramid schemes flop, they collapse like a deck of cards. Cases in point are Enron in the United States, Goldenberg in Kenya and ENG in Zimbabwe. Also, because financial or business engineering is basically a glorified criminal activity, its political and business perpetrators often end up in jail and the American Enron, Kenyan Goldenberg and Zimbabwean ENG cases bring home this truth.
One does not have to be a robotic scientist to realize that Mawere’s alleged business empire was an ill-conceived pyramid scheme that has collapsed with devastating effects on Mawere who foolishly thought he had become a business mogul when he was a mere front or face of political gladiators from whom he tried to steal the loot and run away.
What I think is fair as poetic justice about the Mawere saga is that some of the looted assets, such as SMM, have been reclaimed by the State and are no longer in either Mawere’s hands or those of his Zanu PF political principals who had conspired with him in the first place. A future democratic government will inherit these assets for the nation.
Let me now turn to three specific issues that are personal to me arising from Mawere’s article.
First, he claims that he initial attracted my wrath immediately after I was appointed as a government minister in 2000 after he declined to advance me a personal loan of R300, 000.00 to finance a mortgage in South Africa because I refused to disclose a repayment plan. Significantly, he does not say what wrath it was because he is inventing it in the typical fashion of a paranoid attention seeker.
Otherwise it is indeed true that a mutual friend, Musekiwa Kumbula who first introduced me to Mawere in 1985, approached him on my behalf over the mortgage issue. There was no problem with the repayment plan at all. However Mawere, through Africa Resources who were going to advance the payment, wanted some security in foreign currency and I offered an equity investment in the United States but it was not possible to do and get the required paperwork within the very short time the mortgage financing in South Africa had to be finalized. In the circumstances, I had to find an alternative which did not require a collateral arrangement based on my equity investment in the United States and the matter ended there.
Second, Mawere cynically claims that the reason I wrote my article on the Budiriro by-election and the state of opposition politics in Zimbabwe is because I desperately want to be accommodated by the opposition. His cynicism is based on either ignorance or malice or outright stupidity or all of these things rolled into one. This is because everyone else knows that I am an elected opposition member of parliament who ran and won as an independent candidate against candidates from Zanu PF and the MDC in the March 2005 parliamentary elections.
As an elected opposition parliamentarian, I am already working with my colleagues in the opposition on a number of legislative and other issues of mutual interest or national concern in and outside parliament. It is therefore an oxymoron, and in fact rather silly, for Mawere to imagine that I should want to be accommodated into something that I already am part of. Some people are breathtakingly naïve.
If Mawere really read and understood my article on the Budiriro by-election and the state of opposition politics in Zimbabwe, he would have noticed that my plea and emphasis was that the opposition forces in Zimbabwe should forge a united front with reform minded elements in Zanu PF. I made it clear that simply uniting forces that are already in opposition would not be of strategic value in the current scheme of things given the prevailing national and international balance of social forces along with the opportunities created by Zanu PF’s succession conflicts and the economic meltdown.
Only a mad person would take this plea to mean I desperately want to be accommodated by the opposition. Ironically, while Mawere says I am desperate to be accommodated by the opposition, he also says in the same article that I have been working to create an opposition from within Zanu PF and that I want Mugabe to be succeeded by a non Zezuru from Zanu PF! This obvious and rather glaring contradiction can only come from a person like Mawere who does not know what he is writing about.
Third, and last on issues personal to me arising from Mawere’s article, he claims that “…before the entry of the Prof in Zanu PF, Mugabe did not have the balls to enact POSA and AIPPA”.
I honestly wonder whether this is a sick way of cleansing Mugabe from his atrocities or it is another example of Mawere’s ignorance, malice and outright stupidity all put together.
Can Mawere tell us where Mugabe got the balls to unleash the Gukurahundi atrocities in which more than 20,000 Zimbabweans in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces were massacred and where many more lost their livelihoods and had their homes destroyed between 1980 and 1987? Was I in government then to give Mugabe the balls that Mawere is talking about?
In May last year Mugabe unleashed the so-called Operation Murambatsvina that destroyed the homes and livelihood of 18% of the population and internally displaced some 570,000 households. Did Mugabe get the balls to be that inhuman from me given that I was not in government then?
If Mawere was a serious person who thinks before he says things, I would accuse him of revisionism but that would be giving that word a bad meaning. Here is somebody who wants to be taken as a learned person who also happens to be a skilled business mogul foolishly trying to get us to believe that the dreadful provisions of POSA are new in Zimbabwe and that they were made possible by my entry into the Zanu PF government.
This kind of stuff sounds like the kind of rubbish that traditionally comes from a person like Bornwell Chakaodza who foolishly thinks people have forgotten that he used to work in the heart of Zanu PF’s propaganda machinery and that he was a hopeless editor of the Herald when the MDC was formed and during the run up to and campaign for the 2000 parliamentary elections when he routinely used to call the MDC all sorts of dirty names. Chakaodza, like Mawere, now wants the world to believe that he has always supported the MDC and that he has never called it silly and dirty names because that is allegedly the preserve or monopoly of people like me.
Perhaps Mawere is one of those who do not know that before POSA Mugabe used the notorious Rhodesian Law and Order Maintenance Act (LOMA) until the Supreme Court struck down key provisions of that dreadful Act to render it impotent? Can Mawere tell us where Mugabe got the balls to use LOMA virtually throughout the independence period when I was not a government minister?
In the same vein, can Mawere tell us where Mugabe got the balls to inherit the evil Rhodesian State of Emergency and to use it from 1980 to 1990, again when I was not a minister? Does Mawere know what the deadly impact of that state of emergency has been not only generally on governance in Zimbabwe but also and particularly on Mugabe’s commandist leadership style and his absolute political dependence on State security agencies?
Right now there is an evil bill before parliament that seeks to empower State security agencies to routinely snoop into and intercept telephone, email and other telecommunications of individuals and businesses, including and particularly those of journalists. The effects of this bill that is certain to be law are, to say the least, staggering. Can Mawere care to tell us where Mugabe has gotten the balls to bring such ominous law since I am not a minister?
I suppose by claiming that Mugabe did not have the balls to enact POSA and AIPPA before I became a minister, Mawere is opportunistically trying to join and profit from the ridiculous bandwagon of some opposition voices that have been making the same foolish allegations that I authored POSA. To this day, many rational people cannot understand how a minister of information can be claimed to have authored a security law such as POSA when there were ministers of national security, home affairs and defence.
While it is provocative, and maybe even interesting for some, to link me with POSA the undeniable fact is that Dumiso Dabengwa and John Nkomo know how and why POSA was drafted to replace LOMA because that was done under their watch as ministers of home affairs. But even so, Dabengwa and Nkomo cannot shoulder the responsibility as individuals because of the clear history of the making of security laws in Zimbabwe that precedes both of them.
As for AIPPA, it was indeed drafted under my watch as minister of information and I take full responsibility for that. It is a matter of the public record readily available through the Hansard which captures parliamentary debates and proceedings that the AIPPA law as it stands was drafted by agreement between Patrick Chinamasa and Welshman Ncube after the original draft had been thrown out by the parliamentary legal committee then chaired by the late Edison Zvobgo.
Furthermore, it is a matter of the same record that the AIPPA bill was unanimously supported by all Zanu PF and MDC parliamentarians present on the day during its third reading and was therefore passed without any opposition. Against this background, everyone else involved should own up and accept their responsibility or role over AIPPA. There has been too much opportunistic posturing on this matter as if people are not aware of the public record. The time for the opportunists to put up or shut up has come.
While I know that AIPPA has some shortcomings chief of which arises from the notoriously selective application of the law by Zimbabwe’s law enforcement agencies, I am also prepared to say to this day that having AIPPA is far better than having the brutal state of emergency that gave security forces a free hand to regulate the media in our country between 1980 and 1990. Since then the media in Zimbabwe has remained a security issue. There is no security briefing by State security agencies that is not media based and that is a tragedy. This explains why the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) formed in Rhodesia has taken over two out of three remaining independent media houses. They even tried to takeover Mawere’s Tribune but found it to be too useless.
I believe the foregoing fully responds to all the key issues raised by Mawere in his New Zimbabwe.com article, “My problem with Jonathan Moyo”. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a response I would have rather not made for the reasons I gave. I am however grateful to have had the opportunity to respond.
 David Coltart on August 14th, 2008 8:26 pm
Dear Geoff,
Thank you for your retracion. I did write to the Financial Gazette but I do not think they ever published the retraction and an apology – indeed I have written to a variety of publications which have persisted with this falsehood.
I am nowhere near my desk top at present so cannot send you just yet the amended document which was tabled. If you would like I will send it to you in due course. However the draft eventually tabled had the entire offending paragraph deleted before it was tabled in Parliament. This can be confirmed by Parliament and all MDC MPs who were present including Tendai Biti and Innocent Gonese.
Best wishes,
David Coltart
 Clapperton Mavhunga on August 14th, 2008 8:33 pm
Against Political Recycling and ‘Big Ego’ the Mawere Way
Sometimes recycling does indeed work wonders–new plastic products are produced out of bottles stinking with decomposition. The cardboard boxes too are recycled into very good paper, as indeed is human waste into organic fertilizer (manure) which when spread turns lawns into lash green. You can eat breakfast on the lawn–thriving from human waste.
Mr. Editor, I wonder if Mutumwa Mawere’s attempt to recycle himself from himself has really succeeded that far. I mean the guy has tried–one garrulous article after another, rambling on, pulling a huge tree branch behind him, in the vain hope it will erase his tracks. Indelible. He presided over an asbestos empire whose product he knew fully well was endangering the lives of millions of workers, home-dwellers, Zimbabweans. Wealth whose financing has remained mired in mystery while the workers who quarried the mines air either sick with asbestosis or six feet under. He held on stoically defending a case that scientists had long considered a slam dunk: that asbestos is poisonous. Mawere at the time said, ‘not the white variety’. Well, credible scientific opinion says asbestos is asbestos. It remains a fact that Mawere is found where the money is; I never heard the word ‘moral conscience’ associated with his ilk.
When he was snubbed by Zanu PF, he became obsessed with Jonathan Moyo; everything he stood for was anti-Jonathan and Mawere-centric. He tried to mobilize the media–tirelessly recycling history–in order to suggest that Zanu PF had no role in giving him preferential treatment in the ownership of Shabanie. Well, Mr. Mawere, you convinced only a few members of your family and other corrupt elites. When there is a new people-centered government, you shall be subpoenaed to appear before the courts to explain the origins of that wealth. You might protest all you like, and claim hollow victories, but you had better know that history cannot be recycled. You, Jonathan Moyo, and now Arthur dined and wined with these corrupt elites, and your attempt at a volte face will be very shrill–as always–but know this: the day of judgment will come.
You tried to back Makoni so that, in the vain hope that he won the elections, he would soft-land you back into Zimbabwe without probing your past dealings. Well, as you very well know, the citizens are not stupid. They were fair to Makoni, studied what he was good for, but found that, like you sir, there are these darker forces that people don’t really know about your associations in the past–yet. These ghosts remain matters of interest that belong to the “in-tray” of any incoming democratic government. If I were you, I would go back to Zanu PF and sing for my supper because ‘The Ides of March are Coming’.
You will turn the editor’s words upside down and personalize them all you like, but it is an open secret that you, Moyo, and Mutambara represent a sad indictment to ‘high degreed’–but quite clearly uneducated–people, who are so self-centered they believe the universe revolves around them. True education sir, is the ability to apply the tools you have acquired through book to reconnect to the realities of the people you left behind, to be able to establish conversation between the two worlds and thereby enable one to see the other’s relevance. Education is the ability to exercise this status in such a way as to meet the expectations that society invested in sending you to school.
True education–not just “being degreed”–is not a monopoly of those who went to university. I went to school myself, but I will say here and now that my professors are not those who lecture in the university, but the old men and women of the village, who anchor my lofty head back in the realities of their life struggles. They compel me to simplify my language to the village- and street-level, thereby creating an atmosphere where I can communicate the complexities of academia in my native language. When I go to the university, I am able to translate the ideas of the village in the complex jargon of academia precisely because I am able to speak the language of the village.
True education is not to go into the village and speak ‘wi-fi’, ‘prevaricate and equivocate’–and all those other unmentionable jaw-breakers. True education is to realize that nobody, even Albert Einstein or Mbuya Nehanda, will even know everything in the world. True knowledge is to allocate each other a division of labor, to realize that the classroom is not the only source of “being educated”. It is not to say people might as well just stay at home and not go to school, but it is to say that there is something called ‘tacit knowledge’–knowledge learnt through interaction with others, through practice, through proximity to those who know, and through oral rendition, which our ancestors and elders were/are good at.
True knowledge is the ability to know that every time we leave a place and go to another, we are losing a bit of memory and knowledge over the place we are leaving but gaining something new in the places we are arriving in. Similarly, those we have left behind acquire a certain degree of perspective that is expert and which we do not have, even if they too are shut out of knowing what we know by traveling. Hence those who have left and those left behind have to combine these two domains of knowledge and intellect, especially in the current struggle for freedom. Mr. Editor, if you look at the success of Mugabe’s international isolation, it is obvious that this teamwork is something the mandarins in ill-gotten power never anticipated.
In typical ego-centric fashion, Mawere jumped overboard and went into overdrive attacking the editor in very personal terms. In so-doing, he missed the opportunity to realize the larger project of the editor’s op ed. The editor himself has qualifications of his own, and I would have expected you to show him respect for the contrition of actually being self-reflexive, to criticize “the educated” and by implication including himself. This was the opportunity for you to disabuse yourself of your ego, and to ask citizens for medicine on how to cure your self-centeredness and rehabilitate yourself in the public’s eyes.
I read the editor’s note to mean that we, collectively, as men and women of letters–hence everybody here writes in English–must urgently look inside themselves and avoid taking the path of these “Nyayo professors” (the Kenyan version of professors who used to kow-tow to the Nyayo, Daniel arap Moi’s nickname). Interestingly, Zimbabweans might want to know that the battle against the Nyayo professors was led by fellow men and women of letters–Wangari Mathai among them–who looked inside themselves and decided that the intellectual standing was in urgent need of redemptive action. Today, still, Kenya’s government is packed with professors and the Kenyan public has not given up the importance of the highly degreed to economic revival. I would be shocked if we preferred to go ahead with promoting a ‘Border Gezi mentality’ of saying ‘Pasi nevakadzidza’ (down with educated people). As a nation we would not go very far.
So Mutumwa Mawere should have started with a little more humility and to apologize that he has been subscribing to an elitist and self-centered intellectual discourse in the past, but now he is like Paul on the road to Damascus. Transformed! Mutumwa, at least, if you can’t do that for yourself, seeing as it may be too late in the game to redeem yourself, at least do it so that you might help restore the trust that the public used to have in the literati which, I must agree totally, has been eroded by intellectual bullies who want to silence the editor from commenting on the content he deems of interest to readers. Every time the word “reckless” is mentioned I immediately think Zanu-PF, because it is the sort of language they use to profile those they do not agree with. Well Mawere, this is neither the place nor is ours the time to let you blubber on without eliciting reply.
Here we do not accept bullies because this is a democratic space which you and your cronies denied us. That you fell victim to your own erstwhile cronies does not in itself mean that you have suddenly become a different person. You ate, we suffered for you to eat. You left because you were ambitious, and yet the party had a cement ceiling. So stop trying to personalize the issues here because this site is for more serious issues of national interest.
 POVO on August 14th, 2008 10:23 pm
Sometimes the errors committed by lawyers outside of their profession delay democratic processes.
 John Moyo on August 15th, 2008 2:20 am
Mr David Coltart, thanks for participating in these debates. May I comment and say that I find you to be one of the only principled , genuine and selfless persons still remaining in your faction.
To that end, to clear the air and set the record straight can you please give me some clear and concise answers to the following pertinent questions concerning your MDC faction.
1. Are you as many people of Zimbabwe now take as de facto “reality” – a surrogate or a stalking horse from CIO send to divide the opposition and help in denying them their democracy ??
2. During the talks to re-merge the two MDC factions, you were demanding that the MDC-T faction give you 50 percent of the positions with 50 percent representation at the parliamentary elections and now your faction head (Mutambara) wants Tsvangirai, having won the 29th March that were rigged against him to accept anything that Mugabe (the looser of the same elections) is prepared to give him. Can you explain the rationale behind the anomalies pointed in this – firstly why you wanted 50 percent posts and secondly why you think Tsvangirai should now play 2nd fiddle to Mugabe, the loser of the messaged elections results.
3.Having observed the propensity and affinity of your learned leader to flip- flop at the smell of any Zanu-PF government-led position, I would like to know if this is a disposition that is shared or supported by the electorate in the paltry 10 seats the faction managed to clinch or these arey Mr Mutambara’s exclusive escapades and endeavoirs in his search for power at all costs.
4.Is it true that the faction you represent , wanted to merge with Tsvangirai’s faction so that they could cross the “election bridge” together and then run away with the baby (victory) from Tsvangirai soon after the elections accusing him of all sorts of things in the same way that you broke away from him in 2005. You ran away with more than 50 percent of the MPs only to lose everything at the first juncture you faced the electorate on your own. That said , do you agree and subscribe to the widely held notion that if the two MDC factions had indeed contested as one party the people of Zimbabwe would have been in a worse position than we are in now because your faction would have send Tsvangirai to the cleaners by wrestling power from him and your faction would be holding the country to ransom – As it occurs your faction with its 10 seats is holding the country to ransom because it is combining with Mbeki and Mugabe to gang against Tsvangirai and yet you know that Tsvangirai has the support of the general population of Zimbabwe.
5.Is there such a leadership dearth or scarcity in your faction that had to out-source it to an untried and untested person with no grass-roots connection in the form of Mutambara who hit the ground saying that he was an anti-senate leader of the pro-senate group.I f you were strictly looking for a token leader in the form of a Shona professor to fill the leadership position (as is suspected by some people) were there not enough Shona professors already within the party to catapult to such a position.
6.Is it true that Welshman Ncube is a beneficiary of the chaotic Zanu PF land reform (that made us climb down from being the bread basket of Africa to a Basket case) in that he received a farm ?
7.Are Mutambara’s articles written by George Charamba ?
8.When Tsvangirai, Biti , Sekai Holland , Grace Kwinjeh, Madhuku and Mutambara were arrested whilst trying to attaned a prayer meeting in Harare in March 2007 why is it that Mutambara was the only one who didn’t get any beatings?
9.Does your faction now want to compete with the old Zapu Members absorbed in Zanu , the JOC murderers and the Gukurahundi architects in sharing the magnanimity extended by Mugabe.- Also , what is your moral and ethical position about this.
10.Why does your leader send his wife have their baby delivered in the US and not in Zimbabwe.Why is he so desperate to have his children carry a US citizenship and yet he says the West does not promote democracy. He may as well send his wife to go and give birth in China which he praises a lot. Isn’t this double standards , if not the typical “prevacating and equivocating” that he accuses Tsvangirai of doing.
11.What is your idea of a true and competent leader in your faction – Is he somone who studies the dictionary ad-infinitum , says some disconnected jaw -breakers and quotes the some Corporate Strategy and Marketing jounals without referencing and adultarates them into politics (in short plagiarises)? Is he someone who is always entrenched in the injustices of the past without looking into the injustices and realities of the present ? Is he someone who is always telling us about the 1st black barrister in Zimbabwe (Chitepo) , the first black medical doctor in Zimbabwe (Dr. Parirenyatwa) and he is quick to go and dine with the alleged killers of those two prominent people? If the answer is Yes to the above , then you already have one in the form of the 1st Robotics/Rocket Scientist in Zimbabwe(Mutambara). However, the politics of Zimbabwe is not advanced and convoluted with Rocket Science. In Zimbabwe we are still primitive and just want the basic physiological needs i.e. shelter , food , warmth etc and we are still light years away from the rocket science.
12.The more I listen or read any of your leader’s articles, the more I am convinced that you are being led by a grievous and egocentric clown who is so drunk with the aroma on power and will stop at nothing to get the real power including “marching on his grand-mother’s grave”. He feels left out in the looting that happened whilst he was in the Diaspora and he can’t wait to get into the government of “National Looting ” and catch up with the Bright Matonga’s, the Munangagwas, the JOC etc.The unfortunate thing is that he is still painting you with the same paint – which makes the majority of Zimbabwe cynical and critical about where you stand.

The Zimbabwe Independent
15 August 2008

THE Arthur Mutambara led-MDC faces a revolt within its ranks after its leader allegedly agreed on all issues under discussion with President Robert Mugabe during the Sadc-initiated dialogue mediated by South African President Thabo Mbeki.

It has emerged that the majority of MPs, senators and supporters in the party structures in Matabeleland are up in arms over the decision by Mutambara to take sides with Mugabe.
Elected officials in the party said there was no way Mutambara could have found common ground with Mugabe.

MP-elect for Mangwe, Edward Tshotsho Mkhosi, told the press he would quit the faction if Mutambara agrees with Mugabe a deal that excludes the president of the main MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai.
“No, I will not watch history being repeated,” he said. “We have seen Zanu PF’s strategy of divide and rule in the past and this time it will not work, not this time,” Mkhosi said.

Khumalo Senator David Coltart also said he would not agree to a deal between his party’s leadership and Mugabe and expressed doubt that the majority of the executive would support that decision.
An MP from Matabeleland South said if Mutambara sold out, lawmakers from Matabeleland were prepared to quit the party.

“If what President Mbeki said to reporters after the talks in Harare is anything to go by then we have a big problem within the party because there is no way we could be associated with a decision that favours Mugabe,” the legislator said. “The position on the talks that we had as a party is similar to that of the Morgan Tsvangirai formation and if what Mbeki says is correct then Arthur Mutambara will have to explain to the national council why he acted in the manner alleged.”

Mbeki told reporters after the talks were adjourned on Tuesday that Mugabe and Mutambara had agreed on almost everything while Tsvangirai had a problem with one item under negotiation.
Another MP from Matabeleland North said Mutambara did not consult the party on backing Zanu PF’s move for Mugabe to retain executive powers in a unity government.

“People are angry at that decision and they are shocked with Mutambara’s position because the people of this region (Matabeleland) have said they do not want Mugabe as a leader,” said the lawmaker. “The move by Mutambara to support Mugabe’s bid to remain in power is shocking to people from Matabeleland.

The legislator said Mutambara did not consult widely adding that they were prepared to defend the people’s position even if it means joining the MDC-Tsvangirai formation.

“The decision by Mutambara to back Mugabe is disgusting and the people of Matabeleland, which Mutambara claim to represent through the 10 parliamentary seats won in the region, have always said since 1980 that they are tired of Mugabe. We, therefore, are prepared to cause by-elections in our constituencies by leaving the party in order to defend the will of the people,” the legislator said. Civic society leaders in Matabeleland also said the decision by Mutambara to take sides with Mugabe was a betrayal of the region.

Bulawayo Agenda executive director Gorden Moyo said Mutambara’s decision to embrace Mugabe replicates the 1987 Unity Accord where people from the region felt betrayed by PF-Zapu.

“Working with Mugabe in any form replicates the 1987 agreement which led to the submergence of one political party by another and people from Matabeleland will frown on any attempt by their leaders to work with Mugabe without the March 29 victors,” Moyo said.

“The MDC Mutambara faction is now serving the purpose they were called for in the talks, which is to play a script that was written before the talks.”

National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) media committee member in Matabeleland, Justin Ndlovu, said the Mutambara faction by agreeing with Mugabe was selling out on the wishes of the people of Zimbabwe and said the faction was finished politically.

“Mutambara’s backing of Mugabe is typical of the Bishop Abel Muzorewa’s betrayal under the internal settlement, but the Mutambara faction is finished and the people of Matabeleland do not forget easily and they will punish them in future,” Ndlovu said. –– Staff Writer/Telegraph

The Guardian
By Chris McGreal
14 August 2008

Robert Mugabe will shortly install a new government in Zimbabwe following the collapse of political negotiations with his principal rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, according to the state-run press.

But the leader of an opposition faction, Arthur Mutambara, denied claims by Mugabe’s officials that he will join the administration, which Zimbabwe’s president is portraying as a government of national unity in an attempt to win international backing.

Senior ruling Zanu-PF party officials said on Tuesday that Mutambara had reached agreement with Mugabe on the shape of a new administration. South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, who was mediating the negotiations, confirmed that the two men did agree the division of powers in the next government, to be led by Mugabe.

But Mutambara, who heads a faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, said that did not mean he is prepared to serve in a new administration while there is still no deal between the two principal players. The talks broke up after Tsvangirai refused to drop his demand that Mugabe relinquish power and become a ceremonial president.

“This is a tripartite negotiating framework. You cannot get an agreement where only two parties agree,” said Mutambara. But he made clear his antipathy to Tsvangirai’s insistence that Mugabe surrender power by calling on his MDC rival to “put national interest before self-interest”.

Tsvangirai’s aides treated with suspicion Mutambara’s claim not to have done a deal with Mugabe, noting that the opposition faction leader had shifted his position considerably in recent days and was praised by Zimbabwe’s president in a speech earlier this week.

But Mutambara was also under pressure from his own members of parliament yesterday, some of whom threatened to desert him if he did a unilateral deal with Mugabe. The Mutambara faction holds 10 seats in parliament, which represent the balance of power.

One MDC Senator, David Coltart, said that he would not back a unilateral deal with Mugabe. “The political impasse will only be broken when we have an agreement that reflects the will of the people as expressed in the March election,” he said.

Despite the lack of progress during three days of talks on the central issue of who wields power, Mbeki insisted a deal was possible soon. “We are indeed convinced that it is possible to conclude these negotiations quite quickly,” he said yesterday. “They are working on a truly inclusive government.”
Publicly, Tsvangirai said his party remains committed to dialogue but that the outcome must reflect the democratic will of the people established in the last generally accepted election result – the first round of presidential elections in March, won by Tsvangirai.

The Zimbabwean Guardian
Staff reporter
Wednesday, 13 August 2008

UNBELIEVABLY, for the positive role he has played in the current political negotiations on Zimbabwe, South African President, Thabo Mbeki’s own position is now expected to come under scrutiny this weekend at a meeting of regional powers!

With hot communication lines buzzing throughout the world on the Zimbabwe situation it is no surprise that “wannabee first to hit the headlines” reporters are grabbing at straws, so much so that the SA President Mbeki has found himself having to stem rumours and deny that any power sharing deal has at last been signed between breakaway Opposition Leader Arthur Mutambara and President Robert Mugabe.

Despite this, it would appear that President Mbeki feels that a settlement could be reached.

The secretary general of the smaller opposition group, Welshman Ncube has rebuffed speculation that his party has clinched a power-sharing deal with President Robert Mugabe that excludes Morgan Tsvangirai.

We reported earlier that President Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai had been unable to agree on the way forward, and Tsvangirai did leave the negotiations early yesterday (Tuesday) but, according to the BBC’s Karen Allen, this was merely to go and reflect on the deliberations.

At least one news publisher reported that the Mutambara faction came under fire from at least seven of its MPs-elect for signing the deal.

The following MDC(M) MPs are said to have threatened to quit if a deal was signed: Edward Tshotsho Mkhosi, MDC-Mangwe, Abednico Bhebhe (MDC Nkayi South), David Coltart (Khumalo senator), and a few unnamed others.

The only MP said to be receptive of the idea was Moses Mzila Ndlovu,MDC-Bulilima who was one of the negotiators in the power sharing talks in South Africa.

It is now clear that although a deal could have been signed, the signing parties will have to go a long way in convincing the public and their own supporters to accept the deal.

President Thabo Mbeki said the break was to allow Tsvangirai time to consider an unspecified aspect, of the proposed power-sharing setup.

Mbeki says he has no doubt the current round of talks will result in a power-sharing deal, as none of the parties can single handedly haul Zimbabwe out of the quagmire.

Radio Voice of the People
13 August 2008

HARARE, August 13 2008 – Seven Members of Parliament (MPs) aligned to the Mutambara led Movement for Democratic Change on Tuesday reportedly threatened to leave the faction if their leadership signed a deal with President Robert Mugabe.

MP for Mangwe, Edward Tshotsho Mkhosi, is said to have told the Zimbabwe Metro that he would quit if Mutambara hopped into bed with Mugabe.

“No I will not watch history being repeated,we have seen ZANU PF’s strategy of divide and rule in the past and this time it will not work,not this time,” said Mkhosi.

Another MP for Nkayi South, Abednico Bhebe, told the Telegraph that he would would not agree to such an agreement. “”If this has happened I don’t agree. This will be disastrous. None of us will go with him. He would be committing political suicide.”

Senator David Coltart, Khumalo, also said he would not agrre to a deal betwwen his party’s leadership and expressed ‘doubt the majority of our executive would support that decision.”

Four other unnamed MPs have reportedly voiced their displeasure with the leadership’s decision.

Mutambara and Ncube lost parliament bids in Zengeza West and Makokoba respectively, to candidates from the faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai. Reports indicate that the Mutambara faction pushed for an amendment of No. 19 during the talks, so as increase appointed senators from five to 21.

South African President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday confirmed that Mugabe had agreed a power-sharing deal with a breakaway opposition faction on Tuesday, but has yet to agree with main rival Morgan Tsvangirai.

A state controlled Herald report also confirmed the signing of an agreement by Mugabe and Mutambara on Tuesday, which it said would pave the way for Mugabe to form the next government.

“Although MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai did not sign, it was expected that negotiations would continue until he appended his signature to the agreement,” said the Herald.

Mbeki, mediating in talks to end the political and economic crisis paralysing Zimbabwe, said negotiations had not broken down and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Tsvangirai was still considering his position.

Talks on power-sharing began last month after Mugabe’s unopposed re-election in a vote that was condemned around the world and boycotted by Tsvangirai because of attacks on his supporters.

But three days of meetings in Harare have failed to reach an overall deal. The ZANU-PF official said Mugabe, in power since 1980, would form a national unity government and convene parliament next week.

Mutambara’s 10 seats would give the coalition the majority in parliament that ZANU-PF lost in March elections for the first time since independence, but analysts say excluding Tsvangirai would be unlikely to heal the deep rift in the southern African country.

The Daily Telegraph
By Peta Thornycroft In Harare And Sebastien Berger
13 August 2008

Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party claims to have signed a power-sharing deal with a faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change [MDC] to create a new government in Zimbabwe.

The agreement with Arthur Mutambara would sideline Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the main MDC bloc, who beat Mr Mugabe in the first round of the presidential election in March, taking just short of 50 per cent of the vote.

A senior Zanu-PF official had earlier said: “We, and the MDC headed by Mutambara have signed the agreement. “Tsvangirai did not sign the agreement because he is basically trying to take us back, to renegotiate issues that we had already agreed on. “We are proceeding, and the president is going to form a government of national unity including members of the opposition.” He said his party would not be “held hostage” by Mr Tsvangirai, and insisted that parliament would be convened next week.

The move would create a new government and close the door to further negotiations with Mr Tsvangirai. Negotiations between Mr Mugabe and the two MDC faction leaders have been stymied over the key question of executive authority.

The report of a new “government of national unity” agreement between Mr Mugabe and Prof Mutambara could be a negotiating ploy by Zanu-PF. That hypothesis seemed to be supported by Prof Mutambara, a robotics scientist by profession, who denied the claims late last night. He told The Daily Telegraph: “It’s rubbish, rubbish, rubbish,” before hanging up.

If the report is confirmed, however, it would represent a stunning coup for the octogenarian president, splitting the opposition and reaffirming the political skills that have kept him in power over three decades.

But while it might help keep Mr Mugabe and the Zanu-PF in office, it would do nothing to solve the myriad problems they have imposed on the country.

As such it would be a humiliation for Thabo Mbeki, the South African president tasked with mediating the talks between the government and the opposition. He has long been accused by critics of being too soft on Mr Mugabe, and if he presides over an agreement that excludes Mr Tsvangirai, his hopes for any legacy as an African statesman will be over.
It would also do nothing to help Zimbabwe’s beleaguered economy, which is ravaged by hyperinflation and in desperate need of aid and investment.

Western countries have hinted at a multi-billion-pound reconstruction package if Mr Mugabe accepts a genuine power sharing government. But any deal that cut Mr Tsvangirai out would eliminate the prospect of foreign aid.

Key members of Prof Mutambara’s own faction, which split off in 2005, last night denounced any deal along the reported lines, saying that none of them had been consulted.

“If this has happened I don’t agree,” said Abednico Bhebe, from southern Matabeleland and one of the faction’s 10 members of parliament. “This will be disastrous. None of us will go with him. He would be committing political suicide.”

David Coltart, who represents Bulawayo in the senate, said: “If that happened I don’t agree and I doubt the majority of our executive would support that decision.”

The talks between Zanu-PF and the main MDC faction had broken off earlier in the day. Mr Tsvangirai left looking grim-faced but Tendai Biti, his secretary-general and chief negotiator, said: “The talks have not collapsed. It’s just a time out. There is nothing that cannot be overcome.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES
August 12, 2008

JOHANNESBURG — News agencies reported Tuesday that Arthur Mutambara, the leader of a faction of Zimbabwe’s opposition party, had signed a deal with President Robert Mugabe to form a unity government after months of turmoil and political instability in the country.

The reports, citing an unidentified senior official in Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, said that Mr. Mutambara and Mr. Mugabe had sidelined the country’s main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, by reaching the deal without him or his dominant wing of the opposition party.

Mr. Mutambara could not be reached to confirm or deny the report.

But David Coltart, a Senator from the faction, said that if Mr. Mutambara had made such a side deal — and he had no confirmation that he had — it would have been without a mandate from the faction’s national executive and was highly unlikely to be supported by the faction’s 10 members of Parliament or six senators.

The Standard
2 August 2008
Opinion by David Coltart

Question – what has happened to all our patriots?

It seems to me that our nation has been blighted by a succession of leaders who are more concerned with their personal interests or the narrow interests of their own political parties and supporters than they are in the great nation state of Zimbabwe.

This should be a great nation; it is richly endowed with bright articulate hard-working people; with rich natural resources; with the best climate in the world; it is a country of stunning natural beauty. As Garfield Todd said over 50 years ago it is indeed the finest country on earth. How can it then be that the finest country on earth is the location of one of the world’s worst nightmares? I believe that is primarily because our political leadership has for decades put selfish personal interests ahead of the national interest.

One of the reasons the Lancaster house talks did not provide a long-term resolution to Zimbabwe’s problems is because white rights were put before the entrenchment of universally recognised human rights. Instead of ensuring that the new Zimbabwean Constitution was deeply rooted in democratic principles, there was a concentration on protecting white interests. In contrast both FW De Klerk and Roelff Meyer in the South African negotiations recognised that it was more important to entrench democracy for all than it was to seek to protect white privilege.

Likewise the reason the December 22, 1987 Unity Accord has come unstuck is because it accommodated the interests of the political leadership of Zanu PF and PF Zapu rather than the general interests of the Zimbabwean people. One of the reasons there is such antipathy in Zimbabwe today regarding a government of national unity is because of the 1987 Unity Accord. The Unity Accord is viewed by most people, certainly in Matabeleland, as a settlement which benefited a few leaders and did not entrench democracy and so lay the foundation for meaningful economic development which would benefit all Zimbabweans.

Sadly that attitude continues to this day and applies to both Zanu PF and the MDC. I fear that the current negotiations may focus on who gets what instead of what structural reforms are needed to put Zimbabwe back on the road to recovery. If the negotiations focus on how much power is either retained by Zanu PF or acquired by the MDC rather than the policy reforms needed then any settlement that arises from the negotiations will not be wholeheartedly embraced by the Zimbabwean people.

To this extent who leads the country and who is in any Cabinet is irrelevant. Let me be quite clear what I mean. Obviously the democratic will of the people of Zimbabwe as reflected in the 29 March 2008 elections must be respected. However the problems Zimbabwe face are so severe and intractable that we cannot allow petty bickering about who gets what to derail the negotiations. All national leaders must recommit themselves to the national interest and be prepared to subordinate their personal goals and ambitions to what is in the best interests of Zimbabwe. This means that in the interests of compromise there may have to be some power-sharing mechanism during a transitional period.

In this regard let me briefly respond to the statement issued by the civil society organisations on 17 July 2007 in which they call upon a transitional government to have “leadership by a neutral body” and a transitional government “headed by an individual who is not a member of Zanu PF or MDC”. Once again whilst I appreciate the sentiment which lies behind the statement one cannot just disregard the wishes of the Zimbabwean people as expressed on 29 March. Our society remains deeply polarised and we cannot ignore the fact that leaders on both sides of the political divide enjoy the passionate support of their respective supporters. They have been given a mandate by their supporters and that mandate must be respected in the negotiation process. However it is because of that deep polarisation that I believe we will have to consider some interim power sharing mechanism. And it goes without saying that power-sharing involves compromise on both sides.

But the tragic consequences are not solely confined to economic collapse. Almost of greater concern to me is the collapse of the moral fabric of our society. We need to consider the effect of 50 years of violence on our national character. In this regard and I am not only speaking about the victims of violence but also about the perpetrators. In the last few weeks I have seen horrifying injuries inflicted on Zimbabweans by young men. Doctors say that some of these injuries are so severe that they would never occur, for example, in a traffic accident. Bones had been broken repeatedly by young men acting on the instructions of their political leaders. I have no doubt that they will be haunted by what they have done in the years that lie ahead. Scientific studies show that those who inflict violence on political opponents often go on to inflict violence on those they love including spouses and children. It is also a fact that we now have a deeply ingrained culture of violence. If negotiations are to succeed then not only must this violence stop immediately but other measures must be taken to ensure that violence does not derail either the talks or the transition.

In these circumstances the demand by the MDC that all violence should stop, that political detainees should be released and that is NGOs be allowed to distribute food are reasonable. However I would qualify these demands by recognising that even if Zanu PF gives undertakings it will be difficult to verify the compliance of those undertakings in the short term and to change the mind set of a generation of youth militia overnight. I believe that SADC has a key role to play in this regard. I think the state should immediately deploy civilian monitors to report back to the facilitators regarding whether militia camps have been removed, whether NGOs are able to function and other legitimate issues of concern have been addressed. I think that if such a commitment is given by SADC then negotiations should commence without further ado. But we must recognise that unless there are neutral SADC monitors deployed in the country eruptions of violence are more likely to occur and these may have the effect of disrupting the talks.

It follows as well that a crucial aspect of the talks must be how to tackle the culture of violence so that it does not derail any transitional period agreed to in the talks. Suffice it to say that we must not underestimate how serious this problem is and our need for an ongoing presence of SADC monitors even during the transitional period.

For the reasons I have outlined above a government of national unity will be viewed with extreme scepticism by most Zimbabweans. The fear of Zimbabweans is that the government of national unity will draw in unscrupulous political leaders who then become part of a corrupt system. The fear is that those leaders are then compromised and that they will fail to deal with the fundamental problems facing Zimbabwe.

It is for this reason that a transitional authority should be agreed to and I would like to discuss a few aspects of this authority. Before I do so let me respond to those who may say that there is no difference between a GNU and a Transitional Authority. Some argue that this is just about semantics. I disagree – the difference is all about emphasis. A GNU focuses on “unity”; substance is secondary and the notion of a transition to something different is completely subordinate to unity. A Transitional Authority focuses on “transition”. There can, and must of course, be unity in transition but the emphasis is on a transition to something new, not just a changing of the guard at the top.

My own belief is that any transitional authority emerging from the talks should generally respect the will of the people as expressed on 29 March 2008. As stated above because our nation is so deeply polarised there will have to be a power-sharing arrangement during the transition including all the political parties given a mandate by the electorate in March. However during the transition civil society will have to play a major role in certain aspects of the transitional authority’s mandate, especially regarding the process which should culminate in a new democratic constitution.

Any transitional authority agreed to should have a finite mandate. It must be made clear that the authority will not have a mandate to govern indefinitely. In addition the duration of the authority should be as short as possible; and it should be understood that it is to govern in the short term — I would hope for no longer than 18 months to two years.
It seems to me that there are four critical areas that need to be addressed by a transitional authority.

The transitional authority should be mandated to stabilise the economy, to seek balance of payments support, to tackle inflation by engaging institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. It will need to draw on technical expertise from qualified Zimbabweans and others who can introduce the necessary economic policies to stop Zimbabwe’s economic freefall.
Zimbabwe is arguably suffering the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis at present. The country faces a severe food shortage; our hospitals are devoid of qualified personnel and medication. An absolute priority of the transitional authority should be to engage the international community to ensure the importation of the necessary food and drugs and introduction of policies which will attract qualified personnel to return to Zimbabwe to address the food and health crisis.

At the root of the political, economic and humanitarian crises is our deeply flawed Constitution. The transitional authority should immediately engage all Zimbabwean political parties, civic organisations that trade union movements, churches and other interested organisations to recommence the constitutional debate and to agree on an all-inclusive process which will culminate in a new constitution.

Once the economy has been stabilised, the humanitarian crisis addressed and a new constitution enacted the transitional authority should hand over to a genuinely, and objectively verifiable, Independent Electoral Commission which will then conduct and genuinely free and fair elections supervised by SADC and the AU.

Zimbabwe has reached a political stalemate. There is no way out for Zanu PF. Its nemesis is now the economy. It has no solution to hyperinflation. It knows that in the coming weeks and months it will not even be able to feed key elements of its support base. To that extent it has no choice but to negotiate. Likewise the combined MDC in respecting its moral and practical commitment to a non-violent solution to the Zimbabwean crisis must recognise that it to too has no choice but to negotiate, no matter how unpalatable that may be in certain respects.

Despite our fears and reservations we must see this as a unique opportunity to negotiate a peaceful settlement for our nation. Our country is in great peril today. We can either allow it to continue down its present slide to destruction and oblivion or we can all work together to seize this opportunity to lay the foundations for a great nation. I reiterate again the words of Garfield Todd made over 50 years ago – this is indeed the finest country on earth. It is missing one key ingredient at present – democracy. When that ingredient is rooted I have no doubt that the Zimbabwe will yet become the jewel of Africa.

*David Coltart is Senator-elect for Khumalo Constituency. This is an abridged version of a Speech given to Bulawayo Agenda meeting on Friday July 18, 2008.