The Zimbabwe Times
September 8, 2008
Geoffrey Nyarota

THE campaign pitch of President Robert Mugabe in recent elections has been consistent.Since the electorate shocked him out of deepening complacency in the aftermath of the constitutional referendum held back in February 2000 Mugabe has sought to portray himself as a patriot, while presenting his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, as nothing more than a groveling puppet of the West.

Mugabe and the former ruling Zanu-PF have paraded themselves as paragons of post-colonial political virtue, while dismissing those who oppose them as shameless sell-outs, permanently at the beck and call of a dispossessed white farming community and a Western world seeking to re-colonise Zimbabwe.

In the world of make-believe painted by Mugabe and his surrogates at Zanu-PF campaign rallies, political correctness entails having nothing or as little as possible to do with white people especially those of Zimbabwean commercial farming stock or with the representatives, even accredited diplomats, of Western nations, particularly the United Kingdom, the United States or Australia.

This essentially racist posturing was evolved and fine-tuned in the period after the 2000 referendum, when it suddenly dawned on the Zanu-PF leadership that they no longer enjoyed the fawning support and unquestioning loyalty of the Zimbabwean electorate.

Evidence abounds, however, that Mugabe’s and Zanu-PF’s racist pretensions are based on a false premise and shrouded in hypocrisy and double-speak. Zanu-PF has thus continued to delude both itself and party loyalists over the years simply because its rivals in the MDC have somehow allowed the party to get away with what essentially amounts to telling two self-serving falsehoods.

Mugabe in the early days of Zimbabwe’s independence basked in the glory of overstated Western adulation, while Zimbabwe benefited from the backing and support of a Western world anxious to support a government they somehow believed would constitute a departure from the African post-independence stereotype of corruption, economic mismanagement, lawlessness and abuse of civic rights. Aid funds poured into Africa’s newest nation while Mugabe was toasted in Western capitals. A knighthood was conferred on him by Queen Elizabeth the Second at Buckingham Palace while members of the Zanu-PF Women’s League ululated in Harare. A number of universities on both sides of the Atlantic recognised him through honorary degrees.

The first lie is that Western nations are natural enemies of Zimbabwe.

The second falsehood, more significantly, is that Zanu-PF hates while people. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, Zanu-PF has built a strategic circle of its own white friends over the years. Not only does Zanu-PF have dealings and cordial relations with its white allies; the people concerned are in most cases capitalist entrepreneurs who have prospered magnificently in Zimbabwe through their association with the ruling elite. Some prosper through exploiting the very people Zanu-PF pretends to protect.

Back in 1980 Mugabe went out of his way to prove to an anxious world that he was more than willing to abide by the non-racist tenets of his party’s first election manifesto.

Zanu-PF’s election manifesto stated categorically: “Zanu wishes to give the fullest assurance to the white community, the Asian and coloured communities that a Zanu government can never in principle or in social or government practice, discriminate against them. Racism, whether practiced by whites or blacks, is anathema to the humanitarian philosophy of Zanu. It is as primitive a dogma as tribalism or regionalism.”

The Zanu-PF of today publicly castigates and demonizes opponents such as the MDC who espouse similar non-racist policies and openly engage with members of the white community, branding them as enemies of the people and as puppets of the West.

Surprisingly, supporters both in and out of the country who hailed Mugabe for his former concern for the welfare of the ordinary man and his policy of national reconciliation, still glorify him long after he abandoned both the concern and the policy and now constantly spouts racist diatribe without the mandate of the majority of his people to do so.

But then to a considerable extent Mugabe and his acolytes depend for their survival on the existence of powerful white supporters who manipulate and strategize behind the scenes.

In the eyes of Zanu-PF and some post-colonial African political opinion the grievous error that the MDC
makes is to parade its Roy Bennetts, David Coltarts, Eddie Crosses, Ian Kays and Trudy Stevensons in public; granting them a manifestly conspicuous frontline role in the fight for democratic change.

The MDC strategists perhaps never read George Orwell’s Animal Farm or took serious note of Squealer’s constant exhortation to “Tactics, comrades.” Squealer was the porcine equivalent of Zimbabwe’s former Minister of Information, Prof Jonathan Moyo. In the Zimbabwean context, Mugabe did not preach reconciliation until he had the keys to the office of the Prime Minister in hand. Yet Tsvangirai practices appeasement and magnanimity from a position of powerlessness. Maybe if he could persuade Bennett to withdraw from the front he would soon have real power to share with him.

Tactics, comrades!

While the MDC’s white supporters love to shout from public platforms, Zanu-PF’s whites are voiceless but powerful backroom strategists. Their rare forays onto newspaper front pages are often prompted merely by the pressing need to defend themselves in the face of allegations of corruption, outright fraud or other impropriety while making money for themselves and Zanu-PF.

Being dedicated capitalists, even when Mugabe was still an avowed socialist, their major preoccupation is to make as much financial hay as possible, while the Zanu-PF sun still shines. Over the past 28 years of Mugabe’s rule leading entrepreneurs such as the gregarious British businessman Roland “Tiny” Rowland, the somewhat eccentric Nicholas van Hoogstraten, also British, John Arnold Bredenkamp, who constantly parries accusations of arms dealing, and Conrad Muller “Billy” Rautenbach who took care of Zanu-PF financial interests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have forged strong alliances with the Zanu-PF leadership, Mugabe himself included.

So too have emergent businessmen such as Lt. Col Lionel Dyke (Retired). He quickly rose from the relative obscurity of an officer in the Zimbabwe National Army and was thrust into the limelight by the turn of the century as a political broker.

He was assigned by two men he claimed to be his allies in Zanu-PF, Emmerson Mnangagwa, then Speaker of Parliament and retired defence forces commander Gen Vitalis Zvinavashe to broker a partnership deal between the ruling party and the MDC. Dyke said the MDC was represented by the party’s secretary general, Welshman Ncube and Paul Themba Nyathi, its secretary for information and publicity.

Dyke revealed these details to me in December 2002 when I was editor of the now banned Daily News. He disclosed that he had also been assigned to secure the support of The Daily News, then the country’s largest newspaper, for the ambitious political initiative. The initiative sought to sideline both Mugabe and Tsvangirai, in favour of a new leadership. I turned Dyke’s proposal down, and blew the plot in the newspaper.

Col Dyke, one of Zanu-PF’s most trusted white allies now rakes in millions through landmine recovery operations in Zimbabwe, the Middle East, Kosovo and other trouble-spots of the world. South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki has since taken over the role of mediator in the Zimbabwean political crisis.

Dyke, who was commander of the Rhodesian African Rifles during Ian Smith’s war against the guerilla armies, was in charge of a regiment of paratroopers in 1983 to 84 during the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland. The Catholic Justice and Peace Commission’s report “Breaking the Silence: Building True Peace” says Dyke expressed support for the deployment by government of Five Brigade against civilians, saying this strategy “brought peace very, very quickly”.

While Zanu-PF publicly berates opposition politicians for associating or having links with whites, behind closed doors Mugabe and his cohorts exploit clandestine relationships with their own white partners, most of them extremely wealthy capitalists.

There was Tiny Rowland, that colourful British businessman who was the most conspicuous epitome of western capitalism in Rhodesia, in Zimbabwe and elsewhere on the continent. In Rhodesia he was a friend of Ian Smith and in Zimbabwe he cultivated the friendship of both the late Dr Joshua Nkomo and Mugabe.

Rowland was the founder and chief executive of Lonrho, one of Zimbabwe’s largest multi-national conglomerates. After independence he became one of the most generous benefactors of Zimbabwe’s ruling elite. Rowland’s Metropole Hotel in London became home away from home for the top echelons of those fighting for the liberation of Zimbabwe, with full board on the house. The friendship between the controversial British tycoon and Zimbabwe’s new rulers flourished after independence. The Lonrho end-of-year dinner party became the social event of the year in Harare. Meanwhile, the Lonrho pavilions at the Harare Agricultural Show and the National Trade Fair in Bulawayo were the favourite haunt of cabinet ministers under the patronage of the flamboyant Herbert Munangatire, now late.

So revered was Rowland by Zanu-PF that when he was ousted in a board-room coup, Dr Nathan Shamuyarira, that eminent custodian of the party’s ideological values, lamented that the controversial businessman’s ouster was likely to end the “warm relations between Lonrho and the government of Zimbabwe”.

It is only after the constitutional referendum of 2000 that Zanu-PF has become openly critical of Zimbabwe’s white citizens and representatives of Western governments, especially those who challenge Mugabe’s excesses and point at his failures.

Mugabe’s personal friend Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, the British magnate whose status as the largest private owner of fertile Zimbabwean land complements is unchallenged, spoke with understandable warmth and affection when he described Mugabe as “100 percent decent and incorruptible”. Separately he said: “I don’t believe in democracy; I believe in rule by the fittest.”

Among Zanu-PF’s white allies, van Hoogstraten is the most vocal supporter of Mugabe, whom he regards as a personal friend. More significantly he is said to be a financial backer of the President.

Van Hoogstraten holds extensive investments in Zimbabwe. The Rainbow Tourism Group’s shares register shows that van Hoogstraten’s Messina Investments has a stake-hold of 2.17 percent with 35 727 640 shares. He owns 32 percent of Hwange Colliery Company and seven percent of CFI Ltd, one of Zimbabwe’s largest agro-industrial enterprises. He is the single largest shareholder in NMB at 20 percent. The founding owners of the bank were hounded into exile by Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono.

The President’s friend also owns 600 000 acres of prime farmland. Not unexpectedly, van Hoogstraten’s farms have been spared the treatment reserved for the farms of less “patriotic” white commercial farmers.

Van Hoogstraten, who is reported to have relocated from the United Kingdom to Zimbabwe, is said to manage his vast business empire of 200 residential and business properties in Zimbabwe from an office in Harare. In January they hauled him to court. The police had caught him red-handed while receiving rentals from tenants in hard currency.

The phenomenal success of van Hoogstraten is clear testimony that Zanu-PF merely pays lip-service to its anti-white and anti-western mantras.

Another strategic Zanu-PF ally, wealthy businessman, John Arnold Bredenkamp, has publicly expressed his open support for the Mugabe regime. He told the Zimbabwe Independent that because of his vast business interests and extensive travel experience he had become a friend of politicians and he had no regrets about it. He said he sincerely believed that it was in the “best interests of Zimbabwe for Zanu-PF to win the presidential elections next year”.

Mugabe narrowly missed losing the election in question to Tsvangirai in 2002.

Bredenkamp’s forlorn hope was understandable, given that at the material time he had just won a major tender to supply fuel to the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe. In any case, freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution of our once great land.

Yet when British premier Tony Blair stood in the House of Commons to pronounce that his Labour government worked hand-in-hand with Tsvangirai’s labour-backed MDC, Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, went totally ballistic in Harare.

That single statement by Blair and its opportunistic exploitation by Mugabe and Moyo may have made a considerable contribution to the recovery by Zanu-PF in 2005, of a significant number of parliamentary seats that it had lost to the MDC in the 2000 parliamentary election.

Reports in the international media have consistently referred to Bredenkamp, as an “arms broker,” “arms dealer,” “arms merchant,” “weapons dealer,” “weapons broker”.

Challenged by Bredenkamp to substantiate allegations of arms dealing against him, one British publication, Executive Intelligence Review, defended itself haughtily.

“In describing the charmed life of John Arnold Bredenkamp,” the editor wrote, “it is difficult to know where to start. In fact, it is difficult to find a media reference to him that does not mention his business in arms trafficking. From the London Observer, to the Washington Times, to the Guardian of the U.K., to WorldNet Daily, to the UN Association of the United Kingdom, to a broad swath of British-based organizations and NGOs that specialize in opposing arms proliferation, Bredenkamp is repeatedly mentioned in the context of arms trafficking – selling, brokering, and violating sanctions.

Bredenkamp gained his reputation as a shrewd “sanctions buster” while supporting the racist regime of rebel Rhodesian leader Ian Smith.

“Like many of my contemporaries, I have adapted to change,” Bredenkamp says. “I was Rhodesian; I am now a Zimbabwean. I was a tobacco merchant; I am now an investor in many different sectors.”

When the George W. Bush administration imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe and Mugabe in 2001, Bredenkamp was reported to be among Zimbabwe’s businessmen included on the sanctions list. He was charged with violating international sanctions.

On February 18, 2000, The Washington Times published a report that the DRC and Zimbabwe were purchasing arms from Bredenkamp, who was said to be based in Belgium.

After independence Bredenkamp, indeed, left Zimbabwe and moved his base of operations to Belgium.

A report submitted to the United Nations Security Council in October 2002 by a panel of experts investigating the exploitation of raw materials in the DRC cited Bredenkamp’s role as an arms broker:

“John Bredenkamp, who has a history of clandestine military procurement, has an investment in Aviation Consultancy Services Company (ACS). The Panel has confirmed, independently of Mr. Bredenkamp, that this company represents British Aerospace, Dornier of France and Agusta of Italy in Africa. Far from being a passive investor in ACS as Tremalt representatives claimed, Mr. Bredenkamp actively seeks business using high-level political contacts.

“Mr. Bredenkamp’s representatives claimed that his companies observed European Union sanctions on Zimbabwe, but British Aerospace spare parts for ZDF Hawk jets were supplied early in 2002 in breach of those sanctions. Mr. Bredenkamp also controls Raceview Enterprises, which supplies logistics to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. The Panel has obtained copies of Raceview invoices to ZDF dated 6 July 2001 for deliveries worth $3.5 million of camouflage cloth, batteries, fuels and lubricating oil, boots and rations. It also has copies of invoices for aircraft spares for the Air Force of Zimbabwe worth another $3 million.”

Bredenkamp protested the findings of the UN panel. The report highlighted the existence of an “elite network” comprising Congolese and Zimbabwean government officials and private businessmen. The network was reported to be exploiting the rich mineral resources of the DRC. The report identified the key strategist for the Zimbabwean branch of the network as Mnangagwa, while the former army commander, Zvinavashe was described as his key ally.

It has been alleged that before independence Bredenkamp effectively ran the finances of the Rhodesian armed forces during the later stages of the guerilla war. In this capacity he is said to have brokered export sales of Rhodesian products, mainly tobacco, and used the proceeds to fund the purchase of munitions and military equipment.

It is said that his complex “sanctions busting” deals sustained the UDI regime for far longer than would otherwise have been possible. Could Bredenkamp now be facilitating the survival of Zanu-PF as Mugabe clings to power?

On his return to Zimbabwe in 1984 after he made peace with the country’s new rulers, he remained involved in commodity trading and defence procurement while making himself generally useful to government and Zanu-PF. Using Zimbabwe as his base, Bredenkamp conducted business dealings elsewhere in Africa and in the Middle East. Not only did Bredenkamp become extremely wealthy, he also helped sustain the Zimbabwean economy in a period of some turbulence.

Bredenkamp made strategic inroads into the post-independence political establishment while gaining considerable clout in the economic affairs of Zimbabwe. Mugabe is often accused of having made a single-handed decision to deploy Zimbabwean troops to the DRC. It is alleged, however, that Bredenkamp may have played a significant role in the events surrounding Zimbabwe’s costly and suicidal intervention in the West African nation between 1998 and 2003.

The Zimbabwean army and air force were deployed to shore up the Laurent Kabila government in its fight with rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. In return generous mining concessions were granted by the DRC to key figures in the Zimbabwe political and business elite. It is alleged that Bredenkamp and his Zanu-PF allies were major beneficiaries. Mnangagwa has been the key Bredenkamp ally in Zanu-PF since the businessman’s return from Belgium in 1984.

In fact, it is also alleged that Bredenkamp became something of a power behind the scenes in Zanu-PF. Sources say he overplayed his hand, however, when he sought to facilitate the early retirement of Mugabe in 2004 and his replacement by Mnangagwa.

This displeased rival politicians in the party and government and investigations were instituted into the affairs of Bredenkamp’s Breco trading company concerning tax evasion and exchange control violations.

Controversial businessman, Conrad Muller “Billy” Rautenbach, is one of the handful of white businessmen who have prospered under Mugabe. He owned Wheels Africa, which quickly grew to become Zimbabwe’s largest freight company. He also held the Volvo and Hyundai franchises. He is said to own several thousand cattle north of Harare. The herd remained unscathed as neighbouring commercial farms were violently seized during by Zanu-PF sponsored war veterans and other party militants.

Rautenbach was one of South Africa’s best known businessmen but he fell foul of the law. The police wanted him in connection with massive fraud at his Wheels of Africa Group.

The charges against Rautenbach included stealing 1,300 cars from Hyundai, bribing customs officials and fraudulently reducing the tax liability of Wheels of Africa’s subsidiaries. He fled South Africa in 1999 after justice department investigators raided his office and home. Wheels of Africa was liquidated in December1999.

In Zimbabwe Rautenbach has enjoyed the company of equally tough businessmen, including the ubiquitous

The Guardian
By Blessing-Miles Tendi
Thursday August 28 2008

Mugabe has always switched his views on race to make political capital, as his enthusiastic welcome of Kirsty Coventry shows

“The only white man you can trust is a dead white man.”

“Our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy.”

Those are Robert Mugabe’s words. They are forever etched in modern African history as indicative of the anti-white politics that took hold in Zimbabwe from 2000 onwards, when the Mugabe government proclaimed that Zimbabwe was for black Zimbabweans and Africa for black Africans. Race was politicised to an unprecedented level and aggressive threats to the white community were carried out, namely the violent seizure of white-owned commercial farms. White Zimbabweans were blamed for all of Zimbabwe’s problems. They were labelled racists and accused of working hand in hand with white Britain in funding and directing opposition politics in Zimbabwe.

Only a government with selective amnesia would ever embrace anything “white” after years of inexorable anti-white politics. The Mugabe government is one such government. Kirsty Coventry, a white Zimbabwean swimmer, won four medals – one gold and three silver – at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She was the only Zimbabwean athlete to win a medal at the games. Coventry was greeted with a heroine’s homecoming in Zimbabwe yesterday. Mugabe congratulated her “most heartily on that heroic performance”, on the eve of her return. Gone was Mugabe’s anti-white speechifying. A victory parade through the streets of Zimbabwe’s capital city Harare was staged in her honour and she attended a banquet hosted by Mugabe at his official state house residence.

It is tempting to conclude that given Zimbabwe’s prevailing political, social and economic morass, the Mugabe government is capitalising on Coventry’s Olympic success to deflect national attention away from the country’s problems. Certainly, Coventry’s achievement has provided weary and oppressed Zimbabweans with some national fanfare in a land where all else is a litany of monotonous struggle and human suffering. However, the Mugabe government’s response to Coventry’s medal-winning performances is part of its wider contradictory logic of race relations.

Whites were embraced as brothers and sisters at independence in 1980 because it was politically expedient. In 2000 they were disowned as the political necessities of defeating the burgeoning opposition MDC took centre stage. Mugabe rants and raves against white people and Britain yet he professes his undying affection and respect for the British royal family. Indeed there is a lot about Mugabe that is British, from his accent to his dress code to his love for cricket. English remains Zimbabwe’s national language, 28 years after colonialism.

The contradictions are starker with regard to the majority black population, which the Mugabe government has attempted to indoctrinate with its racist politics. Anti-white politics has not aroused black Zimbabweans against white people. Even during the explosive land seizures phase, to a greater extent attacks on white Zimbabweans remained linked to state-sponsored farm invasions and official pronouncements. Spontaneous nationwide populist looting, beatings and lynching of white people never occurred. Four white MDC members were elected to parliament at the height of the farm seizures.

One of them, a farmer called Roy Bennet, had his commercial farm invaded by war-veterans in 2000 but scored a resounding electoral victory none the less.

Another elected white parliamentarian, David Coltart, was a Rhodesian police officer when he was 18 years old. In spite of the Mugabe government’s use of Coltart’s history against him, Coltart remains a popular politician.

The Mugabe government’s “hatred” of whites has not filtered down to the average black Zimbabwean. Most black Zimbabweans are aware that the root cause of Zimbabwe’s problems is, ultimately, the Mugabe government. Blaming white Zimbabweans and white Britain will never wash this charge away. Black Zimbabweans see through it – just as they see the irony in the Mugabe government’s taking of Coventry to its bosom.

The Los Angeles Times
By Robyn Dixon
26 August 2008

The election of a candidate from the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, deals a blow to President Robert Mugabe’s regime. The vote is seen as a key test of who will control parliament.

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — Zimbabwe’s main opposition party won its first legislative showdown against President Robert Mugabe on Monday, taking the post of speaker of parliament.

The Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, is deadlocked in talks with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party over who should control the government, and Mugabe reconvened parliament despite opposition complaints that such a move would “decapitate” the negotiations.
Frustrated by their country’s economic collapse, voters stripped Mugabe of his parliamentary majority in March 29 elections for the first time since independence in 1980. But Mugabe was declared the winner in a presidential runoff in June that observers found to be undemocratic.

International aid agencies say that by January, 5 million people will need emergency food aid to avoid starvation. But Mugabe has banned international humanitarian agencies.

Monday’s vote on the speaker was the first significant test of who will control parliament, analysts said, and the election of Lovemore Moyo was a blow to the regime.
Even though it lost its majority, ZANU-PF has been trying to tempt opposition members to defect by offering jobs and rewards, according to the opposition.

Police arrested two opposition members as they arrived at parliament and tried to seize a third, according to the MDC, which accused the ruling party of trying to rig the vote on the speaker’s job. One of those taken was freed in time for the vote, but the other, Eliah Zembere, was being held Monday.

ZANU-PF did not field a candidate, but it was unable to unite with a breakaway faction of the MDC to elect that group’s candidate.

Although the ballot was secret, it appeared that the 10 members of the breakaway MDC faction voted against their candidate rather than cooperate with ZANU-PF. The main faction, loyal to Morgan Tsvangirai, has 100 members of parliament, 99 of whom were present Monday. ZANU-PF has 99, and there is one independent. Moyo received 110 votes.

The vote underscores the problems Mugabe will have in passing laws and getting a budget through parliament.

“It’s not just about the speaker, but [Mugabe] has lost control of parliament, which makes it very difficult to govern,” said David Coltart, a senator representing the breakaway MDC faction. He believes this will force Mugabe back to the negotiating table.

Tsvangirai won the most votes in the March 29 presidential election, but not the outright majority required to avoid a runoff, according to official results. He pulled out of the June 27 runoff because of widespread violence against MDC activists, which human rights groups said was overwhelmingly state-sponsored.

Mugabe is determined to maintain control of the Cabinet and security forces, and Tsvangirai suffered a setback when leaders of the Southern African Development Community said that allowing the president to keep those powers was a good basis for a settlement.

But analysts say such a deal would do nothing to unravel Mugabe’s control of the country or allow it to attract the Western support needed to rebuild its economy and feed its population.

Tsvangirai is pushing for control over Cabinet appointments, the police and intelligence service. While Mugabe still would control the army in that plan, his role would be much reduced.

John Makumbe, a political analyst at the University of Zimbabwe, said Tsvangirai was under pressure within Zimbabwe not to compromise.

“The majority of people in Zimbabwe are saying, ‘If you are not in control of the security forces, don’t sign, because it means Mugabe can unleash violence whenever he likes,’ ” Makumbe said.

Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group think tank, said Tsvangirai was right to hold out for greater powers, even though he was being cast as the intransigent party by the SADC mediator, South African President Thabo Mbeki.

“Though Mugabe wears no general’s uniform, for all practical purposes, his is a military dictatorship, relying on the support of the military establishment and brute domestic force to cling to power,” Evans wrote in a recent article in Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

robyn.dixon@latimes.com

The Telegraph
By Sebastien Berger, Southern Africa Correspondent and Peta Thornycroft in Harare
26 August 2008

Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe suffered a major blow to his attempts to hold on to power when an MP from Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change was elected as speaker of parliament.

In a stunning upset Lovemore Moyo, chairman of Mr Tsvangirai’s MDC faction, defeated Paul Themba Nyathi, of the smaller MDC grouping led by Arthur Mutambara, by 110 votes to 98.

Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party did not put up a candidate itself, instead ordering its newly sworn-in MPs to support the Mutambara faction’s man. Mr Mugabe will undoubtedly have been infuriated by the result.

The indications are that Mr Mugabe had been hoping to engineer a deal with Mr Mutambara’s faction to exclude Mr Tsvangirai from a government of national unity, and that enough of its MPs would support the government in parliament to enable it to function.

As of yesterday, those plans are in ruins. In Zimbabwean politics the speakership is a powerful role, with the ability to determine parliament’s agenda, and the octogenarian leader now faces the prospect of having to deal with a lower house fully controlled by his opponents if he decides to abandon the deadlocked negotiations being brokered by the South African president Thabo Mbeki and form a government of his own.

“Whatever game plan Mugabe had has been complicated and this greatly diminishes his capacity to form a cabinet and govern,” said Eldred Masunungure, professor of politics at the University of Zimbabwe. “Mugabe is seriously weakened and he and Zanu-PF will have to take the negotiations more seriously.”

David Coltart, a lawyer and Senator for Mr Mutambara’s MDC, added: “This is highly significant because it means Zanu-PF have lost the legislative control of parliament. It shows there is a determination throughout the opposition that there should not be any two-party arrangement with Zanu-PF and it will force president Mbeki to take Morgan Tsvangirai’s concerns more seriously.”

The house of assembly, which is reminiscent of the House of Commons with its wood panelling and green leather benches, was standing-room- only for the vote, despite two MDC MPs being arrested before they could be sworn in – the opposition has raised fears that Zanu-PF will try to circumvent its majority by detaining its legislators.

In the parliamentary poll earlier this year, Mr Tsvangirai’s MDC took 100 seats, Mr Mutambara’s 10, and Zanu-PF 99, with one independent.

It was the first time Zanu-PF had lost its majority since independence in 1980.

Initially the MDC’s MPs sat down on the government benches yesterday, shouting at Zanu-PF representatives: “You sit on that side. You are now in the opposition.” They sang and cheered when Mr Moyo’s victory was announced, hoisting him on to their shoulders.

Zanu-PF was forced to put a brave face on events. The hardline rural housing minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, a key player in the Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980s and long seen as a potential successor to Mr Mugabe, congratulated Mr Moyo.

“Mr Speaker, Sir,” he said. “This is a truly historic event and I would like, on behalf of the president, our party and this side of this august House, to congratulate you.” But in the internecine world of Zimbabwean politics, the result may actually work in Mr Mnangagwa’s favour, by potentially hastening Mr Mugabe’s departure.

The vote for speaker is held by secret ballot, so it is impossible to determine exactly what went wrong for Mr Mugabe. But it is understood that eight of Mr Mutambara’s MPs rebelled to back Mr Moyo against their own candidate, as did four members of Zanu-PF.

It is a clear indication of divisions within Zanu-PF. As it happens, Mr Moyo’s mother-in-law Sithembiso Nyoni is a former minister and a senior member of Mr Mugabe’s party, and is understood to have been campaigning quietly for her relative.

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.