HAS POWER CHANGED HIM ALREADY? CAN HE HIMSELF AVOID CHANGING WITH `CHINJA(!)'?
Andrew Marr interviewed Morgan Tsvangirai on the BBC this bright Sunday morning. I was as interested in what he had to say as I was the first time he rose to address us as the Chairman of the NCA back in 1998. Marr came straight to the point: "Is the split in the MDC a personal one?" Morgan's answer, well rehearsed I am sure: "No it is ideological." Still on the edge of my seat, I waited for more enlightenment: The pro-Senate people wanted to do a deal with the regime, Mugabe's ZANU (PF) government and I did not - or words to that effect - is what he blithely alleged.
He lost me there. I have never let my eyes stray from the reports - from whatever quarter - about what went on in that catastrophic series of meetings which ended in disaster for the MDC as a bright hope for all Zimbabweans looking for new and better leadership. In a ten-minute interview, Marr couldn't possibly ask him: "What about the violence which began with the attempt on the life of one of your `internal' critics? What about the overriding of your party's constitution when you ignored the majority decision to go into the Senate?" And finally: "Is this allegation about the motives of the pro-Senate group really true? Why should some of the most dedicated of your followers turn against you? Did you not dismiss their concerns about your apparent change of character when you condoned internal violence and ignored your own party Constitution? Have you not considered that they went into the Senate because `realpolitik' dictates that you become irrelevant if you do not participate in the political process - however distasteful that may be?"
I say: Morgan, you have been less than truthful. You have a great following and they are so sick of the current regime that they will remain loyal to you no matter what. This looks worryingly like history repeating itself. Deja vu and all that. A quarter of a century ago,Zimbabweans were so sick of the suffering they endured in the liberation struggle that they allowed themselved to believe that their troubles would be over under Mugabe's leadership. Little was known about his character except that he was clever and embraced violence as the path to power. We all know where that has led us. Your own character has now been closely examined and until the first moment of the `split', you came through as a man who could be trusted with high office - a man of principle, a true democrat. Well, democracy went out of the window after that unfortunate man nearly did at the hands of your youthful thugs at Harvest House (and as you yourself narrowly missed doing when attacked by ZANU (PF) thugs at the start of your political leadership. Principle is what is now under the microscope.
The pre-independence Zimbabwean `masses' as Mugabe liked to call them, were denied access to information about nationalist leaders by the previous regime - mostly by default, since they were the rural poor, with little access to the print or electronic media. Far worse, today: positively no access to information about opposition leadership. They have only your rallies - and a few copies of the independent newspapers reaching them - to be persuaded that you are brave, that you are against the current dictatorship and that you are willing to go on leading them however hard the battle has become. What your former admirers need to know is, where are you leading them? Do you know yourself? Does your leadership require you to demolish your internal opposition by fair means or foul - just like ZANU (PF) - whatever it takes? And will you be able to hold on to the principles enshrined in your Constitution, of non-violent change and adherence to your party's promises of a better leadership? Can your leadership remain faithful to the rule of law within your own party and be ready to deliver justice to Zimbabweans within a restored rule of law - should you achieve the power to do all these things?
Weighty questions, but they need answering. If you yourself are changed too much in the process of bringing about change, what greater disaster can befall Zimbabweans?
This is an `I was there' commentary as far as his first five years in political leadership proceeded. I watched him with admiration as he chaired our NCA (National Constitution Assembly) meetings and my respect for him grew as he faced each new challenge as the undisputed leader of the MDC. This was a man who distinguished himself as a Trade Union leader: self-made, confident and daring, rather than opportunistic, in joining the NCA and taking on the leadership of the MDC at its inception. His next launching pad was made before the people and those others living outside of Zimbabwe who still cared about the country's future.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Monday, May 22, 2006
MY RAVE ON BREEDING WHITE LIONS IN SA
I cannot resist commenting on a TV news item regarding the `re-introduction of white lions into the wild' by a wild life conservationist in South Africa's Western Cape.
Here is why:
About twenty years ago, I decided that I should try to depart from my serious and wholly unprofitable (in the financial sense) writing about the business of politics in Rhodesian Front- ruled Rhodesia. Peter Joyce, the writer,(he wrote the first published book 'Rhodesian Rebel' about Ian Smith) nobbled me with a proposal for co-authorship of a surprising (to me)genre of writing. I have since lost contact with Peter and our book was stillborn for a reason I will explain further on. He persuaded me that the way to bust out into literary moneymaking was to write a successful Mills and Boon novel! He had got stuck when his own attempt at income generation along this route (the path to a peaceful retirement to an island where the Great Novel could be written)when the first delicate episode of sex reared up in a book intended for the delight of `those bored and frustrated matrons who don't want to read anything dirty'. He warned me that the book had to be well written and would stand only about a 5% chance of publication. His own literary `Blue' from Cambridge was well up to the task. So why ask for my collaboration? "Because I can't write about those silly things you women think about" was his reply. Huffily, I picked up the three slim volumes he threw down for me to read and got through two of them before dawn the next day. "I can do this! Easier than falling off a log. Just let the imagination rip" I said.
Peter had worked out the plot in fine detail. But, to get back to the subject in hand, the story was of a wild life conservationist (heroically handsome) breeding a pride of white lions in a South African game reserve. We had great fun with the daily progress discussions - he left me to do all the first drafting whilst he got on with his "coffee table" books and promised to polish the final version before submitting it for publication. Unhappily for the book's future, its theme at a time when South Africa was threatened at that very moment with `disinvestment'- an anti apartheid project invented by Teddy Kennedy - our story of a rich, white Saxonwold businessman's romantic adventure with a white lady and a lot of white lions would not go down well with publishers. Without Peter, I have never had the courage to review and change the plot. Tawny lions in a Rainbow nation? Impossible.
But my point here is that Peter had researched well and come up with the facts:the white lion was an albino - not, as portrayed today, a lost species to be `re-introduced into the wild'. Certainly not in Africa where the natural tawny coat is a brilliant protective camouflage in the lion's grassland habitat. Snow lions? Well that needs further research.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Here is why:
About twenty years ago, I decided that I should try to depart from my serious and wholly unprofitable (in the financial sense) writing about the business of politics in Rhodesian Front- ruled Rhodesia. Peter Joyce, the writer,(he wrote the first published book 'Rhodesian Rebel' about Ian Smith) nobbled me with a proposal for co-authorship of a surprising (to me)genre of writing. I have since lost contact with Peter and our book was stillborn for a reason I will explain further on. He persuaded me that the way to bust out into literary moneymaking was to write a successful Mills and Boon novel! He had got stuck when his own attempt at income generation along this route (the path to a peaceful retirement to an island where the Great Novel could be written)when the first delicate episode of sex reared up in a book intended for the delight of `those bored and frustrated matrons who don't want to read anything dirty'. He warned me that the book had to be well written and would stand only about a 5% chance of publication. His own literary `Blue' from Cambridge was well up to the task. So why ask for my collaboration? "Because I can't write about those silly things you women think about" was his reply. Huffily, I picked up the three slim volumes he threw down for me to read and got through two of them before dawn the next day. "I can do this! Easier than falling off a log. Just let the imagination rip" I said.
Peter had worked out the plot in fine detail. But, to get back to the subject in hand, the story was of a wild life conservationist (heroically handsome) breeding a pride of white lions in a South African game reserve. We had great fun with the daily progress discussions - he left me to do all the first drafting whilst he got on with his "coffee table" books and promised to polish the final version before submitting it for publication. Unhappily for the book's future, its theme at a time when South Africa was threatened at that very moment with `disinvestment'- an anti apartheid project invented by Teddy Kennedy - our story of a rich, white Saxonwold businessman's romantic adventure with a white lady and a lot of white lions would not go down well with publishers. Without Peter, I have never had the courage to review and change the plot. Tawny lions in a Rainbow nation? Impossible.
But my point here is that Peter had researched well and come up with the facts:the white lion was an albino - not, as portrayed today, a lost species to be `re-introduced into the wild'. Certainly not in Africa where the natural tawny coat is a brilliant protective camouflage in the lion's grassland habitat. Snow lions? Well that needs further research.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
CAN `TEETERING ON THE BRINK' GO ON FOREVER IN ZIMBABWE?
The vultures who reign in Zimbabwe feed on carcases not quite dead.
In today's ZWNEWS featuring Reuter's Stella Mapenzauswa's "Zimbabwe unions back strikes amid economic chaos" I am inclined to dyslexia in mid-sentence. Should we not hope that Zimbabwe unions strike back? Without the ZCTU, the opposition MDC would never have got within striking distance in its attempt to scare giant ZANU(PF)scavengers off the dying Zimbabwe bird. The first, generally observed teeterings came from the king vulture himself in in August 1997 when the war vets camped outside his office and frightened him temporarily off his perch. He moved adroitly to a stronger one, closer to the cliff edge where he could not be reached. For (so far) another eight years he has sharpened his talons to perfection and it is his victims, critically wounded by the destruction of the country's economy, not the king vulture himself, that have been `teetering on the brink'- to borrow from Stella's words.
It is a source of amazement that with most formal commercial business destroyed or in the process of destruction(the banks being the last bastion of survival are now regularly `teetering')the ZCTU can still gather a body of protesting `workers' together. Unemployment, estimated at 80% is a frightening thought. With this week's news of the government - predictably - banning entry into the country of Congress of SA Trade Unions (COSATU)general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and turning away most international delegates invited to a two-day meeting in Zimbabwe (they include leading trade unionists from Zambia and Swaziland and Norway)we are in no doubt that Trade Unions still represent a threat to the ruling ZANU (PF). Convential wisdom has it that Mbeki's fear of COSATU power is one of the reasons he has been so dilatory in the defence of freedom and full human rights for fellow Africans in Zimbabwe.
If the trade unions' intention was, as reported by The Star (SA) on May 20, to `decide whether the ZCTU will go ahead with strikes to protest against the country's rocketing inflation and poverty' the very best of luck to them, I say. I can't help dreaming of the day that my vulture image turns to one of a dead bird, though not the allegorical albatross, strung around the neck of an ancient. Only this has to be a landlubber and if my metaphor is to hold, the ancient will have need to kill himself and thus put an end to the suffering of his victims, the people of that once great country, Zimbabwe.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
In today's ZWNEWS featuring Reuter's Stella Mapenzauswa's "Zimbabwe unions back strikes amid economic chaos" I am inclined to dyslexia in mid-sentence. Should we not hope that Zimbabwe unions strike back? Without the ZCTU, the opposition MDC would never have got within striking distance in its attempt to scare giant ZANU(PF)scavengers off the dying Zimbabwe bird. The first, generally observed teeterings came from the king vulture himself in in August 1997 when the war vets camped outside his office and frightened him temporarily off his perch. He moved adroitly to a stronger one, closer to the cliff edge where he could not be reached. For (so far) another eight years he has sharpened his talons to perfection and it is his victims, critically wounded by the destruction of the country's economy, not the king vulture himself, that have been `teetering on the brink'- to borrow from Stella's words.
It is a source of amazement that with most formal commercial business destroyed or in the process of destruction(the banks being the last bastion of survival are now regularly `teetering')the ZCTU can still gather a body of protesting `workers' together. Unemployment, estimated at 80% is a frightening thought. With this week's news of the government - predictably - banning entry into the country of Congress of SA Trade Unions (COSATU)general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and turning away most international delegates invited to a two-day meeting in Zimbabwe (they include leading trade unionists from Zambia and Swaziland and Norway)we are in no doubt that Trade Unions still represent a threat to the ruling ZANU (PF). Convential wisdom has it that Mbeki's fear of COSATU power is one of the reasons he has been so dilatory in the defence of freedom and full human rights for fellow Africans in Zimbabwe.
If the trade unions' intention was, as reported by The Star (SA) on May 20, to `decide whether the ZCTU will go ahead with strikes to protest against the country's rocketing inflation and poverty' the very best of luck to them, I say. I can't help dreaming of the day that my vulture image turns to one of a dead bird, though not the allegorical albatross, strung around the neck of an ancient. Only this has to be a landlubber and if my metaphor is to hold, the ancient will have need to kill himself and thus put an end to the suffering of his victims, the people of that once great country, Zimbabwe.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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