Preliminary reports from Zimdaily suggest that Morgan Tsvangirai’s Leeds Rally was attended several hundred people. If confirmed, these reports will confirm that Tsvangirai is undoubtedly more popular than Mutambara both at home and abroad.
Technorati Tags: Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe, MDC Debacle, MDC
Deposed information minister and political turncoat Jonathan Moyo is out courting ire of Zimbabweans again. This time, he used a long diatribe titled Beyond Budiriro in which assumes a lofty position of wisdom and attempts to dish advice to the MDC. Roundly castigated for his oppressive role in crafting AIPPA (Zimbabwe’s unliked media regulation law), Moyo, now Zimbabwe’s lone independent parliamenterian is seemingly desperate to rejuvinate his political career.
In the piece, Moyo asserts among other things that Tsvangirai is myopically obsessed with the idea of asserting his faction of the MDC as the “real MDC.” In so doing Moyo counters, Tsvangirayi is foolishing extrapolating his popularity within the MDC to reach across to all other Zimbabweans. Like the long slumbering Rip Van Winkel, Moyo seems oblivious to what has been going on around him; Tsvangirayi has been going around the country courting all Zimbabweans to respond to a national agenda for progress and the end of tyranny. This idea that his travels are intended solely for flexing his political muscle is far fetched at best.
Building on the fallacy that Tsvangirayi is operating from the throes of self aggrandizing ambition, Moyo “challenges” Tsvangirai to pursue the building of a “coalition of the willing” of sorts. It is clear Moyo writes from the deluded assumption that politics in Zimbabwe remains an esoteric confine accesible and malleable only to the elite and the educated. Alas, those days are long gone in Zimbabwe. Fortunately, the new generation of politicians on the rise in Zimbabwe (which include Tsvangirayi and Mutambara but not Moyo) have latched onto this already. This is why they are travelling so extensively and are reaching out to ordinary Zimbabweans.
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Marvelous word that – hope not too many of you had to go to your dictionaries to find out what it means! However I feel rather smug – I said a few days ago that the 15th May marks the start of our winter, and I was more than right for once. It has snowed all the way from the Western Cape to Mpumalanga in the Transvaal. I was in Johannesburg over the weekend and it was well below freezing at night.
But our elections Directorate in the MDC also has just cause to celebrate. Last week when I was in Harare for three days they told me that they had estimated that Zanu PF would be able to garner up to 4 000 votes in the bi-election taking place in one of the Harare province constituencies. They had come to this conclusion after a detailed study of the voter’s roll and street surveys. They were just about spot on – Zanu registered about 3 900 votes.
However they also felt at the time that the poll was going to be low despite the turnout at MDC rallies and the impact of a walk about done by the President during the campaign. Some estimated a turn out as low as 8 000 and they felt this might result in a poor outcome for the MDC as the MDC vote was split by the current dispute. In the event they need not have worried – the MDC received nearly 10 000 votes, the Mutambara group 500.
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SW Radio’s awarding winning Violet Gonda interviewed Arthur Mutambara on Hot Seat. Mutambara is the self proclaimed “anti-senate leader of the pro-senate faction of the MDC. The transcript is here.
Technorati Tags: Arthur Mutambara, MDC, MDC Debacle, Zimbabwe Crisis, Zimbabwe
*You can hear the audio of this interview here. Audio archives are kept for two weeks after the broadcast date.
Violet: We welcome Brian Kagoro, who is a Zimbabwean activist and an analyst to the programme ‘Hot Seat’. Welcome Brian.
Brian: Thank you Violet.
Violet: Now so much has happened in Zimbabwe, especially where the opposition is concerned since the last time we spoke. That was late last year, around the time that the MDC had split. Now the two parties have gone their separate ways and are now led on the one hand by Morgan Tsvangirai and the other by Arthur Mutambara. So lets start with your assessment of this.
Brian: Well the split is an unfortunate event. Unfortunate in the sense that it’s a much weaker opposition in terms of its capacity to contain ZANU PF. Even before the split, there were already difficulties in the sense that ZANU had managed somewhat to outflank oppositional forces through the use of either force; the use of repressive legislation and sheer wear and tear. I think people were growing weary; the rejuvenation of energy that we began to witness last year seems to me would be dissipated by this positioning within either faction. And, in any sense, it is important for us to remember that the leadership based in Zimbabwe within the opposition is not that broad. So this splintering into small units; for whatever reason; is undesirable. This is exactly where the opposition in Zimbabwe was before the formation of the MDC
Violet: And now it seems if we are to compare the popularity of the two parties by the numbers that they are drawing to their rallies, it seems Tsvangirai is drawing enormous crowds compared to the people that are attending Mutambara’s rallies. First of all, does this say the Tsvangirai camp is the peoples’ party?
Brian: I think there are several ways to look at this. Tsvangirai has been around for much longer, he has been associated with the pro-democracy struggle, if you like, on a consistent basis, much longer and also basically it could be a signification that Zimbabweans generally do not accept that there should be a split in the opposition. It’s not necessarily a vote of confidence in Tsvangirai and a vote against the other party, I think it is against the concept of a split opposition. And in there view the broader party might represent that opportunity to finally deal with the ruling party. That’s one way of looking at it. There is another way though; several other ways in fact. The notion that is often not articulated amongst many circles in Zimbabwe is that the other faction represented some ethnic interest, an ethnic minority interest. Whether or not that is a correct assessment is neither here nor there. What is important is there are people within the country in whose opinion the faction, previously led by Welshman and now led by Arthur, represented an ethnic clustering of people from Matabeleland. And, I think the desertion of various characters, Gift Chimanikire and others back to the Tsvangirai camp, might actually help prop up that perspective; that the broader national interest is greater served in the Tsvangirai camp - it has a broader ethnic spread than the other camp.
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8:01 PM UPDATE: Zimdaily has just uploaded this cellphone video clip of Mutambara’s second London rally (Flash required)
After a salty debut in the UK last week, Arthur Mutambara the leader of the pro-senate faction of the MDC is back in hte UK. Zimdaily, who live blogged the event and supplied the above video, has the very latest on the Mutambara London Rally here.
*Be sure to read to the comments*
BACKGROUND: HERE
Technorati Tags: Arthur Mutambara, MDC, Zimbabwe Crisis
As I sit here looking at my computer screen I’m dreaming of Nepal. I so badly want the reality they are experiencing to be mine . I want to be able cower my despot into democracy too!
Right on cue, Paramendra Bhagat a native of Nepal pointed me to his blog where he has discussed the “Democracy Spreading Mechanism.” You can see where this leading right? This got me thinking; just how well are we doing according to the 21st century democracy revolution standards set by our Nepali brotherhood?
This post is the first in an eight part series where I’m going to present a criticism of Zimbabwe’’s democracy movement according to the principles set out by Paramendra in the aforementioned post. If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to read the post. Paramendra arranges key components of the democratization mechanism into three categories; domestic, diaspora, and international community. Since this is a “A Criticism Zimbabwe’s Democratization Mechanisms,” this series will evaluate Zimbabwe by points in the first two categories only. Besides, we all know how “well” the internation community is doing at keeping up their end of the bargain–no need to beat down the dead donkey we call that muchekadzafa–cutting the dead.
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Just been watching the celebrations in Nepal following the King’s decision to give in to popular demands that he restore the democratic structures in that country. It is very moving to see this massive commitment by simple, ordinary people in a very poor country demanding that they no longer be treated as feudal slaves to a totalitarian regime but be granted the democratic right to choose their own government.
My mind goes back to that night in Harare in 2002 when people were unable to cast their votes because the regime here had reduced the number of polling stations and the remaining ones were unable to cope. The sight of thousands of people demanding their rights and standing in queues for days and nights to do so was imprinted indelibly in my mind.
We traveled up to Mutare on Saturday for the MDC rally there and then went through to Harare to be present at the rally in the Zimbabwe stadium in Highfield. For those who are not aware of these grounds they are very much the home of African Nationalism in Zimbabwe. It was to these grounds that Mugabe came when he returned from overseas to lead his Party to contest our first “one person, one vote” election.
By now many of you would have seen some images from these two events, but being there was a very special experience. The Mutare rally was very well attended – perhaps 25 000 people, but what stood out was the presences of traditional leaders from the Province. One of the most senior Chiefs in the country sent an aide and his most trusted lieutenant to the rally to accept the gift of a ram from Roy Bennett who is in South Africa seeking asylum.
Their presence electrified the gathering and the simple dignity of the ceremony involving the gift from Roy, who’s the adopted son of Chief Mutambara, was a special aspect of the rally. The people also presented Morgan with a ram – a sign of respect and leadership. Aside from this, the gathering was disciplined and attentive – people wanted to hear what was being planned to resolve the national crisis. Roy phoned up after the rally to find out how it had gone and was very emotional – wished he had been there and feeling far away from home. But no doubt he is better off where he is – no use to us in prison here on some trumped up charges
We then traveled through to Harare to the rally there, arriving at 14.00 hrs and joining a huge crowd gathered to hear Morgan Tsvangirai. It was quite apparent that he is the man of the moment – the people gave him a tumultuous greeting when he arrived and when he rose to speak at 16.30 hours the crowd – perhaps by then 40 thousand people, went completely quiet. They wanted to hear what he had to say, what he was planning to do to get the country back on its feet.
This completes the second phase of our programme leading up to the first use of “people power” to try and change the course of events in Zimbabwe. The first step was to get our Congress behind us and this we have – with great success. Now we have held rallies in all major centers in the country – again with good results, large crowds of very attentive and supportive people. All these functions have been disciplined and gave the authorities no problems – no violence and no heckling or disorderly behavior. They have also demonstrated to all who watch events here, just who has the people’s hearts and hearing. They also demonstrate the extent to which popular support for Zanu PF has waned in the past decade, references to Mr. Mugabe were received with derision and laughter.
So where do we go next? The MDC is now pressing on with a Provincial programme – we are holding meetings across the country in the next few weeks to explain what it means to take the struggle to the streets using only people power to influence events. Twelve teams have been formed and these are now fanning out across the country meeting the people and alerting them to what we expect from them during our winter of discontent.
Just to highlight their desperation and inability to get anything right, the regime has announced another “recovery programme”. The actual content of this is so ridiculous it simply serves to emphasize how little this regime has learned about managing the economy in the past 26 years. Mutasa, who for months has been threatening the remaining commercial farmers, does a complete about turn and says they are prepared to “allow” white farmers back to their farms on certain terms.
No such desperation for Mugabe however, on Tuesday last week he went out of his way to say that they would take 51 per cent of the mining industry – because that is what being independent was all about. Needless to say, the attempts to repair the damage done by the Minister when he leaked draft legislation to this effect, was wiped out and the mining industry now knows they face a bleak and uncertain future – at a time when commodity prices seem to be unstoppable.
We have decided to give the bi-election in Budiriro a go – this seat was held by a MDC Parliamentarian and the Party felt that we should not concede this political space to Zanu PF. We held our primaries and a young candidate (he is 32 years old) was elected. At the nomination Court on Friday we had no problems getting his candidacy accepted but the Registrar General allowed the Mutambara group to register with the same name as the MDC and the same symbols. So we now have an election coming up with the potential for confusion as to who is who.
This was quite deliberate – and we will have to counter it with a campaign to explain the problem to our supporters in the area so that they do not just vote MDC – but make sure they know who it is they are voting for. The voter’s roll closed two weeks ago and as of today we have been unable to get a copy – for Z$10 million cash! But we hear that Zanu is still registering voters in the rural areas adjacent to the constituency – the usual ruse in a bi-election.
The motive of the Mutambara group in doing this is also not difficult to understand – if you cannot gatecrash the Party then just be a spoiler. What we are saying to our people in the Constituency is we know that the election is largely irrelevant to the resolution of the crisis – but lets show the rest where the peoples hearts are and turn out in large numbers to swamp the rigging and the confusion that is being used to try and defeat the MDC on this occasion.
Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 26th April 2006
Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Eddie Cross, Zimbabwe Crisis
The pro-senat faction of the MDC which saw a series of debilitating defections late last week, continues to reel in uncertainty as it’s national chairman Gift Chimanikire quit the faction today
On the eve of the 26th commemoration of Zimbabwe’s independence from colonial rule, I wonder if anyone in the country will observe the holiday with anything more than the customary day off. Even that won’t mean much, 85% of Zimbabwe’s able and willing workforce are jobless. There is very little independence left in the country, and there is even less to celebrate.
In hollow statements Arthur Mutambara and Morgan Tsvangirai, the two leaders of the MDC’s bickering factions issued blurry calls for action from the Zimbabwean people.
In his first independence message to Zimbabwe, an ambitous Mutambara delves into details of his lofty plans to transform Zimbabwe’s economy;
“Beyond recovery and survival we need to develop long term strategic initiatives, with sector specific programs, that enable Zimbabwe to emerge as an industrialized, technology driven, competitive nation, fully integrated into the global economy. We should use the existing capacity of Zimbabweans and their natural resources to compete through the design and construction of new and innovative products on the world market. While building upon our national core competencies such as agriculture, mining and tourism, emphasis should be on focused manufacturing and leveraging new technologies. These include wireless telecommunication (e.g. Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax)), biotechnology, wireless power (e.g. fuel cells and solar-thermal), automation, nano-technology, micro-electronic and mechanical systems (MEMS), and electronic commerce. Some of these new technology platforms are cheaper and lend themselves better to countries with poor infrastructure than advanced countries. Hence, there is a unique opportunity for Zimbabwe to run where others walked. We can thus, leap-frog from the current economic crisis into the globally competitive and knowledge-based economy. Zimbabwe needs an effective science and technology strategy, rooted in regional integration and linked to forces of globalization.”While urging collegiality among Zimbabwe’s civic organizations, Mutambara is consipicously mum about his frosty relationship with Tsvangirai. Notice, he has nothing to say to or about the other MDC. Trust me, it’s not for a lack of things to say. Several members of his faction recently defected.
