In a statement issued following a meeting of the National Executive of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) today, Morgan Tsvangirai announced that his party has agreed to form an inclusive government with Zanu PF and the other MDC, led by Arthur Mutambara.

This agreement has felt increasingly inevitable since the SADC summit communiqué earlier this week. If things go according to the SADC timetable, Parliament will debate Constitutional Amendment 19 this coming week, and Tsvangirai will be sworn in as Prime Minister 11 February.

The sky tonight is, fittingly, dark and stormy. As the finalisation of this deal has crept inexorably closer this week, my emotions have also been dark and depressed. It’s hard to articulate how utterly disheartening this agreement is. Reflecting tonight, I thought that my heart has just taken the last break it can take.

This deal is entirely detestable. In its statement today the MDC said this didn’t mean it was giving up the struggle, just taking it to a different arena. But it’s hard to imagine that the party will have much success fighting for true democracy inside a flawed government, when it has come to such little effect outside it. A friend of mine yesterday said he’d heard this deal likened to putting on a dirty shirt. I said it’s more like putting on a dirty condom – smelly, sticky, damp, diseased and distasteful.

Admittedly, I don’t know what other the option the MDC had. A different party – one which was more Movement than Party might well have had different cards to play. But the MDC lacks the capacity to lead any sort of civil disobedience or “make the country ungovernable” movement, which might have resulted in a different outcome. Instead, the MDC has tended towards negotiations and legal challenges and contesting undemocratic elections. This strategy has left it high and dry at this most recent negotiating table.

Yesterday, Acting Minister of Finance Patrick Chinamasa, himself a snake of a man, announced the 2009 Budget Proposal – which sees the Zimbabwe economy increasingly dollarised. City councils, taxation, plus local goods are to be sold in forex, not in Zimbabwe dollars. How are Zimbabweans meant to survive the latest economic and political onslaught? The future is looking bleak.

My colleague walked into the office and announced that Morgan Tsvangirai is to be sworn in as Prime Minister on 11 February. He’d heard it on the state radio this morning.

Surprised, we checked the news. One story confirmed what he’d heard – but the headline was curious: SADC agrees on Zim unity govt. That’s great if SADC agrees on what Zimbabwe should do. But what has Zimbabwe agreed Zimbabwe should do?

The international press was less convincing. Reuters says Opposition disappointed with summit – and reports that the MDC says the conclusions “fall far short of our expectations,” and that they’ll meet this weekend to think about it. CNN reckons  Conflicting reports blur Zimbabwe deal and reports that the MDC says its “concerns remained unresolved.” So what is going on? According to CNN:

A source close to the talks said Tsvangirai agreed to all the decisions that the SADC made, but that other MDC leaders were unhappy with the agreement once he left the talks.

So does Operation Flip Flop continue? Will the MDC continue to waffle its way through these negotiations – when the very notion of negotiating with an entrenched and recalcitrant dictator is absurd.

A comment on our blog reads “Mugabe and Tsvangarai ‘working together’ was never a realistic or desirable outcome. Tsvangarai shouldn’t be working with Mugabe, because Mugabe is not capable of sharing power.” I agree with the theory of that. But unfortunately, as another colleague just pointed out, Tsvangirai is more desperate than Mugabe – desperate enough that he’s willing to negotiate in the first place.

When are the great majority of Zimbabwean people going to take some responsibility for what they are allowing to happen to them and get off their backsides and do something about it for themselves? I am fed up of the whinging and lack of action coming out of Zimbabwe. Other countries in the same position have fought their oppressors. Yes, it has cost lives and caused hardship but they have eventually overthrown the oppressive regime controlling them. Zimbabweans are not even prepared to organise “a day on the streets” or any other civil unrest in case they get hurt or arrested. This is not the way to change things. For goodness sake get out there and fight for your basic freedoms whatever it may cost you in the short-term. Mugabe relies on your inaction to retain his power and day after day, week after week, month after month you let him get away with it. Why? Only a few brave souls raise their heads above the parapet and so are easily picked off. Get behind Jestina and here ilk, follow them, and give them support. Protest as never before when people are abducted, when a two year old is incarcerated, when people are tortured. Do something about it; Let Mugabe know it is not acceptable. For God’s sake, and your own, do something to get Mugabe’s attention and indeed that of the whole world. Stand up and fight like people who want their freedom. Don’t rely on others. – Ken, UK

The above is a comment on an article by David Coltart.

I thought the author was right and he was also wrong – if it is at all possible to be right and wrong at the same time. What I do know deep in my heart is that some things are easier said than done. And if you’ve never had to survive under a dictatorship, you just don’t know what the hell you are talking about. Because you just can’t fathom that the non existence of democracy entails a lot of things including that you cant just up and make a noise faced with bullets and a real disregard for human life. You also have no idea that dictators are practically untouchable, at least by the ordinary citizen. Here in Zimbabwe they move in kilometer long motorcades and their functionaries are armed to the teeth and ready to kill anything that moves within a short distance from the dictator.

Zimbabweans got off their backsides and actually did something, which was to vote. Mugabe disrespected the will of the people and is intent on staying in power until “only God removes him”. Activists have peacefully taken to the streets and the police have descended like tons of bricks. Understandably, people now fear for their lives.

Do something to get his attention? You bet the guy knows he’s the most unwanted person right now. He is also aware of the fact that hunger and cholera are wiping out whole communities of this nation. If someone can be aware of all that and still remain indifferent, what more do you think ordinary citizens can do? This indifference is our biggest challenge.

I also wish to relay the fact that Zimbabwe is going through what OCHA describes as a “complex emergency.” According to OCHA, a complex emergency is a “humanitarian crisis in a country, region or society where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response”. I think this means in essence that when a state has collapsed and its citizens’ livelihoods are gravely threatened it becomes the obligation of the regional and international community to intervene. Hopefully the world has learned a few lessons from Rwanda, Darfur and Uganda’s Idi Amin.

We are an unarmed people under siege.

Yesterday I spoke to a woman who lives in Harare and earns a living as a domestic worker. She told me that if there is another election she won’t bother going to vote because when you vote you should get a result. Even though she and a lot of her friends have been staunch MDC supporters, she says that Morgan Tsvangirai is being criticised on the ground for “running away”. She views life through a relatively simple lens; in Botswana Tsvangirai can eat, here in Zimbabwe, millions of ordinary Zimbabweans can’t. She talked about too many people dying from either cholera, or hunger. And that people are responding to cholera like they once did, or still do, to AIDS, with fear and alarm, believing that someone who has died from cholera will make them sick too. So a body will remain where it falls until someone brave enough comes along to remove the corpse.

Here’s another contribution from Sophie Zvapera, a Kubatana subscriber . . . it seems like women are tired of men talking, talking, too much.

Today I thought I should give you some of the quotations from Zimbabwean women who had gathered for a women’s weekly church fellowship meeting (Ruwadzano):

“These men (Mugabe, Tsvangirai & Mutambara) have totally killed us and our families

Do you think these men care at all? But these men think we care who is controlling Home Affairs or not? Not at the moment! It doesn’t provide food on my table!

Do these men have a conscience at all? Next time I won’t vote because the vote has no value at all in Zimbabwe

Do these men Mugabe, Tsvangirai & Muatmbara have wives? What are their wives saying about all this?

Men are the same they don’t care about our suffering all they want is power, power & power”

These exchanges went on for a while as we waited for the start of the meeting during which time I started thinking of all the women and children who are unsung, unrecorded and unknown heroines of the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe.

There are many women whose names have never been mentioned anywhere who are suffering the brunt of the failure of leadership at all levels. These women are responsible for looking for food where there is none, caring for the sick where there is no hospital, no medication; they are the ones that are experiencing both social and psychological burn out because of the situation that is presenting in Zimbabwe. They see their children, husbands, relatives and friends dying because of cholera, HIV/AIDS, starvation and still have to attend the funerals and do all the traditional rites. The question that kept on coming to my mind as these women talked is do these political leaders care at all? I recognized that the feeling amongst these women as they expressed it here was that political leaders do not care about all the suffering that is going on except to gain political mileage at the expense of the suffering masses.

Someone might say this is an unkind analysis but I am sure I am not the only one who gets this feeling when you talk to small groups of women going about their daily chores. All they want now is a solution that brings respite to the people of Zimbabwe. In my discussions with women that I meet on a daily basis in my life none of them wants fresh elections, none of them wants a coup. All they want is going back to normal where they do not wake up in the morning to the news that a woman like Jestina Mukoko or Violet Mupfuranhewe and her two year old child disappeared, for instance. If women had their way they would have stopped the suffering long back through finding a workable solution than ‘to stick it out to the wire’ as these men are doing whilst people are dying daily.

My request therefore to these leaders is for them to talk to the suffering women and find out what they think about the ongoing impasse. If they think they are going to get some ululation for a job well done then they are so far away from reality. Women want this impasse resolved immediately. They want to take care of their families and move on with their lives where there is no senseless dying from cholera, where there is enough food for their families on the table, where children can go back to school and get a decent education, where the employed earn respectable salaries and not all this political rigmarole.

How many people have to die before these three men realise it is time for all of them to compromise in one way or the other. It is political doublespeak for any of the three leaders to say they have compromised enough because from where the women stand they have not since we have not moved forward as a country.

Seeking the shadow minister for health from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Mr Minister, 120 people have died from cholera in Zimbabwe in the period between February and August 2008. They were not beaten to death at some party base, but l would still call theirs death from political violence.

In February, l am told, Parirenyatwa Hospital stopped all surgical operations because the hospital had run out of theatre supplies. Now this and other hospitals in the country including Harare Central and Chitungwiza have stopped all admissions because there are no drugs and there is no staff. I already know that the present Minister has failed. If you are the alternative, what have you been doing about disaster that is our health delivery system? Do you have a plan for solving these problems, say in the first 100 days of office? How about letting us know some of those plans so that we know you are capable of solving this emergency? In the meantime, how about saying something about the needless loss of life as a result of cholera? How about visit Budiriro and Glen View and Glen Norah just so the people know whose side you are on? Or does the MDC only talk to the people at election time?