When hell closes down for repairs, the devil goes to Beit Bridge for a holiday.  I think he has a timeshare on the old railway bridge; it’s government property, but when you’ve got contacts in high places, anything goes – for a song.  From this colonial relic he encourages the crocodiles to eat border jumpers.  He is in friendly competition with the Ministry of Home Affairs who is training selected crocodiles to become customs officers.  Why crocodiles? I asked one of the trainers: because they always have a welcoming smile for the tourists.

You can sense the devil approximately 60 kilometres, going south, from the border township.  Suddenly you are in cactus land: thousands of dreadful thorny eruptions, indigenous to hell (kaktos Beelzebabelaas), which makes T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land seem like a Disney theme park.  Then there is the ten year old detour, which reduces even off-road vehicles to instant rattletraps.  The new stretch of tarred road, shorter than the detour, is almost as bad.  When will Zimbabwean civil engineers learn that tarring a road is slightly more complicated than icing a cake?

That stench, which causes you to gag, and wind up your car windows, is the devil’s incense.  The rotting corpses of cows and donkeys, rammed into oblivion by Formula One juggernauts, are paving the way to the god of bad intentions.  You can’t miss him: he’s coloured red, he has a forked tail, a huge willy, and he carries a ZANU PF stroke MDC membership card.

The township itself is a masterpiece of incompletion: half-built shops, half-built restaurants, half-built garages, half-built intersections, half-built homes, half-built human beings.  But the worst place of all is the border post (and it’s now just as bad on the South African side).  From street kids specialising in hub caps to the very highest officials specialising in shifty wheeler-dealers, you will find yourself in a gallimaufry of criminal activity over which only the devil could preside.

A recent commentary by Eddie Cross caught Dale Doré’s eye. Among other things, Doré suggested:

The MDC must grasp is that they are powerless and that they have indeed been sucked into the ZANU(PF) morass. And, yes, there is something the MDC can do …… GET OUT!

This in turn caught our eye. Yesterday, we included some of Dale’s comments in our email newsletter, and we invited people to email us back with their thoughts. This has sparked a lively debate. The people who are responding to us disagree strongly with Dale, saying things like:

The GPA is cast in stone! We are tired of talks – and we do not want to backtrack and redo the talks. We will not achieve anything, we cant reinvent the wheel! Why should anyone want the MDC to pull out of the GNU when there are signs of progress written all over the wall? I say to this to these peddlers of venom, eat the humble pie. The GNU is here and is here to stay!

Read more here, and leave us a comment to share your thoughts on this debate.

According to the Global Political Agreement signed by the three political parties in Zimbabwe . . .

“RECOGNISING and accepting that the Land Question has been at the core of the contestation in Zimbabwe and acknowledging the centrality of issues relating to the rule of law, respect for human rights, democracy and governance. The Parties hereby agree to: (a) conduct a comprehensive, transparent and non-partisan land audit, during the tenure of the Seventh Parliament of Zimbabwe, for the purpose of establishing accountability and eliminating multiple farm ownerships; (b) ensure that all Zimbabweans who are eligible to be allocated land and who apply for it shall be considered for allocation of land irrespective of race, gender, religion, ethnicity or political affiliation; (c) ensure security of tenure to all land holders; (d) call upon the United Kingdom government to accept the primary responsibility to pay compensation for land acquired from former land owners for resettlement; and (e) work together to secure international support and finance for the land reform programme in terms of compensation for the former land owners and support for new farmers.”

Quite clear? Clear enough? So as Rejoice Ngwenya asks “on any clear day, it is therefore impossible to comprehend why MDC, realising the incapacity of JOMIC to guarantee the democratic rights of citizens, is not evoking the clause that binds the implementation of this agreement to be guaranteed and underwritten by the Facilitator, SADC and the AU.”

Below is a letter written by Ben Freeth, a Zimbabwean farmer. The letter is addressed to Morgan Tsvangirai and it asks him to follow through on his promise to stop farm invasions.

Dear Prime Minister Tsvangarai,

As you are aware I wrote an open letter to you 2 weeks ago asking where we were going because “soon it will be too late.”

I likened our countries economy to that of an engine that is continuing to be stripped. Unfortunately the stripping process has increased in momentum significantly since my letter; and police unfortunately remain complicit with it.

Since I wrote to you we have had a fresh illegal invasion on Mount Carmel Farm on the 4 April 2009. We copied a letter to your office addressed to the Commissioner General of the Zimbabwe Republic Police dated 5 April but have yet to have any response.

Some of our workers have been badly beaten [one with a cracked skull]; the Mount Carmel house was broken into and entered by invaders while my elderly parents-in-law were inside; Mike and Angela Campbell have since been evicted by the illegal invaders and stopped from accessing their home and work place by a locked gate that the invaders have erected on the drive into the farm; their house has since been entered by invaders again and some looting has taken place; the mango crop still in the orchards of over 100 tons is being stolen before our eyes; the pack- shed has been broken into and the 50 tons of export mangos that was rotting there [because the invaders have stopped all the 150 workers from loading the lorry that came from SA for export] are being sold by the invaders – we saw the rotting mangos and invader sales of stolen property on 10 April; the orange crop of 200 tons is being stolen and the maize and sunflower crops will be stolen shortly if nothing is done to arrest the perpetrators of these crimes.

Many of our workers are sleeping in the bush due to the violence that remains unpunished. Others are victims of trumped up charges in jail. They have been subjected to torture by police in Chegutu using armoured cable to beat them. The one with the cracked skull [Sinos] was dumped on the charge office floor by invaders in the presence of witnesses who were never even asked to explain themselves. A police constable then smashed Sinos’ head against the charge office wall. As a result of police being used to torture and arrest our workers, our workers are naturally very afraid to make reports of crimes that continue to be committed.

Invaders threatened to kill any of our guards that tried to continue to guard the crops. They stole a shotgun from the guards and used it to threaten workers. This they subsequently handed into police. Not a single one of the workers has been allowed to work for us in the last week doing the vital job of packing export quality mangos for the earning of tens of thousands of US dollars of scarce foreign currency.

Chegutu police will not even give us the name of the main invader who is frequently at the station with them. Chegutu Police now refuse to take reports of crimes being committed on Mount Carmel Farm so there is no official record. On their visit yesterday they saw all the evidence of these crimes and did nothing to arrest the “untouchables” who were in their presence. Evidence of some of the crimes is on film.

In my letter before this invasion I asked why the SADC Tribunal Judgement is not being upheld. SADC has directed that “the respondent [the Zimbabwe Government] is directed to take all necessary measures to protect the possession, occupation and ownership of the lands of the applicants [ourselves]…and to take all appropriate measures to ensure that no action is taken, pursuant to Amendment 17, directly or indirectly, whether by its agents or by others, to evict from or interfere with, the peaceful residence on and of those farms, by the Applicants.”

If there was a political will to restore the rule of law I have been assured by police that it would take 5 minutes. Unfortunately, there appears to be no political will to deal with these latest invasions and to restore the rule of law and to allow us to live and farm in peace.

This is not an isolated incident. Other farmers are experiencing similar situations and thousands of jobs and livlihoods are on the line. We invite you down to urgently see with your own eyes the realities of the continued State inspired lawlessness in Chegutu. We implore you to have the invaders arrested and to put a police guard on the property to allow us to continue farming in peace and to stop the continued victimisation that is being experienced.

Kubatana was copied in on an email written by Dale Dore, a Harare based activist, to Eddie Cross an MDC stalwart. In his email Dale suggested that the MDC are powerless in the unity government and because of the numerous transgressions of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) the MDC should declare the power sharing government dead.

We still have a dictatorship in place in Zimbabwe albeit with a bit more money than it used to have.

Tsvangirai can only cite certain successes because Zanu PF has facilitated them. Anything vaguely unpopular with Zanu PF doesn’t get to see the light of day.

Jonathan Moyo in an article published by The Nation, in Kenya, called the unity government “self indulgent” and that Tsvangirai is “now groping in the dark  in a desperate search for non exist benchmarks of success.”

Tendai Dumbetshena writing for The Zimbabwe Times asserts that Mugabe has something sinister in mind, but then again when hasn’t he? Tendai does ask some very direct questions that we must insist on being answered. We don’t expect the true blue dictator Mugabe to do so but we do expect Tsvangirai to step up to the challenge:

The Global Political Agreement (GPA) was signed on 15 September, 2008 – seven months ago. All issues pertaining to political reforms and human rights were contained in the GPA and Memorandum of Understanding that preceded it. Why do these issues remain outstanding after such a long time?

What is so difficult about repealing repressive legislation such as POSA and AIPPA? Why the delay in allowing the media to operate freely? Why does the government need an extra 100 days to, for example, lift the ban on international networks such as CNN, BBC, SKY and South Africa’s eTV. The above list of banned foreign media is by no means exhaustive.

Why do some MDC and civil society members still face charges for crimes that were not committed while those who actually murdered and tortured people have not been brought to justice? Where are the seven missing MDC members?

When will Roy Bennett be sworn in as deputy Minister of Agriculture? Will it also be done within the next 100 days? When will the endless talking stop and actual deeds begin?

Assurances from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his ministers count for nothing. In a major speech about three weeks ago the MDC leader threatened to arrest those who continued to invade farms and disrupt production. The mayhem continues and not a single person has been arrested. It is his people who languish in jail. The people who enforce law and order have disdain for Tsvangirai.

The MDC leadership must get real. It is excited beyond measure by the new titles, cars and other trappings of office. Its view of this inclusive government is defined by the material benefits it has yielded to those in government.

Tsvangirai and his colleagues must wake up from their comfort-induced slumber.

Serious people never allow themselves to be victims of naiveté or blinkered optimism. There is something sinister brewing in Mugabe’s mind. There is something sinister being hatched within Zanu-PF. If the MDC continues to act as if it has a genuine partner in this charade called an inclusive government a terrible fate awaits it.

Alex Magaisa rightly questions Zimbabwean politicians who educate their children outside Zimbabwe at great expense whilst allocating our teachers here at home a wage of US$100 a month.

And, now that they are in, the likes of Biti have a vested interest in the unity government’s success. That may not be a bad thing in itself. But they should be very wary of the old fox Mugabe. It was always believed his strategy would be to suck in the MDC and use its foreign credibility to revive the economy (and lift the travel bans on the president and his mates) while he and Zanu PF maintained control. Meanwhile, the MDC would be contaminated by association with Zanu PF. We have seen nothing to contradict that understanding of Mugabe’s game plan. Already we are seeing poor Tsvangirai trying to explain away the new farm invasions. Unless the MDC can get the rule of law restored very soon, it should pull out of this government. And even before then, it should hand back those Mercedes-Benzes, the very symbols of co-option. - Comment from the Cape Times SA, 6th April