Read this open letter from Dale Doré

Dear Prime Minister,

After a brave, harrowing and tearful account of a victim’s experience of being raped you asked: “How do you confront a dictator using democratic means?” With due respect, Prime Minister, it is not by dining with the dictator every Monday while crimes are committed against your supporters. Nor do you confront a dictator by proclaiming that he is part of the solution when he is, and always has been, part of the problem. Nor do you confront a dictator by undemocratically handing power to him. After nearly a decade of struggle, the Zimbabwean people elected you as their President, not as a powerless Prime Minister. Yet, it was you and your party that negotiated and handed back power to the dictator and the loser of the March 2008 presidential elections. This was not only a betrayal of the democratic principles that you espouse, but you had no mandate from the people to do so.

Nor, Prime Minister, do you confront a dictator by following his lead on pernicious and racist policies. Instead of supporting an international court’s ruling to which Zimbabwe is bound by treaty and international law, you have supported the dictator’s unlawful and ‘irreversible’ land policies.  Nor can you pretend that you did not mean that sanctions on ZANU(PF) individuals should be lifted just because you used the words ‘restrictive measures’.  It now seems that you are no longer confronting the dictator’s imposition of an indigenisation policy that will end any chance of investment to create desperately needed jobs.  If the truth be told, Prime Minister, you have not confronted the dictator using democratic or any other means. You have trusted him, colluded with him, and appeased him. In doing so you have – as one commentator put it – gambled your political credibility to the hilt.

You have also sent him the very signals by which he manipulates you. Whenever you tell the dictator that you will never abandon the GPA, you strengthen his resolve to repudiate it. Whenever you tell the dictator that past crimes should be forgiven and forgotten, it emboldens him to act with greater impunity. Even as you preach healing and tolerance to the dictator over dinner, he prepares for arrests, violence and intimidation against your supporters in the run-up to elections.

We therefore call upon you to focus all your strength and energy on ensuring that Zimbabweans can vote in peace, and in the knowledge that every vote counts.  Democracy and justice will only prevail when we start concentrating our minds on what really matters: providing security to remove any and every threat of election violence; tightening the electoral process to prevent rigging; and ensuring the peaceful handover of power. As the coercive power of the state remains firmly in the grip of the dictator, the imperative is to build a powerful coalition of political and diplomatic forces that will deny him victory through violence.

The tears of anguish of a single woman – or indeed those of thousands of your compatriots who have been tortured, raped and murdered – cries out, not for rhetorical answers, but for a leadership that demands democracy and justice. The hope of millions of Zimbabweans to live in dignity and freedom, Prime Minister, lies in your courage and leadership to confront the dictator. You must not fail them.

Spot the difference . . . this is exactly what we’ve been through, and are still experiencing in Zimbabwe. If only it were as simple as civil society and trade unions standing up.

Below is a letter printed in Business Day:

TS Eliot perfectly sums up our gloomy state of affairs: “we are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men … shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion … this is the dead land, this is cactus land”.

If Nelson Mandela was our nirvana, the new leadership is our nadir. Despondency and gloom have replaced hope. Greed and plunder have taken over from selflessness and servant leadership. Without any skill, education or hard work, one can accumulate millions in a week, more than Raymond Ackerman did in the first decade of running Pick n Pay.

Your green and gold political membership card is more precious than a university degree or values. If you are connected, a phone call to a well-placed minister will open doors for you. Talent and competence are irrelevant. State institutions are paralysed by inept leadership and infighting.

It is twisted irony that the new rulers praise apartheid monsters such as PW Botha for their leadership. Spare a thought for his victims. Like his predecessor, Adriaan Vlok, our current police minister is smiling, as the blue light brigade harasses poor citizens.

Sixteen years ago, Africa looked up to us for inspiration — today we are Africa’s cartoons.

Be warned: these are the first signs of post-colonialism blues that destroyed most of Africa’s young democracies. This is our Damascus moment. If we do nothing — we go the Zimbabwe direction. Zimbabwe is a state of mind and not a place.

Please do not blame Julius Malema for milking the system. It is not his fault. All he did was rent out his name to interested parties. Our flawed democracy was designed to benefit the elite and not the masses.

Yesterday it was Thabo Mbeki ’s group to enjoy the fruits of liberation. Now it is Jacob Zuma ’s turn. Moaning will not help. Every comrade wants a taste of the state honey.

Like cancer, political decay has spread to all parts of our body. It is sad for the African National Congress — the party of Sisulu — to be seen defending the looting of state resources.

Lord have mercy on us if our leaders cannot separate what is legally right but morally wrong. Do not look to President Zuma for answers. He is part of the problem and a pawn in the game. Our democracy and our future need defending from our leaders.

The media, civil society and trade unions must stand up. Our loyalty should be to the constitution, instead of to leaders. Building democracy is hard work. We cannot afford to be complacent.

Dr Lucas Ntyintyane
Cape Town

To celebrate his 50th birthday this year, Rejoice Ngwenya has launched the 2010% campaign. Read and listen to some of Rejoice’s ideas here. Below, he explains more about the campaign:

In my native siNdebele language, when a woman delivers a baby it is said: ‘Sekhululekile!’ literary translated into English – she is free!  I have proof that chiKaranga version is ‘kubatsigwa’, meaning ‘to be helped’.  In retrospect, I do appreciate and thank my mother, who exactly fifty years ago this September  will have heaved a sigh of relief after being ‘freed’ with a set of twin boys, one of which is me. This gift had an even deeper meaning coming many years after this wise rural woman married to a sophisticated primary school teacher had had a human avalanche of five baby girls before then. The man was so elated – because those days it was considered  ‘taboo’ not to have baby boys – he showed his ‘rejoicing’ by sticking that label on my birth certificate! What cheek, now everyone who sees my name thinks I am one of those … girls. You are forgiven, Old John. May the God of Abraham remember to keep a place for you in the New Jerusalem!

And so it is for this reason that one Robert Mugabe says that he single-handedly ‘freed’, or ‘helped’ us Zimbabweans from the miserable pregnancy  of nauseating colonialism. We now supposedly collectively owe him a favour, having had tolerated his thirty-year grip on abusive  political power without so much as raising an eyebrow of resistance. “Zimbabwe is 100% free,” he bellows, “and this you ungrateful citizens owe it to me and, and, and my party ZANU-PF.” I’m like No! Old man, all you did was to change the colour of the skin of the tenant at Zimbabwe House from white to black, and that don’t make me free. If you, in 1980, gave me this defective form of ‘100% freedom’, I want the real thing. 2010% will do just fine, and so good bye. Take a break, a long break and nobody will even remember you were once part of my rugged political landscape. The more you hang around, the more I will remember Gukurahundi, DRC, land invasions, Murambatsvina, one billion percent inflation, empty supermarket shelves, poverty, hunger, oppression, petrol queues, AIPPA, POSA… and that’s not very healthy.

If you claim to have ‘delivered’ me from Ian Smith, how come three million of my friends are still hiding in exile? You claim you are free, but travel in a mile long convoy surrounded by Uzis, AK-47ns and ugly m*****f*****s?  Quiet some freedom, Old Man. I want to make it official now, there is no democracy around here, and I might sound so dam crazy! Elections every five years are not the best litmus for democracy. Sadam Hussein had elections too! They have them in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the DRC, but that don’t make their democracy cool.

For now, democracy seems to be at the bottom rung of my ladder of priorities. Freedom first. No, your retirement first, then perhaps my freedom. Even great football players did retire – Edison Pele, George Best, Maradona, Roger Mila, Doctor Khumalo, Kalusha Bwalya, Zinadine Zidane and Peter Nyama. So what’s up with you Mdala?   You say Zimbabweans, or more accurately, ZANU-PuFfed Zimbabweans will decide when you should retire. Nice try. Fortunately, they are such a small proportion of the voting population, because at the last count in March 2008, you comprehensively lost. Here’s the deal: next time you look out of your tinted Mercedes Limousine escort car, you will see the ‘real’ Zimbabweans in T-shirts, caps and car stickers giving you five cool reasons why you should retire. Peer through the tint and marvel at the number of citizens waving the 2010% free flags. Ask your receptionist, she might even have 2010% free as her screen saver, then you know it’s time to hang your …. Manifesto.  Ses’ khululekile!

Rejoice Ngwenja rocks.

Kubatana.net recently interviewed him and you can read and listen to his views on a variety of critical issues in Zimbabwe on www.kubatana.net

In the meantime, below we carry an article by him entitled Scorpion in my Shoe, published by www.africanliberty.org

Thanks to Robert Mugabe’s reign of record-breaking incremental destruction, my country is struggling to redeem itself from the abyss of infrastructure collapse, so much that even hardcore urbanites like me have to make do with irritating wood smoke just to have a warm plate of sadza [Zimbabwe’s staple maize meal paste].    And that was without additional injury to the back breaking exercise.   A week ago, I was stung by a small black scorpion on my big toe as I chopped firewood to beat Zimbabwe’s notorious power outages.

The sting, while irritating, passed off just like any other experience of living in modern-day Zimbabwe under the Jurassic governance of the primeval ZANU-PF.  Thinking back, I imagined that Morgan Tsvangirayi was persuaded to take Robert Mugabe into his political boot, wherefore the old trickster settled at some dark corner until MDC fell into a stupor of artificial comfort.  But now, Tsvangirayi has been inevitably stung while he least expected.

Instead of focusing on the business of building high yielding relations, Mugabe continues to conspire evil against our nation hiding behind questionable legalism.  According to a recent Zimbabwe Situation news online report, “…. Mugabe is entitled under the law to assign functions to ministers, [but] he still has to consult his partners in government on the allocation of the ministries, according to the GPA”.  In complete defiance of this noble proposition, Mugabe unilaterally takes it upon himself to strip MDC-held ministries of essential powers.

Apparently, the biggest challenge confronting Tsvangirayi is not the quality of Zimbabwe’s coalition government, given that most such arrangements are products of large-scale compromise.  Agreements are made on the basis of partner credibility, honesty, consistency and transparency – traits which ZANU-PF is not exactly endowed with.  Most progressive analysts will agree that Tsvangirayi knew exactly the nature of the partner he was committing himself to, that is why he needed to have a comfortable stock of antidotes to deal with Mugabe’s chicanery.   More importantly, ZANU-PF is a completely discredited partner, headed by one Robert Mugabe who comprehensively lost the March 2008 Parliamentary Election, only to be ‘salvaged’ by an equally discredited one-man masquerade in June of the same year.

According to Professor Arthur Mutambara, the Global Political Agreement [GPA] is the only source of Mugabe’s ‘presidential legitimacy’.  In fact he would have proceeded to add that had SADC taken the right decision to call for a more organised, African Unity-supervised presidential re-run, Mugabe would now be confined to overdue retirement at his Zvimba rural home.  It therefore is astonishing by what authority Mugabe cherry-picks ministerial responsibility, if it were not that he is of a tyrannical genre obsessed with power.  I have argued time and again that our Zimbabwe government is too big and expensive, hence the shifting of ministerial powers would, on any other day, have little impact on service delivery.  And yet if you really put Mugabe’s juggling under the spotlight, he is only interested in ministerial adjustments that entrench his hegemonic hold on political power.

What is left now is for both Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirayi and his deputy, Arthur Mutambara to place an inexpensive political device that should shatter once and for all, Mugabe’s life-presidency ambitions. Both MDC cadres must come out of their friendly accommodative shells and tell Mugabe to fulfill all the provisions of the GPA. This is the opportune time for both men to stop making excuses for the aging dictator and embark on three-dimensional activism. The more sensible side of government – MDC – must promulgate statutory instruments to licence all applicants for radio stations and newspapers.  The democratic parties must dispatch all ambassadors, governors and appoint deputy minister for agriculture Roy Bennet.  Morgan Tsvangirayi and Arthur Mutambara must repeal all anti-democratic laws while all pubic appointments not sanctioned by the GPA must be nullified, including that of attorney general Johannes Tomana and central bank governor Gideon Gono.

The gist of my argument is that Robert Mugabe lost the election, thus has no moral high ground to play god.  Five million Zimbabweans have given both MDCs the mandate to govern, so the one-man political dance of the discredited Robert Mugabe has no authority or legitimacy to give five million voters a single sleepless night.  If both Tsvangirayi and Mutambara are weak, they should immediately hand over their power – Nigeria style – to more capable members of their parties.  This weakling image of subservience they are portraying does not augur well with our expectations.  It could also endanger their 2012 electoral standing in their constituencies.  Mugabe’s unpopular mandate expired in 2000, so any compromise on the part of Tsvangirayi and Mutambara is blight on the noble fight against ZANU-PF fascist dictatorship.  Luckily, we now know there is a scorpion in our boot.

Zimbabwe is in a process of formulating a new constitution. The process is already reportedly marred by disgruntlements emanating from different lines of divisions ranging from political to gender. It is sad and highly unexpected of an educated populace as Zimbabwe’s. The tensions reflect massive misconceptions not only of the process leading to the constitution but also of what the constitution is and its short term and long term objectives.

If people really knew what they were doing, we would not be having outcries over political rallies and the consequent political violence, which we hear of, or over who constitutes the select committee to spearhead the constitution making process. It is not the role of any political party to inform its people of the constitution but of an independent neutral body, or of other informed citizens.

The constitution is a document much more important than any political party, it should live beyond ZANU PF, beyond MDC and beyond Ndonga or any political party yet to be formed. It is the national bible to determine the conduct of the government and other stakeholders including people. What it implies is that it is the key to control the birth, survival and death of political parties. It should therefore come from the people in general, irrespective of their political party allegiances. Everyone should wear the coat of a citizen and take off any identification with a party in the process.

The select committee to spear heard the constitution making process is not there to influence the outcomes of the process. What we want collected are the views of the people as raw as they are and not views doctored along short term political interests. The same can be said of gender issues. We want people’s views and not those of whoever is part of the committee. People should be educated and to take heed of such elements that are bent on influencing the process to make the constitution their pocket parcel or baby.

People should stop viewing the constitution through political party lenses and rather jointly come up with a constitution that benefits everyone. What is important here is political and social neutrality.

The Southern and Eastern African Political and Economic Series Trust (SAPES) is hosing a weekly seminar series, alternating between policy dialogue, and discussions on the Constitution. To kick off their series, the first discussion was on the Land Question in Zimbabwe.

Renowned land policy analyst Mandivamba Rukuni lead the discussion, sharing his thoughts on the challenges facing Zimbabwe, and what role land policy played in that. He warned the audience that he would be controversial, and indeed he was. Some of his more controversial points included:

• The four causal reasons for Africa’s problems are organised politics, organised religion, formal education and economic policies based on greed, individualism and selfishness
• Government needs to strengthen the traditional tenure system, not weaken it
• Most African governments don’t believe that rural traditional people know anything about anything. We are just as bad as the colonial masters

Read more of Rukuni’s thoughts, and listen to excerpts of his talk here.

Join the SAPES discussion series every Thursday from 5pm-7pm at 4 Deary Avenue, Belgravia, Harare. This week, Lovemeore Madhuku will lead the discussion, on the topic Constitution-Making in Zimbabwe: Re-inventing the Wheel or Learning from Precedents? Admission is $10 (free for SAPES members). For more information, email admin@sapes.org.zw