Tendai Dumbutshena recently wrote an impassioned article for The Financial Gazette in which he suggests that “Tsvangirai, excited beyond measure by his status as Prime Minister, has exceeded his brief by sanitising the person of President Mugabe.”

Tendai also believes that “there is no point trying to make out a case for the MDC-T to pull out. It will simply not happen. The comforts and status of office are too attractive to resist. No price is too high to keep them.”

The article ends pessismitically with these words . . .

While MDC-T leaders are flying all over the place begging for money and lobbying for the removal of sanctions, President Mugabe is planning for the day the country goes to the polls. When that day comes the MDC-T will find that nothing has changed. The militia will still be in place. The police CIO and defence forces will still be wings of ZANU-PF. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission or whatever body replaces it will be under ZANU-PF’s commissariat. The ZBC will still enjoy a monopoly and be staffed by ZANU-PF apparatchiks. Certain magistrates and judges will be on standby to deal with cases assigned to them by the Minister of Justice. Filthy prisons and CIO jails will still be there to welcome opponents of ZANU-PF deemed dangerous. If all this fails ZANU-PF will not accept the results and the MDC-T will go crying to SADC for intervention. Enter another inclusive government under President Mugabe as head.

As Tendai points out it is all very predictable and depressing, but what are the other options?

The more the MDC insists that it is “a party of excellence,” the more sceptical I become about it. Having agreed to this transitional government arrangement with Zanu PF, it is now finding it difficult to actually get anything done. Mugabe flouts the agreement by appointing the Attorney-General and Reserve Bank Governor without consulting with the MDC, and at the same time refuses to swear in the MDC’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Roy Bennett.

The MDC’s National Council met on the weekend to decide what to do about some of the problems they’re having in this “power sharing” agreement, like the appointment of permanent secretaries and Provincial Governors.

Their resolution? To ask SADC and the AU for help. Never mind that it was SADC’s mediation that created this imbalanced agreement in the first place. If the MDC can’t solve its problems without looking to outsiders for help, what confidence can we have it its ability to run the country?  It’s time they started demonstrating excellence in action, not just in words.

Mgcini, a Kubatana subscriber, shares his thoughts on the constitution and the Government of National Unity . . .

In 2000 I voted NO to the proposed draft constitution, the one Jonathan Moyo tried diligently to sell to us. If I had known more about the new constitution I would have voted NO anyway, but I did not and I voted NO because the opposition was pushing for a NO vote. It was a stupid and uninformed decision. We were used by the opposition to render useless a noble process known as a referendum. I vowed back then to diligently look at all available facts before blindly following bogus leadership. It is in this kind of spirit that I find myself not belonging to any political party. None of the leadership, especially Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe has made it about the country, Zimbabwe as opposed to personal advancement. The so-called Government of National Unity, Transitional government or Inclusive government as some would prefer to call it is an insult to our intelligence and integrity as a people. If it is truly an inclusive government, where is Simba Makoni, Jonathan Moyo, Nkosana Moyo, John Makumbe, Margaret Dongo to name, but a few. Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai and one professor of robotics think Zimbabwe is theirs to do as they please with. Why should they behave like children and treat Zimbabwe as a piece of candy they are squabbling over. What does the ordinary Zimbabwean know about the new government and what it’s mandate is? The teachers are on, or have threatened to strike because they are not informed and they do not know what their role is in this circus. Instead of spending money on luxury vehicles and expensive retreats, the new government should  produce information packets and have public forums to inform the people and get the people’s take on things. Are we so feeble minded that three clueless people should do everything for us?

Recently Kubatana offered Brian Chikwava’s new book, Harare North, as a prize for the best bit of writing on the Diaspora. Here’s something from Martha in Bulawayo . . .

For me the Diaspora is any place outside Zimbabwe. This is in contrast with the main belief that the Diaspora is over the seas. I grew up in Tsholotsho and most men over the age of eighteen are in Egoli, as Joburg in South Africa, is commonly known. For me they are in the Diaspora. For the past thirty years or so this has been an increasing trend and it has led to an appalling lack of ambition. Boys dream of going to Egoli and girls dream of getting married to Injiva (a man working in South Africa). To me the Diaspora means a  total disregard for education, a break down of the family system (men working in South Africa only visit their families once or twice a year) and lack of achievement – although it might be argued that being able to  feed one’s family is achievement. But I believe if a person who could have been a doctor, an engineer et cetera ends up being a mere gardener in South Africa, there is a lack of achievement. The Diaspora has set an unreal sense of achievement so much that the youth, and in some cases adults, have totally lost focus. To me the Diaspora means a disturbance of a people’s value system and belief in themselves.

Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti is struggling to get the kind of big dollar support he is hoping for to resuscitate the country’s ailing economy.

He’s gotten a few nibbles – this week Zimbabwe secured USD 200 million in credit from SADC, and another USD 200 million in credit from COMESA. The UK has promised USD 21 million in humanitarian aid. Nothing to sniff at – but nowhere near the USD 10 billion plus injection Biti has been shopping around for.

Part of the problem, of course, is the global financial crisis – countries are worried about bailing out their own economies, and aren’t as open to helping out others as they might have been a year or two ago.

Part of the problem is scepticism. The IMF turned down Biti’s request, reportedly citing arrears and financial restrictions.

But most importantly, perhaps, Western governments at least are still under pressure to not give aid to Zimbabwe – until the government stops its human rights abuses, and commits to reform.

Human Rights Watch Africa Director Georgette Gagnon said in a statement today:

Humanitarian aid that focuses on the needs of Zimbabwe’s most vulnerable should continue. But donor governments such as the UK should not release development aid until there are irreversible changes on human rights, the rule of law, and accountability.

Continued farm invasions are getting a lot of media coverage, and are cited as one type of abuse that has to stop. As Tom Porteous pointed out in the Guardian (UK) yesterday, while perhaps less in the public eye, the attacks at the diamond mines in Marange are also a brutal form of human rights abuse. Porteous warns that donors can’t guarantee that aid to Zimbabwe will go to rebuilding the country’s infrastructure to promote basic human rights. Rather, it might still end up financing the forces which actively assault them.

There is much talk of reform in Zimbabwe but, as yet, no concrete action. The process of political change may have started but it is not irreversible. As long as Mugabe’s nexus of repression and corruption remains in place, no amount of development assistance will help solve Zimbabwe’s huge economic problems. And any economic aid to Harare from the UK or other donors will help to feed the crocodiles, just as surely as the blood-soaked profits of the Marange diamond mines.

Last night in an effort to fall asleep I took a gender mentality quiz from a recent FEMINA publication. The quiz was titled, “Do you think like a man”. The questions got more interesting as I got to understand what the author considered ‘male behavior’ that ‘normal’ women supposedly shouldn’t ordinarily display.

You had to strongly agree, agree or disagree with listed statements in the quiz. Some of them were: I can programme the remote control for my TV all by myself (of course I can!). I understand how a parliamentary system works. I know the basic rules of most sports including golf and tennis. I didn’t cry when I watched the Titanic (me, I didn’t really.) I know what an AC/DC transformer is and silliest of all; the angle between the floor and all four walls of any room is probably 90 degrees. Duh! I scored a lot of strongly agrees and at the end of the quiz, fell under the category of uber-male, i.e without any hint of womanly thought and susceptible to the same kind of weaknesses of the male mind in being unable to empathize with others and communicate needs effectively. What utter rubbish. Just because I understand a few things makes me male minded? I was surprised certain things were considered a preserve only for male species.

Anyhow, there was probably an element of truth in some of the things because for instance, here in Zimbabwe, how many women actually understand or even want to understand how the parliamentary system works, let alone the constitutional reform process that is currently staring at us?

At a Gender Forum meeting I attended recently, it was noted that a trend developed amongst women during the 1999 consultative processes. The women tended to boycott such processes because they simply either did not understand the processes and the constitution itself or recognize its immediate relevance to their lives. Some women are generally ‘technophobic’ and far removed from the language used in the constitution. Others simply do not care probably because they do not think their participation would make any marked difference anyway. These factors have presided over the oppression of women for a long time.

The chance to once and for all do away with the authoritarian 1979 Lancaster House constitution that has been amended at least over 15 times is here, and it would be such a disservice if women did not grab this opportunity to advance their interests especially in line with the many loopholes that dog the current constitution.

I believe it is up to civil society to point out to many an ignorant woman that a constitution determines how they are governed, and that our current constitution does not provide for things like reproductive health and sexual rights or guarantee women’s equal access to ownership and control of property. It also has sections like the S111B that prevent the automatic application of international human rights treaties like CEDAW. This would be an opportunity to lobby for the inclusion of women in parliamentary sub-committees and also ensure that the lack of a guarantee of security of a person’s bodily and psychological integrity is done away with, especially in view of the fact that there is a lot of justice outstanding from the violence that accompanied last year’s harmonized elections.

I believe it is up to all of us as individuals to take it upon ourselves to encourage and educate our neighbors about partaking in this critical process and attend consultative meetings. It is about time we set the precedent for our own possible Obama-like election hopefully to be called in 2011. The South Africans have just had something of a democratic election, and they boast one of the most democratic constitutions on the continent. It would be nice for once to stop wishing and thinking  when we too shall see democracy skate across our land. Only we can make it happen if we start by being or neighbor’s keeper.