It was nice to see Zimbabwe get a bit of positive media coverage for a change these past few days. Kirsty Coventry won a silver medal as well as broke a world record in the 100m backstroke at the Olympics in China. Amanda thinks the Olympics are just too overrated. Had she seen the illustriously extravagant opening ceremony, the term overrated would be an understatement. Unfortunately she doesn’t watch TV. In fact, she doesn’t want to own one, but that’s another story.

Its horrendous human rights record aside, all eyes are currently on China and for a while, people are just so sick and tired of politics they want to concentrate on the games for a change. Latest squabbles between Russia and Georgia have also partially displaced Zimbabwe from the limelight of the media’s watchful glare.

However, the media have kept half an eye on the secret talks which have apparently once more sort of ended in deadlock. Prior to Mbeki’s recent visit to Harare over the weekend, the media reported that he was carrying the proposal that Mugabe be granted amnesty and would become ceremonial president while Tsvangirai becomes executive president.

This morning, South Africa’s ETV showed footage of a clearly unamused Tsvangirai storming out of the talks last night. Mbeki denies there is a deadlock but rather some sort of break to give Tsvangirai a chance to dwell over a certain proposition that Mutambara and Mugabe already find agreeable. I thought if these people were understanding each other, Tsvangirai would not storm out looking like that. And as for Mutambara, there’s one guy most of us really couldn’t care less about, I mean, who is he reallyin all of this? He is proving more and more to be a yes-man whose behavior smacks of someone who simply wants in for some piece of the action.

The ever-optimistic Herald newspaper today carried on its front page a misleading bold headline that shouted: DEAL SEALED. Anxious and information hungry Zimbabweans probably rushed to buy this paper hoping for some workable conclusion to this impasse, only to be disappointed for the umpteenth time since the talks started. The so-called deal is an agreement between Mugabe and Mutambara paving way for Mugabe to form the next government. Well, they can agree all they want but Mutambara won no election and therefore his opinion doesn’t count.

Surely we are getting exhausted with these talks that will not end. With the imposed media blackout, there is no way the rest of us can find out what it is exactly that these guys are failing to agree on. But we can however, make intelligent guesses.

Knowing Uncle Bob as well as we all do, there is no way he would agree to becoming ceremonial president, he may be getting old but not foolish. We also know that the JOC would not be too excited at the prospect of serving under Tsvangirai, and would also like to save their butts for their own personal crimes. In this light, one can safely assume that Mbeki’s said proposal was thrown in the bin and fresh proposals that have Tsvangirai as another vice-president or some shitty arrangement like that were tabled and that is why he stormed out. I’m sure a lot of Zimbabweans would rather he ship out than agree to play second fiddle and as Tendai Biti said, ngavatonge tione (let’s watch and let them rule).

The disagreement is most likely that Mugabe simply wont cooperate with anything that will see him become anything less than what he is now. Despite the fact that the economy is ailing and people continue to suffer, Zanu PF is the kind that operates with suicide bomber mentality and would go down with the country first before they relinquish power.

This entry was posted on August 13th, 2008 at 12:41 pm by Natasha Msonza and is filed under Activism, Elections 2008, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.