Morgan Tsvangirai has been in the press a lot lately making largely depressing reading. First I saw an article in The Herald that reported on an alleged meeting between Dell the US Ambassador in Zimbabwe and both factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Both meetings were separate of course. Anyway when I discussed this article with a friend today she said that the supposed US$1million being offered by Dell to the MDC if they sorted out their differences and united should rather be spent on suffocating the MDC because its become as much of a liability to democracy in Zimbabwe as Zanu PF.

Then I note in the Financial Gazette today that Tsvangirai is apparently “talking tough”. Unfortunately that’s about all he can do – Mr All Talk And No Action. I mean maybe it’s just me but aren’t you sick and tired of statements like “the time to act is now” (duh) or “we are guided by an urgent call to save our country”? In fact in the fatuously entitled email, “The MDC President Speaks” published by the MDC yesterday, the phrase “the time to act is now” was used at least three times.

It appears that the MDC is banking on two things to “save Zimbabwe”. One is the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. I found it rather disheartening to read that the leader of our largest opposition party is “pinning his hopes” on a seemingly fictitious coalition of civic organizations acting under the rather worn out name of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. What does this say about Tsvangirai’s vision of his own political party and their ability to seriously challenge Mugabe? Of course whilst I completely agree that its time that pro-democracy forces within civil society support the MDC’s call for political change, I wonder what exactly about the Save Zimbabwe Campaign gives Tsvangirai all this hope and confidence? Have you had the opportunity to meet the leaders of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign? Have they encouraged your participation in the formulation of civic campaigns? Have you attended one of their events? Do you know how and where to contact them if you wanted to get involved and find out more?

In short, have you ever seen any of them?

And then Tsvangirai believes that elections are the way to go, either in 2008 or whenever. Never mind that we’ve had the last several elections stolen from under our noses. Yes of course we agree that the conditions need to be rectified in order to hold accountable and transparent elections but we also know that this is the very last thing that Mugabe will allow because it would be shooting himself in his own small foot.

So therefore we have the two dominant political parties in Zimbabwe playing the same old games. Zanu PF is bound to win, and the MDC is bound to lose – unless the MDC stops ploughing the same old barren fields of thought and action.

This entry was posted on January 18th, 2007 at 2:03 pm by Bev Clark and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.