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African Regional News Updates |
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9 July 2009 Harare — One of the salient features
about Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's recent trip
to Europe and the United States, apart from its huge
controversy rating, is that, whether by design or
otherwise, it ended with his party boycotting a duly
convened session of Cabinet.
Last Monday just as he was arriving from the trip,
ministers from his party, MDC-T, boycotted a Cabinet
meeting called by President Mugabe.
The party, felt that President Mugabe's decision,
as he was due to leave for a continental assignment
the next day, had been "unilateral" and designed to
deny PM Tsvangirai the opportunity to chair the
Executive's top decision-making body.
Deputy Prime Minister Thokhozani Khupe, who is also
MDC-T vice president, felt that the decision was a
deliberate assault on her party and its leader, PM
Tsvangirai.
"Innocent and innocuous as this decision may be,
the fact of the matter is that it underpins everything
wrong about the present arrangement.
"The decision seeks to deny the recognition of the
Prime Minister as chair when the President is away.
"Mr Mugabe has indicated that he will not be
present on Tuesday and hence the unilateral decision
to move forward to today (Monday)," she said, adding
the meeting which Cabinet held in the absence of MDC-T
ministers was "informal and unilateral".
She was so convinced that it either had to be her
party boss, who had been away for close to a month and
hardly out of his plane, who had to attend to the
issues in the country, or nothing at all.
She very enthusiastically said her party would
rather opt out of the agreement than see anything that
appears to "deny the recognition" of her boss, the
Prime Minister.
She believes that whilst her party remains
"committed to the GPA (Global Political Agreement) in
the interests of our people, it is our own
constitutional right to consider disengagement".
But her actions seem neither to suggest that she is
committed to the GPA, and the Government it begot, nor
the "people" she, as part thereof, serves.
Instead, DPM Khupe has shown that she is mainly
committed to her party, and, more so, to stroke the
ego of its leader, and for a seemingly hugely
mischievous and divisive intent.
And if boycotting Government functions is only but
a way to stroke that ego, for the foregoing purpose,
the Prime Minister might actually have taken the bait.
But while in Germany during the six-nation trip, PM
Tsvangirai apparently showed just how the mischievous,
divisive and arrogant machinations could push a leader
into inadvertently stumbling onto himself.
"I was not sent by President Mugabe, or anybody,"
the Premier reportedly told journalists, some of whom
apparently were miffed by reports that he had received
a "brief" from President Mugabe to go on the trip.
"It's my own individual initiative because Cabinet
has adopted the fact that we need to re-engage the
world, so I'm not under anybody's instruction," he
said.
He added: "I would have stayed at home; no one
would have sent me so I think it's just a myth to
promote a certain position which is not the objective
of the inclusive Government."
Thus, in feeling the strokes of mischievous hands
on his plumage, PM Tsvangirai could not sense the
contradiction in saying, in his purported magnanimity,
that he had not been sent by anybody, yet venturing to
explain that Cabinet had "adopted the fact that we
need to re-engage the world".
That the State provided funds totalling $126 000
for PM Tsvangirai's trip is known, but he seemed to
ignore the fact in an attempt to show how he holds
sway in an apparently protocol-less Government.
But on returning from the trip the Premier briefed
President Mugabe on his excursion on Monday, and they
even discussed the Cabinet boycott by DPM Khupe and
company.
If anyone has to understand PM Tsvangirai's rather
egoistic statements, which would really bring
not-so-innocent smiles to those who do not want to see
him "belittled" or "outmanoeuvred", in the words of
that Aunt Jemima called Jendayi Frazer, it is
instructive to note his response to Monday's boycott.
He attributed the uncouth showing by the ministers
to "frustration" over what they feel are delays in
implementing the terms of the GPA.
"I understand their frustrations and concerns," he
said.
"It is the same frustrations expressed by
Zimbabweans in general and the international community
we wish to re-engage with. These frustrations emanate
from the slow pace of the implementation of the GPA,"
he tried to explain.
His "understanding" tone, if not one of fatalism,
it can be noted, is no different from the one he
adopted following the decision by his party's
executive in May to refer the all-important
"outstanding issues of the GPA" to Sadc.
He said: "I totally agree with the decision that
has been made by my party because they feel we
(principals in Government) are dragging our feet in
solving the outstanding issues.
"As a worker of the party, I can't go against their
resolutions because they are saying we are not
satisfied with the progress that is being made . . .,"
said the MDC-T leader, who only the previous week had
said "95 percent" of GPA issues had been resolved.
In South Africa, where he had attended the
inauguration of President Jacob Zuma, he said: "We had
to express ourselves with the frustration with
resolving some of the outstanding issues, but there is
no deadline."
It is easy to realise that the PM is being pushed
around by unscrupulous elements in his party who are
bent on sabotaging the inclusive Government they
purport to be committed to.
The "outstanding issues" mantra is just but a way
to divide the inclusive Government, specifically to
emasculate Zanu-PF's role in the arrangement.
And this is just the "insincerity" of the likes of
DPM Khupe in talking of the "unequivocal lack of
paradigm shift on the part of Zanu-PF" when, in fact,
it is clear that they themselves have never been
reconciled to the "living reality" of the inclusive
Government.
That PM Tsvangirai can, as he did at the Press
conference he held after his tour, complain of
"negative" or "hostile" coverage of his party without
venturing to realise the same of the private media in
covering his Zanu-PF partners, does not reflect any
sincerity.
Rather it negates not only the spirit of the GPA
which, for example, urges to him to act on hostile
pirate foreign-owned media, but also his integrity as
an honest leader.
That integrity entails him not to attempt to see an
imagined monster in someone with whom he has an
"extraordinary working relationship", as he said of
President Mugabe, nor believe in the wanton land
invasions of some imaginary Zimbabwe whereof he is not
Prime Minister.
What he must wake up to, or knowing and
"understanding" his party as he does, is the fact that
there are elements that are of the "business-of-old
mentality", to use DPM Khupe's expression, who, true
to the good expression, have seemingly not grown out
of opposition politics.
Indulgent "understanding" of "frustrations" that
mischievous and divisive elements are only too
inclined to vent, is grossly perverse.
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