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Chaibva is wrong again: Julius Sai Mutyambizi-Dewa

The attack on Trudy Stevenson is an act of barbarism that no-one can really condone. And the MDC, as led by Morgan Tsvangirai, was quick in condemning it. But it seems as if the Professor Mutambara faction of the Party wants to gain political mileage out of it. Statements that followed the attack seem to have exonerated ZANU PF and ridiculously tried to make Tsvangirai the wicked person of Zimbabwean politics. In doing that the Mutambara faction is not alone, they have plenty admirers especially in ZANU PF, as represented by Nathan Shamuyarira their spokesperson. Interestingly the government mouthpiece reported on the same day and ironically on the same page that the case against Didymus Mutasa was being dropped, yet that involving Trudy Stevenson was being propped up. The Mutasa case was about ZANU PF intra-political violence which involved attempted murder and is no different from the Trudy Stevenson case but it is clear that the stake is higher to pursue Morgan Tsvangirai. One wonders why ZANU PF is too quick to implicate MDC and why some of us are complicit to that.

The attack on Trudy Stevenson was splashed in the Herald, Trudy herself gave a good account of how bad her attackers from the other side were, and that she has never seen such savagery in her entire life. Of course when in pain, one can say things that they would not want repeated! Not to condone violence, I personally being a very peaceful man who submitted fully to the life of Christianity, but there is a clear distortion in such statements. It is commonplace in Zimbabwe that the savagery that has been witnessed was from Ian Smith in the liberation struggle, the Robert Mugabe regime during Gukurahundi in Matabeleland and the Robert Mugabe regime against mainly MDC supporters and white farmers. These are the facts, documented in such reports as the Monthly Political Violence Monitoring Reports that are produced by the Zimbabwe Human rights Ngo Forum. The depth of that savagery is so deep and we have Zimbabweans such as Tonderai Machiridza, Stephen Olds etc lost their lives and others like Gabriel Shumba, Ian Kay, Job Sikhala etc were beaten and left for dead. This was savagery at its worst, sustained by the ZANU PF machinery…sustained shamelessly and anchored as a monoculture through institutions of violence such as the Youth Militia.

The attempt to demonise Morgan Tsvangirai by exonerating ZANU PF is as bad as hero-worshipping Ian Smith because I do not like Robert Mugabe. The MDC can not be demonised that way. Whoever beat Trudy was not sanctioned by Morgan Tsvangirai or whoever leader of the MDC. It follows also that it is not true that Tsvangirai and the MDC are very violent as both Nathan Shamuyarira and Gabriel Chaibva want us to believe. Contrary to that if there is any political party in Zimbabwe that is serious about addressing the issue of political violence, it is the Tsvangirai led MDC. This is seen in the tangible efforts that followed the attack on Trudy Stevenson. The Independent Commission of Inquiry that was set displays a seriousness that only those with ulterior motives won’t notice. The quoting of the word independent in some quarters seems to attach doubt to the effect of the inquiry; its purpose is being defeated even before its inception by people obviously longing to see the end of the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC. Yet the same people have been crying for violence to be addressed. It seems as if the attack on Trudy was a blessing in disguise for the Mutambara-led MDC…..and they want that on and are clinging to it as if their whole lives belong to it. But some of it is coming from people like Chaibva who themselves lack credibility and were trained to maintain ZANU PF by using violence, when he was trained in the then People’s Militia. But what Chaibva forgot to tell the nation is that he was also involved in intra-MDC fighting when he was jostling for a position in MDC Harare Province in 2001. Maybe he is a recent convert to the peace brigade but of course everyone who knows about converts knows that they confess first before they become true converts. We haven’t heard Chaibva confessing. The same for Arthur Mutambara, himself during his University years, a master who taught our intellectuals how to urinate in fridges! We have nothing really to learn from people who lack credibility to talk, and the nation simply has to be spared the lectures from people whose histories too are well-embedded in the culture of violence that they want us to believe they loath.

Enter Gabriel Chaibva: http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/senate211.14346.html on the proposed talks between MDC and ZANU PF seemed to want to indicate that Morgan Tsvangirai and MDC may have played a traitor. The man, of course doing his duty as the Pro-Senate spokesperson, seems to want to speak to the World and seems to have thought that he might have wrong footed Morgan Tsvangirai for what he says is talking to ZANU PF. In his article he also exonerates the Pro-Senate MDC for what he says were accusations that they were either a creation or an extension of ZANU PF. He seems to celebrate the exposure of Tsvangirai as indeed the real traitor, and further talks about the “Winter of Discontent” which he thinks might have been shelved.

What is so striking is the attempt to be the good guys of Zimbabwean politics, a card that was played before the planting season of Budiriro, which as we all know came and others who had truly been serious harvested fruits, and others we won’t mention to avoid unnecessary monotony harvested thorns. “Oh how did I become anheroxic?” said the food shy sister! The question of being traitors and going thousands of miles away from principles is there, stuck on the Mutambara faction that they it will only be changed with the fading of history. Zimbabweans will always remember how some of those they thought were MDC betrayed the struggle for the love of money. They, led by Welshman Ncube and Priscilla Misiharabwi-Mushonga, decided to endorse a constitutional amendment all civic groups in Zimbabwe had rejected by participating in Senatorial Elections. Zimbabweans remember how those they thought were part of them decided to deride the poor by participating in a scheme once more being advanced at the behest of their oppressors, to overburden the already overtaxed Zimbabwean taxpayer by creating a senate that is nothing but the “golden handshake” for Zimbabwe’s political mafia. The senate project came at a time when the electorate, which happens to have the largest stake in the political economy, was crying for houses destroyed during “Operation Murambatsvina” and hyperinflation. It is at that time that Welshman Ncube and company decided to distance themselves from the legitimate agenda of poor people, which at the time was to get redress for “Operation Murambatsvina”. It was around this time that they chose to legitimise ZANU PF by supporting the senate when that money should have been used to build houses for those affected by Murambatsvina. The senate is a project that even ZANU PF luminaries such as Shuvai Mahofa are castigating in broad day light. One wonders how far some of us have travelled from the truth, if they are so myopic not to see what others are beginning to see. Come, the Political Parties Financing Act. Faced with two MDCs after the split, and faced with two MDC congresses it was left to the discretion of ZANU PF and Mugabe to choose what to do. It was either that the two parties would be given Z$4bn each or else as it turned out to be, ZANU PF would reward the MDC they preferred and punish the MDC they hated. And so recent history has it that ZANU PF chose to give the Z$8bn to the MDC they preferred, those that were talking their language and opposing them innocently. This meant the Arthur Mutambara camp was baptised as another ZANU PF, even more preferred to this day to ZANU Ndonga which is ZANU PF’s namesake and to United People’s Party which was born from within ZANU PF itself. They then were taken closer to the hearts and minds of ZANU PF but on that day they also became bad-smell to the besieged masses of Zimbabwe. Bad-smell as shown by their rejection at the hands of the Budiriro folk. Their redundant and decadent ideology was rejected by the sound rejection of their Party’s principal promoter, the spokesperson Gabriel Chaibva…the rejection showed in the number they got 504; ironically the code name of a now redundant and decadent model of cars; Peugeot 504.

I wasn’t really surprised when I followed Chaibva’s argument. It was really not on principle, no. He was not saying MDC should not talk to ZANU PF, no. He was saying ZANU PF should talk to them because they have more representatives in the House of Assembly. What he could not see was that ZANU PF will not talk to another ZANU PF in order to end the crisis. They will engage the opposition and by aligning themselves to ZANU PF, by allowing themselves to be used as canon fodder early in the day and by being rejected by the grassroots the Mutambara faction is both bad-smell and damaged goods and ZANU PF will not have anything to do with them. ZANU PF and the international community would like to hear the other side as is the principle of natural justice and the true other side that has been resolute and unwavering in its opposition of ZANU PF is the Tsvangirai-led MDC and that is in the public gallery. It is therefore clear that all along Chaibva’s group has been positioning itself for talks and in the process they decided to call the bitter pill that is ZANU PF by the name sweet but of course that did not alter the test-buds of the electorate. Instead the electorate has become more and more interested in supporting the truth, supporting the truth with the vigour that it deserves. Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC have not warmed up to ZANU PF in anyway. They did not seek to “re-brand” the Party by harmonising their policies with those of ZANU PF as was done by Mutambara and company. What they have done is to proffer a platform by which ZANU PF will be engaged and that is being done on about eight pillars. What is being proffered is a good dispute settlement mechanism that is all inclusive and this is rare and an indication that at least in Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC he leads we seem to have a leader prepared to move further away from the culture of revolutionary aristocracy that has done our country great disfavour. The Mutambara faction of the MDC is full of people who have positioned themselves as the sympathetic few whom without them poor Zimbabweans would have no voice of agitation. If you listen to Arthur Mutambara speaking, his emphasis on gravitas and how by inference he thinks he meets that definition and the excludability that he thinks befits people such as Morgan Tsvangirai and Joyce Mujuru because they do not have the so-called gravitas, you can see how people who claim to be pro-democracy are not prepared to listen to the electorate but their whims. Like ZANU PF they are a closed club of self-important persons no wonder the likes of David Coltart were shocked when they were not called to mediate when they thought they have the gravitas to mediate and denial would be a sin.

It is therefore left to the Arthur Mutambara led MDC to start-searching for their soul. They are clearly exhausted with the struggle and people like Chaibva who want to contest in every constituency are the best case of such desperation. Defeated in the MDC primary elections in his traditional Harare South Constituency he did the embarrassing thing of going to contest in Budiriro in a clear sign that either the Mutambara faction has no ready takers or they are a closed club where only a chosen few will be preferred. This is why we have seen the same recycled people coming to “preach” their political gospel which at best is a rare blend of ZANU PF and 1960s Pan-Africanism. Having realised that they do not stand a chance with the Zimbabwean electorate they now want to see the demise of MDC and they have been trying by all means to sound the international community that MDC is not good business. They are no longer promoting their own philosophy because they know its bad-smell but as they go want to pull with them the entire MDC and of course the only hope Zimbabweans have. Because they are intellectuals they do not care what happens to the average Zimbabwean because they have never cared. They want their names only. One is reminded of the Biblical mothers who claimed the same child. One who was not the mother wanted it cut into two. The other who was the mother asked King Solomon to spare the child’s life and give it to the other woman if necessary. The wise King settled for the later. In our scenario the electorate is the wise king and they have chosen the ones who want to save the life of the people’s party. What’s left for Chaibva and company is to try and co-exist, if they do that history may not charge them harshly. But if they continue to try and destroy the only hope the people of Zimbabwe have, they may succeed in scaling it down but they will never succeed in destroying the Party. And people will never forgive them. This happened before and ironically the same people were involved in the futile attempt to destroy ZimRights. For years ZimRights had a bad name with the so-called international community. But people remained resolute and now the people’s human rights organisation still survives and has since been rewarded by regaining the respect from the ever inconsistent so-called international community!

JULIUS SAI MUTYAMBIZI-DEWA CAN BE CONTACTED ON 07984254830, 02077206614 mutyambizidewa@yahoo.co.uk or dhewah@hotmail.com