African Agenda

This is my first post in over four weeks. In the four weeks, I was also in Zimbabwe for the not-so-festive season for two weeks, from the 20th to the 31st December. I came back through Botswana hoping to catch some sight of MDC bandits toy-toying but had no such luck.

My experience in Zimbabwe was very sobering. You get this sense that there is this Zimbabwe we picture in the Diaspora and that Zimbabwe happening on the ground. The Zimbabwe on the ground is surprisingly in a slumber, except perhaps for the very politically involved.

In the two weeks I do not remember reading the newspaper or really sitting down to listen to the TV. I would therefore try to glean information from the common man and not only did they not quite know what was taking place, they did not seem to care too much. Not to say they are not clear what they want, but they do not unnecessarily want to burden themselves with the nitty-gritty’s of things they cannot influence. Or so they think: let me return to this point later.

I therefore concluded that we in the Diaspora with our access to the news channels online and everywhere, we are our own worst enemies, cranking ourselves into a frenzy. We are constantly checking the email for the next news, anxiously hoping for some movement. My new year resolution is to do less of that.

Those on the ground where the news is happening have only one worry, how to survive the next day (if of course they have not been abducted, which is another story altogether!). With the virtual dollarization of the economy, it can be argued that things are now ‘better’, only in the sense that basics are now widely available and in some cases are getting progressively cheaper. Some towns are madder than others, as I recall protesting vociferously as I purchased one litre of milk in Bulawayo at thrice its shelf price in South Africa. There were of course some pleasant surprises, fuel as a good example, which I was buying in coupon form at prices slightly below South African ones at the time.

The sticking point of course is that not everyone is earning the dollar or rand, or the improvised equivalent which has become legal tender, coupons. The dealers meet the hard currency on the streets, but the civil servant is the worst victim, as the government has not devised any inventive remuneration schemes to protect their work force as the private sector has done.

What dollarization has also done is to take away the advantage those with foreign currency had in an environment where local currency operated, where a small bit of currency like USD$10 could be ‘burnt’, literally multiplied, by changing it to local currency at astronomical cross rates. The local currency is now almost redundant.

If Zanu PF could find a way of getting SADC to pour into the economy the rand as official tender, and of course support it by ensuring there is enough for the civil service to be paid, it could effectively complete a coup on the MDC and afford it to completely sideline them as is their wish.

SADC (read as South Africa and others) has shown the appetite to circumvent the demands for fair play by coming up with a SADC vehicle to distribute aid they had vowed could only be distributed after a Unity Government is in place. Others will argue of course that they were thinking of the povo instead of the selfish politicians. One wonders what else they are prepared to do in defence of a brother-in-arms.

Their only worry would be the fiscal indiscipline and endemic corruption in Mugabe’s government; SADC taxpayers would cry foul and lose these leaders support at home.

What I can see is that Zimbabwe has become a test case on the battle of wits between erstwhile ‘Colonial’ Powers and African Liberation Movements. The later are determined to prove that Africans can govern, indeed can resolve their own issues, peer to peer. They are determined to resist the prescriptions of the West and America on who should govern and how they should govern, in their circles such a prescription read as ‘Tsvangirai and the MDC-T’.

No wonder then at Mutambara’s overboard vitriolic in singing from the same pages of Mugabe’s hymn book. The truth of the issue is that this hymn book is the official African Leaders’ song book if they are to be deemed truly African, and to be trusted with carrying forward the gains of the liberation struggle.

On seeing Zimbabwe on the ground, the position espoused by the MDC of hoping that Zimbabwe will ‘crash and burn’ so they would pick up the pieces afterwards, to quote Eddie Cross the Policy Co-ordinator of the party, may be a long way in coming. You ought to remember that Zimbabwe with an estimated seven million people left in the country has a smaller population than Soweto at about thirteen million. As long as South Africa props up this regime, it will never crash, the South African fiscus can uphold it with ease. It is like an average province of South Africa really.

I said earlier that Zimbabweans do not seem to care much what is happening around them, but on closer inquiry, you realise that they have this total faith in the leadership of the MDC-T to bring them the change they hope for. I have read and heard many deride Morgan Tsvangirai for his naivety and not being resourceful as a leader; but I believe it is this apparent simplicity required for Zimbabwean politics in practice. Look how the think-tanks, from Jonathan Moyo and of late Mutambara, seem to trip over themselves.

The average voter in Zimbabwe knows a few simple facts: Firstly Tsvangirai ndizvo! (basically means, he is the man of the moment); secondly Mutambara mutengesi (meaning he is a sell-out); thirdly Makoni is not serious, fourthly Mugabe and Zanu PF are killers and on their way out and finally that hapana chisingaperi, kana muroyi chaiye anofa (Nothing lasts forever, even a witch will suffer the inescapable fate of death.)

As I wrote in an earlier article, MDC Prevarications must stop, this does not mean that peoples’ attitudes are cast in stone and should an inventive politician arise, the ball game could change for Tsvangirai. Makoni was the hope of some if his Mavambo project had not faltered soon after elections. Also, the going of Mugabe is no guarantee of better days with his junta likely to usurp power (he is Legion, as Magora would put it!), so this waiting game to me is not very meaningful. It is on this premise that I have supported the idea of the MDC getting into a Unity Government with any leverage whatsoever. Others disagree, with good reasons too.

The dynamism in Zimbabwean politics is such that nothing is guaranteed; Tsvangirai may actually fail to ascend to that highest office in the land at the end of it all. But to his credit, that does not seem to be the pre-occupation of his mind.

However, no one at the moment has suggested that single action that if it were done, would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. That action that would create a domino change effect that cannot be halted. What would that be? This leaves us in the domain of needing some Divine intervention in 2009.