The Zimbabwe Times
November 25, 2009
By Jupiter Punungwe
ON October 29, the SADC Troika held a meeting attended by the major parties in Zimbabwe’s Government of National Unity (GNU). It was reported that the Troika directed that the major parties go and immediately negotiate on outstanding matters regarding the Global Political Agreement that gave rise to the GNU.
As we all know, this mini-summit had been precipitated by the urgency caused by the partial withdrawal of the MDC-T from the GNU. It was therefore natural to expect that the relevant negotiators would immediately and very urgently sit down to iron out the outstanding issues.
To our surprise things did not move. A snail would have lapped the negotiators several times given the speed with which they set upon the task of negotiating. The 15- day deadline reportedly set by the SADC Troika to start the negotiations, passed without the negotiators even bothering to sit down and just say ‘hello’ to each other.
The MDC-T’s negotiators were the first to demonstrate a lack of urgency on the matter. Soon after the troika meeting in Mozambique, they took a break in South Africa for a few days. It has not been quite explained what business they were attending to in South Africa. It couldn’t have been state business as we all know that they had disengaged from state activities.
When they came back, other negotiators who had pressing matters to do with state had to attend to that business. Even when they were back in Zimbabwe, the MDC-T negotiators were not available for another week. After they had finished attending to all their private matters, they were then ready to start the talks.
That is when all hell broke loose. Soon, the MDC-T started spewing accusations and insults, accusing the other parties of dragging their feet. Their own foot-shuffling was not even mentioned. I would say it is very arrogant, preposterous and condescending for MDC-T negotiators to expect everyone to abandon their serious business to attend to them when they had not been prepared to abandon their pleasures to attend to the matter.
From David Coltart’s explanation, the business that Professor Welshman Ncube and Priscilla Misihairabwi had to attend to was legitimate business which had been planned months in advance and the MDC-T knew about it. Surely they wouldn’t have expected them to cancel their attendance of the China-Africa summit merely upon the MDC-T’s last-minute whims. Nor would they have expected delegates to Brussels meeting to abandon their mission. Especially not after the MDC-T negotiators had not been prepared to abandon their holiday in South Africa. If the MDC-T expect the whole country to fawn to their every move, then Zimbabwe as a country will be in equal, if not worse trouble than we were with Zanu-PF.
On another note, the matter of how the MDC-M and its leaders came to be in the government is at this point irrelevant. They are there because of the GPA negotiated and signed by the MDC-T, presumably with their eyes wide open. If they had wanted to exclude party leaders without a national electoral mandate, they should have raised the issue at that time. Maybe David Coltart as the most senior elected MDC-M leader would have been deputy prime minister and believe me, our cabinet and country would have been so much the richer for it.
Coltart is so sensible, down to earth and people-focused. I am convinced he is the only one with his eye on the ball, while all the other politicians have their eyes on the power and prestige.
However, as I pointed out at the time, the MDC-T were not guided by matters of principle but were simply trying to make a beeline for maximum power and prestige.
Consequently they never even thought about matters of principle like respecting national electoral mandate. Even now they are not raising the issue out of principle, but rather because the individuals concerned are becoming an inconvenience in their quest to wrest more power and prestige from Zanu-PF.
It is childish, immature and utterly unprofessional for the MDC-T to be throwing insults at their GPA partners for something they [MDC-T] are wrong about in the first place. Let me repeat; they are the ones who first went on holiday, proving to all and sundry that the matter was not serious.
Another fact that needs to be carefully remembered by all is that neither the MDC-T nor Zanu-PF has a majority in parliament. The MDC-M control the swing votes and under normal circumstances it would have been possible for them to hold cabinet posts in alliance with one of the big parties, while the other had nothing at all. It is absolutely no use begrudging their status as a swing party.
We, as Zimbabweans, sorely need our politicians to grow up and simply be mature.