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Transcript of 'Hot Seat' with politician David Coltart and analyst Brian Kagoro
Violet Gonda, SW Radio Africa
August 15, 2008

http://www.swradioafrica.com/pages/hotseat200808.htm

Violet Gonda: We welcome David Coltart who is a newly elected senator for the MDC led by Arthur Mutambara and Brian Kagoro a political analyst, on the programme Hot Seat. Thank you for joining us.

Coltart & Kagoro: Thank you Violet.

Gonda: Let me start with David. The Herald reported that a deal had been signed by Arthur Mutambara and Robert Mugabe, now as far as you know did Mutambara sign an agreement or this is a divide and rule tactic by the regime?

Coltart: I think this is another divide and rule tactic by the regime because our party is very clear that we will not enter into any bilateral agreement with ZANU PF. We recognise that unless all parties are involved, especially our colleagues in the MDC under Morgan Tsvangirai, the public simply won't accept any agreement reached.

Gonda: And what about your party? What if Arthur Mutambara was to actually sign this deal, will your party agree with that?

Coltart: Well we are speculating because I understand from Arthur Mutambara and Welshman Ncube that any agreement is conditional upon buying-ins from Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC under Morgan Tsvangirai so to that extent the question is moot, it doesn't arise.

Gonda: And you know Mutambara has been intensely involved in these talks. Do you think this is right as he apparently has little support?

Coltart: Of course one could say that looking at him as an individual that he stood for an election and lost in Harare but of course he is the elected President of a political entity which secured a total of 16 seats in parliament - 10 in the House of Assembly and 6 in the Senate and of course it is a fact that because of the breakdown of the various seats won by ZANU PF and the MDC under Morgan Tsvangirai that our small party effectively is the kingmaker in parliament. It will be able to decide who to back in regards to passing of legislation in the Lower House and of course will play a major role in selecting a Speaker and to that extent it is right that Arthur Mutambara in his capacity - in his ex-officio capacity - as President of that political entity should be represented.

There is another reason why he should be represented and that is because our party secured 8% of the votes in the March election. I am sure every single democrat will agree that 8% of the electorate should be represented in these talks anything other than that would be a negation of democracy.

Gonda: But still David other people would ask what gave your party legitimacy to be at the negotiating table if you actually endorsed Simba Makoni as your Presidential candidate, why isn't it him at the talks?

Coltart: Well I think that is correct when it comes to looking at the Principals aspect but the Principals are not there in their individual capacities. I believe they are there as leaders of their respective parties. If you look at the Memorandum of Understanding you will see that it was signed by Robert Mugabe - not in his so called capacity as President of Zimbabwe but in his capacity as President of ZANU PF and likewise Morgan Tsvangirai is in that capacity and so is Arthur Mutambara. So they are there as the Principals of the political parties that secured 100 seats, 99 seats and 10 seats respectively in parliament.

Gonda: Mutambara has also received a lot of criticism over his speech at Heroes which has been interpreted as anti-West and appeared to be reminiscent of Mugabe's rhetoric. What is your opinion of this criticism?

Coltart: Well I think there are aspects of Arthur's statement that I am sure on reflection he would change. I don't personally - and this is a personal view it's not the view of the party - I personally do not believe it serves any purpose at this juncture to attack the West especially in such general terms when we have friends such as the Scandinavians and others who have stood so steadfast for democracy and not just in Zimbabwe but during the Rhodesian days. The Scandinavians may not have supplied arms of war but they supplied all sorts of other support to the forces seeking to liberate Zimbabwe . So my own view is that he used too broad a brush. But some of the comments that he made of course are valid. I think a very important point he made is that Mugabe cannot seek to legitimize the violence since independence on the same basis as the violence used in the liberation war was justifiable in the view of ZANU PF - and that is a very important statement. Whilst I personally don't agree with everything he said I believe there are aspects of his speech that we need to take note of.

Gonda: Brian the Mutambara has received a lot of criticism from the general public. People see the group as aligning itself more with ZANU PF than the pro-democracy movement. Is this a fair assessment?

Kagoro: Politics is 90% perception. I trust my dear friend David will agree with me that half the judgements that are levelled against political actors are not necessarily made up of substance. It essentially means that when you dance on this open floor of politics you must be careful that even what you think subjectively to be an objective dance could be viewed as tilting to one hand or the other. Reading Arthur's statements - a series of them - one sees a desperate attempt by a political actor to sound somewhat different from Morgan Tsvangirai and at the same time to try and sound different from Mugabe. So he attempts to take aspects of Mugabe's rhetoric that he agrees with - which is the anti imperial thrust or the pan Africanist ideal, and he takes some rhetoric from Morgan Tsvangirai which is the critique around the internal accountability of the regime to try and demystify this continuity of revolutionary violence, violence necessary for the armed struggle against colonial rule and equating that to whatever violence against opponents since 1980 as revolutionary.

Whilst one appreciates the academic import of that the majority of the populace do not interpret issues on that basis and frankly beyond that there is the issue of timing. It seems to me that whilst one may interpret what Arthur was attempting to do in either a good way or bad way the timing may perhaps have been unfortunate and also the location of where this particular speech was delivered. So perhaps he would be a victim not of what he said but of what Zimbabweans heard or expected him to say. And this is the real crux of the matter. We are in a country where people are dying and starving, in a country where barely a few months ago people were brutalised and in a country where over the last 28 years and even more they have been brutalised by a series of regimes, but more particularly by the present regime.

And one might argue, 'I am a politician so I need not pander to populist notions of what I should say' but it's the timing. If you are given half a chance you need to score twice so the timing may have been inappropriate and even the location. But I am not going to detain myself with trying to determine whether Arthur has gone ZANU or Arthur is still opposition. I would urge that perhaps they should think more about nuance and timing a lot more strategically at the risk of being misinterpreted.

Gonda: What about on the issue of Mutambara being at the talks and not Simba Makoni?

Kagoro: My view is that if you take the principles that David enunciated, if you base the fact that this negotiation arose because there was a Presidential election won by one side and which was meant to go to a re-run - so you look at representation. As we understood from the media Arthur threw his weight behind Simba Makoni. So Simba Makoni got some percentage of the votes. So if you take the March election - which is really the only valid election at hand and you take both the Parliamentary and Presidential there is room to argue that all people who contested should be at the table.

So I would not be dispute why Arthur is there. I think David has articulated the reason that Arthur is there representing a political entity that got 8 percent - 16 seats. The same argument, if applied, would justify having the Mavambo outfit also included. However I think that is a bit problematic. The casting of the major dispute following the presidential election is it reduced it to a two-horse race - which is Tsvangirai and Mugabe. So if the dispute was about who is the legitimate President therefore the dispute would be for those two.

But this is negotiating a national settlement so my argument would be you need much more than Arthur Mutambara, Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai at the table - or even Makoni. You need the broader spectrum of Zimbabwe . . . So the question is then when do you bring everyone else to the negotiating table?

I think labour is a critical player and should be at the negotiating table, I think the women's movement is a critical player they should be at the table. I think that the faith based institutions are critical players and should be at the table - they represent a critical constituency. So in my view the point is not to limit who is at the negotiating table, it is to broaden but to do so strategically so that what you are negotiating is not an elite pact but what you are negotiating is a truly representative deal.

Gonda: Morgan Tsvangirai is delaying in signing this so called power sharing deal with ZANU PF and the Mutambara- MDC. Why do you think he is doing that? What do you think are his considerations?

Kagoro: I am not necessarily a prophet but let me hazard some answer. I think that several concerns - as I have heard them from various actors - are that the understanding of functions of the Prime Minister and the President is not in itself a problem. The question is how do you ensure that this process is guaranteed? That it will not be reversed. So do you go through by way of another constitutional amendment no19? So you create the office of the Prime Minister and then you state that the Prime Minister shall convene cabinet etc etc. Do you go to the constitutional draft that the two MDC outfits and ZANU PF agreed in Kariba? Does this become an interim arrangement? If you go by way of amendment does that amendment necessarily do away with an earlier amendment which is no. 7 of 1987 that created the imperial Presidency under which we have suffered? So there are arguments around that technicality.

And fine tuning of roles - because I have been in Kenya for some time there are things that appear petty at the point of signing that become fundamental. So for example the Kenyans didn't define the packing order - you know who would follow who? So they woke up the next morning, they had signed the grand coalition deal and of course the opinion of the then ruling party was that the Vice President is the second in line after the President and so it made the Prime Minister third or so. Then it went into parliament to try and determine who is the leader of government business and of course with the way they structured it was such that you ended up with the Vice President being the leader of government business. So technically a lot of people within the opposition were now asking, 'What on earth is the Prime Minister, what is executive about the Prime Minister's role?' So you ended up with a person in practise struggling to define the executive component of their powers.

So I am certain that both the Mutambara and Tsvangirai MDCs have studied the Kenyan process both the deal signed as well as the difficulties in implementing it and they maybe apprehensive about the fine text and what it means in actually implementing it.

Gonda: Let me go to David. What are your views on this and also if I may add - the MDC says Mugabe continues to preach dialogue but acting war - and that the authorities even went on to seize passports belonging to Tsvangirai and his delegation to the SADC summit. We all know that the bone of contention is over the issue of sharing executive powers. Is it realistic for the MDC to think Mugabe will reduce his executive powers?

Coltart: Well the one thing we know about Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF is that they are not democrats. They have never been. They have always been committed at their call to a Marxists Leninist philosophy. They believe in a one party state. They don't believe in tolerance, in freedom of expression and they have been forced to the negotiating table. So we must expect that they are going to try to limit the amount of time they yield to the MDC and to Morgan Tsvangirai so I am not surprised. I think we need to remember the process which led to the signing of the unity accord on the 22nd December 1987 . ZANU PF kept the pressure up on ZAPU right until the final moment. Some of the worst massacres - the New Adams Farm massacre occurred at the end of November 1987. People in ZAPU were detained right up until the bitter end. This is the way ZANU PF operates. They believe the best way to get the deal they want at the negotiating table is to be ruthless and violent and the actions today seizing or attempting to seize Morgan Tsvangirai's passport, delaying them at the airport are entirely consistent with that philosophy.

I have received a report today from colleagues in Harare that there appears to be this fear of an increase in violence. I think we should expect that and part of this philosophy of ZANU PF is that the best way to extract a deal in their favour is to brutalise, to torture, to intimidate the people sitting right across the table from them to get them to make concessions that they would otherwise not be prepared to make.

Coming back to your fundamental question Violet about Morgan Tsvangirai and the tactics that he is employing. Well I think we need to remember that there are a variety of levers being employed against all parties. President Mbeki knows he has come under intense international scrutiny and criticism for his failure to achieve a result. Robert Mugabe knows that he cannot hold on much longer, that the economy is spinning out of control. He must realise that very soon he is not going to be able to pay the army and others who support him. And likewise I think there is pressure on Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara and the pressure on those two opposition leaders is of course the suffering of the people. We know we simply cannot hold out too long because there is no food in the country - people are starving and people are desperate for a solution.

But let me come back to Morgan Tsvangirai and his strategy at this stage. He has to balance the need to secure a reasonable deal against the need to bring this negotiating process to an end as soon as possible. So that we can relieve the suffering of Zimbabweans. I believe that at this stage he is right to try to extract the best possible deal. We simply cannot tolerate a situation in terms of which Robert Mugabe retains effective control of the government. At the very least there needs to be an effective power sharing and the agreement reached thus far or what is being offered thus far rests too much power in Robert Mugabe and he is going to perpetuate tyranny - well then Morgan Tsvangirai is entirely right to bargain for more. However he has to bear in mind the need to try to bring these negotiations to finality because of the extreme suffering of Zimbabweans at present.

Gonda: But can you make a pact with the devil because this is a government that has shown it will go to the most appalling lengths to hold on to power and some have even said ZANU PF can use the transitional period to annihilate the MDC?

Coltart: Violet we have very little choice but to make some sort of agreement in this situation. Let me tell you and along with Brian, both of us have roots in human rights law in Zimbabwe and the thought of perpetuating this culture of impunity is anathema to both of us. It is certainly anathema to me the thought of having Robert Mugabe in some influential role and having to sit down with people who are guilty of crimes against humanity is anathema. But we have to recognise there is a political reality there. The political reality is that there is a stalemate. The opposition secured the majority of the votes in March but Robert Mugabe still retains control of most of the levers of power. He retains the support of the hierarchy of the military and he is unscrupulous in exercising that control, and we have to break the political logjam especially given the suffering of Zimbabweans. And for me the key is not so much sitting down and negotiating with these people - I believe that we have no choice but to do so - the key thing for me is: Will the agreement result in the status quo continuing or will it result in a continuation of this process of change. Will we see an inevitable continuation of this process?

I wrote about this last year in my article entitled: The Gorbachev Factor, when I referred back to the actions of Mikhail Gorbachev who felt he could hold on to the Soviet Union and never wanted to see the end of the Communist party but because of economic pressures was prepared to make some reforms and of course the moment he made those reforms the process ran away from him and he could no longer control that. The Soviet Union broke up and the Communist Party was effectively destroyed. I believe we are at a similar juncture. The core of this state, the core of ZANU PF is so weak at present that as distasteful as this process is, so long as reforms are made, so long as those reforms are irreversible we will see this process of change continuing and Robert Mugabe won't be able to stop that. And ultimately we will get to the stage where we get a democratic constitution and fresh elections and an entirely new government that reflects the will of the Zimbabwean people.

Gonda: Brian what do you say about this? Is the core of ZANU PF weak now because it seems these talks have emboldened Mugabe as he is carrying on with his functions, addressing the nation on Heroes Day, promoting and even rewarding the masters of terror in the military and just his body language says he is still the Head of State. What can you say about this?

Kagoro: I think I would agree that the core of ZANU and indeed all political parties in Zimbabwe are in some disarray. The popular support that ZANU assumed it had it does not have and this is what the March election showed. Especially if you look at the results of the civic seats where out of 800, 600 went to oppositional formations. However that is only if you look at ZANU PF as the institution. If you look at ZANU PF as both the political process and culture of primitive accumulation - as everyone else has been focusing on the political process - we have seen an unprecedented scramble for Zimbabwe's mineral wealth in diamonds, in platinum and this has essentially gone to people within the military, people within the public service, serving ministers and political party criminal elements and activists.

We are at the same historical juncture similar to where the Patriotic Front was in 1978. You are in danger of there being some settlement of sorts and in the settlement you all worry about the political powers and the sharing of political powers. You may actually get a deal that gives you political power but the fundamentals of economic power would have been siphoned off - if not given away as payment to the Russians and Chinese and all sorts of people who have kept the regime alive. They would have been conscripted by those lieutenants and activists within the ruling party.

So there is a political weakness around organisational structures. ZANU as an institution is an institution that is unlikely to recreate its legitimacy and therefore unlikely to win an election if the process of transformation or transition is a popular election. It's a system that is unlikely to retain its coherence because part of this primitive accumulation has generated rabid competition within ZANU itself. It's a system that is unlikely to retain cohesion because various pockets within ZANU, whose sole interests in being ZANU has been this private accumulation will begin to make alignments with international finance capital, alignments with sections that they see as more powerful in the emerging MDC formations.

So yes, whilst ZANU organisationally appears weak I think we have a new danger and that new danger is that a new economic elite which was embedded in ZANU politics, which financed part of ZANU PF's politics of impunity and violence has made inroads into the economy using all sorts of means legal and illegal. And I am not hearing a lot of talk about those particular components and so the impunity that we focussed on is the impunity around physical violations and psychological violations.

We need o start articulating impunity with respect to the economic plunder - the asset stripping - and I think both David and I have alluded to this in the past. So that is one point. The second bit is that ZANU is a political culture that has a way of doing things that exhibits intolerance and unaccountability, we need safeguards that ensures that if our friends do get into government they don't also become part of the plunder and the pillage. And also when you have an interim arrangement or an arrangement that is birthed out of unpleasant circumstances such as we have experienced you need to make sure that it is short-lived - this is as experienced in Liberia .

Make sure that what arrangement this unity government is not for 5 years or more. Make sure that it is short-lived so that you move back to a situation where your government is a government that has popular mandate. So will ZANU as an institution survive? I doubt. Will ZANUISM as a political culture survive? Very likely. And that takes me back to the David point - how do you ensure that change or the process of change, the spirit of change, the values of change are irreversible? It seems to me that you would need to make sure that there is a constitutional process that is inclusive, a constitutional process that makes part of the change irreversible. The rest depends on political culture because when you ask for justice and you are given law it doesn't necessarily mean you will be satisfied.

I am worried; worried by the secrecy that has shrouded these talks. I am worried by the fact that these talks have been - for all good reasons according to Mr Mbeki - been confined to only issues like three critical players. I am also worried by the fact that the levels of accountability of those at the talks for what they agreed to, to the rest of the Zimbabwean population seems highly limited. So Zimbabweans would be presented with a fait accompli that says this is what we have agreed, and they will have to function through that and if there is no other process of opening up and enlarging the dialogue then the negotiated settlement may very well be the worst nightmare we would have achieved. All it will do is buy us short term peace.

Gonda: So briefly Brian in your opinion what do you think Morgan Tsvangirai should do right now, just briefly.

Kagoro: Well I think he must first of all make sure that he is not short-changed. He is the only winner of a legitimate election at the present moment - the March election. No. 2: He must make sure that there are constitutional guarantees or a guarantee that there will be a constitutional process that safeguards the process of change. Number 3: He must make sure that this thing is not forever. It is for a fixed duration of time. He himself must subject himself to a popular endorsement along with the other colleagues. No.4: He must make sure that when we talk economic recovery it is not just the rabid open up Zimbabwe to all sorts of money. Though we must be clear that the national development trajectory that we take is one that is premised on a clearly and popularly owned national development strategy that guarantees social security and safety nets for the most vulnerable of our population. We know it will not be a miracle turnaround unless if there is define intervention.

What we will have is that we will need to deal with 80% unemployment, a lot of people are vulnerable. They face hunger, starvation and so he needs to ensure that there is no overzealousness of the moment that suggests that all Zimbabweans needs is to deal with the power problems. Zimbabwe has fundamental structural problems that need to be thought through carefully and I don't think Morgan alone with Robert and Arthur will be able to think through this.
I think that he needs to buy time to include some of the best resources we have.

Gonda: David?

Coltart: Well let me first of all say at the risk of puffing up Brian, that I can't improve much on his wisdom and his advice. But let me just focus on one aspect of what he has just said and I will go back to the Gorbachev factor. The Communist party ended, the Soviet Union split up but as you know Russia has hardly become a democratic society and state and it's because of precisely what Brian has just been speaking about - mainly that whilst the political parties were shattered and I believe that ZANU PF is severely weakened the culture remains and the great challenge for us in these negotiations and in the months and years that lie ahead is to break the culture that has developed in Zimbabwe - not just over the last 28 years but over the last four decades.

Ironically it's a Rhodesian Front culture. A culture of intolerance, a culture where transparency is not a virtue, and we have to break that. But the most important thing that we have to do is to get a new democratic constitution agreed to as soon as possible through an inclusive process involving the civic society, involving faith based organisations so that we get the entire country to embrace whatever emerges from that process.

Tied into that is the need to build the institutions which are going to buttress democracy. We saw in the Herald today this talk about these organisations like SW Radio Africa having to stop their operations and for you Violet to come home. I support that. However SW Radio Africa should be allowed to set up in Harare . We need to have Violet Gonda in Harare broadcasting as freely as you broadcast from London . We need the Daily News back. We need an independent judiciary and all of these institutions are going to be the main guarantors of democracy - ensuring its survival in the years ahead. You can't rely on political parties for that and you can't rely on the constitution in isolation for that. You have got to embolden, strengthen civil society, you have to strengthen the fourth estate and you have to strengthen the electorate.

What isn't clear from the negotiations at present is whether we have these acceptable guarantees in place and we will only know that when the full settlement is revealed.

Gonda: You know you have just reminded me of one other issue and perhaps this will be my last question to you David, when you were talking about the need for a culture of tolerance. It's reported that your group has never really wanted Morgan Tsvangirai as a leader and the Zimbabwe Times this week alleges that in 2005 you tried to sneak in an amendment clause which would have barred non-degreed politicians from aspiring to be President. And the website said your obvious target of the proposed amendment was Morgan Tsvangirai. Can you comment on that?

Coltart: Well I can and I have already responded to Geoff Nyarota's article and he has apologised on the website for getting it wrong again. That is a falsehood which has been rebutted by me consistently for the last three or four years. In 2005 we approached constitutional lawyers who prepared a draft constitution for us and they included this clause which said that a non executive ceremonial President would have to have a degree. When we got that draft, before it was tabled in parliament I read it and I deleted that clause because it didn't reflect MDC policy. The constitutional lawyers had got that clause from the document entitled: 'What the people want'. If you recall in the 2000 referendum a document was produced by the Constitutional Commission following its surveys and it found that the majority of people wanted a ceremonial President who had a degree. And the original draft reflected that view which didn't reflect the MDC view.

So there are three points; Firstly I did not draft that it was drafted by constitutional lawyers. Secondly, when I saw it before it was tabled in parliament I took that clause out. Tendai Biti who seconded the motion when we tabled this motion is my witness to that. So in other words when it was tabled in parliament it excluded that clause. But the third point is - and this concerns the issue of Morgan Tsvangirai as an individual - this clause in its original form related to a non executive ceremonial President which Morgan Tsvangirai has never aspired to become. He wanted to be an executive President or an executive Prime Minister. So this is a falsehood which has been peddled around for a long, long time and I am grateful that you have raised it so that I hope can clear the air once and for all and set the record straight on this issue.

Gonda: And Brian finally the civil society has called for a transitional authority that should be headed by a neutral person. What are your views on this?

Kagoro: (laughs) I sympathise with my colleagues in the civil society. I drafted the original yellow paper with my colleagues Everjoice Win, Priscilla Misihairabwi Mushonga and co and that is where that demand was contained. That was in 2002 the day we believe Mugabe stole the election. At the present moment the problem is one of control of the state apparatus for purposes of development. So you have Morgan Tsvangirai who we have agreed won an election in March, we have Mugabe who remains, as David said, in de facto control of the arms of State. You have two centres of power - one popular by popular mandate and one who retains by coercive mandate. So to suggest that you take these two forces, tell them to hold at bay and find a neutral party who neither has control over the military nor control over the popular will or the popular mandate and say this person will for the next 18 months run the country to try and bring sanity - knowing the characters that we are dealing with because we are not in a vacuum, we are not in the same situation where Liberia was - we are dealing with very strong characters. We are dealing with a hunger for change that is stronger than before.

If you will persuade MDC supporters in their hundreds of thousands that Morgan should make way for a neutral party who will select this neutral party? Does a neutral Zimbabwe exist that you know of that is neutral with respect to what's going on? One that ZANU PF will say ok this one is neutral? That the MDC will say this one is neutral? There will be a problem and it will take us forever to find that one person.

If we gave you any name - whether the person has been living on Mars or planet Jupiter - we will be able to find his relatives in Zimbabwe and trace the relatives to ZANU PF or to MDC. If it's going to be someone effective enough to run the country we are likely to find that the person has at some stage or the other been aligned to the constitutional movement, the labour movement, the liberation war or something of that nature. So the person's credibility will be questioned. It will become problematic to constitute any authority that is not representative or inclusive of the major political players.

So in my view whilst I sympathise with the history of that demand and even see its logic I think in the particular context we are in it maybe a good principle that's academic and difficult to apply, that's one. Number two, what is it that we are trying to achieve? And what is it that we are redressing? We are redressing the fact that there was an election won by one person which didn't have sufficient constitutional majority to form government. And then we had a one man show that happened. We have a dispute that neither the SADC nor the AU has been able to pronounce upon either way. We have a very highly polarised society. We have this plunder of the economy that I talked about. You have violence that is going on. Any person who does not command sufficient power over the military and other arms, who doesn't have sufficient popularity with the public will not be able to control and effectively run a government in Zimbabwe. Unless if you are sending an occupation force of sorts from SADC or from somewhere. But the AU has been struggling to raise sufficient forces for Darfur so where will we get a force for Zimbabwe?

So in the absence of all the other things which normally at international law enable a neutral person to run a country I think that suggestion should be taken as a very good suggestion that is not presently applicable.

Gonda: Ok I am afraid we have run out of time but thank you very much Brian Kagoro and David Coltart.

Kagoro: You are welcome.

Coltart: Thank you Violet goodnight.

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