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MDC accepts responsibility without authority
Tanonoka Joseph Whande, Mmegi
August 08, 2008

http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=1&aid=1&dir=2008/August/Friday8

It is reported that dictator, Robert Mugabe, has reached an agreement with the now very suspect, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Under normal circumstances, I would have cheered that, finally, my country was on the brink of greater things. But I dare say that I am not amused by this clear sell-out of an arrangement.

To start with, the MDC won the election, but now we hear that, like Raila Odinga in Kenya, Tsvangirai has accepted being 'Executive Prime Minister' and leave the presidency in the hands of the losing candidate, Robert Mugabe.

Tsvangirai will say he accepted in order to save Zimbabwe, but that is not true. The reason is that, for him, it's better than nothing, dead people be damned!

Secondly, how will the people feel to see ZANU-PF people, including Mugabe, still wielding power and running ministries and making decisions that affect them? Will the people cheer at such betrayal? Many people were prepared to die for change, and they did, because they did not want anything to do with Mugabe and ZANU-PF after 28 years of murderers, abuse, plunder and misrule.

So did the people go through all this misery in support of the MDC to get this in the end? It gets worse.

If reports are to be believed, there are many appalling concessions made by the MDC. Not only did they agree to employ Mugabe as President, ceremonial as it is expected to be, but they offered Mugabe and his murdering underlings blanket amnesty.

Now that is one issue that I would take up as a personal crusade against the MDC. What authority does the MDC have in pardoning "each and every Zimbabwean who, in the course of upholding or opposing the aims and policies of the government of Zimbabwe, ZANU-PF or either formation of the MDC, may have committed crimes within Zimbabwe..."?

More than 97 percent of political murders were perpetrated by ZANU-PF thugs against the defenseless MDC supporters so ZANU-PF comes out the winner, thanks to the MDC. Wasn't it the MDC itself that asked all Zimbabweans to record names, places and incidences of violence committed by ZANU-PF functionaries for later prosecution?

Now we should throw away the lists because they have united at our expense? Curiously, they are both quiet on the Midlands and Matabeleland atrocities. And I don't like it one bit.

Surely, the MDC cannot pardon crimes committed even before its own formation! Besides, is this the kind of closure the people want?

Is it possible to forget all the many people who were killed by Mugabe and ZANU-PF? I am not forgetting people who were killed by Mugabe and ZANU-PF even before independence.

And the MDC considers itself all forgiving and goes on to forgive people who wronged other people. Think again, I ain't buying this even if it means launching a campaign for Tsvangirai, along with Thabo Mbeki, to be summoned to The Hague for harbouring and aiding mass murderers.

Tsvangirai will appoint two deputy prime ministers, one from his own party and the other from ZANU-PF, who will both preside over the ministries of Defence and that of Home Affairs? Why? Are they ganging up on the people already?

Mugabe, however, is expected to keep control of the Defence ministry. Why? It is further reported that a number of ministries, including Finance and Investment, Justice, Land, Resettlement Implementation, Agriculture and State Enterprises, "would reside independently of either party chief..." Aaah! The MDC accepted responsibility without authority; I thought all along they were fighting to acquire the authority to change things around? Chinja Maitiro, indeed!

And given the fact that the majority of the ministries will not be under the transitional government, who would be blamed if something went wrong? If the agreement comes out in this reported way, then God have mercy because we have clearly been sold out. People are being asked to stomach the sight of those murderers and to continue yielding to their authority.

There are thousands of people amongst us whose names are not synonymous with amnesty. Do these people expect me to rub shoulders with Joseph Chinotimba "in a new and democratic Zimbabwe"?

Do they expect me do hug and cheer alongside Joseph Mwale at a soccer match? Am I expected to forget the sight of a law abiding farmer, whose farm had been violently seized, lying dead in his shorts on his doorstep with his petrified mutt sitting bolt-upright, as if guarding its master's corpse?

Are we being asked to forget Tsvangirai's puffed up face as he was humiliated in front of a court? And some people cried for him.

What about our daughters and sons? People are not given the opportunity to arrive at some sort of closure for all their murdered relatives.

We should all just forget about our dead loved ones so that Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti and all those MDC people can mingle, eat, drink and toast each other as buddies while we are left out in the cold with all our tattered feelings and rubbing our scars and tending to the graves of our murdered relatives.

I can no longer tell the MDC to be careful; they appear to be in too much of a hurry to get on the gravy train.

Why did they not demand that all the service chiefs be retired by Mugabe now, before this agreement goes into effect? The CIO hierarchy must all be retired now by Mugabe. There are people in both the military and the police who have individual cases to answer but the MDC says they all deserve a blanket amnesty.

I thank both Mugabe and Tsvangirai for what they have done. They have done their part and now they should publicise the terms and conditions of the agreement and hold a referendum to give the people, on whose behalf they negotiated, the opportunity to accept, reject or to fine tune it, unless, of course, they were negotiating for themselves.

I don't suppose they intend to force whatever agreement they reach on the people, do they? We are also mindful of our heavily panel-beaten Constitution. We need a new constitution as a basis of all these maneuvers.

As Mbeki meets with the two leaders, Mugabe's violence continues on innocent people. And you say these are the people who should be forgiven? Mugabe and his service chiefs and all his functionaries must answer for the crimes they committed in the motherland. No, I declare, there will not be blanket amnesty. I wanna bet, just this once?

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