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Transcript of 'Hot Seat' with foreign correspondent Peta Thornycroft - Part 2
Violet Gonda, SW Radio Africa
November 06, 2007

Read the first part of this interview with Peta Thornycroft

http://www.swradioafrica.com/pages/hotseat261107.htm

Violet Gonda brings the final episode of the Hot Seat interview with veteran Zimbabwean journalist Peta Thornycroft. In the first segment she talked about her concerns on the way the Zimbabwean media has been covering the crisis in the country. In this final part the award-winning journalist gives us her frank assessment of the state of the MDC.

VIOLET: We welcome journalist Peat Thornycroft on the programme Hot Seat again. Now Peta when we ended the discussion last week we were talking about the turmoil in the MDC. What are your thoughts exactly on what is happening in the MDC right now

THORNYCROFT: Well, I think one has to really go back to the beginning of the MDC as journalists and look at how we covered the MDC, certainly how I covered it from July 2001. I'm afraid to say I was very neglectful of looking at the MDC. My excuse is that it wasn't such a big foreign story, it was more of a domestic story - the opposition - but I bitterly regret that I didn't do more work in finding out about the various fault-lines in the MDC, which I have subsequently discovered were there right from the very beginning and I was totally unaware of it. I had no idea until I think it was July 2005. I had no idea.

And the domestic press, certainly The Daily News and what else was there apart from the Daily News? What ever else, what ever other domestic media there was, also didn't investigate the MDC - almost at all. And because of the polarization any criticism that appeared in the Herald or on ZBC I think we all dismissed as propaganda, and that's also a natural thing that would happen. I saw that happening in South Africa as well. Nevertheless if we'd been on our toes, a bit smarter and not so anxious and longing for the end of ZANU PF we would have and should have seen that the MDC was in trouble almost from the day it was launched. And so when it split in 2005 it was not a surprise. I remember I was down in Bulawayo in early October 2005 when I realized that an actual split was coming and that was because I had interviewed the Mayor of Bulawayo and I asked him what he would do if the MDC called for a boycott of Senate elections? And he said to me, 'We'll have to field independent candidates because we cannot have ZANU PF taking our space. We down here we have a different experience of ZANU PF a longer experience of ZANU PF than people in the rest of the country. We've earned our place, our MPs have earned the right to be MPs for a long time and we want them to stay. We don't want ZANU PF to have any position in the whole of Matabeleland particularly Bulawayo.'

And I remember thinking to myself 'oh oh, this is a tricky situation,' because in Harare we knew that people were so against the senate elections, participating in the senate elections. So clearly there had been inadequate consultation within the MDC. I reported that only I think for V.O.A because quite frankly the other newspapers were not, you know it was again a very domestic story, very domestic story. Then we came across the violence in the MDC. I found that out in July 2005 and it wasn't particularly nasty, dreadful life threatening violence but it was completely against the public perception that the MDC had put-over of itself as being almost Gambian in its passive resistance and its pursuit of democracy using only peaceful means. Not only was this violence violence but it was also against its own members and I found that deeply shocking. I then discovered that this has been going on and that the first violence, I found out, was in 2001. So now we come to a situation of 2005 and then the party split, dreadful accusations went on - most of the accusations were made against the Mutambara faction although it wasn't called that faction at the time it split - It seemed to have been loaded against the then Secretary General Welshman Ncube. I was told by senior members of the party he had a farm here, a farm here, he had a supermarket there he had a shopping mall there, he had this and that. So I went and investigated it and wrote the story in the South African press about the farm which they seemed to just ignore, fair enough. But all of this venom that I was getting from the Tsvangirai faction was aimed at Welshman Ncube. To this day I keep on saying to myself, have I missed something? Have I missed something? What has he done? What has he done? But still I keep on wondering if I just missed something. It seems to me that now there's terrible anguish against ehm em em em.

VIOLET: Lucia Mativenga?

THORNYCROFT: The new secretary general, what's his name?

VIOLET: Tendai Biti.

THORNYCROFT: Tendai Biti is in deep problems now. And I can tell you this from Johannesburg that there's huge turmoil in the MDC in Johannesburg. I think they are reacting to Tendai Biti because they are looking to him for money. The MDC is a source of some kind of employment and resources over the last seven years when there had been no jobs and no resources. So the MDC is one of the few ways that people can get some money in the bank. So it's a job, it's a resource. As it is for the MPs - they've got jobs and clearly what we're seeing now is this jockeying for positions ahead of the elections next year. It's about jobs. It's not about ideology, it's about jobs and I think that's the shock to us. Perhaps we were just naive.

VIOLET: So Peta what exactly are you saying here? Are you saying the MDC got it wrong and that the opposition party is not the party that people thought it was?

THORNYCROFT: I wonder if we ever knew what it was. We just accepted it, didn't we? I wasn't there in 2000, I went to one of its rallies in 2000 and I came in July 2001 and I think I just accepted that the MDC had been cheated at the elections and that this was a party that had the majority support in the country and it was only long afterwards that I discovered that in fact of course ZANU PF had enormous support in certain rural parts of the country. I first saw that demonstrated to me in the March elections of 2005, I was actually astonished by that and it is in my copy. I then saw it again demonstrated in the Budiriro by-election when 4 000 people continued to vote for ZANU PF and it was quite a peaceful by election. They were just as short of fuel, water and electricity as all the other people in Budiriro. And I think that I realized that I hadn't taken into consideration that ZANU PF was an old established party, which despite its appalling lack of democracy and its top down style of doing business - because of the liberation struggle and the propaganda it's been able to feed everyone - it does genuinely have support. And that the MDC as the farm workers disappeared and as the farmers disappeared a great chunk of its support went with it. I think that was important and I think that we didn't see it and we didn't sort of realize it at the time, I didn't realize it at the time. So when the break came (the split), I mean it was deeply shocking, it was amazing, it was amazing when the Tsvangirai faction seemed to think that it was a triumph and not an absolute shattering disaster from which they would probably never recover . I'm sure the MDC will never recover that from that split.

VIOLET: From the October 12 2005 split?

THORNYCROFT: Yah yah, I mean wow it has been..

VIOLET: Do you think what is happening now is linked to the troubles in the MDC that erupted on October 12 2005?

THORNYCROFT: Of course it is, of course it is and it's also connected with the poverty in Zimbabwe that people are desperate for jobs and desperate for resources. The MDC does get funding from all sort of quarters. Let's face it, if you going to go to a rally you used to get money. I have seen it being handed out. People got money to just go to rallies, they get money. I'm not saying its paid participation, they might be organizing, putting flowers or whatever it is but an MDC political event provides resources.

And an MDC job as an MP - however poorly paid the MPs are - it's cheap fuel, it's a new car every five years, its very low forex rates. Yes there are great advantages in life being an opposition MP. And that's why there's this fight over why they can't get the corporation agreement between the two factions of the MDC to work because it's about jobs.

And I'm afraid to say that there was an agreement in April and I saw the agreement. Tragically it didn't translate into an effective agreement in May when Sam Nkomo was sent in to renegotiate the terms of it. And so it fell aside. So we are going to have a situation as far as I can see that certainly in some key constituencies you are going to have MDC from both factions standing against each other in the elections, dividing the votes and handing victory in that constituency to ZANU PF.

In Johannesburg here I tell you what is going on - and there is a huge number of MDC people here. There's a fight going on here that one lot of MDC supporters says Morgan Tsvangirai and Roy Bennet have to go, Roy Bennet being the National Treasurer and Tendai Biti has to go as well. In their place they want Tapiwa Mashakada and as President of the MDC this faction is saying they want (Lovemore) Madhuku in Morgan's place. It's very serious here in Johannesburg and they are complaining about Biti saying, 'he's just as bad as Welshman Ncube was when he was Secretary General and he's keeping all the money.' You know if one suspected that Ncube was short of money when he was Secretary General and so is Biti short of money. But this is now translating itself into Johannesburg.

If the stories coming out of London in the MDC are true (infighting), although I have no experience of what's going on in London and what is happening with the MDC Women's assembly. I think you have to look at that party and say my God what is that party? What is it - just a few months before the elections?

VIOLET: It's really sad that things have come to this because at the end of the day it's the ordinary people that are suffering and they really do not deserve this confusion that is happening in the pro-democracy movement. But on the other hand some may say Mugabe has skillfully dragged this crisis on for the last seven years, for too long. To some extent when things go wrong in the opposition it seems people forget the problems created by the regime.

Now do you think people have considered these other risks? That the regime is armed, it has torcher chambers against an opposition which does not even have a military wing. What can you say about this?

THORNYCROFT: No I think that the MDC is being absolutely tormented; we've seen it with our eyes. We have seen it before the 2002 presidential elections in particular it has been tormented. Whatever rural structures or peri-urban structures it set up were destroyed. We saw its urban structures being destroyed in April 2007, we saw that. We were there and we witnessed it and we wrote about it and ZANU PF has all the power but there does seem to me, and I don't know how you'd quantify this - a failure across the top echelons of the MDC of those people who are prepared to actually take risks and they have to take risks. So why aren't they when there's now some little spotlight on the country because of the on going negotiations? Where are they in Mashonaland West, Central - the three Mashonaland provinces? And I go on and on about this and I was there just a few weeks ago, driving there with a very good cover and nobody knew I was a journalist and I was able to speak to people and they were very open and chatty with me. I mean the MDC just hasn't tried to go into most of those places. And will they ever or are they going to just remain an urban party you know an urban party in Harare, some in Manicaland.

VIOLET: (interrupts) But isn't it a fact that some of these rural constituencies are no go areas for the MDC so.

THORNYCROFT: (interrupts) I want to see them, I want to know that it's still a no go area. You know I need to know that they have tried to go there and that they got chased away. And there are still enough reporters on the ground in Harare, and we've all got quite skilled at doing this so that we can be witness to that. And if it is really that they can't go into Mash West or Mash Central and parts of Mash East - into those big rural areas and the communal areas - if they can't go there then we need to be writing about that.

VIOLET: And you know Peta, politics aside, is the Lucia Mativenga issue central to the politics of gender in the country? I mean should this be viewed as part of the patriarchal system alluded to by some of the women in the MDC like Sekai Holland and Grace Kwinjeh?

THORNYCROFT: I think it would, the MDC is still a very young party. I mean seven/eight years old. It was inevitable that there were going to be splits, strains etcetera. I actually think whatever is happening in the Women's Assembly, in the fight between Lucia Mativenga and Teresa Makoni is probably duplicated in other political parties everywhere around the world especially in their infancies. The problem is that Zimbabwe is in a particular fix at the moment that it's facing crucial elections next year. Perhaps under a new constitution, which may deliver what Mugabe is desperately hoping for, which is free and fair elections, genuinely free and fair elections because the MDC is so weak.

And so there are demands on the MDC to be at its very best - to fight the election not as two factions but as together to try and fix these internal problems that they are having or avoid them, suspend these problems until after the elections because there is this moment in time. I don't think that these eruptions that are going on are particularly significant because they happen in all parties as they are starting up. They haven't yet got the mechanisms in place to deal with them in an emergency.

I think one of the sad things we saw over the negotiations in South Africa that was clear to me - was that whereas the Mutambabra faction was able to understand what was going on with the 18th Constitutional Amendment - somebody, or whoever was responsible for explaining it to Morgan and his people didn't get around to it until the last minute and there was a lot of misunderstanding and of course a lot of misunderstanding by the civics. And you know I had to say to the civics, why was there a misunderstanding, why didn't they bother to go and find out, what did they want, do you need an invitation to find out what was happening? Why where they just hanging about and not making it their business to know every little bit that was going on in the negotiations so they could see the 18th Constitutional Amendment for what it was which may be quite different to the way they reported it or had analyzed it.

VIOLET: (interrupts) But I think to be fair it has been quite difficult.

THORNYCROFT: I think the MDC's had a hard time Violet, I really think it's had a hard time.

VIOLET: Is there a trend , sorry to go back to this particular issue, is there a trend, is there an issue regarding women and politics in Zimbabwe because if you go by the reports that we are seeing some women have come out complaining about these problems . Is there a trend regarding women and politics in Zimbabwe.

THORNYCROFT: I don't know. I absolutely have no idea. I think that's a question that really needs to be given to Zimbabwe's journalists who are reporting it in a domestic way and who know the MDC much better than I do. As I say I only got into really reporting the intricacies in the MDC almost by default because it's not really a foreign story. The MDC is only a foreign story if Morgan gets tortured or if they win all these elections. The actual fighting and infighting within the MDC is largely not a foreign story but unfortunately it wasn't covered well by the domestic press in the early days. It's much better now. We get much more information now than we used to. I think you need to ask them I mean I've read what you've read about the lack of women representation in the MDC. I don't know if it's true or not. I just simply don't know.

VIOLET: Peta let's move on to ZANU PF. We hear there's infighting in ZANU PF but there's no evidence of this, and there's still no indication of where ZANU PF is going. What are your thoughts on this?

THORNYCROFT: I think there are indicators that they are fighting. I mean I think they've been good reports I think in The Independent newspaper and elsewhere about the extremely tumultuous politburo meetings. We have a situation where a former prominent banker James Mushore who fled the country and would not have come back into Zimbabwe without believing that he can face up to the allegations against him without ending up in the slammer.

He's still waiting to be freed and he happens to be a relative of retired army general Solomon Mujuru in the Mujuru camp. This is part of the successive struggle and I think we now got a situation where we we must all pretty much expect that Mugabe is going to be the ZANU PF candidate to stand next year and that he's going to serve a full term in office for five years. And so he's managed to crush, it would seem to me, those in the Mujuru faction and perhaps those who might have supported say Gideon Gono as the Prime Minister. We've heard a lot about that or even Simba Makoni as the Prime Minister, which would have gone down well in the world. Those seem to have gone.

It seems to me that Mugabe has managed to finally bring a fractured ZANU PF under his wing with, once again, excluding the voice from the floors. This fracture within ZANU PF is a fracture at the top not a fracture at the bottom. ZANU PF has long been a party of the chefs not the people. Whereas I would think that MDC some of its problems is actually the people who are looking for jobs are a lot more involved in their party than the people in ZANU PF are involved at the lower level in their party. ZANU PF is just a joke of a party.

One of the tragedies I think in the negotiations facilitated by the South Africans is that they have not ever understood the nature of ZANU PF. It's thought of, I imagine, the South Africans think that ZANU PF is sought of like the ANC perhaps not quite like the ANC but after all it fought the liberation war. But it's completely a different type of party. And ZANU PF has always been run on fear right from the beginning, certainly since in
1980 and people tell me even before then when you think of what happened to people being looked up in Mozambique during the struggle. That it's been dominated by one man for over thirty years and he's going to carry on for another five years. Regardless, that some of the better informed and the more literate, economically literate members of ZANU PF sit in the Mujuru faction. I think we have overwhelming evidence that ZANU PF has been incredibly divided. That even though Mugabe is going to be endorsed as the candidate that he is going to be endorsed with a lot of the senior members of ZANU PF being extremely unhappy, that they could not find a solution to Mugabe, an alternative to Mugabe being the ZANU PF candidate.

VIOLET: A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Professor Jonathan Moyo on this issue and he also spoke about the Third Way. Now newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube also talked about this so called alternative movement that will bring together you know elements from ZANU PF, the MDC and civil society. Does it sound like a viable option to you?

THORNYCROFT: I read it too and I wondered who the moderate members are of ZANU PF. I understand that Trevor Ncube was asked that question in London when he made that speech. I think to the Oppenheimer Society and he mentioned Emmerson Mnangagwa being a moderate member. I can't see any Third Way happening because I think that people like Munangagwa know that they just have to hang on, it will only be just five years and then he will take over from Mugabe and unless the Mujuru faction joined up with Trevor Ncube - I think Ncube himself sees a role for himself, perhaps with some from the MDC. He made that remark about 6 weeks ago and I haven't heard of anything happening since then. Not any discussions other than discussions of what he said. I think it's too late ahead of these elections for any Third Way.

VIOLET: On the issue of elections, it seems there's a crisis in the MDC; no one really knows what is happening in ZANU PF - as you say Mugabe will probably stand again; there's this talk of the Third Way -although at present it's not even known who's behind this and who the actual leaders are. Now elections are around the corner do Zimbabweans have a bleak choice at the polls?

THORNYCROFT: Say that again do Zimbabweans ..?

VIOLET: Have a bleak choice at the elections, at the polls?

THORNYCROFT: An enormously bleak choice and I think it's terribly bleak. We don't yet know what kind of elections we going to have. We know they are going to be Westminster-style elections and I think anyone who has seen what proportional representation has done for diversity in South Africa's parliament will be very sad that the winner takes all solution could not win the day. That Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube could not win that round. We still don't know what the electoral laws are going to look like. They're about a month behind in their negotiations not because of any crook-ery, I think because Biti had to go overseas for something, ZANU PF had to do something, and then Welshman Ncube had to go somewhere and then there was some holidays and there's some visits and now of course we've got the tragedy of Patrick Chinamasa - one of the ZANU PF negotiators' son having died in America. And so I think they're about a month behind. That would take us then; we're talking about now nearly the middle of December before we can expect points one to four. Points one to four being the legal requirements for new laws for elections and in that time we have then got the ZANU PF extraordinary congress.

So unless ZANU PF agreed to delay the elections so that if there are reforms people can get confident that these reforms will work. Its going to be very shoddy isn't it, it's very shoddy. They may even have it all down on paper but not any time to get used to it.

And they've got a terribly bleak choice haven't they? I mean they've got the same old guy whose led them into poverty, who allowed the country to be dismantled. We've seen the best and the brightest of all flee Zimbabwe for better pastures and I doubt whether any of those will come back. And they've got a country that is a wreck, literally a wreck! That is what there is to show for 28 years of ZANU PF rule.

But on the other hand you've got these two MDC parties which, one of the factions is fighting with itself, and the other faction seems to only operate in Bulawayo or in Matabeleland. I keep on getting notes saying that they are down to Insiza etc etc. I'm sure they would do very well in Matabeleland but I haven't seen Arthur Mutambabra hanging about in Rafingora either and I'm wondering when he's going to make it and it would be nice to see Welshman Ncube in Mashonaland West too. I just think they all going to concentrate on their familiar stamping ground so that they can keep the positions they already have. So that they don't lose more seats because these seats are jobs they see themselves as an opposition party now and not a party that's there to win any national elections that's what it has got to. I feel, I wonder if Zimbabweans would be bothered to vote. Would you really be bothered to vote when the choice is so bleak? I can't imagine it.

VIOLET: It's a difficult one. Finally Peta do you think the West has made a huge mistake where Zimbabwe is concerned? If so how?

THORNYCROFT: Well (pause) I think there are two ways: I think when the MDC started in 2000, what a pity that they where addressing people in Sandton mostly white people in Sandton north of Johannesburg instead of being in Dar es Salaam or Ghana or Abuja. They failed to make contact with Africa for so long, they were in London, we've just seen it again, Morgan Tsvangirai's just been in America. Why isn't he in Cairo? Maybe he needs financial support and he can't get it outside of America or the UK and the same would go for Mutambara. They have not done enough in Africa and that was also one of the reasons for the split, I must say, as those reasons emerged. Please remind me of your question again.

VIOLET: The International community, you know what about..

THORNYCROFT: The international community, you then had Tony Blair in about
2004 making a dreadful statement about how he's working with the MDC, when he must have known that would feed into, that would be absolutely marvelous for ZANU PF. And you saw the State Department in America say it was working with the MDC.

Yeah it wasn't particularly helpful but actually I think the West at least fed Zimbabwe. Thank God they provided the food for Zimbabweans. There is not going to be an Ethiopia-type situation. Zimbabwe is not particularly hot story apart from inflation and I think it's a symbolic thing for the British. Zimbabwe was a colony - there was the Rhodesian war. There is a kith and kin element in it, whether we like it or not there is a kith and kin element in it. I think Claire Short made a terrible mistake in 1997 when the Labour party came to power and that letter she wrote to Zimbabwe saying; 'Land in Zimbabwe has never been part of our problem.' Of course it has been.

And so they have withdrawn, the West have withdrawn haven't they? Gordon Brown is going to be exiled from his own continent in December, he has to stay in London. He can't even go for the two hour flight from London to Lisbon because he's got himself into a corner saying he won't go there when Mugabe is there. Somehow those are battles that were okay, but I think it's become a domestic issue for Gordon Brown, it affects his votes and it's got nothing to do with the reality of Zimbabwe.

And the West is obviously simply hypocritical. It depends on if you have got oil and you haven't got oil, how your foreign policy is handled. I think the West is an ex-player in the Zimbabwe situation. And if there ever is a solution it has to come out of Africa and one doesn't have great hopes over that. One doesn't have great hopes over the South African foreign policy successes, so far they've had very few. One would hope that that this time they'll do better.

There are five points on the agenda for the negotiations. The first four are legal points, the fifth point is the political climate. Will Mbeki deliver on that? Because that's going to be up to him to deliver. If they really get a new constitution or new electoral laws through parliament in the first week of January, will Mbeki have the guts to stand up and say to Mugabe; 'we can't possibly have elections in March, we have to delay these elections until June and if you don't then I'm afraid SADC is not going to support you.' Are we going to see that? Those are great unknowns. I mean how we can possibly have an election like we had in 2002 and the voters roll in 2005?

For a start for example I've been cut off the voter's roll. There are a lot of people like me. For no reason my name's just been taken off.

VIOLET: Even though you're a Zimbabwean citizen?

THORNYCROFT: Yah, I'm a Zimbabwean citizen absolutely.

VIOLET: Well I guess the struggle continues and we'll just have to wait and see what happens now in Zimbabwe. Thank you very much Peta Thornycroft.

THORNYCROFT: Okay Violet thank you.

Comments and feedback can be emailed to violet@swradioafrica.com

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