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Zanu PF culprit: Welshman
Tonderai Kwenda, Daily News
July 10, 2011

http://www.dailynews.co.zw/index.php/news/34-news/3196-zanu-pf-culprit-welshman.html

The Daily News on Sunday deputy News Editor, Tonderai Kwenda spoke to Welshman Ncube, the leader of the breakaway MDC formation. TK - Tonderai Kwenda, WN - Welshman Ncube

TK: Do you think the Global Political Agreement (GPA) was the only solution to the country's political problem?

WN: We were the strongest proponent of dialogue as a way of solving problems when no one in Zanu PF not even the MDC T, not in civic society, not in the international community believed that a solution to Zimbabwe's problems was by way of a coalition government.

The polarisation in 2008 made it virtually impossible to realise democracy in this country and therefore there was a need for a cooling period.

We want a situation where we can have competitive politics. We can not have a situation where political party ''A'' believes that political party ''B'' can never be allowed to be in power.

Democracy must imply a willingness to allow the people's verdict to prevail even if you believe the people are wrong, even if you believe it is not in the national interest.

But where you have political parties which say if it is not us we must basically burn down the country and you can not have a democracy like that.

We strongly believe that it is not in the best interest of Zimbabwe for Zanu PF and MDC T to be elected, but we are willing to say if that is the verdict of the people, even if it is a wrong verdict let the people live with their mistake.

They will have another opportunity in five years to correct it but we have a political situation where there is intolerance to say that unless it is us lets burn down the country.

TK: From what you are saying it seems the coalition government you believed in so much is in trouble?

WN: We had hoped that the inclusive government will change this but regrettably that has not happened.

Since the beginning of the year we have basically regressed to the intolerance of 2008. There is no point in getting to elections with polarisation and intolerance. The biggest culprit in all this is Zanu PF.

If they had demonstrated a little sincerity to work with others without putting roadblocks on everything the better. They do not want to share governors, they do not want to share ambassadors, they do not want to open up so that we can have security forces in the country which treat all political parties as legitimate institutions of Zimbabwe.

It is this lack of sincerity which has undermined the premise of the GPA.

TK: How was it like negotiating this difficult political agreement?

WN: There were tensions, very severe tensions from time to time but there was a spirit of co-operation and criticism of each other, but often this was fair.

The situation was helped by the fact that the key players in the negotiations had worked together even though from different political formations for a long time particularly myself Tendai Biti and Patrick Chinamasa.

TK: Do you have any regrets?

WN: The only regret was that towards the end, we got tired and wanted to get over with it and in the process overlooked some things particularly on the media.

Our failure to create an independent commission to deal with the electronic media as we had done in creating the media commission to deal with the print media is one regret.

Largely, the problem is not the construction of the GPA, it is the lack of sincerity among the players in the inclusive government.

TK: So what exactly is troubling the coalition government if the document is perfect?

WN: The problem has largely been the security sector. If we had a security sector sincerely and genuinely committed to bringing to an end to political violence in this country it would have brought it to an end.

The challenge is not that Zanu PF people beat others or MDC T people beat each other or others. It is given that young people at the instigation of politicians think that they can get away with violence in order to get political advantage.

The key is how do the police react or respond if they acted firmly against every perpetrator of violence regardless of which party they are from. If that was done we will not have political violence in this country.

The police have failed to act decisively and firmly and are in fact themselves on a blame game.

We have a list of people from both MDC parties who have been beaten, brutalised and their assailants are known by name, by residence and if police genuinely applied the rule of law and acted against these people, we would today have a much better political environment. In June 2008, Harare, was under siege.

People disappeared, were tortured, and were dying. At that time there was a real possibility that we were headed the Somalia route.

TK: Do you think security sector reform is an urgent necessity to solve these problems that the coalition government is facing?

WN: I hate the term security sector reform because it connotes that the legal policy framework under which the security forces operate is wrong. But I believe there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our constitution to the extent that it deals with the police and the army.

There is nothing wrong with our Defence Act and the Police Act. You could take these and put them in South Africa, they will compare favourably, but look at the rules and the policies on paper that should be followed by the police, you will hardly be able to improve on them.

It is the individuals we have assigned the responsibilities to administer these laws and policies.

These are individuals who for better or worse historically have not transformed mentally from being an armed wing of a political party to being a professional police force or to being a professional army for the whole of Zimbabwe.

TK: In your view how the secret service should be regulated given that there is no known policy to regulate its activities?

WN: Where you might have a legitimate debate on reform is the intelligence services. Should they be regulated by an act of parliament or should they simply be regulated as part of the President's office.

If you do a research, you will realise that almost half of the countries in the world have pieces of legislation regulating the intelligence services.

But for me it does not matter whether there is regulation of the intelligence service because where we have legislation like with the police would not make any difference as long as they do not have a commitment to live in accordance with the laws and policies that we have.

TK: You have been championing the idea of a united front against Mugabe, what is the reasoning behind the idea?

WN: Our party even after the painful split said in spite of our differences we should acknowledge them and genuinely deal with them.

We none the less said we can still try and work together in the things that we agree on and acknowledge the things that we are unable to agree on and that is why we went out of our way to try and build a coalition and that is why we negotiated and agreed on a coalition which would have seen all of us supporting Tsvangirai as our presidential candidate.

Our national council, which is the supreme organ of our party, adopted that and endorsed it in 2008 but MDC T rejected it on the eve of the election which is why even as we walked into that election, we were left on a lurch having put so much effort even in the 4 or 5 months to the election.

We had put on our best people, our best minds to those negotiations and neglected doing a lot of work on the ground as a party because we thought it was more important for us to be in the coalition but we later found out that we were wrong.

The end result was that we ended up without a presidential candidate, we ended up without candidates in some of the areas because we thought we could build a coalition so our commitment to that has never wavered.

We have always believed in that but we can not achieve it without being realistic enough to realise that the obstacles to that are very huge and are immense which is why we have said this time round we will not put our best people and we will not devote a great deal of our time to the pursuit of that, we will devote our time and our best minds to our people and rebuilding our party which is what we are trying to do as a political party.

But we will always be open as a political party any time for any conversation around working together with anybody else in the things we believe in so we are open on that.

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