The Zimbabwe Situation

STATEMENT BY THE PRIME MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF ZIMBABWE AND PRESIDENT OF THE MDC RT HON MORGAN R TSVANGIRAI

7 OCTOBER 2010

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with some sadness that I have to make a statement today about the state of this transitional Government. It relates to the Constitution and Sovereignty of Zimbabwe, and the principles of democracy for which my Party and I stand for. The MDC utterly rejects the notion of one-party or one-man rule. The MDC utterly rejects any suggestion that power is an entitlement through historical legacy, or that power is a God-given right of an individual or individuals.

The MDC firmly believes that political leaders should only serve and act on the basis of a mandate of the people. Lest we forget. The MDC was given that mandate on March 29, 2008, when the people of Zimbabwe clearly rejected the notion of one-Party and one-man rule. That mandate was to govern on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, in September 2008, I signed an agreement, allowing for the formation of a joint transitional government with those Parties which the people had rejected. I did so for several reasons that I outlined at the time. Not least, I did so to try to help end the needless suffering of the people of Zimbabwe which had been inflicted on them by the failed and corrupt policies and abuses of the previous regime.

I signed this agreement when the whole world was sceptical about the wisdom of working with Mr Mugabe. The world questioned his sincerity. They questioned his integrity and his ability to respect an agreement with anyone. They pointed to the abuses of power over a great many years. They pointed to the fact that he had reappointed himself President, in breach of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, and in defiance of the will of the Zimbabwean people. I shared their concerns but as a leader and for the sake of this country and the security and welfare of our citizens, I took a leap of faith and I signed the agreement.

I was prepared to work with Mr Mugabe to allow him to address the mistakes of the past, and to help him to rebuild his legacy. This is why, despite the challenges that I have faced in working with him, I have repeatedly said that whilst our relationship was not perfect, it was workable. This was meant to encourage Mr Mugabe to right the wrongs of the past. However, the events of the past few months have left me sorely disappointed in Mr Mugabe, and in his betrayal of the confidence that I and many Zimbabweans have personally invested in him.

Ladies and Gentlemen, when the MDC formed this Government with others, we did so on the basis of clear and public assurances that Mr Mugabe and his Party would now respect and abide by the principles of democracy. That they would now respect the freedoms of the individual. That they now understood that politicians should govern for the people and not for themselves. That they now accepted that the mandate to govern comes from a free expression of democratic will, not from a God-given right or from a campaign of violence and intimidation. I was prepared for the sake of our country to sit alongside my yesteryear’s enemies and tormentors to rebuild a stable and democratic country.

Ladies and Gentlemen, on Monday I met Mr Mugabe and DPM Mutambara to discuss the implications of the resolutions of the SADC Windhoek summit. The Troika’s report to the summit stressed the importance of the freedom to express political views, and of free and fair elections. It stressed that there was no place for violence in any democratic process in any democratic country… and least of all state-condoned or state-orchestrated violence.

Ladies and Gentlemen, in this respect, ZANU PF has sorely disappointed us all in the conduct of the constitutional outreach meetings. The activities of rogue elements of the security agencies alongside state actors directed by ZANU PF was clearly designed to deny citizens their right to have their views heard. As we have seen so many times, ZANU PF is determined to tell citizens what they should think, and to intimidate, bully and beat up any who disagree. This goes against the fundamental principles of democracy, and is utterly abhorrent to me.

I advised Mr Mugabe of this on Monday. As you are aware, we have also had a dispute over the appointment of Governors, along with a number of other unilateral and illegal appointments which the President has made following the signature of the GPA. The dispute over the former Provincial Governors effectively timed out when their term of office expired in July. The country needed to appoint new governors according to the law and the Constitution. The Constitution clearly says that such appointments must be done in consultation with the Prime Minister.

To my utter surprise, and shall I say disgust, Mr Mugabe advised me on Monday that he had nichodemously reappointed the former governors in the same manner in which he appointed the previous governors on a Sunday when most of us where at church. I say “nichodemously” because those who are supposed to be served by these governors – the citizens of Zimbabwe – knew nothing about it.

They were hoping for Governors to be appointed who would serve in the interests of the people of Zimbabwe, not in the interests of the President and his Party, as has been the case until now. The Prime Minister, who has to consent to their appointments, knew nothing about it. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Mugabe publicly stated to African leaders in Windhoek as recently as August this year that he “has never and will never violate the Constitution of Zimbabwe”. Sadly, he has done so not once, but time and time again.

In March 2010, he appointed the Police Service Commission when the Constitution clearly says that all Service Commissions must be appointed in consultation with the Prime Minister. On 20 May 2010 , he unilaterally swore in five new judges to the Supreme and High Courts without consultation. On 24 July 2010, he unilaterally appointed six Ambassadors without consultation. On 24 September 2009 whilst in New York on CNN, Mr Mugabe stated publicly and unequivocally that he would swear in Deputy Minister Roy Bennett if Roy were acquitted of the absurd charges brought against him. He said categorically: “yes, yes, yes, if he's acquitted, he will be appointed.”

Roy was acquitted on 10 May, but again, Mr Mugabe has gone back on his word. He confirmed to me and DPM Mutambara on Monday that he has no intention of ever swearing in Roy. The matter of Roy Bennett has now become a personal vendetta and part of a racist agenda.

And these are simply the most obvious and most high-profile breaches of the Constitution and laws of Zimbabwe. They demonstrate that Mr Mugabe believes that the offices of the Government of Zimbabwe are there to serve him, not the people, which is what the Constitution seeks to ensure. We are all well-aware of the other breaches which occur all too regularly. Every extra-judicial arrest of citizens is a clear breach of the Constitution.

Every act of intimidation or violence by state or ZANU PF actors is a clear breach of the Constitution. In this respect, we urge South Africa to release the Report of the Retired Army Generals who investigated state sponsored violence and its implications on the electoral process and results in 2008. Every act of censoring or curtailing individuals’ or journalists’ freedom of speech is a clear breach of the Constitution.

Zimbabweans will know that I have desperately tried to avoid a Constitutional crisis in Zimbabwe. I have worked tirelessly to try to make this transitional Government work, in the interest of all Zimbabweans. I have worked and spoken in support of this Government. But neither I, nor the MDC, can stand back any longer and just allow Mr Mugabe and ZANU PF to defy the law, to flaunt the Constitution and to act as if they own this country.

Mr Mugabe was one of the leaders of the liberation struggle which led to our country’s independence 30 years ago. For those efforts, and for all the sacrifices of those who fell in that struggle, Zimbabweans will forever be grateful. But no actions of the past translate into a right to wield power in the present. That right derives solely from a mandate from the people. And citizens rightly judge their leaders on their record in office.

We are all - citizens, politicians, soldiers, policemen, workers, mothers, fathers and children – subject to the Constitution and laws of this country. None of us own that Constitution and none of us own this country. None of us, whatever our history, are above the law. We are all but caretakers for future generations. Ladies and Gentlemen, The MDC’s National Executive has today resolved that we must make a stand to protect the Constitution of Zimbabwe and to return it to the custodianship of the citizens of Zimbabwe. As a first step, we will refuse to recognise any of the appointments which the President has made illegally and unconstitutionally over the past 18 months.

That includes:

the Governor of the Central Bank, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 26 November 2008
the Attorney-General, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 17 December 2008
the 5 judges, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 20 May 2010
the 6 Ambassadors, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 24 July 2010
The Police Service Commission
the 10 Governors, appointed unilaterally and furtively by Mr Mugabe last week

As Executive Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe, I will today be advising the countries to whom these Ambassadors have been posted that these appointments are illegal and therefore null and void. I will be advising the Chief Justice of the improper appointment of the judges concerned, and that they are therefore null and void. I will be advising the President of the Senate of the improper appointment of Governors, and that they should therefore not be considered members of the Senate, which is therefore now unconstitutional. I will be advising the joint Ministers of Home Affairs and the National Security Council of the illegal appointment of the Police Service Commission..

We now similarly call on the people of Zimbabwe, at whose pleasure we serve, not to recognise these individuals as the legitimate holders of the posts to which they have been unconstitutionally and illegally appointed. In doing so you must all remain peaceful. I now call upon Mr Mugabe to return the country to Constitutional rule by correcting the unlawful appointments. I invite SADC to join me in calling on Mr Mugabe to respect the SADC Resolutions, the SADC Charter and Protocols, the AU Charter, and the principles of democracy. I invite SADC to deploy observers before the constitutional referendum to help protect the rights of Zimbabweans to express their views freely and without violence or intimidation. And I invite SADC to urgently intervene to restore Constitutionality in Zimbabwe.

Mr Mugabe has tried to link many of these issues, including the appointment of the Governors of this sovereign country, to the lifting of restrictive measures on him and his political cohorts by other sovereign, independent countries. This is rank madness, and utterly nonsensical. It is tantamount to surrendering the sovereignty of this country. It is an insult to all those who fought, and all those who lost their lives, in the struggle for the independence of Zimbabwe.

All Zimbabweans know that Mr Mugabe and his colleagues brought the restrictive measures on themselves through the flagrant abuses of human rights and the economic disaster which they inflicted on this country. All Zimbabweans know that these restrictive measures are the result, not the cause of that economic disaster. They know that these restrictive measures affect the individuals concerned, not the country as a whole, as the economic turnaround since my Party joined the Government has shown. Nevertheless, I undertook to work with ZANU PF towards the lifting of restrictive measures, and I have abided by that promise. At every turn, I have reminded Mr Mugabe and his colleagues that my commitment to do so is part of my commitment to abide by and to implement the GPA.

Sadly, they have demonstrated so far that they have no similar commitment either to abide by the GPA and to a host of other undertakings which they have made. In these circumstances, it makes my job of arguing for the lifting or even the suspension of the measures extremely difficult. But because I believe in the GPA, and I believe in sticking to my word, I will continue to work for the implementation of the GPA in its totality, including the lifting of restrictive measures.

Mr Mugabe and his colleagues know that the keys to them achieving this are already in their hands. All they need to do is to abide by their promises, to abide by the laws and Constitution of this country, to respect the rights and freedoms of Zimbabweans, and to accept that Zimbabwe belongs not to them but to the people of Zimbabwe and the restrictive measures will go.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not want to understate the nature or extent of the current crisis. It is nothing short of a Constitutional crisis, which is why I have urged SADC to intervene as a matter of urgency. But we cannot allow this crisis to derail our efforts to change Zimbabwe but as I said when I signed the agreement to join this Government two years ago, my Party and I remain committed:

To serve you, so long as that is your will
To ensure that your children can go to school and learn
To ensure that you have access to medical care
To protect and promote your rights to free speech, movement and political assembly
To empower each and every citizen, economically, socially and politically
To end privilege, patronage, abuse and corruption
To turn Zimbabwe into a country ruled by the law, not by decree.

When it comes to pursuing these principles and these goals, no amount of dishonesty, insincerity, intimidation, or abuse will move me.

You can count on me to ensure that you will be able to participate in a free and fair election to choose who should lead your country
You can count on me to ensure that you will write your own, new, pluralistic constitution.
You can count on me to stand up for your rights at each and every turn.
You can count on me to work for the empowerment of each and every citizen and not an elite few.

I will not win every fight in the short-term, but I assure you that I am as committed as you are to winning the war and win we shall. This is a war which we must continue to fight bravely together: a war which pits all Zimbabweans who believe in the principles of freedom and democracy against those who seek to maintain and abuse privilege. I appeal to all Zimbabweans, our loyal civil servants, our loyal police, and our loyal armed forces, to work with us in this new struggle for freedom.

To ensure that Zimbabwe becomes a Zimbabwe for everyone, not just the self-annointed and chosen few who seek to exploit this country – as did their colonial predecessors – for their wealth and their own ends. I therefore urge my team at every level of government and every level of society to rededicate yourself to serving the people of Zimbabwe. The road ahead is not going to be easy, but our collective future will be better than our present challenge. I will not rest until I fulfil my mandate from the people of Zimbabwe to build a new Zimbabwe to which I, alongside so many of you, have committed our lives.

This is my promise to you for real change.

I thank you

IF YOU take President Robert Mugabe's recent declaration at face value, Zimbabwe will have another general election by the end of next year. That will be three-and-a-half years after his long-ruling Zanu-PF party indisputably lost to the rival Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai (right, above), but then refused to concede. Mr Tsvangirai, as compensation, became a distinctly second-fiddle prime minister. Next time, despite all the tricks Mr Mugabe and his party are sure to play, they could well lose again. There is at least a chance that the president will step down and that, at last, less fettered power will be handed to Mr Tsvangirai.

Many-perhaps most-perceptive Zimbabweans think such a prospect fanciful. Why, they ask, should the thugs round Mr Mugabe behave any differently next time, especially when their own ill-gotten gains are at stake? And yet, though the economy is still in ruins, politics messy and human rights persistently violated, the picture is definitely less bad than it was two years ago. It is widely considered, with good reason, that Mr Mugabe is running rings round Mr Tsvangirai and is preventing the MDC and its allies from enjoying their rights as a majority in parliament. All the same, a steady momentum is growing for change-and against Mr Mugabe.

Moreover, though recent reports of the 86-year-old leader's impending demise were based on his occasional sleepiness at official functions and a stumble or two on ceremonial steps, plainly he could drop dead tomorrow. Behind the scenes, feuding within the ruling party over the succession is getting hotter.

Last electoral time round, at the end of March 2008, the playing field was so heavily tilted against the MDC that few thought it could win-yet it did so clearly, albeit by a narrow official margin. Mr Mugabe also decisively lost the first round of the presidential poll, held on the same day, to Mr Tsvangirai. Only after a bizarre five-week silence from a terrified electoral commission did Mr Mugabe, bolstered by his security men and their lethal machinery of repression, declare that Mr Tsvangirai had fallen just short of the required 50%. The shaken president then set about bludgeoning the challenger and his MDC into submission-resulting, after the murder of at least 200 MDC supporters, in Mr Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the run-off some three bloody months later.

After that, while the MDC and its allies had a slim majority in the lower house of parliament, Zimbabwe's slide into ruin continued. Within months of Mr Mugabe's re-election as president, inflation had reached several billion per cent a year. Eventually, early last year, Zimbabwe's own currency was abolished altogether, to be replaced by the American dollar.

Shortly afterwards, a government of national unity (known jokingly as the Gnu) took office. Five months earlier the two main parties, plus a breakaway from the MDC under Arthur Mutambara, had signed a "global political agreement" (GPA), spelling out how power would be shared. Mr Mugabe remained president and Mr Tsvangirai became prime minister, with Mr Mutambara as his deputy.

Since then, things have undoubtedly improved. The economy's dollarisation is by far the biggest factor in Zimbabwe's fragile recovery. As the Zimbabwe dollar gradually became worthless, civil servants, including teachers and doctors, saw their pay shrivel until there was no point in working. Now, though many-perhaps most-Zimbabweans are still on the breadline and 80% have no jobs, at least those in work can predict their income. Inflation is officially running at 5% a year. After years of contraction, the economy is growing-at 8.1% this year, says the finance minister, Tendai Biti, an MDC man.

Health care and education have improved markedly, from rock-bottom. Hospitals that had run out of the most basic medicines, as well as staff, have begun to function again. More recently more than 13m textbooks, paid for by Western donors, have started to be delivered under the eye of Unicef to all the country's 5,600-odd primary schools.

Sales of beer and beverages are sharply up on a year ago. Other indicators, such as sales of roofing material, point to busier economic activity. Traffic in downtown Harare is a lot more clogged than a couple of years ago-and not just because many of the traffic lights are still not working.

The decline in some types of farming may have bottomed out. Tobacco production, for instance, which peaked at around 230m kg in 2000, just as the mass expropriation of white farms got going, slumped to around 59m kg last year. But this year's sales suggest that output, thanks in part to a rise in smallholder planting, may have risen to around 120m kg (though that figure may include smuggled imports). Some minerals are also beginning to do better again, notably gold and platinum. And though the ruling party and its military backers plainly hope to filch the diamonds from newly developed fields in the Marange area, Mr Biti is determined to ensure that the Treasury also benefits.

With recovery, the proportion of Zimbabweans needing food handouts has dropped sharply. Two years ago the UN's World Food Programme found that at least half the country's 8m-9m people relied on them. This year probably only 15% of rural folk will do so.

Breadbasket no more

But the economy as a whole is still in dire straits. Driving for 140km (87 miles) along the main arterial road eastwards from Harare, you pass mile after mile of derelict and seemingly empty farmland that was once among the most productive in Africa. Not a single pedigree cow is to be seen-nor, for that matter, one white face. Grass along many of the verges has been burnt, apparently because hungry people have been trying to flush out rodents for food. Milk production, though well up on last year's figure, is seven times smaller than it was. Beef production has fallen nearly fourfold. You see the same desolate picture across the country, once the region's breadbasket as well as one of the world's largest producers of top-quality tobacco.

Of the 4,500 white farmers who owned 6,800 farms, barely 150 still hold their original tracts, according to John Worsley-Worswick, who runs Justice for Agriculture, a lobby that stands up for commercial farmers and their employees. Another 200 or so have stayed on at least a portion of their land, often as managers or leaseholders. (At least 75% of the country's white farmers, he notes, bought their land on the open market after independence in 1980, having acquired certificates to show that neither the government nor black Zimbabweans wished or were able to buy it.) The invasions are still going on, despite the GPA's assurance that they would stop, with white farmers still subjected to assault and arson as the police look on. Around 278,000 whites once lived in Zimbabwe; now, at a guess, there are around 12,000.

A large majority of the 350,000 permanent black workers and 270,000 seasonal ones who worked on white farms, with at least 1.5m dependants between them, have lost their livelihoods as a result of the expropriations. Most of them were denied land elsewhere in the communally owned rural areas (formerly known as "tribal trust lands") because they or their forebears came from poorer neighbouring countries, such as Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique. Fewer than 2% of them have benefited from the confiscations. Thousands have been reduced to living in shacks on the edge of towns. Many were among the 700,000 victims of Operation Murambatsvina, when Zanu-PF decided to sweep away entire shanty-towns in 2005.

The exodus of Zimbabweans abroad, especially to South Africa, has yet to be stemmed, though nearly 420,000 people have been helped to return this year. Figures are disputed, but economic chaos and political repression may have caused a good 3m Zimbabweans to emigrate. The UN's refugee agency counted 149,000 of them applying for political asylum in South Africa last year alone, quite apart from the much larger number who have slipped over the border for work and melted into the population.

Despite the country's surge in economic activity, a drastic decline in manufacturing will be hard to reverse, as cheap Chinese goods flood the local market. Mr Mugabe's law on "indigenisation and economic empowerment", enacted in 2007 but due for implementation only this year, has deterred all but the boldest firms, at home and abroad, from investing.

The aim of the law is to ensure that all businesses worth more than $500,000 should be majority-owned by black Zimbabweans. The definition of "indigenous" rules out native-born whites-and, for that matter, rich black South Africans, though Zanu-PF is always liable to make exceptions for people who pay enough. Mr Mugabe and his allies are candidly racist in espousing the bill, which they promote as complementary to the land-confiscation policy: large-scale property as well as land should belong only to blacks, however liberal individual whites may have been during the struggle for independence.

The human-rights picture is less horrible than it was two years ago, when Zanu-PF conducted a reign of terror, particularly in the countryside, in response to the MDC's election victory. And that itself came only a year after thugs presumed to be operating under the aegis of Zanu-PF nearly killed Mr Tsvangirai, breaking his skull, and, in a separate incident in prison, beating him to a pulp, before he was charged with treason, a capital offence. (The mutilated body of Edward Chikomba, the cameraman who conveyed the picture of Mr Tsvangirai's battered head to the wider world, was found by the roadside outside Harare, the capital, two weeks later.) Thousands of villagers who were thought to have voted for the MDC were displaced, their houses often burned down. Hundreds were killed.

Short sleeves, long sleeves

But though violence on such a scale has ended for the moment, fear is growing again, partly because Zanu-PF senses that another election may be in the offing. In the past few months a Constitutional Parliamentary Committee, known as COPAC, has been sending "outreach teams" around the country, in theory to discuss a new constitution that is supposed to be drafted in parliament, then endorsed in a referendum. More than a thousand meetings have been held. Many have been peaceful, but Zanu-PF thugs, in an exercise known as Operation Chimumumu ("dumb person"), have been beating up and in a few cases killing suspected MDC supporters who disagree with a so-called Kariba draft favoured by Mr Mugabe. It would, among other things, allow the old man in theory another ten years in office.

"We don't have short sleeves, long sleeves any more," says an opposition leader near Macheke, east of Harare, referring to the way the Zanu-PF thugs treated those suspected of voting for the MDC: "short sleeves" meant that their arms were axed above the elbow, "long sleeves" at the wrist. "But the fear is growing." "All that our people want is food and peace," says a worried priest in a rural area north-east of Harare. "But these [Zanu-PF] guys are starting to come back." A queasy feeling persists that, while the violence is mostly low-key and confined to the countryside, it could erupt in the run-up to another election. Jabulani Sibanda, a leader of the so-called "vets", most of whom are far too young to have been true veterans of the guerrilla war against Iain Smith in the 1970s, has recently been terrorising villagers suspected of MDC sympathies in parts of central Zimbabwe.

Although the terror of mid-2008 subsided once it was clear that Mr Mugabe was still pretty much in charge, many leading human-rights campaigners have fled the country: Jestina Mukoko, abducted in late 2008 and held in secret for several months; Noel Kututwa, director of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, whose band of 8,000-odd brave volunteer monitors prevented Zanu-PF from wholesale ballot-stuffing at the polling stations; Gertrude Hambira of the farm workers' union; and, most recently, Roy Bennett, the MDC's white treasurer and deputy agriculture minister-designate, re-elected as an MP in a landslide in an entirely black constituency, whom, for that very reason, Mr Mugabe still refuses to appoint. After Mr Bennett's eventual acquittal this year on a trumped-up charge of terrorism, for which he spent months in prison, the police say they want to interrogate him on new unspecified charges; he is in hiding abroad.

Tsvangirai's travails

The political picture is patchier still. Plainly, Mr Mugabe has abided only by those parts of the GPA that suit him. A few advances can, however, be chalked up. Commissions on the media, human rights and elections have been set up under decent chairmen. The media has more space, with new licences approved for eight publications, including NewsDay, which offers a far more rounded picture than the Zanu-PF-controlled Herald. The Daily News, by far Zimbabwe's best newspaper until its presses were blown up in 2001, may revive soon. The very fact that Mr Tsvangirai and Mr Mugabe sit down together in cabinet every Monday, apparently without rancour, marks a dramatic turnaround.

But on a range of issues Mr Mugabe ensures that his prime minister is often kept out of the loop, in blatant defiance of the GPA. He has refused, among many other things, to remove the central-bank governor, Gideon Gono, or the attorney-general, Johannes Tomana, both leading authors of the country's economic and human-rights disasters. Above all, he has kept his hands tightly on the levers of hard power: the courts, still largely in the hands of Zanu-PF judges, and in particular the army, the police and the feared Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). By various means, including dirty tricks, deaths and suspensions, the MDC's wafer-thin majority in the lower house has been whittled away, though it technically still has control if the unreliable Mr Mutambara's small slice of the party votes with the main bit.

Owing partly to the MDC's own lack of guile, the country's three most repressive laws, the Public Order and Security Act (known as POSA), the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, are still in force. The sole broadcaster is still under Mr Mugabe's thumb-and full of hate-speak. Even when some of his closest aides and MPs have been arrested or accused on spurious charges, Mr Tsvangirai has been unable to prevent the police or CIO from obeying Zanu-PF's orders to hamstring his party, disperse meetings and beat up its members.

Yet he remains incorrigibly hopeful, refusing to criticise Mr Mugabe even for his patent foot-dragging and abuse of the terms of the GPA, which states that the security forces and courts should be politically neutral. "He's an old man who wants to let go," he says of the president. "He's looking for an exit strategy that restores his legacy in Zimbabwe and the world."

Mr Tsvangirai has been accused of weakness and dithering by some of his supporters, who want him to express the people's outrage more forcibly. Even on such core issues as the land confiscations and the indigenisation act, he sounds emollient. "We can't reverse the land reform," he says. "But there should be a one-family-one-farm policy" and "we must provide for compensation [for the white farmers] as a matter of principle." "We have modified the [indigenisation] law," he says, without demanding its removal. New "sectoral thresholds" must be laid down, so that in some parts of the economy, for instance in mining, maybe only 5% of the company would have to be allocated to black Zimbabweans-"on a willing-buyer-willing-seller basis, at proper value". This is a far cry from Mr Mugabe's ferocious insistence on 51% of all mid-sized companies and all land going willy-nilly to blacks. But it does not signify flat-out opposition to drastic, race-based redistribution.

The whites have lost everything-and so has she

Mr Tsvangirai's apparent aim, rather than demanding in vain that the GPA's terms be met, is to entrench his MDC in government and prepare the road towards a fresh round of elections by the end of next year. That involves preparing a new voter roll and ensuring that, for a change, the election is properly monitored. In the past, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), an influential 15-country regional club which South Africa unofficially leads, has whitewashed flawed polls in Mr Mugabe's favour. Now, thinks Mr Tsvangirai, SADC and South Africa, especially its current president, Jacob Zuma, having accepted him as a legitimate prime minister rather than an upstart or a traitor, are likely to give him a fairer wind.

Mr Tsvangirai also calls for the lifting of the personal sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United States and a few other countries against Mr Mugabe and 200 or so of his closest colleagues, who blame these measures entirely for Zimbabwe's misfortunes. But in return the president must, he says, guarantee that the coming election will be conducted fairly.

Is this mere wishful thinking? Mr Tsvangirai, noting that against the odds the MDC still managed to win the previous general election, evidently thinks he can pull off the feat more decisively next time. He has also let it be known that he would, if given the chance, form a government of all the talents, including the less venal members of Zanu-PF. He has promised not to impose a policy of retribution.

He even thinks he can accommodate the "securocrats", as Zimbabwe's high-ranking military people and police are known, who have become ever more powerful and rich (from the proceeds of diamonds, among other things) since the sullied election of 2008, and who are now considered Zanu-PF's most important constituency. Undoubtedly, the security people are jockeying behind the scenes as the succession draws near. These men with guns probably think they can keep Mr Tsvangirai out of power altogether-and for good. But the prime minister is a survivor, and may be cannier than he looks.

Kennedy Mhondiwa	10/05/2010	18:371 (18:1344) CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT BANK FRAUD (1s) - Disposition: BOP 21 months; S/R 2 yrs.; MSA $100; Restitution $20,867.79.
Cloud Mhondiwa	10/05/2010	18:371 (18:1344) CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT BANK FRAUD (1s) - Disposition: BOP 15 months; S/R 2 yrs.; MSA $100

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