The Sunday Mail
By Prof Jonathan Moyo, MP
Is Morgan Tsvangirai a political charlatan who has caused untold harm to Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans and who as such is unfit to be a national leader? The compelling answer to this question of the moment whose truth might be uncomfortable to some with partisan interests is a resounding yes.
When everything about Tsvangirai is said and done there can be no escaping the screaming fact that he is just a political quack that has been thrust by history upon us for reasons or sins which only posterity shall tell.
This perception is developing into a reality as Zimbabweans begin to understand the full import of the false crisis that Prime Minister Tsvangirai tried but failed to create a few weeks ago through his now infamous October 7 letters under the spurious and irrelevant claim that President Robert Mugabe had unconstitutionally appointed the attorney-general, five judges, six ambassadors and 10 provincial governors.
An overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans — especially among prospective voters — now appreciate that it is wrong and even treacherous to give national responsibility to a hopeless charlatan who is a sellout and who is as irresponsible as Tsvangirai has proven to be.
Before he joined Government on February 11 2009 Tsvangirai was seen by his foreign handlers and local supporters as a brave and courageous leader. But over the last 20 months the growing view about Tsvangirai from across the political divide in and outside the country is that his alleged bravery and courage is without responsibility and is therefore not different from hooliganism. No wonder why he tends to squander leadership opportunities by choosing the road of hooligans.
Fundamentally, and this is the poisonous source of his now inevitable downfall, Tsvangirai has over the years displayed a gross preponderance of being a fatal law onto himself at great cost to our country.
This has defined Tsvangirai’s treacherous politics with the result of making him an unmitigated, total, complete and utter sellout who epitomises and personifies the modern Tshombe. As a result the bottomline is not only that Tsvangirai is a bad or poor leader but that he is unfit to govern and thus has no business in being in government let alone leading it. There is a telling background to this now unavoidable conclusion.
In 2000 soon after the formation of the MDC and without any provocation other than his uncontrollable urge to be a law onto himself typified by his legendary pandering to the irresponsible, hooligan, racist and violent instincts that define his Rhodesian party, Tsvangirai shocked everyone by calling on President Mugabe “to go peacefully” or risk being removed from office by the MDC “violently”. If the long-term seriousness of that defining incident and the reaction to it by nationalist forces in the country have not given any lasting lessons to MDC founders and funders who to this day keep making unacceptable noise about security sector reforms in Zimbabwe then those regime-change mamparas will never learn anything.
Another very serious example of Tsvangirai’s reckless readiness to be a dangerous law unto himself to the detriment of his own country was played out between January 2001 and February 2002 when the political establishments in the US and the EU used him and his MDC as destabilisation tools and propaganda megaphones for instituting illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe whose full toll is yet to be told notwithstanding that a lot more is now known about that dirty saga.
The political import of Tsvangirai’s latest stunt to create a false crisis by alleging that President Mugabe has unconstitutionally appointed the attorney-general, five judges, six ambassadors and 10 provincial governors, among other unnamed Government or State positions, is not substantively different from his violent and illegal threat against President Mugabe in 2000 or his illegal role in leading the US and EU to impose illegal economic sanctions against our country between 2001 and 2002.
In particular there are three major implications of Tsvangirai’s latest stunt which warrant full attention and they are the following:
When it comes to the rule of law about which Tsvangirai and his MDC have made too much noise in pursuit of cheap politics, it can now be said without fear or favour and without prejudice that Tsvangirai is a charlatan who has no chance of recognising the rule of law even if it were to smack him on his fat face. This conclusion is necessitated by the reckless, irresponsible and illegal letter that Tsvangirai wrote to the Chief Justice on October 7 2010 declaring President Mugabe’s appointment of five judges who had been recommended by the Judicial Services Commission as “unconstitutional, null and void” and announcing that he would not recognise the judges in question.
Tsvangirai’s declaration and announcement in his October 7 letter to the Chief Justice makes him a charlatan because he has no authority or power to write to the Chief Justice about a matter which could end up in the courts nor does he have power under the Constitution to declare anything as “unconstitutional, null and void” and to proceed on the basis of his own illegal declaration.
There’s another consideration which seals Tsvangirai’s status as a political charlatan. On the same October 7 date when he sent an illegal letter to the Chief Justice without any authority or power to do so, Tsvangirai also wrote a letter to the EU asking that body — which has imposed illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe — not to recognise Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to the EU whose credentials Brussels had already accepted.
Tsvangirai sent the treacherous letter to the EU when he knew or should have known that as Prime Minister he has no constitutional power or authority or ministerial responsibility to handle or deal with anything relating to foreign affairs or defence.
What adds salt to injury is that Tsvangirai’s October 7 letter to the EU was a blatant attack on Zimbabwe’s sovereignty and it should be prosecutable for that treasonous reason.
Tsvangirai’s October 7 letters to the Chief Justice and the EU respectively, and indeed his other letters sent on that day to other foreign authorities with a similar message, demonstrate not only poor and bad leadership but also breathtaking policy bankruptcy. As far as Tsvangirai and his MDC are concerned, it is now official that whenever they make noise it is always about positions and not policies: Tsvangirai and his MDC cronies want positions in Government but they have no policies for Government to support the positions they want.
What this means is that Tsvangirai sees Government as a gravy train and the evidence for that is now there for the asking. The three major implications of Tsvangirai’s latest stunt at creating a false constitutional crisis arising from his ill-fated October 7 letters outlined above need further elaboration in order to fully appreciate why and how
Tsvangirai is the ultimate political charlatan who now needs to be shown the ultimate door out of our national politics at the next polls if it cannot be done before then. In the first place, there’s something very scandalous about Tsvangirai’s preoccupation with positions for his kitchen cabinet and cronies over policies for the nation.
This preoccupation demonstrates not only Tsvangirai’s poor and bad leadership but also his breathtaking policy bankruptcy which is typical of sellouts who invariably serve as empty vessels to front harmful foreign interests.
Positions for the kitchen cabinet and Tsvangirai’s village boys matter more to the MDC-T than national policies and that is why, come to think of it, Tsvangirai and his cronies have never threatened to quit the coalition Government or written treacherous and treasonous letters to the usual foreign authorities over a policy dispute with Zanu-PF. The disputes that have threatened the collapse of the coalition Government have always been about individual appointments of this or that MDC crony, with Roy Bennett’s Rhodesian quest for the position of deputy minister of agriculture ruling the roost.
But something sinister has been unfolding on the policy front. While everyone interested in what is happening in our body politic knows that some dubious documents have been flying all over the place purporting to be either MDC-T policy positions or, even worse, initiatives of the Prime Minister’s Office on policy issues such as the 100 days government programme, security sector reform, constitutional reform, media reform, government’s work programme hurriedly and controversially presented to Parliament last December by Tsvangirai including a range of other sectoral development issues.
What everybody does not know is that these and other related so-called MDC-T policy documents or alleged initiatives of the Prime Minister, including the restructuring of his office and the reshuffle of Cabinet ministers from his party, have been done not by Tsvangirai and not by his kitchen cabinet co-ordinated by Ian Makone and Jameson Timba, who still don’t know whether they are coming or going, but by foreigners fronted by some hostile governments under the cover of some outfit called Adam Smith International, which has links with foreign intelligence organisations.
While the number of foreigners who are directing the MDC-T’s policy thrust as the leaders of the parallel government run from the Prime Minister’s Office has fluctuated since February 13 2009, its initial stock had five busybodies ensconced in Munhumutapa Building before moving to the open ambience of Avondale where they foolishly think they are hiding while still doing the same dirty work against our national interest.
In the second place, and taking into account his policy bankruptcy which has allowed foreign intelligence interests to smuggle themselves into his office through functionaries of Adam Smith International who run his office and who ipso facto run the MDC-T itself, Tsvangirai’s October 7 letter asking the EU not to recognise Zimbabwe’s Ambassador in Brussels sums up his Uncle Tom image as a sellout who surpasses the ranks of Tshombe whose fronting of foreign interests destroyed the national interests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo under the founding nationalist leadership of Patrice Lumumba.
Many young people who have followed the story of Tsvangirai’s October 7 letters to foreign authorities have been left unable to understand why their Prime Minister believes it is right to invite foreigners, who include anti-Zimbabwe racists whose political establishments once colonised our country, into our domestic affairs such as appointments to some positions in Government or the State.
It is not possible that any politician in the UK, US or EU — leave alone the pretenders in Australia, New Zealand and Canada — would even contemplate writing to foreign authorities to seek their intervention over a domestic issue. That is a political taboo and Zimbabwe’s youth can see and understand Tsvangirai’s folly and treachery and the same is not lost to Tsvangirai’s foreign handlers who are clearly embarrassed by his shameful antics.
The fact that Tsvangirai wants foreigners in the US, EU and even the UN to have a say on who is appointed to professional and constitutional positions in the civil service, the judiciary and the foreign service demonstrates beyond any doubt that he has been spoiled by foreign governments which have since 2000, but more so in 2008, sought to use him to influence, if not determine, who occupies political positions in Government after a national election.
In other words, Tsvangirai’s October 7 letters show that he has become a spoiled sellout who imagines that he can get away with anything against Zimbabwe’s national interests and sovereignty. The time to put a permanent stop to Tsvangirai’s nonsense has come and it shall be stopped come rain or shine.
In the third place — and this is what proves even to neutrals that Tsvangirai is an unmitigated, total, complete and utter sellout as he is a charlatan — is the letter he wrote to the Chief Justice on October 7 declaring President Mugabe’s appointment of five judges who had been lawfully recommended by the Judicial Services Commission as “unconstitutional, null and void” and announcing that he would not recognise the five judges.
You will not find a crass attack on the rule of law and the separation of powers worse than Tsvangirai’s October 7 letter to the Chief Justice. Even fools know that the courts are approached not through letters but by making court applications in terms of the regulated due process of the law.
What this means is that if Tsvangirai, as a self-proclaimed champion of the rule of law, wanted the attention or action of the Supreme Court, he should have filed a court application through his lawyers instead of writing what was clearly a stupid letter whose desired legal import was not worth the paper it was written on.
Any member of the executive anywhere in the world, as is Tsvangirai as Prime Minister Tsvangirai, who writes a letter directly to the judiciary about any matter whatsoever without going through the Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs, if the matter is of a policy nature, or through their lawyer, if the matter is of a legal nature requiring a decision by the court, is a charlatan who is a danger to the rule of law in any constitutional democracy.
What makes Tsvangirai’s October 7 letter to the Chief Justice worse than his other letters of the same date on the same matter is that it contained the following words: “I have now informed the President that I see little alternative but to declare these appointments (of five judges) as unconstitutional — and along with a number of other appointments which he has made — and that I therefore cannot recognise the appointees as serving judges”.
Let us be clear. There is no law or provision of the GPA which says any Government or State appointment made by the President will be “unconstitutional, null and void” if the Prime Minister does not recognise it. So what was the import of Tsvangirai’s declaration to the Chief Justice that he does not recognise the five judges appointed by the President as serving judges? Should judges serve only when they are recognised by Tsvangirai as judges? What rank nonsense is this?
To be sure, if Tsvangirai was not the charlatan that he is and thus had a serious and legitimate constitutional or legal matter of concern about the appointment of the five judges in question along with the other appointments he has queried, he should have in the first instance made an application to the Supreme Court seeking a declaratory order invalidating the appointments he is not happy with.
But instead of giving the Supreme Court an opportunity to adjudicate over the matter without prejudice, Tsvangirai himself declared the appointments unconstitutional, null and void and wrote a letter to the Chief Justice on October 7 advising him of his declaration. Is that the rule of law or does Tsvangirai imagine that he is some king who can make declarations and inform the courts after the fact simply because the EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand always interpret the rule of law in Zimbabwe in his favour?
You do not need to be a lawyer to understand that Tsvangirai cannot now approach any court of law in this country with an application seeking the nullification of any of the appointments that he has disputed. This is because his hands are now dirty and he is a fugitive from justice because he has operated outside the law by judging his own cause and communicating his judgment to the courts on October 7. He now cannot be heard by any court in the hope that the judiciary would endorse his fugitive status.
As such, media reports that Tsvangirai is contemplating suing President Mugabe over the disputed appointments are a pie in the sky with no legal merit even in the jungle itself where natural justice rules. Tsvangirai should stew in his own fat and forget it.
There’s no need to split hairs over Schedule 8 of the Constitution which is an unhelpful reproduction of an unjusticiable Article XX of the GPA inserted for informational purposes after the enactment of Amendment 19 of the Constitution. There’s also no need to assess that Schedule against Section 31K of the Constitution whose provisions would stand and take prominence even if Schedule 8 was justiciable.
The fundamental issue is simply that Tsvangirai is not just a political charlatan and ultimate sellout who is unfit to govern this country and who must henceforth be dealt with accordingly but also that his hands are so dirty that he can’t approach the courts with those hands of his and expect to be heard, let alone hope, to have his dirty hands cleaned by the court.
So he must just shut up and get on with it as he awaits his assured shellacking at the next polls if he still would be around by then.
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