MDC-T, rather than security sector, needs reform

Instead of trying to pick unnecessary fights with the security forces, Tsvangirai must walk his party's mantra of change and transform his party from a British regime change project into a progressive Zimbabwean party that differs with Zanu-PF on the modalities of governing but not the objectives. Judging by the way he has gone about his politics and the company he has kept since his party's launch on September 11 1999, it is Tsvangirai and MDC-T, and not the security sector, who are in need of reform.
The Herald

By Caesar Zvayi
IT'S an art that has been perfected by Western rabble-rousers and, it is hardly surprising to see Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T try to employ it here. It is the art of deception that was used to start wars in Vietnam, Iraq and now Libya.
After flying the kite for the firing of Zimbabwe's war-tempered generals, a stunt MDC-T euphemistically calls ‘‘security sector reforms,'' the party has decided to manufacture the need for such reforms. This agenda setting follows Zanu-PF and the Sadc facilitation team's insistence that there won't be any renegotiation of the GPA through the back door since ‘‘security sector'' reforms were never part of the GPA.

The need to manufacture a reason for reforms explains the potshots Tsvangirai has been throwing at the country's service chiefs. His game is to provoke a verbal exchange with them in the hope that the service chiefs say something that MDC-T could cite as grounds for the said reforms.

The whole campaign escalated with the abortive, amateurish job on Tendai Biti's security wall in the run-up to the extra-ordinary Summit of Sadc heads of state and governments that was held in Sandton, South Africa this month.

When that stunt proved to be an embarrassment for the super-victim himself, Biti and the MDC-T, focus had to turn to provoking the service chiefs. This explains Tsvangirai's so-called challenge, and the unprovoked statements like ‘‘come and shoot me,'' ‘‘am ready to rot in jail,'' that he has been spewing at his rallies and the obliging headlines from the captive private media that allege a state security plot to kill Tsvangirai.

Overnight, Tsvangirai, a confirmed lilly-liver is being cast as a braveheart who can stand eyeball to eyeball with the country's generals. Reading the headlines in the private media, one would never believe this is the same Tsvangirai who lasted no more than 24 hours in a liberation training camp before fleeing to work in a textile mill in Mutare, before joining Bindura's Trojan Nickel Mine en route to the ZCTU. One could hardly believe this is the same man who fled his family home in Strathaven to hide in the Royal Netherlands Embassy claiming he feared for his life during the 2008 presidential run-off campaign. Anyway, enough about the man and his warts.


Morgan Tsvangirai...who is watching from behind?The so-called security sector reforms being called for by MDC-T are nothing more than an attempt to effect regime change through negotiation rather than through a constitutionally acquired mandate, which mandate can only derive from a national election. Contrary to popular belief, regime change does not only refer to a change in the government of the day, but entails the replacement of all or part of a state's existing institutions, administrative structures, bureaucracy and other elements. This is why the poll roadmap the MDC-T is pushing is all about changing key institutions ostensibly to create an environment conducive for free and fair elections, yet MDC-T leaders are mum on the economic sanctions that were imposed to influence voting patterns.

This focus on negotiated regime change should help us understand why the MDC-T is demanding, among other things, security sector and media reforms. They feel these sectors are central to the sustenance and survival of the Zimbabwean State. The whole MDC-T campaign can be traced to the statement made by service chiefs in the run-up to the 2002 presidential election when they made it clear that they would only stand in support of political leaders who support and advance the objectives of the liberation struggle. The statement that was read by the then Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander General Vitalis Zvinavashe in the presence of fellow service chiefs on January 9 2002 made it clear that the ZDF are the custodians of the gains of the struggle and would never support anyone with a different agenda:

‘‘We wish to make it very clear to all Zimbabwean citizens that the security organisations will only stand in support of those political leaders that will pursue Zimbabwean values, traditions and beliefs for which thousands of lives were lost in the pursuit of Zimbabwe's hard won independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and national interests. To this end, let it be known that the highest office in the land is a straitjacket whose occupant is expected to observe the objectives of the liberation struggle. We will therefore not accept, let alone support or salute, anyone with a different agenda that threatens the very existence of our sovereignty,'' the service chiefs said.

On his retirement in 2003, Gen Zvinavashe was succeeded by then ZNA Commander, Lieutenant General Constantine Chiwenga on January 1 2004. Gen Chiwenga has since, on numerous occasions, reiterated the ZDF's resolve to stand by a progressive, patriotic political leadership. So what is Tsvangirai's problem? In demanding that the generals be fired, Tsvangirai is in effect saying he can't fit into the straitjacket for which over 50 000 patriots paid the ultimate sacrifice during the liberation struggle.

Tsvangirai is saying he is an enemy of the struggle. By refusing to cut the umblical cord that links his party to the Westminister Foundation, Tsvangirai is saying he would rather have regime change so that the quisling politics his party stands for can be accepted by pliant security forces.

The ZDF is a professional army with officers, who distinguished themselves in liberating this country, have excelled on UN duties and have kept the peace even in the MDC-T's favourite haunts in Europe.
ZDF personnel and officers have acquitted themselves well at home and abroad, hence there is no call at all for changing the command or reforming their operations. What MDC-T is demanding is akin to having apartheid South Africa functionaries demand a reform of the South African and Namibian Defence Forces on the grounds that they back the ANC and Swapo. Akin to having Unita and Renamo contest the command of the Angolan and Mozambican Security Forces on the grounds that they back the MPLA and Frelimo! Tsvangirai and his party, as currently constituted, have no leg to stand on as long as they continue proving they are under massive western handholding.

Instead of trying to pick unnecessary fights with the security forces, Tsvangirai must walk his party's mantra of change and transform his party from a British regime change project into a progressive Zimbabwean party that differs with Zanu-PF on the modalities of governing but not the objectives. Judging by the way he has gone about his politics and the company he has kept since his party's launch on September 11 1999, it is Tsvangirai and MDC-T, and not the security sector, who are in need of reform.

Tsvangirai still "ugly duckling" after Livingstone

MDC-T and private media's obsession with Livingstone stems from the fact that they believed Livingstone had put a wedge between Sadc and President Mugabe.
They believed that in Livingstone, Tsvangirai transformed from the politically ugly duckling that he is to a beautiful swan that the region had embraced.
This is why the forces of regime change always harp about Livingstone and not Sandton which reflects the latest Sadc position.
The Herald

By Farirai Chubvu
HOW many extraordinary Sadc Summits on Zimbabwe were held in Sandton, South Africa, and how many communiqués were issued?
If its one communiqué, how come some in a highly literate society like ours can fail to decipher what is in clear black and white?
Whose interest is served by trying to put words into the mouths of the Sadc leadership over the farce that was the Livingstone Troika Communiqué that the Summit refused to endorse in Sandton apart from merely NOTING its existence?
Why does the private media insist on reading from the Livingstone communiqué that was issued by a mere organ of a Summit that reports to the Summit anyway, and not from the Sandton communiqué that was issued by the full Summit?
And, why ask Lindiwe Zulu to comment on Summit when she is a mere member of the SA facilitation team, and not even its spokesperson for that matter?
Where in the world has a facilitator ever had a spokesperson when his/her role is just to facilitate talks between rival parties?
Ask any diplomat worth his/her salt, even Jacquiline Zwambila, and they will attest to the fact that diplomacy has its own conventions and when a report of a sub-committee of an organ is merely noted but not endorsed after its presentation, it means the report is as dead as a dodo.
Therefore, if the Livingstone document was still a living document of Sadc, it would have been formally adopted by the Summit, which it wasn't.
So, the fact of non-adoption, of silence, marked the death of that document.
In any case, all the party principals from Zanu-PF, MDC-T and the MDC acknowledged that the situation in Zimbabwe was now radically different from what it was during the time of the Livingstone Troika Summit; hence Livingstone was overtaken by events.
So to all intents and purposes Troika Livingstone is as dead as the man the venue was named after, and no amount of posturing or pontificating can equate NOTED to ENDORSED.
Any one with a modicum of understanding would know that the Troika is an Organ of Summit and its resolutions only become binding if they are endorsed or adopted by full Summit, otherwise they remain recommendations to be noted for historical purposes but not acted on in practical terms.
But what is it about Livingstone that has turned the MDC-T and its coteries of NGOs into Livingstonites?
Believe me it's not about the content of the Troika communiqué which among other things called for:

•  the implementation of the GPA and noted with disappointment insufficient progress thereof and expressed its impatience in the delay of the implementation of the GPA.l noted with grave concern the polarisation of the political environment as characterised by, inter alia, resurgence of violence, arrests and intimidation in Zimbabwe.
• an immediate end of violence, intimidation, hate speech, harassment, and any other form of action that contradicts the letter and spirit of GPA;
• all stakeholders to the GPA to implement all the provisions of the GPA and create a conducive environment for peace, security, and free political activity;
•  the inclusive Government in Zimbabwe to complete all the steps necessary for the holding of the election including the finalisation of the constitutional amendment and the referendum;
•  Sadc should assist Zimbabwe to formulate guidelines that will assist in holding an election that will be peaceful, free and fair, in accordance with the Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections;

Surely, it is not these recommendations that drive the MDC-T's obsession with Livingstone because the party itself is implicated in all of them.
MDC-T and private media's obsession with Livingstone stems from the fact that they believed Livingstone had put a wedge between Sadc and President Mugabe.
They believed that in Livingstone, Tsvangirai transformed from the politically ugly duckling that he is to a beautiful swan that the region had embraced.
This is why the forces of regime change always harp about Livingstone and not Sandton which reflects the latest Sadc position.
The obsession with Livingstone stems from the regime change lobbyists' mistaken belief that Sadc had ditched President Mugabe, the way the Arab League ditched Colonel Muammar Gaddafi prior to the scandalous UN Security Council Resolution 1973 that paved way for the bombardment of Libya.
But, Tsvangirai committed one fatal mistake in Livingstone that is now coming back to haunt him.
He lied about the situation in Zimbabwe and the region has since called his bluff, which is why in Sandton he spoke for no more than two minutes.
While lies can work on gullible MDC-T supporters, they do not work in a region like Sadc with its rich history of dealing askaris like Moise Tshombe, Jonas Savimbi and Afonso Dhlakama, to mention just a few.
So, to the MDC-T leaders and their coterie of NGOs, its better to expend energy on finding solutions to the multi-faceted challenges confronting the nation stemming from the ruinous economic sanctions you grovelled for, the meddlesome western hands that handle you and the politics of destructive engagement you stand for.
Livingstone is as dead as a dodo, the sooner you realise it, the better.

Audit the impact of sanctions

 With scores of Zimbabwean companies and businessmen featuring on the sanctions list, they surely should provide statistics of how they have been affected.
This is the work of auditors, which an educated country like Zimbabwe has in abundance.
Zimbabwe has universities and other institutions of higher learning that should have an easy task looking at the sanctions issue.
The Herald

By Tichaona Zindoga
After being confronted by a group of demonstrators and allegedly challenged to sign the anti-sanctions petition recently, MDC-T secretary general and Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who did not face off with the youths, later made an interesting statement to the media.
He poured water on the anti-sanctions drive, in an offhand, arrogant if not almost disarming manner.

President Mugabe launched the National Anti--Sanctions Petition Campaign in March in Harare seeking to present a raucous two million signatures against the United States and the European Union which imposed sanctions on the country.

Buying into the bilateral land dispute between Britain and Zimbabwe, the US promulgated the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act in 2001 while the EU followed suit a year later with similar measures.

The day, which brought thousands of people outside the Harare Showgrounds remains one of the most politically compelling in recent times as around 30 000 people came together.
The sheer significance of numbers even made a downpour that had threatened to break on the multitudes of people to scatter and waft off.

Speakers from different sections of society spoke against sanctions.
The message was clear.

Not even the alibi-like press conference that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai called at his Number 2 Lyndhurst Lane Strathaven home in Harare failed to take the sting and zing of the message.
The people had spoken.

And, when the campaign was taken to the provinces, it had a generous uptake.
Now the two-million figure has reportedly been surpassed with numbers said to be daring the three-million mark.

The youths that went to Biti's offices at the New Government Complex sought to take the campaign to the doorstep of the man widely believed to have authored sanctions against Zimbabwe.
But Biti did not turn up because he had allegedly been in meetings.

"Even if I was not in meetings, I was not going to sign that stupid petition because I am not open to political and bankrupt thugs. I am bound by a principle and that principle is what I am," he averred.
Adding, "I cannot and was not going to legitimise an illegitimate process.
"The entire sanctions issue has been heavily politicised and the gymnastics you witnessed at my offices are part of the politicisation of that issue."

He said that the sanctions issue was a Zanu-PF baby just like his party had its own programmes.
Biti, a lawyer by profession, thus got away with it.
Those who see the injustice in the sanctions that the West has imposed on Zimbabwe and thus believe in the value of the anti-sanctions campaign will no doubt feel slighted by Biti's remarks.

After all the sanctions have been acknowledged, revised and otherwise upheld by those that imposed them.
Their existence is a well-known fact.
The Global Political Agreement between Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations on which the current inclusive Government is predicated acknowledged the presence and undesirability of sanctions binding all parties to work for their removal.

However, the issue of sanctions remains a tricky subject which the likes of Biti can willfully mock, defer, deflect or skirt around.
The reason is simple: there has not been a systematic and scientific effort to debunk the issue relating to the cause and effects of the sanctions.
In this vein, while it is widely remarked that Biti and others authored the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, American sanctions package against Zimbabwe, who has come up with sound evidence to demonstrate that?

Were Biti to confront any of the youths that came to his offices to make good of their claim that he is the brains behind Zidera, would they be forthcoming?
It is highly unlikely as well that were Biti to call the demonstrators to provide evidence of sanctions scant would be available, at least among the party that confronted him.
A random pick from the street would yield similar, unflattering results.

But, the sanctions are there, aren't they?
Biti and his MDC company once pigheadedly denied the sanctions' existence but, they have since forced to grudgingly acknowledge them, with a lot of sophistry to take refuge in.
While Minister Biti met the likes of Russ Feingold in America over sanctions, a team of Government and regional officials have sought to have the sanctions removed.

The British and Americans have revealed that they work with the MDC, in particular Biti, in coming up with sanctions hit lists and the general direction these measures should take.
While there might be compelling evidence around to bare it all on sanctions, precious little has been proffered to the ordinary man and woman.
If anything, the issue sanctions has been discussed on largely an emotional, non-scientific, non-empirical and political scale.

It is little doubt that while lacking the empirical evidence of sanctions, the many people that made the big crowd outside the Showgrounds that day and those who have signed the anti-sanctions petition did so out of the patriotism.
This is patriotism that hates that other countries would dare craft laws against this sovereign land; the same countries being those that which the people defeated to attain Independence in 1980.

The same countries that people have been told were behind the economic malaise of the past decade.
The same countries that created the MDC to undo the gains of the liberation struggle including the land reform programme that reconnected the majority blacks with the land that had been stolen from their ancestors.

So, from the political perspective, those against sanctions have done well, even in the face of accusations of "politicking" and propaganda to the contrary.
But more needs to be done.
In fact, more should have been done already to prove that sanctions are hurtful and constitute a national emergency.

In imposing sanctions against Zimbabwe, the US says the southern African country poses an "extraordinary and continuing threat" to the national security and interests of the US.
The United States hides behind the rhetoric of democracy and human rights, saying Zimbabwe's alleged assault on these poses mortal danger to its administration.
Zimbabwe knows that by reclaiming its land, it was not only righting a historical and socio-economic wrong, and embarking on an agrarian revolution that is why it was being sanctioned.

Faced with a hostile counter-measure in the form of US-EU sanctions, why did the country not impose an emergency of its own, one which would have seen Zimbabwe respond in equivalent measure?
It will be recalled that there was once an attempt to play down these sanctions; until the sanctions really hurt.
At the signing of the GPA, why was there no effort to entrench the stated resolve against the interference that sanctions are in the laws of the land, making another amendment to that effect?

Belated measures by a badly exposed Zimbabwe have been but a desperate catch-up game.
During the launch, a call was made that British and American companies, about 800 of them, should disown sanctions and start working with the Government against their mother countries or face sanction themselves.

This was a reverberation of the Zanu-PF conference that was held in Mutare last December.
A combative stance, but has anyone heard anything more on that?
Or on the law that makes it illegal, as it in actual fact is, to campaign or invite sanctions?

One of the greatest points of the anti-sanctions launch was the testimony of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries.
Joseph Kanyekanye, the president of the body, demonstrated how industry has been affected.
In a series of articles that were published in The Sunday Mail he wrote in part: "Are sanctions Western myths, reality or mass deception?

The United States embassy in Harare has declared that sanctions do not affect ordinary Zimbabweans but few individuals and companies.
"The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic recovery Act (2001) or Zidera's existence at the same time with the fact that the US has a visa system and border control measures that could alternatively be used to deal with these individuals and firms suggest some cognitive resonance on me or them.

"Why legislate to deal with individuals when there are already travel instruments?
"Why is the US government maintaining Zidera if there is no intention to stifle efforts by Zimbabwe to deal with its debt and secure funding?
"It is analogous to a person with a nicotine fit who runs around from bar to bar looking for cigarettes while claiming they do not smoke.

"It needs to be pointed out that with the exception of the PTA Bank, Afreximbank and lately the Development Bank of South Africa and some China Development Bank support, Zimbabwe has failed to access the international debt market largely because of sanctions.
"Industry needs at least US$3 billion to creep back!

I have met representatives of virtually every multi-lateral agency to a point that I know their standard line for declining financial assistance.
"They always say sort the political issues first and money will flow. It cannot be anything else or we run the risk of saying that these aforementioned institutions do not do proper due diligences.
"On the contrary, the Afreximbank president is on record as indicating that this all-weather friend of Zimbabwe industries has never failed to get its money back. Zimbabweans, use your world-renowned literacy and

judge for yourself!"
This kind of technocratic and scientific evidence presents just what talk of sanctions has lacked over the years.
By the way, CZI once denied the existence of sanctions, making Kanyakanye's contribution all the more valuable at this juncture.

With scores of Zimbabwean companies and businessmen featuring on the sanctions list, they surely should provide statistics of how they have been affected.
This is the work of auditors, which an educated country like Zimbabwe has in abundance.
Zimbabwe has universities and other institutions of higher learning that should have an easy task looking at the sanctions issue.

Private citizens have been barred from transacting with American companies because they sought to use sanctioned institutions like banks and Government ministries for their commerce.
Someone like Biti won't tell them that sanctions are "targetted" at certain Zanu-PF individuals only.
The statement by former US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell that the living conditions in 2005 had regressed to 1950's levels might need revisiting for the direction the country faced under sanctions.

After all Dell predicted the implosion of the country's economy under sanctions-induced hyper-inflationary pressures.
It was only through extraordinary measures by Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono that Zimbabwe's economy stayed afloat.

In fact, Gono has written a whole book on the depredations of sanctions in the turbulent period of hyperinflation.
His input to the knowledge of sanctions will be invaluable.

Businessman and politician Aguy Georgias is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the European Union over sanctions.
He has published articles on the subject.

The EU has curiously removed him from its hit list.
He has the facts, and presumably has signed the anti-sanctions petition.

There have been arguments on the possibility and desirability of Zimbabwe's class action suit against the EU and US.
One analyst has written about fighting sanctions at the United Nations on the basis that they make the ordinary people suffer.
Having a repository of the effects of sanctions will give a footing to such a venture.

Zimbabweans can ill-afford to be mocked by Biti that their belief in the injustice of sanctions is "stupid" and "bankrupt".
Zanu-PF members and other well-meaning economists and technocrats should not take this lying down.

Biti might be bound by the Moise Tshombe or Nyathi principles of selling out to outsiders and, it is the duty of every technocrat worth his salt to demonstrate that they are beholden to the cause and sovereignty of Zimbabwe.

It is not to be forgotten that Biti's principles also include starving civil servants as he follows the policies of the IMF that gave Zimbabwe the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme.
As such, the devil cannot be allowed to run away with the gospel.

Demonstrating the illegality and the effects of sanctions should reveal the fatuity and evil of his so-called principles.
tichaona.zindoga@zimpapers.co.zw

Audit the impact of sanctions

 With scores of Zimbabwean companies and businessmen featuring on the sanctions list, they surely should provide statistics of how they have been affected.
This is the work of auditors, which an educated country like Zimbabwe has in abundance.
Zimbabwe has universities and other institutions of higher learning that should have an easy task looking at the sanctions issue.
The Herald

By Tichaona Zindoga
After being confronted by a group of demonstrators and allegedly challenged to sign the anti-sanctions petition recently, MDC-T secretary general and Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who did not face off with the youths, later made an interesting statement to the media.
He poured water on the anti-sanctions drive, in an offhand, arrogant if not almost disarming manner.

President Mugabe launched the National Anti--Sanctions Petition Campaign in March in Harare seeking to present a raucous two million signatures against the United States and the European Union which imposed sanctions on the country.

Buying into the bilateral land dispute between Britain and Zimbabwe, the US promulgated the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act in 2001 while the EU followed suit a year later with similar measures.

The day, which brought thousands of people outside the Harare Showgrounds remains one of the most politically compelling in recent times as around 30 000 people came together.
The sheer significance of numbers even made a downpour that had threatened to break on the multitudes of people to scatter and waft off.

Speakers from different sections of society spoke against sanctions.
The message was clear.

Not even the alibi-like press conference that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai called at his Number 2 Lyndhurst Lane Strathaven home in Harare failed to take the sting and zing of the message.
The people had spoken.

And, when the campaign was taken to the provinces, it had a generous uptake.
Now the two-million figure has reportedly been surpassed with numbers said to be daring the three-million mark.

The youths that went to Biti's offices at the New Government Complex sought to take the campaign to the doorstep of the man widely believed to have authored sanctions against Zimbabwe.
But Biti did not turn up because he had allegedly been in meetings.

"Even if I was not in meetings, I was not going to sign that stupid petition because I am not open to political and bankrupt thugs. I am bound by a principle and that principle is what I am," he averred.
Adding, "I cannot and was not going to legitimise an illegitimate process.
"The entire sanctions issue has been heavily politicised and the gymnastics you witnessed at my offices are part of the politicisation of that issue."

He said that the sanctions issue was a Zanu-PF baby just like his party had its own programmes.
Biti, a lawyer by profession, thus got away with it.
Those who see the injustice in the sanctions that the West has imposed on Zimbabwe and thus believe in the value of the anti-sanctions campaign will no doubt feel slighted by Biti's remarks.

After all the sanctions have been acknowledged, revised and otherwise upheld by those that imposed them.
Their existence is a well-known fact.
The Global Political Agreement between Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations on which the current inclusive Government is predicated acknowledged the presence and undesirability of sanctions binding all parties to work for their removal.

However, the issue of sanctions remains a tricky subject which the likes of Biti can willfully mock, defer, deflect or skirt around.
The reason is simple: there has not been a systematic and scientific effort to debunk the issue relating to the cause and effects of the sanctions.
In this vein, while it is widely remarked that Biti and others authored the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, American sanctions package against Zimbabwe, who has come up with sound evidence to demonstrate that?

Were Biti to confront any of the youths that came to his offices to make good of their claim that he is the brains behind Zidera, would they be forthcoming?
It is highly unlikely as well that were Biti to call the demonstrators to provide evidence of sanctions scant would be available, at least among the party that confronted him.
A random pick from the street would yield similar, unflattering results.

But, the sanctions are there, aren't they?
Biti and his MDC company once pigheadedly denied the sanctions' existence but, they have since forced to grudgingly acknowledge them, with a lot of sophistry to take refuge in.
While Minister Biti met the likes of Russ Feingold in America over sanctions, a team of Government and regional officials have sought to have the sanctions removed.

The British and Americans have revealed that they work with the MDC, in particular Biti, in coming up with sanctions hit lists and the general direction these measures should take.
While there might be compelling evidence around to bare it all on sanctions, precious little has been proffered to the ordinary man and woman.
If anything, the issue sanctions has been discussed on largely an emotional, non-scientific, non-empirical and political scale.

It is little doubt that while lacking the empirical evidence of sanctions, the many people that made the big crowd outside the Showgrounds that day and those who have signed the anti-sanctions petition did so out of the patriotism.
This is patriotism that hates that other countries would dare craft laws against this sovereign land; the same countries being those that which the people defeated to attain Independence in 1980.

The same countries that people have been told were behind the economic malaise of the past decade.
The same countries that created the MDC to undo the gains of the liberation struggle including the land reform programme that reconnected the majority blacks with the land that had been stolen from their ancestors.

So, from the political perspective, those against sanctions have done well, even in the face of accusations of "politicking" and propaganda to the contrary.
But more needs to be done.
In fact, more should have been done already to prove that sanctions are hurtful and constitute a national emergency.

In imposing sanctions against Zimbabwe, the US says the southern African country poses an "extraordinary and continuing threat" to the national security and interests of the US.
The United States hides behind the rhetoric of democracy and human rights, saying Zimbabwe's alleged assault on these poses mortal danger to its administration.
Zimbabwe knows that by reclaiming its land, it was not only righting a historical and socio-economic wrong, and embarking on an agrarian revolution that is why it was being sanctioned.

Faced with a hostile counter-measure in the form of US-EU sanctions, why did the country not impose an emergency of its own, one which would have seen Zimbabwe respond in equivalent measure?
It will be recalled that there was once an attempt to play down these sanctions; until the sanctions really hurt.
At the signing of the GPA, why was there no effort to entrench the stated resolve against the interference that sanctions are in the laws of the land, making another amendment to that effect?

Belated measures by a badly exposed Zimbabwe have been but a desperate catch-up game.
During the launch, a call was made that British and American companies, about 800 of them, should disown sanctions and start working with the Government against their mother countries or face sanction themselves.

This was a reverberation of the Zanu-PF conference that was held in Mutare last December.
A combative stance, but has anyone heard anything more on that?
Or on the law that makes it illegal, as it in actual fact is, to campaign or invite sanctions?

One of the greatest points of the anti-sanctions launch was the testimony of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries.
Joseph Kanyekanye, the president of the body, demonstrated how industry has been affected.
In a series of articles that were published in The Sunday Mail he wrote in part: "Are sanctions Western myths, reality or mass deception?

The United States embassy in Harare has declared that sanctions do not affect ordinary Zimbabweans but few individuals and companies.
"The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic recovery Act (2001) or Zidera's existence at the same time with the fact that the US has a visa system and border control measures that could alternatively be used to deal with these individuals and firms suggest some cognitive resonance on me or them.

"Why legislate to deal with individuals when there are already travel instruments?
"Why is the US government maintaining Zidera if there is no intention to stifle efforts by Zimbabwe to deal with its debt and secure funding?
"It is analogous to a person with a nicotine fit who runs around from bar to bar looking for cigarettes while claiming they do not smoke.

"It needs to be pointed out that with the exception of the PTA Bank, Afreximbank and lately the Development Bank of South Africa and some China Development Bank support, Zimbabwe has failed to access the international debt market largely because of sanctions.
"Industry needs at least US$3 billion to creep back!

I have met representatives of virtually every multi-lateral agency to a point that I know their standard line for declining financial assistance.
"They always say sort the political issues first and money will flow. It cannot be anything else or we run the risk of saying that these aforementioned institutions do not do proper due diligences.
"On the contrary, the Afreximbank president is on record as indicating that this all-weather friend of Zimbabwe industries has never failed to get its money back. Zimbabweans, use your world-renowned literacy and

judge for yourself!"
This kind of technocratic and scientific evidence presents just what talk of sanctions has lacked over the years.
By the way, CZI once denied the existence of sanctions, making Kanyakanye's contribution all the more valuable at this juncture.

With scores of Zimbabwean companies and businessmen featuring on the sanctions list, they surely should provide statistics of how they have been affected.
This is the work of auditors, which an educated country like Zimbabwe has in abundance.
Zimbabwe has universities and other institutions of higher learning that should have an easy task looking at the sanctions issue.

Private citizens have been barred from transacting with American companies because they sought to use sanctioned institutions like banks and Government ministries for their commerce.
Someone like Biti won't tell them that sanctions are "targetted" at certain Zanu-PF individuals only.
The statement by former US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell that the living conditions in 2005 had regressed to 1950's levels might need revisiting for the direction the country faced under sanctions.

After all Dell predicted the implosion of the country's economy under sanctions-induced hyper-inflationary pressures.
It was only through extraordinary measures by Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono that Zimbabwe's economy stayed afloat.

In fact, Gono has written a whole book on the depredations of sanctions in the turbulent period of hyperinflation.
His input to the knowledge of sanctions will be invaluable.

Businessman and politician Aguy Georgias is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the European Union over sanctions.
He has published articles on the subject.

The EU has curiously removed him from its hit list.
He has the facts, and presumably has signed the anti-sanctions petition.

There have been arguments on the possibility and desirability of Zimbabwe's class action suit against the EU and US.
One analyst has written about fighting sanctions at the United Nations on the basis that they make the ordinary people suffer.
Having a repository of the effects of sanctions will give a footing to such a venture.

Zimbabweans can ill-afford to be mocked by Biti that their belief in the injustice of sanctions is "stupid" and "bankrupt".
Zanu-PF members and other well-meaning economists and technocrats should not take this lying down.

Biti might be bound by the Moise Tshombe or Nyathi principles of selling out to outsiders and, it is the duty of every technocrat worth his salt to demonstrate that they are beholden to the cause and sovereignty of Zimbabwe.

It is not to be forgotten that Biti's principles also include starving civil servants as he follows the policies of the IMF that gave Zimbabwe the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme.
As such, the devil cannot be allowed to run away with the gospel.

Demonstrating the illegality and the effects of sanctions should reveal the fatuity and evil of his so-called principles.
tichaona.zindoga@zimpapers.co.zw

Regime change agenda now desperate

 Why then make President Mugabe, champion of such causes of the people as land reform and indigenisation step aside when he is willing to be given another mandate by the people?
There is a very idle if not morbid undertone in the proponents of Western regime change in Zimbabwe.
The Herald

By Fortious Nhambura and Tichaona Zindoga
Is the regime change agenda in Zimbabwe, as espoused and nurtured and funded by the West principally through the MDC-formations and the attendant NGOs got so desperate?
This is one of the questions that many readers would ask after being confronted by a real head-turning headline of an op-ed in a daily paper on Thursday.
(Not that it is something new, really.)
"Mugabe must go now", yelled one Dewa Mavhinga, regional co-ordinator of a Western funded outfit, Crisis Coalition.
In the opinion piece Mavhinga says that President Mugabe must go now to pave way for "genuine democratic transition" in Zimbabwe.
He puts forward four reasons why this must happen, namely that President Mugabe represents the old order as custodian or godfather; that President Mugabe is "past retirement age"; President Mugabe's age; and, to "allow smooth transition and leadership renewal within Zanu-PF".
Broadly, these views are largely shared by many in the regime change sphere.
If Mavhinga did not have democratic pretensions, which he even exhibit in his piece and if he was not one of the people working in organisations desperately seeking to defer elections as demanded by Zanu-PF, and required by the GPA, his submissions could be taken as emanating from any other anti-status quo vigilante.
Surprisingly, he was in South Africa last week calling for the postponement of elections.
But, how can you stop elections when you ask the President to step down?
However, given Mavhinga's democratic pretensions and what he has been doing lately, Mavhinga shows a desperation that borders on criminality.
Constitutionally, change of leadership in Zimbabwe is predicated on the ballot.
President Mugabe and Zanu-PF party have been demanding that elections be held as soon as possible.
On the other hand, MDC formations and their NGO allies, including Mavhinga's Crisis Coalition, have been resisting the same.
It is to be wondered how on earth, supposed champions of democracy can resist elections then, pontificate that a leader of a political party that does not share the same ideals with them should step aside.
How this constitutes "real transition" only cowards must know.
Such growing noises from the anti- Zimbabwe forces crying for President Mugabe to leave office are clear indications of the feelings of the consortium that sees him as the biggest stumbling block to the ill-fated illegal regime change agenda.
If, as Mavhinga demonstrates, the inclusive Government has been a case of new wine being put in old skins, the MDC formations should surely have demonstrated effervescence that would make them the darling of the populace and the electorate.
This has not happened and, the MDC formations are afraid to face voters.
They know that their end is nigh because they failed to provide voters with answers to their problems.
These are the political parties that promised the electorate all manner of goodies which their Western friends and partners would channel to Zimbabwe.
It is common cause that none came, nor did jobs and salaries for civil servants.
The electorate should be spoiling for a date in the ballot box.
Why then make President Mugabe, champion of such causes of the people as land reform and indigenisation step aside when he is willing to be given another mandate by the people?
There is a very idle if not morbid undertone in the proponents of Western regime change in Zimbabwe.
This relates to President Mugabe's age and health and one can see it in Mavhinga's piece.
Remember disgraced Roman Catholic priest Pius Ncube once prayed for President Mugabe's death.
Zimbabwe has suffered countless stories over the health of its leader. Some people have even spread false news of his death.
Having failed to unseat President Mugabe through the ballot, these death wishes reflect thoroughly idle, base and desperate minds.
If these things were to pass, Zimbabwe would be a sad place to be in.
A "democratic transition" that is grounded in idle, morbid and shallow ideals as espoused by the current regime change industry in Zimbabwe does not promise to be any of the best thing to happen to any country.
Besides the tired mantra that "Mugabe must go" regime change activists in the NGO sector, just like their MDC cousins have precious little to offer to Zimbabwe.
It is known that the democracy they preach is the thoroughly discredited system that puts Western capital first and foremost.
It is the brand of politics that dispossesses the poor while the likes of MDC will be comprador allies and NGOs neo-liberal opiates.
Why try to smuggle in a new leadership that has not been elected by Zimbabweans into the presidency when you are on record that elections should not held?
Why not do the honourable thing and go for the election the same springboard that brought the present governing structure, albeit with its many flaws?
Under the country's laws, this governance structure can thus only be changed through elec- tions.
This is what the proponents of the regime change do not realise or want to, as they know it means Armageddon for those who have authored national suffering.
They have to come up with other ways of deflating the wheel of national resistance and black empowerment.
The only way is to push President Mugabe out of Zanu-PF and Government without the people's participation.
Illegal regime change agenda proponents in their time of desperation, are forgetting that President Mugabe is only advancing national will.
His policies are only satisfying a national will, to cut own development agenda.
That is why he has been able to align himself with the people and not Western pseudo demo- crats.
The life support of the MDC formations and their sidekicks, the Western- funded NGOs is economic stranglehold on the country.
People are aware and that makes an election a journey in futility for the illegal regime change agents.
Zimbabwe's problems cannot and will not be corrected by pushing President Mugabe out of the country's leadership but by the removal the evil sanctions.

Sadc needs clarity, sobriety on Zim

If Sadc can go the senseless megaphone way, which former President Thabo Mbeki providentially rejected to come up with the GPA, and be influenced by what it hears from noisy western-funded media and civic organisations, its rashness could prove fatal.

By Tichaona Zindoga
Looking at the aftermath of two Sadc extraordinary summits on Zimbabwe and Madagascar held over the last three months, it would seem that something really extraordinary is coming out of the routine regional meetings on the so-called hotspots of Southern Africa.

This has little to do with the content of the discussions per se, but the crescendo of interest that these summits have attracted.

Zimbabwe, in particular, has drawn immense interest, much of it unhealthy, as to cloud whatever relates to its Indian Ocean counterpart where a legitimate government was overthrown in a coup in 2009.

For the record, Zimbabwe has been an item on regional discussions since 2007 when regional leaders set out to mediate between Zimbabwe’s main political parties, Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations.

This led to the Constitutional Amendment Number 18; the March 2008 harmonised elections and the September 15, 2008 the Global Political Agreement that bore the current inclusive Government in February 2009.

That the inclusive Government is an uneasy arrangement is a matter of public record and the two protagonists, President Robert Mugabe of Zanu-PF and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of MDC-T have stated this.

Yet they have committed themselves to working together for the betterment of the people of Zimbabwe, if not waiting for another chance to go at each other again.

This arrangement has wobbled on, sometimes feared to teeter on the brink of collapse, but gone on to see another day.

The region, through mediator South Africa, has been seized with the Zimbabwe issue through meetings occasioned by the bigger mandate of facilitation and other matters incidental to the uneasy subsistence of the inclusive Government.

But an uneasy air hangs over the region since March 31 when in Livingstone, Zambia, the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security torched a storm by producing a one-sided report based on the submissions of MDC-T.

The Livingstone meeting has gained notoriety and controversy through its procedural treatment of the Zimbabwe situation and its tackling of niggling areas such as political violence and electoral roadmap.

Then there was the resolution to send an oversight team to ostensibly help oversee implementation of the GPA.

While Livingstone outraged quarters that would have wanted sobriety, procedural, political and historical correctness, it became an instant hit with Western capitals and their local allies.

Britain for example only days later pledged to bankroll its election roadmap aspect, raising questions on its keenness to do so in a GPA process that it was not happy with in the first instance.

Even then, its interest could only mean Britain had seen a window of opportunity to have a go at its old enemy Zanu-PF which has continued to have the better of the Western-funded MDCs.

This could be heard in the loud cheers of the MDC formations and their mutual beneficiaries of western patronage and funding in the civil society.

An extraordinary summit on Zimbabwe in Windhoek failed to take place owing to President Jacob Zuma’s absence due to his commitments at home.

But it did not go without heavy jockeying for the entrenchment of Livingstone as civic groups made a beehive to the Namibian capital, amid similar pressures from Western-driven media.

Sandton gave a heightened pitch to what has become a very worrying trajectory.

In essence, witness the semantic wars over the wording of the outcome of the summit, which has been the talking point of the meeting, Sadc has lacked clarity on Zimbabwe.

Or if it indeed has been clear, it has not plugged any loopholes that can be exploited to cause confusion.

(Upon return from Sandton, President mentioned that the facilitator’s report in Livingstone had been ‘innocent’)

Lack of clarity has allowed pitched battles in Zimbabwe’s polarised environment as to what Sadc true position on the country is.

Megaphone diplomacy has become the order of the day.

President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF say Livingstone is dead.

Opponents of Zanu-PF and President Mugabe are screaming at the top of their voices that Livingstone has been adopted.

It does not matter that Sadc chair, Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba, has said that the errors that typified Livingstone should not be repeated.

Lindiwe Zulu, President Jacob Zuma’s international relations advisor, says: “Whether you use ‘noted’ or ‘endorsed’, it means the same.

“As far as the summit is concerned, the Troika report presented in Zambia by Zuma has now been fully endorsed by Sadc.”

For her part, Lindiwe Zulu is controversial enough, having been seen to appear partial to the MDC formations.

She has even described Zanu-PF demands for an election as daydreaming.

The situation is untenable.

Not only is truth being a casualty here.

The uncertainty that has been brought about by lack thereof is unhealthy and polarising.

It therefore requires that Zimbabwe’s issue be brought back to the ground.

While the jockeying by MDCs and their allies could be forgiven as these seek to influence the affairs of the region, Sadc leaders cannot afford to play to the gallery or sleep on duty.

The impetuousness that has been shown by Lindiwe Zulu does not inspire confidence that Zimbabwe’s case is being held with the sobriety it deserves.

Considering the fact that she was once South African envoy to Brussels, the seat of a European Union that has declared that it wishes to use South Africa in its wars against Zimbabwe, Zulu could better be more diplomatic in her handling of Zimbabwe.

Observers have pointed out that the fact that Zimbabwe is increasingly overshadowing Madagascar lies in the mediation style in the two countries.

The Sadc of Frontline States pedigree should know that something is going wrong when it starts to receive all manner of plaudits from quarters that are opposed to revolutionary ideals.

In the same vein, President Jacob Zuma, as extending from his main (wo)man Zulu, should not lose way from revolutionary sensibility in the swelter of jockeying by the West and its allies.

For it is known that the west is waiting on the wings for a “North African window”.

If Sadc can go the senseless megaphone way, which former President Thabo Mbeki providentially rejected to come up with the GPA, and be influenced by what it hears from noisy western-funded media and civic oorganisations, its rashness could prove fatal.

The blunder-and-regret-later approach like what African leaders have seen in Libya cannot be tolerated.

Sadc needs clarity, sobriety on Zim

If Sadc can go the senseless megaphone way, which former President Thabo Mbeki providentially rejected to come up with the GPA, and be influenced by what it hears from noisy western-funded media and civic oorganisations, its rashness could prove fatal.

By Tichaona Zindoga
Looking at the aftermath of two Sadc extraordinary summits on Zimbabwe and Madagascar held over the last three months, it would seem that something really extraordinary is coming out of the routine regional meetings on the so-called hotspots of Southern Africa.

This has little to do with the content of the discussions per se, but the crescendo of interest that these summits have attracted.

Zimbabwe, in particular, has drawn immense interest, much of it unhealthy, as to cloud whatever relates to its Indian Ocean counterpart where a legitimate government was overthrown in a coup in 2009.

For the record, Zimbabwe has been an item on regional discussions since 2007 when regional leaders set out to mediate between Zimbabwe’s main political parties, Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations.

This led to the Constitutional Amendment Number 18; the March 2008 harmonised elections and the September 15, 2008 the Global Political Agreement that bore the current inclusive Government in February 2009.

That the inclusive Government is an uneasy arrangement is a matter of public record and the two protagonists, President Robert Mugabe of Zanu-PF and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of MDC-T have stated this.

Yet they have committed themselves to working together for the betterment of the people of Zimbabwe, if not waiting for another chance to go at each other again.

This arrangement has wobbled on, sometimes feared to teeter on the brink of collapse, but gone on to see another day.

The region, through mediator South Africa, has been seized with the Zimbabwe issue through meetings occasioned by the bigger mandate of facilitation and other matters incidental to the uneasy subsistence of the inclusive Government.

But an uneasy air hangs over the region since March 31 when in Livingstone, Zambia, the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security torched a storm by producing a one-sided report based on the submissions of MDC-T.

The Livingstone meeting has gained notoriety and controversy through its procedural treatment of the Zimbabwe situation and its tackling of niggling areas such as political violence and electoral roadmap.

Then there was the resolution to send an oversight team to ostensibly help oversee implementation of the GPA.

While Livingstone outraged quarters that would have wanted sobriety, procedural, political and historical correctness, it became an instant hit with Western capitals and their local allies.

Britain for example only days later pledged to bankroll its election roadmap aspect, raising questions on its keenness to do so in a GPA process that it was not happy with in the first instance.

Even then, its interest could only mean Britain had seen a window of opportunity to have a go at its old enemy Zanu-PF which has continued to have the better of the Western-funded MDCs.

This could be heard in the loud cheers of the MDC formations and their mutual beneficiaries of western patronage and funding in the civil society.

An extraordinary summit on Zimbabwe in Windhoek failed to take place owing to President Jacob Zuma’s absence due to his commitments at home.

But it did not go without heavy jockeying for the entrenchment of Livingstone as civic groups made a beehive to the Namibian capital, amid similar pressures from Western-driven media.

Sandton gave a heightened pitch to what has become a very worrying trajectory.

In essence, witness the semantic wars over the wording of the outcome of the summit, which has been the talking point of the meeting, Sadc has lacked clarity on Zimbabwe.

Or if it indeed has been clear, it has not plugged any loopholes that can be exploited to cause confusion.

(Upon return from Sandton, President mentioned that the facilitator’s report in Livingstone had been ‘innocent’)

Lack of clarity has allowed pitched battles in Zimbabwe’s polarised environment as to what Sadc true position on the country is.

Megaphone diplomacy has become the order of the day.

President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF say Livingstone is dead.

Opponents of Zanu-PF and President Mugabe are screaming at the top of their voices that Livingstone has been adopted.

It does not matter that Sadc chair, Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba, has said that the errors that typified Livingstone should not be repeated.

Lindiwe Zulu, President Jacob Zuma’s international relations advisor, says: “Whether you use ‘noted’ or ‘endorsed’, it means the same.

“As far as the summit is concerned, the Troika report presented in Zambia by Zuma has now been fully endorsed by Sadc.”

For her part, Lindiwe Zulu is controversial enough, having been seen to appear partial to the MDC formations.

She has even described Zanu-PF demands for an election as daydreaming.

The situation is untenable.

Not only is truth being a casualty here.

The uncertainty that has been brought about by lack thereof is unhealthy and polarising.

It therefore requires that Zimbabwe’s issue be brought back to the ground.

While the jockeying by MDCs and their allies could be forgiven as these seek to influence the affairs of the region, Sadc leaders cannot afford to play to the gallery or sleep on duty.

The impetuousness that has been shown by Lindiwe Zulu does not inspire confidence that Zimbabwe’s case is being held with the sobriety it deserves.

Considering the fact that she was once South African envoy to Brussels, the seat of a European Union that has declared that it wishes to use South Africa in its wars against Zimbabwe, Zulu could better be more diplomatic in her handling of Zimbabwe.

Observers have pointed out that the fact that Zimbabwe is increasingly overshadowing Madagascar lies in the mediation style in the two countries.

The Sadc of Frontline States pedigree should know that something is going wrong when it starts to receive all manner of plaudits from quarters that are opposed to revolutionary ideals.

In the same vein, President Jacob Zuma, as extending from his main (wo)man Zulu, should not lose way from revolutionary sensibility in the swelter of jockeying by the West and its allies.

For it is known that the west is waiting on the wings for a “North African window”.

If Sadc can go the senseless megaphone way, which former President Thabo Mbeki providentially rejected to come up with the GPA, and be influenced by what it hears from noisy western-funded media and civic oorganisations, its rashness could prove fatal.

The blunder-and-regret-later approach like what African leaders have seen in Libya cannot be tolerated.

Tinpot bombardiers: NATO in Libya

 It is clear that despite Homeric paeans by Western journalists to their zeal and prowess, the rebels headquartered in Benghazi are an ineffective rabble, whose prime activity is to complain that NATO is not fighting the war hard enough on their behalf. Gaddafi faces NATO’s tinpot bombardiers acting with no legal mandate and with barely a whisper of criticism in the Western press about the absurd pretence that they are operating within the terms of UN Security Council resolutions. The rebels have been unable to make any effective military showing.

Pambazuka News

By Alexander Cockburn
The alleged purpose of UN Security Council resolution 1973, passed on 17 March, was to seek to protect Libyan civilians from violent attacks by both sides.
In NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) eager hands, cosseted by uncritical Western press coverage, it has rapidly mutated into an overt bid to destroy Gaddafi’s regime, specifically to murder Gaddafi, by missile or bombardment with land-based teams of Special Force assassins doubtless deployed in the desert, assigned the same task.

NATO says more than 10,000 sorties have been flown over Libya since operations began. This includes 3,794 ‘strike’ bombing raids across country. In the heaviest strikes yet, concentrating on attacks in Tripoli, NATO launched 157 strike missions on Tuesday, more than three times the previous daily average.

In fact, in NATO's first 30 days they flew about 5,000 sorties. Since then, nearly another two months, they have flown another 5,000, so despite the trumpeting about intensifying the campaign, the tempo of operations has actually been falling over time. This, as one seasoned observer remarks, is ‘not a surprise, considering what we know about readiness, spare parts inventories, and the capacity to ramp up spares production’.

Pierre Sprey, one of the design team that produced the F-16 and A-10, remarks acidly that ‘the flea bites inflicted on Gaddafi's army by the all-out efforts of the entire NATO air armada are a lovely demonstration of the fruits of our overarching strategic principle of pursuing Unilateral Disarmament at Maximum Expense.’

Sprey continues: ‘Libya also provides empirical verification of the most expensive component of the Principle of Unilateral Disarmament at Maximum Expense: bombing the enemy's homeland lengthens every war in which it is attempted. There have been no documented exceptions in the hundred years since Sottotenente Giulio Gavotti's heroic first bombing of a Libyan oasis in 1911.[1] Clearly, 2011's equally heroic bombing of Tripoli is no exception.’

It is clear that despite Homeric paeans by Western journalists to their zeal and prowess, the rebels headquartered in Benghazi are an ineffective rabble, whose prime activity is to complain that NATO is not fighting the war hard enough on their behalf. Gaddafi faces NATO’s tinpot bombardiers acting with no legal mandate and with barely a whisper of criticism in the Western press about the absurd pretence that they are operating within the terms of UN Security Council resolutions. The rebels have been unable to make any effective military showing.

On 6 June the independent International Crisis Group (ICG), stocked with well-informed regional experts and former diplomats, issued a report ‘Making sense of Libya’. It stated forthrightly that NATO was in the business of ‘regime change’ and was strongly critical of NATO’s refusal to respond to calls for ceasefire and negotiation, a stance which the ICG says is guaranteed to prolong the conflict and the tribulations of all Libyans.

The ICG then address the topic of Gaddafi’s alleged ‘crimes against humanity’, even genocide. Remember that the relevant UN resolutions that led to NATO’s current onslaughts were rushed through the Security Council powered by fierce rhetoric about Gaddafi’s ‘massacre of his own people’, and his ‘crimes against humanity’, even genocide. The diffuse and mostly vague allegations were usually studded with adverbs like ‘reportedly’.

On the issue of Gaddafi’s alleged war crimes the International Crisis Group notes reports of mass rapes by government militias, but declares that at the same time:

‘much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime’s security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no real security challenge. This version would appear to ignore evidence that the protest movement exhibited a violent aspect from very early on … there is also evidence that, as the regime claimed, the demonstrations were infiltrated by violent elements. Likewise, there are grounds for questioning the more sensational reports that the regime was using its air force to slaughter demonstrators, let alone engaging in anything remotely warranting use of the term “genocide”.’

In this context, since the International Criminal Court’s record of ductility to NATO’s requirements is one of near 100 per cent compliance, one can view with reasonable cynicism its timing in issuing accusations of mass Viagra-assisted rape against Gaddafi’s militias immediately in the wake of NATO bombing onslaughts on Tripoli on Tuesday. On the issue of systematic mass rapes, Amnesty International said on Thursday that its researchers in eastern Libya, Misurata and in refugee camps along the Tunisian border ‘have not to date turned up significant hard evidence to support this allegation’.

A hundred years down the road the UN–NATO Libyan intervention will be seen as an old-fashioned colonial smash-and-grab affair. There may even be a paragraph or two about the collapse of the US left in mounting any powerful show of protest.

Behind MDC-T's call for security sector reforms

Whereas the MDC-T is born of, and lives in, treachery by being the handiwork of the West, the security sector protects the country from hostile outside and inside forces.
A party that cavorts with enemies of the State – those that impose sanctions on the sovereign nation and institutions and people – can only be as rogue as the partners it tangos with.
If Tsvangirai takes instructions from Washington and Brussels – and he does – would the sovereign forces of Zimbabwe, were they compelled, be amenable to saluting these enemy flags by proxy?

By Tichaona Zindoga
One of the highlights of the just-ended Sadc-EAC-Comesa summit in Sandton, South Africa, which convened an extraordinary meeting on Zimbabwe and Madagascar, was the charade that Zimbabwe exported to the venue.

Away from the fistfights and chaos that characterised relations among the disparate groups that rallied around the hope of regime change in Zimbabwe, the issue of the so-called security sector reforms took center stage.

A seminar to that effect was convened by an outfit calling itself the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for Zimbabwe to set the agenda for the discussion of the so-called security sector reform.

Speakers discussed topics like “Security sector reform and transition to democracy in Zimbabwe”, “The role played by the security sector during and after elections in Zimbabwe”, “Can Sadc through the facilitator South Africa tackle the security sector reforms?” and “Sadc’s final hurdle to the roadmap: Engaging with the security sector.”

It is evident that the issue of security sector reforms as propounded by the MDC formations and their NGO partners is matched by only by their denial that elections be held soon as demanded by Zanu-PF and required by the GPA.

And it takes very little to realise that the current calls for the so-called security sector reforms by MDC-T partners have the same shrillness that characterized the party’s clamoring for the ouster of Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono and Attorney General Johannes Tomana a couple of years ago.

Conversely, MDC-T and its partners made similarly shrill calls for the appointment of Roy Bennett to the post of Deputy Minister of Agriculture.

In the parlance of the negotiations that brought, and have apparently subsisted with, the inclusive Government, the above named were referred to as as “outstanding issues”.

Before the advent of inclusive politics in Zimbabwe, which happened but to include the MDC formations, the one shrill call was that “Mugabe must go”.

MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai, before his ego split the party on October 12 2005, had in 2001 disingenuously taken the mantra too far and threatened to remove President Robert Mugabe by force.

One thing courses through all these examples.

Outside of wanting to expressly remove President Mugabe from power, the intention by the MDCs and their backers has been to try and weaken President Mugabe and his revolutionary Zanu-PF party by emasculating individuals and institutions that perceivably hold him aloft.

For its own part, besides creating and bankrolling the MDC, the West imposed sanctions designed to bring Zimbabwe down by savaging the economy.

This in turn would cause a humanitarian disaster and force the ouster or abdication of President Mugabe and Zanu-PF.

In the era where sanctions illegally imposed on Zimbabwe by the West wreaked havoc in the economy, it was Gono who through various interventions tried, and largely successfully so, to keep the economy afloat.

The RBZ chief’s interventions miraculously outlived the turbulence of record high inflation spawned chiefly by US/EU sanctions that denied Zimbabwe external lines of credit, foreign direct investment, tourism business, among other things.

He even resorted to the printing press, which by the way has happened in the US and EU lately, trying to keep the economy afloat.

His philosophy was extraordinary situations, as such little, teapot-shaped Zimbabwe was ranged against the powerful Western world, required extraordinary measures.

And somehow it worked earning himself calls for ouster.

On the other hand, as Government’s chief lawyer, Tomana stood in the way of any form of anarchy that MDCs and its partners could hatch.

He should have let MDCs and their allies’ mischief go unpunished, believed the MDC.

In particular, he was supposed to let MDC-T’s’ white face Bennett who faced such serious charges as relating to terrorism walk scot-free.

As Tomana dispensed his duties regardless, he was perceived to be persecuting and applying the law selectively against MDC-T members.

In essence, he stood, along other institutions and individuals, in the way of the ultimate “Mugabe must go” goal.

Today the two persons of Gono and Tomana no longer have the same currency they suffered a couple of years ago nor can President Mugabe be able to go as so agitated for back then.

Yet the game still has the same complexion and intent.

Could there be a more dramatic way to bring the latest scapegoat, the security sector, than having MDC-T’s secretary general Tendai Biti proclaiming that he had seen “the fingerprints” of the military in the overly suspicious and virtually shoddy work in the recent alleged bombing of his Chisipite house?

All in time to have him go to the Sadc extraordinary summit, quite shaken and, in the words of one perceptive writer, casting furtive glances over his shoulder for fear of another petrol bomb?

Never mind the hell of an absurdity in daring to implicate Zimbabwe’s excellent forces in the shoddy piece of work that claimed a small piece of the perimeter wall, the message was supposed to be as shrill as could be ahead of the regional meeting.

Add that to the desperate calls by MDC affiliated groups that were lobbying for the same cause in the party’s corner and apparently also to get the attention of US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton who was in Zambia, and the general drift is clear.

First the MDC-T has to identify an area that it perceives is powerful and compelling enough.

Secondly, make as much noise as possible to draw attention.

If the demands are to be met, fine; but if not the ideologically bankrupt party would have bought enough time for itself to live another day.

The above examples of Gono, Tomana and Bennett illustrate this sequence.

It is common cause that in the three fronts MDC-T did not have its way, namely seeing the backs of Gono and Tomana while landing self-exiled Bennett into the Agriculture portfolio.

But, boy, what noise they made and appeared a relevant, fighting force!

Going into another election which it fears, a long drawn tiff with Zanu-PF over security chiefs gives MDC-T a chance to deflect or defer elections until the party ostensibly gives in to the continuation of the status quo.

Only to start the cycle again!

The MDC-T and its ilk have enough reason not to take a particular liking to the security sector of Zimbabwe.

Whereas the MDC-T is born of, and lives in, treachery and treason by being the handiwork of the West, the security sector protects the country from hostile outside and inside forces.

A party that cavorts with enemies of the State – those that impose sanctions on the sovereign nation and institutions and people – can only be as rogue as the partners it tangos with.

If Tsvangirai takes instructions from Washington and Brussels – and he does – would the sovereign forces of Zimbabwe, were they compelled, be amenable to saluting these enemy flags by proxy?

The West has even contemplated invading Zimbabwe, only to be repulsed by the fear of the security and defence forces.

The same forces that the present security forces defeated during the liberation war would have come again on the back of Tsvangirai who is noted for having shied from that brutal and arduous war.

Were the invasion to come to pass, Tsvangirai would be the first beneficiary of that assault on Zimbabwe.

In this case, it is inconceivable that forces that are sworn to defending the country could and can take the implications thereof lightly.

This is the reason why Retired Brigadier-General Asher Walter Tapfumaneyi told a seminar in South Africa at ahead of the summit that the security forces would not sit and watch the country under threat from Britain through the MDC-T.

He said: "Under the Constitution of Zimbabwe, security forces are sworn to defend Zimbabwe. Here comes a party like the MDC-T, which Britain confirmed it created . . . It is its origins that are a threat. The MDC is a factor to that threat.

"The threat to Zimbabwe is generated by Britain and the MDC is an appendage to that . . . This is why the military in Zimbabwe is behaving the way it is behaving…" he said.

One thing is clear.

Rather than “reforming” the security sector of this country, which sector is highly professional and commended at the highest levels, the MDC-T is out to deform the sector.

It is only a deformed, absurd and undesirable creature of a security force that is moulded to the whims and caprices of those against whom it must defend itself.

In other terms, a security sector that favours those who willfully assail and assault the sovereignty and the national interests of a country, is a farce.

Zimbabwe has its interests to serve namely its territorial integrity, its sovereignty, its resources and its very self-determining soul.

MDC-T’s parentage, association, philosophy and mission as presently constituted ultimately set it apart from serving these.

That is perfectly clear.

Having said that, one can only conclude that having taken on such a compelling issue as security sector reforms, if the MDC-T fancies any chance in heaven it is only to buy time and wait for another windfall to fill its empty ideological bag.

As such Zanu-PF advisedly must not expend energy trying to defend the security sector, which after all stands tall by itself, but continue on its revolutionary path of empowerment and total liberation.

South Africa: It's about the land, Stupid!

The reason was simple: the song in question, “Dubul’ Ibunu”, which was sung during the struggle against apartheid carried the powerful message of black people’s struggle against oppression chiefly carried out by people of European stock on African soil.

That the song could be relevant 17 years after the official end of apartheid, and for that matter unsettling to the oppressors means that oppression and struggle against the same are very much game on in South Africa.

By Tichaona Zindoga
When South Africa’s African National Congress Youth League president Julius Malema was on trial last April for “hate speech” because he had publicly sung a revolutionary song, many Pan-Africanists felt it was actually Africa’s quest for total liberation that was on trial.
The reason was simple: the song in question, “Dubul’ Ibunu”, which was sung during the struggle against apartheid carried the powerful message of black people’s struggle against oppression chiefly carried out by people of European stock on African soil.
That the song could be relevant 17 years after the official end of apartheid, and for that matter unsettling to the oppressors means that oppression and struggle against the same are very much game on in South Africa.
And as the well-publicised trial at the curiously named Equality Court in Johannesburg eventually showed, the struggle in South Africa remains as poignant as ever.
It even showed that there was something more than singing of “Dubul’ Ibunu”, one of many revolutionary songs – after all the aggrieved parties, the farmers and Afrikaners have their own ‘Die Stem’ song.
With strong undercurrents lying in South Africa’s raison d’être, the song was like the tip of the iceberg.
In particular it had implications on racial inequalities in South Africa, specifically where land ownership is concerned.
It is little wonder then that during the trial the issue was brought up.
The lawyers representing pressure group Afriforum and farmer’s organisation, Tau-SA asked Malema if South African farmers would be put on trucks and driven away.
Malema replied in the negative but stated that a more radical policy was needed to address land ownership in South Africa.
He said the ANCYL wanted the law changed from the “willing buyer, willing seller” approach.
“We want policies which will make it possible for the land to be redistributed. We are in the struggle to redistribute the wealth of this country,” he said.
Currently, it is reported that although black people constitute 80 per cent of the population, they have 13 per cent of the land.
This mainly stems from the 1913 Native Land Act, although the history of dispossession of black people dates back to around 300 years.
At the end of apartheid in 1994, the new majority black Government sought to redistribute 30 percent of all agricultural land by 2014.
The country’s constitution provided for land restitution, the right to tenure security and the right to access to land for productive purposes.
These formed the backbone of current land reform policy.
The willing buyer/willing seller model, based on the World Bank's approach of market-led land reform with a reduced role for the state, which failed in Zimbabwe, was to be used.
The result has been a predictable failure with South African government admitting is impossible for it to meet its target.
Much of the only six percent pittance it has acquired has not been used for farming and has laid idle for years.
And funds have dried up too, in light of unrealistic charges on the land by white owners.
"We cannot raise 75 billion rand ($9.62 billion) by 2014 to acquire the 82 million hectares of land that we have targeted... we just don't have the money," Reuters quoted Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti as telling an agriculture conference early this year.
The 2014 deadline has tentatively been extended to 2025, while the government would also focus on refinancing those farms that it had taken over.
In light of this, the stage is set for a continuous struggle pitting on one hand marginalized blacks wanting a piece of the national cake and on the other beneficiaries of 300 years of marginalisation.
In a statement that appeared on Politicsweb during the trial of Malema, Tau SA seemed cognisant of the nub of the story.
“Those who thought 1994 was the end of the revolution have now realized it was just the beginning,” it said.
The group also indicated: “The crux of the case centred around respect for one's fellow South Africans, and in particular the "Boere" - specifically the farmers of this country, a minority group of 0.1 percent of the population…”
It related that all the ANC witnesses had “declared unambiguously that the revolution is not over because the goals of the Freedom Charter have not been attained.”
 “The struggle must continue, and a revolution is the only way for the masses to get what they want,” inferred Tau SA.
The statement added: “Under oath Malema declared the Constitution will be changed so that land shall be expropriated without compensation if farmers do not make it ‘available’. “Zimbabwe is a democratic country, he says, and is an example of how his policy will run its course.
“From his evidence and his pronouncements it is clear that he and his ilk hold South Africa's white farmers responsible for everything that went wrong in the past and that it is the farmers who must be held responsible for solving today's problems!”
In conclusion, the statement was as scare mongering and snobbish as it was decidedly against a robust programme of land reform in South Africa.
It said: “If South African whites ignore Julius Malema, they do so at their peril. His threats to the plaintiffs that if they gave the ANC 80 percent of South Africa's land, he would withdraw his defence and ‘the killing will stop’ reveal an agitator of the first order. He is dangerous not because he knows nothing about governance or world affairs, but because his ignorance and vindictiveness mask a militancy and aggressiveness containing the kernel of another African catastrophe.”
Malema and his ilk might, to use Tau SA’s words, know nothing about governance or world affairs, but they certainly know poverty that abounds around them which is a result of racial inequalities.
Lawyer and academic Dr Motsoko Pheko who is an advocate of land reform in South Africa says “land is the trophy over which the national liberation was fought.”
In an article he wrote reflecting on the significance of the so-called Freedom Day April 27, last year, he said: Land is the national asset without which there can be no economic liberation of the majority poor.”
He highlighted the condition of the poor in the following way: “In South Africa the most unemployed people are Africans. People who live in squalid inhuman settlements are Africans…The least equipped hospitals and clinics are those that serve Africans. The worst or no roads are where Africans live. The least educated and skilled people are Africans. People who have no money for education and are being educated in lowest numbers are Africans. People who have the shortest life expectancy are Africans. People with the highest child mortality are Africans. Yet billions of Rand are buying land and servicing the apartheid debt.”
However, efforts to rehumanise black people by giving them land will not be an easy task.
The minority white farmers hold on to their land ostensibly to give it away at market prices.
They even argue that expropriation laws will have an impact on the international financial confidence in the South Africa as happened in Zimbabwe.
Needless to point out, they have the backing of the law and courts, which they can trust to protect their often apartheid-gotten gains.
The journal TradeInvest South Africa wrote in April last year of the legal hurdle that land reform faces.
It stated: “Despite concern from certain parties, property rights are enshrined in South Africa’s constitution and it states within section 25 that: 'No one may be deprived of property except in terms of law of general application, and no law may permit arbitrary deprivation of property.'
“In terms of expropriation, this is also clearly only to be done with fair compensation for those affected… 'Property may be expropriated only in terms of law of general application: (a.) for a public purpose or in the public interest; and (b.)subject to compensation, the amount of which and the time and manner of payment of which have either been agreed to by those affected or decided or approved by a court.'”
It further stated: “This is not just idle talk but is recognised as a prominent document internationally.
“The 2010 International Property Rights Index lists South Africa at 24 out of the 125 countries included in the report. South Africa ranks even higher (22 out of 125) in the physical property rights sub-index.”
One can only imagine the extent to which opposition to land reform by those enjoying the skewed status quo can go.
Udo Froese, South African journalist says “the colonial-apartheid Caucasian Boers (white minorities and their paid up minions) thoroughly exploit a perceived loophole in the constitution – that of ‘minority rights’” to hold onto land.
“And they win their days in the courts against historic popular war-songs of the ANC,” he wrote in an article recently.
In apparent reference to the now defunct Sadc Tribunal which was widely perceived to have been set up to reverse land reform in Zimbabwe and set a precedent against the same in Southern Africa, he said: “They also interfere in basic human rights, such as land in sovereign, independent neighbouring African countries, using the country’s judiciary.”
He added: “Those unashamedly proud heirs of colonial-apartheid formed a host of active institutions throughout the country. They have openly declared their war against everything African, claiming their ‘democratic rights to defend minority rights’.”
South Africa’s northern neighbour, Zimbabwe faced similar challenges in an effort to break inequalities in land ownership.
Land was one of the reasons why the liberation war was fought in Zimbabwe.
Before the fast track land reform programme in 2000 a minority 4 000 farmers held around 80 percent of all arable land in the country of about 14 million citizens.
The 1979 Lancaster House Agreement which paved way for independence in April 1980, nearly failed as Zimbabwean parties failed to agree with Britain over the issue of land.
It only moved on after Britain and America pledged to fund land reform in the country.
It set a 10-year moratorium on acquisition and thereafter a system of willing buyer/willing seller would be instituted with the two western powers supporting the programme financially.
Land reform moved at a painfully slow pace, with the willing buyer willing seller model, which was supported by Britain failing because of high prices of land and lack of adequate support from overseas partners.
In 1992 Government enacted the Land Acquisition Act to speed up the land reform process by removing the "willing seller, willing buyer" clause, limiting the size of farms and introducing a land tax.
The Act also empowered Government to buy land compulsorily for redistribution, and pay fair compensation land acquired. Landowners could challenge in court the price set by the acquiring authority.
However, white farmers were against the move.
Then the British government declared in 1997 that it had no obligation to fund land reform in the country.
In 1998 a major donor conference on land reform in Harare, admitted the necessity of land reform but no support was extended for that purpose.
A constitutional requirement for land reform was quashed in the referendum of February 2000, with white farmers financing the “NO” vote of the Government-led constitution.
The fast track land reform programme, which benefited around 300 000 families previously marginalised black people followed and in 2005 an amendment was put in place barring any contest in court over State acquired land.
 The disbanded Sadc Tribunal could well have proved the demise of the programme following the favourable rulings to white farmers.

AU’s mistake of policy and principle

If the African leaders had not voted for the resolution, they would not have had to ask permission of non-Africans in order to resolve this continental crisis.
Finally, if African leaders really believed that humanitarian intervention were needed in Libya, they could have acted independent of the UN Article 4(h) of the AU Act gives the AU the right to intervene forcibly in one of its member states with regards to war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
Thus, if the AU was convinced that Gaddafi was committing atrocious crimes, they could have taken unilateral action without recourse to the UN. The UN-sanctioned war in Libya is unfortunate.

The Herald

By Dr Kwame Akonor

AFRICA'S handling of the Libyan crisis at the United Nations has been timorous and confusing, but it presents an opportunity as well as a challenge for the African Union on how it defines its future strategic interests.
Rather than acting decisively, the AU cowered to pressures from the West and voted for UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorised military action in Libya.

The African support of the UN resolution was a mistake not only because it undermined the existing mechanisms and processes that are relevant for human protection on the continent but also because the now two-month-long military response in Libya to protect civilians has since degenerated into a plan to embolden Libyan rebels fighting to oust the country's leader, Muammar Al Gaddafi, from power.

The March 17, 2011 UN resolution on Libya is historic but problematic. It marked the first time the Security Council has authorised a military response to protect civilian populations in a non-consenting state.
The action, according to the US and its allies, was necessary to protect civilians from a leader who has "no conscience" and was intent on committing mass atrocities.

The resolution is based on an emerging human rights norm, not law, known as the Responsibility to Protect (R2P).
According to this principle the international community has a responsibility to intervene in sovereign territories to prevent and halt mass atrocities.

R2P remains controversial and the Libyan events exacerbates (rather than eases) our understanding of its application. For instance, are armed rebels trying to overthrow that government civilians or combatants? Does the claim of civilian protection justify attacking pro-regime forces?
Further, does the call for regime change by the sponsors of the resolution, and the wanton civilian deaths that have occurred as a result of the intervention, not dilute the case for R2P? Though the AU now balks at

the idea of toppling the Gaddafi regime, that objective was no secret. On February 26, three weeks before the UN vote, the US insisted that Gaddafi had lost legitimacy and should go.
This notwithstanding, all three African countries (South Africa, Gabon and Nigeria) on the Security Council voted in favour of military action, allowing the resolution to pass by one vote more than was required.

China even noted that it had not exercised its veto powers out of respect for the wishes of the Arab League and the African Union. Africans weakened their own peace architecture by supporting the UN resolution. On March 10, 2011, the AU Peace and Security Council established a committee comprising of the heads of states of Mauritania, Congo, Mali, South Africa, Uganda, as well as the chairperson of the AU

Commission to find a political solution to the crisis.
The group was scheduled to meet both sides to the conflict in Tripoli on March 20. It is rather puzzling that just two days before their own peace mission was about to begin, African leaders voted to use force in Libya.

South Africa's vote is particularly interesting because it was on both the AU Libya committee and the UN Security Council. South Africa's envoy reported ly failed to show up for the final vote, causing Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, to dash out of the Security Council chambers in search of him to cast an affirmative vote.

It was also revealed later that US President Barack Obama had personally pressed President Jacob Zuma of South Africa to support the resolution. Having voted for the resolution, the five African presidents had to request permission from the Security Council in order to travel to Libya due to the no-fly zone restrictions.

They were humiliated when their request to travel was initially denied. Indeed, the bombing campaign started on the very day they were scheduled to arrive there.
It was not until two weeks later, on April 10, that their request was approved. If the African leaders had not voted for the resolution, they would not have had to ask permission of non-Africans in order to resolve this continental crisis.

Finally, if African leaders really believed that humanitarian intervention were needed in Libya, they could have acted independent of the UN Article 4(h) of the AU Act gives the AU the right to intervene forcibly in one of its member states with regards to war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.

Thus, if the AU was convinced that Gaddafi was committing atrocious crimes, they could have taken unilateral action without recourse to the UN. The UN-sanctioned war in Libya is unfortunate.
Libya has the highest development on the continent in terms of education, health and wealth. According to last year's UN human development report, Libya even outperformed Brazil, Russia, India, China and

South Africa - the BRICS group of fastest growing economies. The war also deals a blow to the AU aspirations for a united and strong Africa. Ruthless and erratic as he may be, Gaddafi, having led the transformation of the Organisation of African Unity to the present AU, champions the pan-Africanist vision like no other current African leader. The Libya debacle provides an opportunity for the AU to elaborate on its principles of democracy and human rights - the basis of the current war.

The AU needs clear and consistent guidelines on what it means by consent of the governed. In the case of Libya, they ought to have a discussion on whether the political system outlined in Gaddafi's green book is legitimate.

Clarifying the parameters for democratic governance will give the AU a rationale to expel non-compliant members.
Similarly, the AU should have a common rationale on when interventions designed to end large-scale human suffering are warranted and how they would be carried out. The AU meeting this month in Equatorial Guinea could be a venue to begin discussing such issues.

• The writer teaches international relations at Seton Hall University in the US state of New Jersey. He is also the director of the University's Centre for African Studies and the African Development Institute.

MDC-T's childish attempt at security sector reform

MDC-T is clearly desperate to have security sector reforms tabled at the forthcoming Sadc Summit and, what better way to bring it to the table than to have a quivering minister, who enters the summit venue casting furtive glances over his shoulders for fear of snipers or petrol-bombers, a super minister who happens to be a loquacious negotiator.
The Herald

By Caesar Zvayi
‘‘I CAN see the fingerprints of the state (in the attack), the military to be precise. Zanu-PF has no capacity to do that, it's the work of the military,'' a ‘quivering' Tendai Biti - MDC-T secretary general and finance minister in the Inclusive Government - told The Daily News (June 7, 2011), 48 hours after an amateurish petrol bomb was thrown at the bottom, not over the top of his house's security wall.

Is this the same Zanu-PF that is full of war veterans who brought the Smith regime to its knees after a 14-year bush war that Biti says has no capacity to make a decent petrol bomb let alone know where to throw it if they want to?

And, are these the same security forces whose fearsome reputation got former British military chief, Lord Charles Guthrie, to warn his blundering premier Tony Blair against considering an impudent military adventure in Zimbabwe saying it would be suicidal to pit British troops against ‘‘the tried and tested veterans of the Congo,'' after the latter contemplated a military invasion of Zimbabwe, that Biti says would do such an amateurish job on his wall?

Are these the same troops that were formed after the amalgamation of three warring military wings - Zanla, Zipra and the Rhodesian Front - that he claims do not even have the sense to know that a petrol bomb is lobbed over the wall towards a window so that when it explodes the curtains and other items can easily catch fire?
Would you believe for a minute that security forces that fought a gruelling 14-year bush war and have been in numerous campaigns on the continent and abroad would throw a poorly-made petrol bomb at the bottom of a security wall and not over it?

And, why would trained servicemen have to resort to petrol bombs when they have the armoury at their disposal that is replete with all manner of bombs that would have reduced Biti's house to a heap of rubble and sent the ‘super minister' himself to his maker if they really wanted to get him? Forces with a sophisticated intelligence network that would have known that Biti was not even at home?
This ‘super minister', sorry super victim, and soon to be super quitter must respect our security forces, not insult them like that.

If they had a mission to terminate him, he would not be grandstanding fear on the pages of the local private and Western media today for the benefit of converts ahead of this week's Sadc Extraordinary Summit.
The bottom line is, given Biti's attempts to link the "bombing" of his security wall to the security forces, it's evident the ‘bombing' was the MDC-T's childish attempt to bolster its calls for security sector reforms, calls that have been rebuffed by both Zanu-PF and the facilitators themselves with the former saying there is no need for such reforms while the later said security sector reform was never part of the GPA.

Interesting things happened regarding the "bombing" on Biti's security wall, an attack that was reported to the media first before the police who were only "privileged" with a report a good 17 hours after private media hacks had splashed the story on the ubiquitous online websites.

Issues around the bombing have centred on the lack of or absence of VIP security details at Biti's house, which was later found to be common to other ministers including those from Zanu- PF.
So much was made about the bombing with the super victim saying the bombing can't be handiwork of ordinary Zanu-PF activists but state security forces.

MDC-T is clearly desperate to have security sector reforms tabled at the forthcoming Sadc Summit and, what better way to bring it to the table than to have a quivering minister, who enters the summit venue casting furtive glances over his shoulders for fear of snipers or petrol-bombers, a super minister who happens to be a loquacious negotiator.

Biti and his party, must give us a break.
If they are pushing an agenda that is not inimical to the national interest, then they have nothing to fear from the security forces who have ably defended this nation for all of 31 years and got the British to rethink the impudent adventures they have embarked on in other parts of the world.

It is the MDC-T itself which needs reform so that it becomes a truly Zimbabwean, home-grown political party not a neo-colonial project full of askaris at the beck and call of Western forces.
If the MDC-T does reform, I have no doubt should they win the elections they will get recognition from and be defended by the likes of Constantine Chiwenga, Perrance Shiri, Paradzai Zimondi, Augustine Chihuri and Happtyton Bonyongwe.

This talk of resignation from a "super minister" who has been nothing more than a dwarfish thief in giant robes as far as crafting fiscal policies is concerned will not cost anyone a night's sleep, maybe only his wife may miss the status.

Biti's announcement that he wants out of the Inclusive Government was supposed to create a ‘crisis' ahead of the Sadc Summit, or send the country off kilter that is.
I wish poor Biti heard the cheers that rocked the Salary Services Bureau at Mukwati Building and other offices crawling with impoverished civil servants countrywide when they heard the news of his threat to quit.

His was more like the threat issued by a long-divorced woman threatening to walk out on an indifferent husband.
No one will stop him; in fact Biti might get a much-needed shove to hasten his departure from the New Government Complex.

I challenge him to make good his threat so that Government programmes can be implemented smoothly without him holding onto SDRs as if they are his long-lost lover.
The Inclusive Government will subsist, and Biti will no doubt make Tsvangirai's day since Morgan was itching to have Biti out of Government before donors reminded him who was the boss and who butters his bread.

Biti being the lawyer he is, should know that his departure fom Government would be a none event.
In fact, even if the whole of the MDC-T was to leave Government, the Inclusive Government would still subsist because only Zanu-PF has the mandate to form a Government by virtue of holding the Presidency.

The Inclusive Government would still go on between Zanu-PF and the MDC.

So, once again "super minister", you are free to become a ‘‘super quitter!''
You will be missed like a plague, it seems.