Paying for peace!

What is wrong with Zimbabwe?
Decades have gone by, philosophies and counter philosophies thrown to the fore and yet still the gears have been failing to engage. Probably the nation awaits a miracle to solve the Zimbabwean crisis, or maybe the power sharing government is that miracle itself!

Events building up to the formation of the power sharing government brought about mixed responses from both within and outside our national frontier. The understanding of such a mixed wave is found in the fact that if you fix Zimbabwe, through the going concern you equally address the auxiliary problems of the region as well.

Zimbabwe is seated on a vast fertile land, and was once known as the food security chief of the Southern Africa Development community, but today its people live in abject poverty as its wealth has over the ages been plundered by an assortment of warlords within a defined party who unleashed a holocaust upon those who chose to stand against them.

If you break Zimbabwe, you literally decapitate the region and if you so wish to mend it, definitely you start sorting out the exported problems in the region. The perennial problem has been that the process of sorting the dormant giant has been locked from both inside and outside. We became land lock polity with inhabitants crying for help and the region watching through the translucent frontiers with ‘cushion’ not to interfere a sovereign troubled republic.

Gradually, the fatigue of intellectuals and the ‘educated’ as in the words of Frantz Fanon in his book The Pitfalls of National Consciousness took sedge of the movement, developing a lethargy when and however clarity of though and position was required, “It so happened that the unpreparedness of educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the masses of people, the laziness and let it be said, their cowardice at decisive moments of the struggle gave rise to tragic mishaps…”

Maybe I am asking for too much, but what I see in present day Zimbabwe is a dry spell of the intellectual tradition which defines the range and comprehensive work of conceptual analysis. In essence, intellectual work is confused with academic scholarships. The Irish Times of February 2007, made a clear distinction between the two, “… intellectuals seek to occupy a more public sphere as journalists, political commentators and opinion spheres. Academics are usually conservative or middle of the road, while intellectuals tend to be politically dissident. Since they have less investment in power than politicians and entrepreneurs, they can occasionally speak the truth to it.”

As such I do not have any investment in power neither do I qualify myself as an academic; this gives me the elective right to pen the truth. It should be equally articulated that the intellectual’s role requires asking embarrassing questions.

Where are the intellectuals of this struggle, both within the civics and the generality of the sphere we are coming from? It is not the duty of the civics to blindly support a power establishment. If there are still intellectuals left in the civics then we need to start raising questions pertaining the new government. Through out my engagement with members of the civics, who are making it a point to agree with all the developments at the labour movement, when are they going to start differentiating between hook, line and sinker?

This is why, for the political gladiators to a swell time ‘negotiating’ on the precarious power sharing deal which later went on to retain the contentious areas of the same. Shockingly, Zanu PF went on to smuggle extra-ghost ministers on the day of swearing in, and the intellectuals failed to come up with a coordinated response. I m not writing of scholarships within both the civic organizations or the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) because they are many of such creed, I m writing of intellectuals who took us on a sailing journey for more than six months after the signing of the inter-party agreement on the 15th of September 2008 telling us they are finalizing the grey areas.

In a nutshell we lost half a year of productive time arguing for the formation of a balanced centre, a centre that has the capacity and drive to address the deeply trenched economic social and political questions which would muscle out more than five million people out of the mucky waters of starvation and hunger. A centre which will manage to flank the warlords within the government to start serving national interest as opposed to selfish and narrow interests which drives on the edges of corruption and nepotism.

The expectations of such a centre are spilling off the containment of the available capacities. This is with the promises of transforming a government’s system on the day of the swearing in of the prime minister, that in two weeks time civil servants would start earning their salaries in foreign currency in two weeks time in absolutist language, political prisoners’ release immediately (by the time of going to press they were still incarcerated) and the appointment of people without any tried and tested competences at this defining time would definitely weaken the much relied upon centre.

It is a much appreciated fact which I equally prescribe to that Zimbabwe needed a transitional regime that would rescue her sons and daughters from the man made forlorn which saw many house holds loosing their beloved one being exposed to the polemic of cholera, HIV and AIDS among other diseases helplessly.

Across the board there is unquestionable consensus that the newly found marriage should be transitional in outlook but is the transition going to be a click of the baton away. The GPA outlines if the marriage fails the aggrieved party or parties will walk out. Perennial wisdom has equally thought us that marriages are not broken as easily as that. It is from such a background that I posed a question that what is wrong with an animal called Zimbabwe?

How can the whole country prescribe to a position whereby names of people are written in black and white in a constitution that so and so shall become a president and prime minister respectively? Constitutions in their nature should be above the politics of personalities. So if one party is to move out, there is a need to amend the constitution first. What is the other partner is not willing to sign the divorce papers?

So in joining the newly found marriage, the prime minister is cognizant of the fact that the other partner has a promiscuous background. He has joined a vampire state which needs transformation from receiving almost 90% of its revenue through a 50% scheme by taking the last cent from every starving citizen. The slippery trading ground is keeping an eye over elitist cultural clique turning into a multi-cultural aristocracy. The questions will not only target the promiscuous partner but the aristocrat marriage if it is going to emerge.


The Pandora’s Box opened at the swearing ceremony of ministers at the statehouse speaks of volumes and hectorages of miles between the people who are suppose to the center of socio-political and economic activities of the country. As insane as it is to conceptualize what was President Mugabe’s line of thinking when he attempted to smuggle an addition half a dozen ministers into cabinet, Mugabe and his clique strongly believed that they were inline with their plan. The spectre of this line of thinking that ZANU PF should be the one with the final word on national events is an anathema to the much needed unity of purpose. How then are these people going to work together when they spend more than six (6) hours on a party which wanted to rig in ministers? Will there be that clarity of purpose?

On the day of the swearing in of ministers, if the parties are working in good faith, why then do the other party arrests a deputy prime minister designate, Roy Bennet who is now being charged of masterminding and organizing terrorist expeditions? These are some of the questions which need to be answered if the is going to be progression within our body polity.


The other threat to the emerging centre is the rumbling of disgruntlement of the party saving loyalists from both ZANU PF and MDC. Some are raising genuine concerns whilst some are militia groups failing to disband. If this voices of dissent including those who were dropped in the last minute at the statehouse grounds are to continue with the grumblings there is a danger of ‘insurgency’ within the party structure as they seek to undermine the work being coined at the centre.

On the same token, the marriage has been a move to stop barbarians and war lords from continuing with the excesses in the name of abductions, killings and abductions of two year olds under the guise that they are being trained to ouster the regime. Hence the agreement is partly paying for the establishment of peace, but for peace to prevail, you need to keep the warlords and militias happy, hence all the warlords, militias who were fueling polity tension will only see merit in the settlement if there is no pay off between what they were earning before the new structure. They still need the red passport to access their multiple entries to the Chiyadzwa diamond treasury or through lucrative salaries. If that equilibrium is not met then, it’s not an enforceable agreement the clock will be ticking in the wrong direction.

In a nutshell the centre’s plate tectonics will always be shifting and widening the fissures in the centre, that’s why this government can only be transitional.

The new culture required from all the parties evolved is to make sure that the understand the fact that yesterday’s dogmas are no longer adequate for pointing out to the much needed solutions of today’s complex problems. This is despite the fact that the other party, ZANU PF is found and font of such dogma as seen in the retention of the old guard such as Mutasa Didymus, Mnangagwa Emmerson among others. What new philosophies will these recycled comrades bring to the fore? Old certainties do not apply, they are obsolete.

Some nations have moved away from the cold war polarization and Zimbabwe too deserves such. This era was driven by the battle of extremes. It was either you are extreme right or extreme left. Humanity has remained stubborn as it trades in between and those nations and individuals stuck in the extremes will end up preaching rhetoric or face the ruthless of the extreme right which saw the global crunch hitting them from underneath their noses. Reality should force all of use to review the old orthodoxies. It’s no longer the time nor the place to elevate rhetoric and misplaced ideology but to come up with models and prescriptions on our way to recovery.

All the same, I place my belief that if the politicians in the newly found government are to subordinate their personal and frequently narrow interests to those of the nation the country will start building from the negative to reach the zero point so that we can start forward marshalling again. After all, nations are built on crises such as the unfolding ones. If there is a creation such as Zimbabwe, it should seek collective enterprise from every collective synergies.

Our task as critical thinker, writing from a bird’s eye view the politicians who are now running the affairs of the state should be taken to task and ensure that they put a system that can handle elections and transition. This is only possible is all of us are included in the process of writing our own constitution which decentralizes the power to participate in political processes and return government ownership to the people of Zimbabwe. Once that is done I will rest my question. But for now, what is wrong with this animal called Zimbabwe?



Tabani Moyo is a journalists based in Gokwe. He can be contacted on rebeljournalist@yahoo.com or moyojz@gmail.com The article was firstly published in the most read journal in Zimbabwe Thinking Beyond.

To my yet to be conceived daughter!

“Now or never is here again. Must I
Look in the face of the moon’s other side?
The moment demands decision. My whole
History is unequal to it – let me be!
I read all day, walk all night. I have
No end but this; no resources but books.
Thus again I dawdle and dither. Perhaps
Th’impartient problem will heart ay my
Expert vacillation”
The footnote to Hamlet – Mind blast – Dambudzo Marechera (1984)
My daughter, I know you are not yet in your mother’s womb, your mother does not know that one day she will be carrying a precious cornerstone of my survival. She is confused what kind of a person your father is, at one time she thinks I m socked in her motions of feelings and the other she holds I m a confused vagrant wondering in the wilderness of her love.
When you are finally going to be a fetus, struggling for space in your mother’s womb – it will be the birth of a struggle within a struggle. It will be the dawn of tears, laughter, endurance and perseverance.
You will one day be ushered onto this selfish earth, barren yet it’s pregnant with contradictions. You will come to realize that the lands of your birth have been forsaken by those who came before you, for good or for evil you will forever live a life of seeking answers to the hard questions which, I as your father failed to answer.
You will live in a dichotomy. It will be highly absurd for you when you ask yourself why personalities are dominating the institutions which were built out of the sacrifices of nonentities. You will wonder why the nonentities rose at a frightening pace to become personalities which unilaterally decided what is good and bad for the majority. You will equally wonder what happened to the value consensus on principle which has led a whole movement engulfed in discussion on the very same principle which is supposed to be the campus for the betterment of this place you call home – Zimbabwe.
My daughter you will curse your father and his generation for failing to put closure to the generational gap deficit between his generation and the one which came before him. You will throb in tears as your peers dance on top of your father’s grave calling him names such as coward, useless and good for nothing – I understand you fear my jewel.
I hear you; I won’t be there to tell you my story. To flip the pages of embarrassment and turn over to the new leaf for you to escape the barrage of firing arrows which will be pearling your innocent flesh with impunity.
If only you could tell them that your father had a dream which you my daughter have to carry over for the betterment of your generation. Never mind how the struggle has been arm twisted into rubbles, my battle has been and remains on the footnote of generational takeover through the straightening of institutions.
Never regret the radical DNA in you which you inherited from your father’s blood for it will remain in you like a menacing shadow. You would like to know how you father stepped to the fore. I have always resisted taking it to the public fore, it’s against my persona to build a domineering personality but I know you will one day want to understand yourself better in your bumpy road from the womb to the day when you write a letter of this nature to your daughters and sons.
My father, your grandfather was come to understand a long journey of stepping on shock pads over how my radical life have evolved. From grade 3 to grade 7 your father was expelled from school six times on different charges of which all he was found guilty as charged.
The same happened in his secondary life where he frequented the disciplinary committee to explain himself to those who where better placed to judge other people’s conduct and trying very hard to effect a correctional service institution within the education system.
Your father remained tall, his conviction was later on to be defined in 1998 when he was to become one of the 15 members who organized the strike at St Mary’s Boys High in Nyanga which left the school grounded for two weeks. The team included Revai Sadziwa who later on went to Midlands state university, Blessing Tichiwangani who became an electrical engineer, George Mudhara, who passed away in 2001, after starting his own company, Cleophas Mutepfe who is now based in the Uk, Farayi Chidhaura, who went to Harare poly, Gift Jamela, Simbarashe Rukanda, Brian Chigumira who is now in the Prison Services, Tapiwa Tafamombe who is now in the president’s office, Eddie Muchena who later went to the Midlands state university, Passmore Bore who is now a Marketer with Jaggers, George Maredza who is now a broker, and the other two comrade I can’t name at the moment.
At that defining moment, a collective group of 200 students were mobilized to shutter the buildings of the school and embarked on a 42km journey on foot to the shanty town of Nyanga where the ministry of education offices is located.
My daughter your father experience the jail smell and blood stains on the walls when he was 17 years old, as usual he was guilty as charged after taking an active role of mobilizing the students to take an act of defiance against the fees which had been hiked from Z$1200 to Z$2200. Your father and his colleagues spent 3 days in cells only to be released without being charged and kicked out of school soon after.
The rest of the story I will tell you in the next letter my daughter, so that one day you will not be puzzled of the radicalism which might come to define you.
The struggle of Zimbabwe might be gone but definitely not lost my daughter, when you will be reading this letter which came from the very centre of my heart you won’t help but concur with me when I insist that Zimbabwe’s struggle has been hi-jacked by personalities who are trying hard to force us to think that Zimbabwe owes them a gratuity for the sacrifices they have made for the country, hell know, recognition yes nothing more nothing less.
On the same token I will agree with you when you tell me that your father’s generation is fast losing it. Yes we are, stepping on each other’s toes sublimating into personality praise singers for those people who are fast running out of new ideas except exhausted rhetoric and dogmatic positions of fundamentalism.
Intellectual capital has become a farfetched mirage, which until your birth and those of like mind might become a reality.
So wakeup my yet to be conceived daughter, its sun shine, the trenches ahead might be minefields but the late Dr. Zvobgo will argue they must not keep you down forever, dust yourself and brace for the vicious struggle against the personification of institutions, organizations and the country. Guard against becoming and academic and failing to become an intellectual – my daughter your father might not have been either but his inspiration is to become the later. I will take care of you in vernacular Chengetai

To she who kept the faith

Some events define history. Some will forever seek to turn the wheels of history anti-clock wise. Whichever way the events of 6 February 2009, which led to the fatal car accident of the premiership along the Harare Masvingo road, have redefined Zimbabwe’s body polity.

This is the day when the Prime Minister’s wife, Susan Tsvangirai’s (main picture) voice came out the last. It was the defining moment when she took her last breath, blinking her eyes for the last stroll which waved good bye to mother earth, her husband, children and the country which she so loved much.

I lastly met and spoke to the PM’s wife two weeks before the 29 March 2008 elections in which his husband was contesting Robert Mugabe and Simba Makoni for the country’s top post. We arrived at the couple’s residency as they were preparing to take the route which later on claimed Susan’s life a year later. Susan stroke me as a very humble and receptive person. An emblem of a down to earth mother figure strongly found on the African cultural fundamentals of reception to both the people she new and strangers like myself and a friend of mine who had graced their residency at her husband’s benevolence.

She spoke highly of how his husband was psyched up for the plebiscite and how the family was raring to go. She introduced myself to her daughter and argued that she was very blessed that she had grown up to see her children taking the huddles of life and conquering them with their support.

When I had of the saddening news – a lump of thickening blood grew on my neck as if to say I was about to be struck by a blot of stroke.

The news broke out when I was making the rounding phases of the Harare Press Club election where I contesting for the post of general secretary which was scheduled to take place the same day and time we were informed of the passing on of the mother figure of the movement and of the nation. When a phone call rung and had the other side of the receiver informing me that Mrs. Tsvangirai failed to make it, a pulse race was triggered in my mind – Life is not fear, I said to myself loudly in silence – here is a rock foundation of a family, a husband, a nation who saw it all in the past decade of the struggle for a people to be freed from the tyranny of Robert Mugabe, poverty, disease, violence, hunger, corruption and collapse of democracy.

She was there in 1989 when the husband was being incarcerated for speaking out against the harassment of students who were protesting against the corruption which was spreading in the government’s systems like a viral infection.

She saw it all during the trials and tribulations of the husband’s tenure as the Secretary General calling for national strikes protesting against the massive tax hikes, during the 1997/8 food riots which led to state operative invading the ZCTU offices and attempting to end Tsvangirai’s life by throwing him through the window from the 9^th follow before beating him up leaving him with head injuries.

She maintained the faith when the husband’s party won elections from 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2008 but instead of power transfer, they got baton sticks blatantly dissenting on them, incarcerations, abductions, killings and rape – she kept the faith that one day Zimbabwe would be free.

She braved the weeks’ incarceration of his husband during the final push campaign which saw Morgan being held at remand prison and being exposed on national television in prison attire.

She was there to absorb the psychological trauma of her husband being charged with treason which attracts a death sentence.

She refused to waver her faith when his husband along side with the save Zimbabwe campaigners where tortured in police detention, leading to a swollen head and eye and a fractured arm – but she refused to allow her heart to be broken. She believed in the ultimate price of revolutions and kept her strength as a pillar of the husband’s resilience.

She was there when the husband, was called to the fore to take the oaths of loyalty to the country he so loves much as the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe after a decade of persecution and victimization. She was there when the fundamentalists and extremists in Zanu PF swallowed their pride and embraced the person they spend a life time denouncing as an appendage of the west.

Sadly she couldn’t leave longer to see what the movement and herself suffered for was going to end up like.

But today, I say, she saw it all. She have lived and left in and from both sides of the worlds – I hope her soul will be received through the gates of eternity. History will capture you role of a mother figure in the struggle for democracy in ZImbabwe