For the good of the country!

One of the more interesting things we have heard from Morgan Tsvangirai (Zimbabwe's hapless transitional prime minister) recently is that Johannes Tomana(Zimbabwe's attorney general whose appointment is in dispute) and Gideon Gono ( the money grabbing Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor) should both resign for the good of the country. Giving the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that the resignation of these two men will deliver a new era of accountability in government, I am willing to call on these two men to quit.
However, I remain unpersuaded that such a development would be anything more than a political victory for the prime minister. I simply cannot believe that the departure of these men will change the opinion of a large number of people who must loosen their purse strings by way of investing in Zimbabwe or by providing bilateral aid.
The prime minister knows, as do most Zimbabweans, that the real obstacle to the reintegration of Zimbabwe into the world economy is the continued presence and dominance of one person: Robert Mugabe.
Gono and Tomana are mere manifestations of the ailment at the heart of Zimbabwe's quarter century in the economic wilderness: the 'failure of leadership' so eloquently expressed by Madiba. Zimbabweans get it and, on this particular matter, the prime minister is behind the curve. As long as Mugabe is in place, it will be very difficult to convince investors, foreign and Zimbabwean, that there is a new political dispensation in the country.
Maybe the prime minister should have said or start saying: Robert Mugabe should retire for the good of the country.

From Obama to Mugabe, with love

It is not unlikely that Barack Obama gave Morgan Tsvangirai a personal message to convey to Tsvangirai's partner in the transitional authority (am I the only one who finds it offensive to call him president?) Robert Mugabe? What could possibly be the contents of such a private communication? I think I know.Dear sir, May I take the opportunity to thank you for leading the fight to liberate Zimbabwe and the southern African region from the yoke of colonialism and apartheid. As a young man, I was inspired by your leadership of the Zimbabwe independence struggle. I was unable to make it to the celebrations in 1980 but it was one of the more memorable events of my teenage days. I was equally impressed by your stance against apartheid in South Africa, in the years leading to its demise in the early 1990s.As William Shakespeare said:"the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones". I am concerned by the looming probability that your heroic works will be overshadowed by the sad events of the last several years, in which thousands of Zimbabweans have been directly victimized by their government under your leadership. Millions of others have died needlessly because of the choices you have made.It may not be too late to salvage your legacy. For example, you could earn a windfall of goodwill by acknowledging the mistakes of the past twenty five years and doing good by the victims. You could then call a national indaba at which you will publicly bless the younger generation of leaders all political parties. You could say something like this: "It is not a secret that I am now a very old man, so old that I need my back to be soothed with cow dung from time to time (try some humour). The only thing I ever wanted was to free my people from colonial domination and I succeeded. Your generation must decide what its own objectives are and try to fulfil them, without me. Do not make the same mistakes that I made by not thinking twenty five years ahead. Think more about where our people will be in twenty five years, than about winning the next elections. Compete fairly for political power and above all, submit yourselves to the wishes of the people of Zimbabwe knowing that ultimately, the collective wisdom of the people is just."I can assure you that if you did that, you would give yourself an opportunity to rehabilitate your good name. You could also find time to write those long awaited memoirs and if you needed a publisher, I would be happy to recommend one.For my part, I will do everything in my power to help Zimbabweans put behind the lost opportunities of the past quarter century and re-ignite the promise of Munhumutapa!

No begging bowl in hand?

Morgan Tsvangirai is currently on a Magellanic (no pun intended!) journey around the western world, to ask for help to get Zimbabwe on its feet again, "without a begging bowl", so he says. But anytime someone volunteers images that have not been suggested, or provides answers to questions that have not been asked, reasonable observers may conclude that such a person is indeed, intimating truths emanating from deep within himself. Thus, we may state here without any danger of exaggerating, that the interim prime minister is holding a begging bowl, at least in his left hand! It's a little bit like passing the collection bowl in church: one does not have to give, but one feels like one is being asked to drop something in there.I have no doubt that the prime minister will be able to go home with something in his bowl; certainly not as much as he would have hoped, but enough to encourage him to keep trying. Now, I have to confess that I consider the prime minister to be a good man with entirely altruistic motives, hence I wish him well in all his endeavours. However, I think that to expect the West to dig deep into their currently challenged pockets while the prime minister's partner in government, Robert Mugabe, continues to pull all the strings and play hide and seek with him, is a little over-optimistic.Clearly, nothing that has happened so far is enough to convince critical thinkers that the prime minister has any real authority in Zimbabwe. It just seems that Mugabe is engaged in a protracted struggle to retain power for as long as possible. It may also be that I am caught up in a cyclical argument here, assuming that a release of significant aid by the west could be catalytic to the quest to send Mugabe into oblivion. My fear is that untargeted western aid could be counterproductive in the sense that it could strengthen ZANU-PF's hand by lubricating instruments of repression, not to mention the propaganda opportunity that would fall into Mugabe's lap.On the other hand (as the prime minister himself has hinted), the west may live to regret its failure to help Tsvangirai if Zimbabwe descends into chaos. Humanitarian aid is fine, but it is not enough, as the Somalia case shows. Granted, the west would be taking a gamble by supporting Tsvangirai but if if all goes well, it could be a wager worth, as Chris De Burgh would say, "the biggest stakes yet: the souls of the dead"! Barack Obama may be the right man to place that bet!