Tsvangirai a poor substitute for tried and tested Mugabe

COMPELLING direct and circumstantial evidence indicates that Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC has had only one objective since taking to the political stage: to drag Zimbabwe back to its 1979 status. Their 12 years of largely discreditable existence have produced no action plan, no programme and no policy – much less convictions – a sign that they are wholly against the people.

The threat to reverse the land redistribution exercise, the incessant promises to undo the indigenisation drive if they ascend to power (God forbid), their endorsement of the criminal and harmful sanctions on Zimbabwe, their never-ending but now doomed efforts to block the lucrative sale of our diamonds and, most recently, their pro-gay mutterings – all have the hallmarks of a puppet government-in-waiting and none is good for the advancement of the welfare of this country.

Of course, the driving forces behind the MDC-T are Britain and America – both of which see Tsvangirai’s party as a useful vehicle for bringing about not democratic change or any of that self-serving nonsense but rather a more pliant government in Harare that would grant them unfettered pursuit of their predatory economic interests.

Even if one were to accept as true the deception that Tsvangirai’s MDC is really about democratic change, the party itself would have to be judged as a huge failure. Time after time they have tellingly flouted their own constitutional provisions in order to entrench the same people in the same positions for the same lame reasons.

Meanwhile, they lack a clear perspective on anything including the economic empowerment of our people. Out of sheer desperation, for example, Tsvangirai sought at a hastily convened press conference last week to blame the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere for the violence which broke out at an MDC-T rally in Chitungwiza.

Of course, none of it was motivated by the existence of any credible evidence linking Kasukuwere to the incident. All of it was driven by malice, a deep-seated desire to taint the clean name of a reputable man currently on a mission to empower our people.

When a player attacks not the ball but the man, it is usually because of lack of skill and nothing explains this phenomenon any better than Tsvangirai’s defamation of Saviour Kasukuwere. As a matter of fact, it’s an accusation which could very well entangle him in a huge legal suit. It’s no one’s fault that he talks before he thinks or that he vilifies before he verifies.

Meanwhile, compare and contrast the admirable record of President Robert Mugabe with the shameful, reprehensible and self-serving conduct of Morgan Tsvangirai. Whereas President Mugabe has walked the walk as a tried and tested leader of unparalleled principle, Tsvangirai and his pseudo-liberal apologists continue merely to talk the talk with nothing to show for their 12 years of political buffoonery.

He has even resorted to making a lot of derogatory noise about President Mugabe’s health as if people eat Mugabe. Does not Tsvangirai know that it’s not the state of the leader that matters but the state of the nation?

With the ongoing indigenisation exercise which has since benefited scores of communities, the youth and the elderly and is on course to advantage employees in a very meaningful and unprecedented way, what more could Zimbabwe ask for?

Economic prosperity will not come through whining and crying or through resolutions and press statements at Harvest House or elsewhere. If it were that simple, then the MDC-T would have achieved a great deal already.

To achieve real economic progress, a country needs radical economic policies so that there is widespread redistribution of wealth from those with obscene levels of wealth to the hungry masses or from those foreign firms exploiting a nation’s pricy resources to the broad masses. Only in this manner can sustainable economic prosperity be achieved. This is what Tsvangirai doesn’t get and this is precisely why he is going to the gutter soon and very soon. About this, make no mistake.

Moreover, his pro-gay stance (another reason to like him at the next election) coming as it did barely a few days before David Cameron revealed that Britain now wanted to see “countries that receive our aid adhering to proper human rights and that includes how people treat gay and lesbian people” has just confirmed many people’s deep pre-election misgivings about his lack of independence, character and leadership qualities.

Homosexuality is blasphemous and very offensive in Zimbabwe and if Tsvangirai wants to go to war with the people of this country on this I’m sure that war will end well.

In the circumstances, the only change Tsvangirai is ever capable of bringing forth is one that could actually make Zimbabwe a far worse place for everyone than it already is. Better to stick, at least for a little while yet, with the tried and tested.