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Zimbabwe: UK Silence Fuels MDC Dilemma
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 Published by the government of Zimbabwe |
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The Herald (Harare)
OPINION
9 May 2008
Posted to the web 9 May 2008
Peter Mavunga
Harare
President Mugabe has always maintained that he was not fighting MDC-T but the British; that the opposition party in Zimbabwe was a creation of the former colonial master; and that without their creators and funders, this party would not exist.
The events of the last seven days appear to have proved him right. Here is why.
Last Saturday evening, Sky News and all the rest were reporting repeatedly that the meeting of MDC-T in Harare, chaired that day by the Vice President, Mrs Khupe, had been inconclusive in its deliberations. The purpose of the meeting, we were told, had been to decide whether or not the party would take part in the presidential run-off elections. But no decision had been taken.
This seemed strange. This was a simple enough decision to make, much simpler than putting the election result "beyond any shadow of doubt" as Biti, the secretary general would have us believe. But it was not that simple and the news media would not tell us why.
And if we needed to understand why there was no decision, we would be well advised not to look for the explanation of the failure to reach a decision to the British, the host nation, the sponsor, the strategists and above all the funders.
It would appear the MDC-T cannot make substantial decision without the authorisation of the British. The party rhetoric may give the impression that they will not participate in the run-off but observers see this as a way of buying time until a decision is made in London. The British are funding their programme and as I reported last week, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Informed sources say the meeting Mrs Khupe chaired could not reach a decision because an instruction that was expected from London did not arrive.
This is understandable because, with the London mayoral and local government elections in the UK, ministers were tied up to their eye balls. It is one thing if you are winning the elections. It is quite a different matter if you are losing as badly as this Labour Government did.
Labour's London Mayor Ken Livingstone lost the election convincingly to Conservative Boris Johnson. Poor Ken. He is a fine chap but the tide has turned against Labour, especially since Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair.
But that is not all. In the local elections, Labour lost even more dramatically. It came third to Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in terms of the national share of the vote, plummeting to only 24 percent, even lower than during the depth of Tony Blair's woes brought about by his adventures in the Iraq war when the party garnered 26 percent of the vote. Gordon Brown was heralded as the man who would turn things round and spearhead New Labour's recovery. But we saw how he dithered about calling an election. We have seen how some of his tax policies as Chancellor have turned out to be so unpopular with the voters because they hurt the poor.
Now the electorate had its say last week. Gordon Brown was given a drubbing that left the party in government stunned. Ministers had a huge task of explaining to the British electorate what went wrong and Zimbabwe's MDC-T had receded way down the priority list.
British ministers are understandably fighting for the future of the Labour Government. Foreign projects in support of the benighted heathens in Zimbabwe have to take their place in a long list of priorities and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary could not get to the meeting that would have given the MDC-T meeting a steer they needed on to how to proceed.
The importance of this meeting could not be underestimated. It was not only supposed to give direction as to what the MDC should do, it was also important for financial reasons.
The MDC-T depends on the British financially. Informed sources say a decision to participate in the run-off could not be made without the authority of the British Government since they would have to fund the MDC-T campaign as they did the campaign for harmonised elections at the end of March.
And there is the other problem. Sources say the Ministry of Defence is hopping mad about alleged misappropriation of funds within the ranks of the MDC-T. They say the MDC-T were given funds to campaign very hard not just for a win but for a victory that would ensure there was "no shadow of doubt" as to who had won. Sources say it is the MOD that is funding the project although the Foreign Office has a strategic lead role.
The MOD is said to be dismayed with allegations that some of the funds that should have been used to campaign for an MDC-T victory were used to buy properties in South Africa and neighbouring countries. The MOD is said to have launched an investigation to get to the bottom of this. A team of investigators has gone out to find out if the allegations are true. They are looking for property exchange details, properties bought by individuals as well as personal bank accounts. If the allegations turn out to be true that their surrogates have been spending British tax payers' money like confetti, enriching themselves in neighbouring countries rather than working with the suffering masses of Zimbabwe, this would be a huge embarrassment for the British.
And while they are so intricately involved in the politics of Zimbabwe in such a partisan way, it is difficult for them to refute President Mugabe's contention that it is the British that he is fighting for bringing about the country's problems.
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It is difficult for them to explain also why, if it is not their wish to fight for their kith and kin in the battle for the land in Zimbabwe, they have not left Zimbabweans to deal with their own problems!
You are muddled Peter.
1. You interchange Britain and the Labour Party.
2. What not produce some evidence rather than offer a deduction. People have been making this accusation for TEN years - if there is evidence, produce it. Or notice the time that the gramophone has being going round-and-round-and-round.
3. People in UK reverse your argument. They say that ZEC deliberately announced the "results" on a night when the world's attention - yes the world's attention - would be on something significantly more important. Elections of London. London has the same... [Read Full Text]
Now that article was funny! I love the way it mentions , "sources at the Ministry of Defence". Well I am a source at the Ministry of Defence and I'd like to tell my fellow visitors to this site that never in a million years would the UK MoD fund a political party in another country. Thats the beauty of public accountability because they have no reason to and they'd never get away with it if for some outlandish reason they ever wanted to. I've already shown this article to collegues who thought it was every bit as funny as... [Read Full Text]
Glyph, the UK is/has been flashing Zimbabwe in all it’s news media on the Internet, to the point that most of us Zimbabweans, wonder if we are a province of UK. Has the UK contemplated funding an army or opposition party in Zimbabwe? Yes indeed. Your denial is typical of British behavior in Africa. You have made Zimbabwe the top priority of Africa news coverage and not Darfur or Somalia or DRC where within 3 years 3 million people have died. The accusation that news on Zimbabwe is motivated by that small racist Anglo community in Zimbabwe resonates with most... [Read Full Text]
Actually the point was that the MoD was financing the opposition parties in Zimbabwe, I can tell you emphatically that they aren't. I didn't mention Darfur or Somalia because the piece in the Herald was obviously on Zimbabwe, maybe you should confine yourself to the comment I made instead of echoing the paranoia in the other posts of yours which I see dotted around the site. If you honestly in your heart of hearts believe that the first thing every white person in the world thinks when they wake up in the morning is, "Oh I wish Zimbabwe was back... [Read Full Text]
Glyph, I'm happy Zimbabwe is not your pre-occupation and I certainly would like your country, especially your media, to act as you said.
Based on the massive propaganda campaign that the Western media has conducted over the past few weeks, right up to The NYTimes' May 9, 2008 editorial, one would get the impression that Zimbabwe is the most important nation on earth and that many, if not all, whites are very concerned about it. Zimbabwe and who rules it is far more significant to the white world for the impact that its success or failure has on the ownership of African resources. To the white world, lead by the UK and US, it is of vital importance that Zimbabweans are not successful... [Read Full Text]
"Strong independent Africans in control of their own resources is among their greatest fears."
ROFL! What a load of rubbish. You think that the western leaders wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat after a nightmare that Zimbabwe had returned to sub-100% inflation? What a joke!
China is rapidly becoming the next superpower and, fool that you are, you think western leaders are worried about small African countries becoming less of an economic disaster. That's funny!
Oh please Phiri you talk absolute nonsense. Go onto the BBC news website now and click on world news. The way you talk most of the links should be about Zim. Right now (20:47) there's ONE link to a Zim story out of about 30.
Your blatant lies are typical of a ZANU-PF propaganda sucker.
Selector
And can you please enlighten us on what you mean by the "Zim situation"- peace, prosperity,harmony?- Is that what you would have us believe were it not for the venal imperialists? Sophisticated as you may sound, please leave Western powers out of this; the battle lines in Zimbabwe are between Mugabe and a traumatized people who have seen through his perfidy- he was given a job to build not to burn and maim. Tell me what have the British and Americans got to do with rural Zimbabweans finally waking up to the truth that ZANU is indeed a... [Read Full Text]
Such apocryphal pretensions to journalistic sophistry can on happen in Zimbabwe.The writer of this article obviously believes all Zimbabweans are dim wits to the extent they can lap ad neusium the preposterous suggestion that the country is under siege from the British.Such wild allegations against a country whose only crime is to have been a former colonial power, is to say the least an abdication of rational thought and the product of compulsive liars who populate Herald House.
I have been wondering what's so special about Zimbabwe that Britain would want to colonize it again given its sorry state... [Read Full Text]
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