Fellow Zimbabweans, our schools are opening tomorrow and
our industry or what is left of it is due to open starting end of this week. We
begin this watershed year amid a lot of promise and mammoth national
expectations for bright and positive prospects for this great country that we
all love.
Last November we all united, for a patriotic cause, to
orchestrate a huge fall of an intractable political edifice that had for
decades stood between the people and their collective hope.
We all saw and reveled at the fall of a strong man who had
ruled this country with an iron fist and bludgeoned the people for selfish
political ends.
In came a new administration on the back of a
military-backed effort that still raises very valid and genuine questions about
the constitutionality of allowing soldiers to dabble in civilian political
affairs.
However, despite the palpable and justifiable national
relief at the fall of Mugabe, huge challenges remain for the new
administration.
Firstly, the new administration has to articulate a clear
and comprehensive roadmap to legitimacy that includes implementation of the
much-needed reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections in a few months
time. It is disheartening to note that we are already behind schedule and last
week, I raised these concerns to President Mnangagwa when he made an impromptu
but welcome gesture to check on me following my public disclosure that I had
been diagnosed with cancer of the colon.
This new administration has to earn its legitimacy through
a proper election. It must seek the people’s mandate. The new government has to
break away from the past and genuinely chart a new trajectory to a dispensation
of clean politics that truly puts the country and its people first. It has to
respect diversity and to appreciate that despite our different political
formations, we are all patriotic Zimbabweans who yearn for the best for our
country.
For me, that visit to my residence by the new President was
significant not only in terms of the content of what we discussed but in the
import of its overall relevance.
The visit signaled what must be the bane of the new
politics of our time that an opposition party, especially one represented in
our national Parliament, does not in any way constitute an enemy of the State.
The opposition is just as patriotic and aspires and wishes for the best for our
people.
Indeed, my engagement with President Mnangagwa must herald
a new page in our politics----a page in which the opposition is considered a
partner and not an enemy of the State. The visit can be built upon by truly
well-meaning Zimbabweans to herald a new politics of engagement in our country.
Political difference must be celebrated and the people must
be allowed to express themselves. That is why I was shocked by the new regime’s
iron-fist response two weeks ago to Zimbabweans in Bulawayo who sought to alert
the government of the deep-seated wounds that are still festering since the
Gukurahundi atrocities of the 1980s.
That response was wanton, unjustified and shows that the
Mnangagwa administration still has a lot of work to do to earn our faith and
trust.
Fellow Zimbabweans, we begin the New Year mired in deep
economic problems from which we need urgent extrication. The cash crisis, price
increases, the liquidity crunch, the huge budget deficit and the lack of faith
and trust in the sincerity of government and all its institutions remain a
somewhat permanent cancer in our body politic.
The onus is on the new administration to inspire hope and
confidence in the nation.
True, there appears to have been some effort in tackling
corruption but one hopes that the fight against graft and avarice truly becomes
wholesome and ceases to be part of a retributive agenda against the ousted
faction in Zanu PF. One hopes that the crusade against sleaze and corruption
becomes a genuine crusade being fought in the national interest and not to
punish a few selected individuals.
Fellow Zimbabweans, we are on the verge of what could be an
exciting year especially as we reflect on the great potential we have as a
country and as a people.
At a personal level, I feel an air of satisfaction as I
reflect on the great journey we have travelled together even as I seriously
ponder about the future.
You, the people have travelled with me a journey that had
its own tribulations. Yet it was also a journey in which we worked hard and
achieved so much together. I am in the process of writing a book that is set to
be a collective national treasure on the great things we have achieved together
over the years in our journey of service and sacrifice.
It was a journey that began at the ZCTU Congress in Gweru
in 1988 when, with a few hours before the elective congress; a delegation
knocked on my hotel room in the middle of the night and persuaded me to run for
the post of secretary-general of the country’s national labour federation.
I was to win that election and the first task that we
achieved together was to extricate the ZCTU from the clutches of government by
making it a genuinely autonomous labour body that represented the interests of
the country’s workers.
We fought that battle together and achieved that true
independence and autonomy of the ZCTU.
When the government introduced a toxic IMF-foisted economic
structural adjustment programme that was not in the interest of the workers, we
fought together and the government began to take the voice of the workers
seriously.
In 1998, together, we turned the workers’ voice into a
sonorous national chorus that could shout for a national shut down to
articulate the genuine concerns of the country’s workers. Together, we
galvanized the workers into a formidable force that could blow out the smoke
from our productive industries to clamour for national attention.
The government began to take us seriously.
We achieved that together.
In 1999, through the national working people’s convention,
together with the workers of this country, you clamoured for a workers-driven
political party.
The country could never be the same again.
That working people’s convention gave birth to the Movement
for Democratic Change in 1999. Since then, the party has become a perennial
people’s voice in Parliament. It became a formidable political force that
administered the country’s major cities and towns and Zanu PF---- to this
day----remain visitors and strangers in the country’s cities, towns and other
rural enclaves where the gospel of change has made a huge imprint.
We have achieved that together.
In 2008, we defeated Robert Mugabe and we showed--through
an inclusive government---that it is possible for government to be an arena
that can bring positive and palpable change in the lives of the people.
We achieved that together.
In that government we turned around the economy, stabilized
prices and gave a battered nation the reason to hope again.
We achieved that together.
Above all else, we wrote and affirmed in a referendum a new
Constitution for the country; a Constitution that determined the way we want
our affairs managed and our country governed. At the heart of this supreme law
is a comprehensive Bill of rights almost second to none in Southern Africa and
beyond.
The challenge for the new administration is to give life to
that governance charter that we made ourselves.
That new Constitution was no mean task and we achieved it
together.
Beyond what we have achieved together, we ought to leave a
lasting legacy where the baton can be changed peacefully, in a tranquil and
cordial atmosphere of unity and togetherness.
At a personal level, I am using this New Year not only to
reflect on the onerous journey that we have travelled together but also to peer
with renewed hope into a bright future.
I am looking at the imminent prospects of us as the older
generation leaving the levers of leadership to allow the younger generation to
take forward this huge task that we started together so many years ago with our
full blessing and support.
It was therefore not by accident but by design that when I
disclosed to you my health status, I also took a bold step to appoint an
additional two Vice Presidents to assist me. As I have said before, while
politicians only think about the next election, true statesmen think about the
next generation, for current leaders are only but caretakers for future
generations. We do not have any entitlement to lead but we have a duty to
serve.
We must recognize the imperative that new hands, with the
full blessing of the people, must take this struggle and this country forward
with the destination remaining the same - a society that prides itself for not
leaving anyone behind in their pursuit of freedom, prosperity and happiness.
That is the only lasting legacy and precedence that we must leave to future
generations.
As we move towards the upcoming elections, we must not lose
sight and misinterpret what happened in November 2017. The departure of Mugabe
resulted in a change of guard at the helm of our state but #ChangeIsNotEnough.
This country requires transformation of both our governance culture and the way
we do business.
Our war war cry therefore for the upcoming elections is
simple “Munhu Wese Kubasa” – “Umuntu wonke emsebenzini” - “Everyone to Work”.
Whether you are an investor, a commercial farmer, an industrialist, a teacher,
a banker a worker or a peasant farmer, lets all go back to work in order to
prosper. We need to produce in order to grow our economy and create new jobs.
For that to happen, we need both domestic and international
investment capital which must be guaranteed a safe, predictable, secure and
corruption free environment underpinned by the rule of law, constitutionalism,
respect for property and human rights and freedoms. The starting point for this
envisaged take off for our great nation is a return to legitimacy through a
free, fair, credible internationally supervised and monitored election whose outcome
is not contested.
Anything short of this will spell doom for our great
nation. I therefore call upon the interim leaders of our country not to miss
this opportunity by dipping their heads in the sand and wish away our crisis by
not implementing the necessary reforms required before elections------for
history will judge you harshly.
Lastly, I would like to urge those who have not registered
to vote to take advantage of the extended registration exercise to register so
that you can participate in shaping your new destiny.
God bless Zimbabwe.
Morgan Tsvangirai
President MDC-T/MDC Alliance
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