President Emmerson Mnangagwa has rejected the growing calls
for political dialogue in the country, including the formation of a new
government of national unity (GNU) to help end Zimbabwe’s myriad challenges.
Speaking in an interview with the Daily News yesterday,
presidential spokesperson George Charamba also said even if Mnangagwa were to
be persuaded to consider knitting together a GNU — as proposed by respected
liberation stalwart Tshinga Dube on Tuesday — this would be difficult to
achieve given the wars tearing apart the MDC.
This comes as the country’s political and economic crises
continue to deepen — with the recently re-introduced Zim dollar plunging on the
parallel market against major currencies, triggering a new wave of price
increases of basic goods.
“We respect Dube as a veteran freedom fighter. He has been
a senior member of the party, and remains so, which means his views will always
be taken seriously, except in this particular case.
“It appears he has forgotten key developments that are
happening in the country … Firstly, he seems to be detached from the goings-on
in the MDC camp.
“Presently, who will be their interlocutor, assuming the
president was inclined to entertain the MDC?” Charamba told the Daily News
yesterday.
“By the way, the president has always been inclined to
accommodate the MDC party, but never exclusively.
“There is also this Supreme Court judgment which has
triggered certain processes in the MDC, and which processes would need to be
concluded before we know the bonafide leader of the MDC.
“Is he (Dube) suggesting that the president overrides court
processes and party processes, in order to engage a party which is still in a
state of unsettledness?” Charamba further told the Daily News.
This comes as the MDC is in the midst of significant
disarray, following a recent Supreme Court ruling which upheld an earlier
decision by the High Court that voided Nelson Chamisa’s leadership of the
country’s largest opposition party.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court installed Thokozani Khupe
as the party’s interim president pending the holding of an extraordinary
congress within three months of its ruling.
The country’s highest court also restored former MDC
secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora and ex-chairperson Morgen Komichi to their
previous positions which they held before Chamisa’s disputed ascendancy to
power.
Ever since this court ruling, the Khupe and Chamisa groups
have been involved in a hammer and tongs tussle for the control of the MDC.
Charamba also told the Daily News yesterday that Mnangagwa
did not need to form a GNU because he had won the hotly-disputed 2018 polls.
“If Dube’s memory serves him well, and I have no doubt it
does, he would know the circumstances under which a government of national
unity is constructed … there has to be a result which is hung or an electoral
result which is unresolved.
“In our case, we didn’t have a hung result and secondly,
while that result was disputed, it went to a process of settlement … which
involved … the judiciary … and it was resolved there.
“So, essentially, it means … all these issues were resolved
comprehensively — firstly, by the electorate and secondly by the Constitutional
Court,” Charamba told the Daily News further.
“Lastly, we are in 2020, just over two years shy of the
next general election. Does it make sense to have a GNU this far late, with a
democratically defined mandate of a winner?
“We are aware that there are some western countries, in the
wake of the troubles in the MDC, that have sought to get Zanu PF to help MDC
put out its fire by creating a side show.
“I don’t think Cde Tshinga is a sharer of that thinking.
That is the enemy’s thinking and it does not need to enlist the support of
Zimbabweans, let alone those of the calibre of Cde Dube,” Charamba added.
“The simple answer is that the advice sits so oddly on the
circumstances of the country and for that reason it is rejected,” he told the
Daily News further.
This comes as more and more people — including Western
powers and church groups — have recently added their voice to the calls for
political dialogue in the country.
Political analysts have also warned Mnangagwa and his government
that the worsening economic rot will likely trigger public unrest if they
continue dithering about fixing the myriad crises.
Dube — the straight-talking former War Veterans minister
and known supporter of Mnangagwa — called for the formation of another GNU,
similar to the stability-inducing arrangement of 2009 — in his wide-ranging
interview with the Daily News on Monday.
“At the current rate, it will take a long time for us to
get it right. I have always said economics and politics are like two legs of
men. If the other leg is dysfunctional, the other leg won’t be able to walk
straight.
“You cannot have a good economy where there is no good
politics.
“I am … calling for a government of national unity, not
because there is a vacancy … but I feel it will make us focus on running the
economy only, instead of spending so much time fighting and squabbling over
politics,” the ever candid Dube told the Daily News, exclusively.
“All these things we are hearing about abductions and
torture are caused by divisions, and they affect the reputation of our country.
“So, if they (politicians) can come together, all this will
be over … and we don’t lose anything as a nation.
“But there are some people in government who feel that
maybe if this GNU comes into effect, they will lose their positions,” the
former Zipra bigwig further told the Daily News.
“But we are not looking at that, we are looking at the
development of the country. Look at how neighbouring countries are fast
developing ahead of us.
“Everyone here is thinking about power. Where have you seen
a country with 23 people aspiring to be a president?
“It’s not surprising that in the next elections, this number
may double up,” Dube added — referring to the record number of people who stood
as presidential candidates in the disputed 2018 national elections.
The worsening local economic and political crises also come
as Zimbabwe is fighting the double whammy of the deadly effects of the global
coronavirus pandemic and the regional drought that has left millions of people
in the country facing starvation.
Despite showing early signs of efforts to turn around the
economy, which had suffered from years of corruption and mismanagement under
the previous ruinous rule of the late former president Robert Mugabe, Mnangagwa
and his lieutenants are now finding the going tough.
In 2009, Mugabe was forced into forming a GNU with the
MDC’s much-loved founding father, Morgan Tsvangirai, after the equally
hotly-disputed 2008 polls.
The short-lived GNU was credited with stabilising the
country’s economy which had imploded in the run-up to those elections.
In those polls, Tsvangirai beat Mugabe hands down. However,
the results were withheld for six long weeks by stunned authorities — amid
widespread allegations of ballot tampering and fraud, which were later revealed
by former bigwigs of the ruling Zanu PF.
In the ensuing sham presidential run-off, which authorities
claimed was needed to determine the winner, Zanu PF apparatchiks engaged in an
orgy of violence in which hundreds of Tsvangirai’s supporters were killed —
forcing the former prime minister to withdraw from the discredited race
altogether.
Mugabe went on to stand in an embarrassing and
widely-condemned one-man race in which he declared himself the winner. Daily
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