Violet Gonda held an interview with Presidential hopeful, Morgan Tsvangirai, and the main question was why MDC Tsvangirai was participating in a "flawed" election in the first place. When we backtrack on this issue, we go to the time that the MDC split on whether to participate in Senatorial elections, or not. The view from him then was that the voting public did not want to legitimize the current regime by acceding to a political manipulation of the country's legislative procedures.
Zimdaily quotes Morgan as saying,
""Well we are past the debate against participation and I want to say that, in our view we are in a struggle. We are in a democratic struggle and any struggle has various fazes and various events and this election is just one of those events in the democratic struggle.""
Shall we read this as the proverbial Damascan experience for a faction that should realize that the best way to make any recognizable effort might just be through the electoral and parliamentary processes? I wonder if things could not have turned for the better if this realization was made early on, and the "struggle" for what it is worth, was carried out right there when people were baying for the regime's blood.
Perhaps a coalition of all the democratic forces currently vying for an end to the present regime would have sounded a stronger knell to the ZANU PF infrastructure than claims of growth coming in at the end of time.
I feel there is need for his party to say more about the other areas of the country's bleeding economy.
Sweeping statements on how to curb an inflation running havoc at 150000% will not cut it. In the interview, he claims that there are going to be a series of measures put in place to ensure that people benefit. He states that no subsidies will be provided, because they benefit the rich at the expense of the poor; that corruption will not be easy to follow up on, because statistically a former government's misdeeds are difficult to ascertin, and in this regard, we might as well 'forget" these misdeeds and start on a fresh page...
he says
Unfortunately it's not something that you can outline as a general policy to say those who have benefited from the system in a corrupt way should pay for it because you don't know how much and you don't know the amount, the extent to which the country has been compromised. I think that unless you have got the facts, you cannot make a general policy because you might find that this might just be rumours and at the end of the day when you make an analysis you are not be able to establish how far the country has been compromised.
Statements like these make me afraid. In fact, I am very afraid at the thought of how the marginalized will feel when put a "clean" slate on the table and begin to talk of change. No chance can come without a proper acknowledgement of the problems people are facing, at whose hands they have come, and what impact this has had on our community. Tell all this to the teacher attempting to make an honest living in Dottito!
There are other issues Morgan raises, but I have to leave you now and work. I can tell you now that no regime living will be legitimized by staying aloof, boycotting and crying foul. When Man eats dog, he goes for the most virulent!
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