Tsvangirais lack of vision astounding
Tuesday, 11 June 2013 00:00
Rangu Nyamurundira
THE day was May 19, 2013 and the place was the historic Zimbabwe Grounds.
MDC-T had called for its so-called star rally. There stood party leader,
Morgan Tsvangirai, eyeing the presidency of this nation. His agenda surely
was to win our watching majority to his partys cause. It was expected then
that his words would stir our hearts, charm
with their expression of a leader for our cause and aspirations.
It was not to be.
Tsvangirais words proved an anti-climax to a nation pursuing economic
empowerment with reaffirmed vigour, celebrating the gains it begins to reap
from land reform.
We cant build an economy that survives on peasants, was the echo around
Zimbabwe Grounds, resonating across the nation, boldly declared by a man
sure of himself, of his vision for a majority he would want to preside over.
He forgot it is a majority awake to the God-given title to their nations
wealth.
We can bet one Professor Moyo at that moment chuckled, thought to himself I
told you so, warned us of the man who speaks with an open mouth and shut
mind.
Tsvangirai spoke such stinging words to a people long sustained by an
agro-based economy, which he would have to rally to him.
Yet his wisest words were that if made president, he would remove people
from the farms to the industries than removing people from the industries to
the farms because I dont see that working.
Gosh! open mouth and shut mind indeed.
What about peasants owning land Tsvangirai?
What emboldens him to dismiss his own peoples growing enterprise on land
restored them, enterprise which has endured and overcame a decade of
sanctions that have been like salt cast upon their land to dry its
fertility.
Now he condemns our peasantry, you, me, father, mother, grandfather,
grandmother, brother sister, cousin, uncle, mukwasha, muroora, who now work
on the land restored us.
What makes him think we have no property rights over that land violently
expropriated from us now restituted?
We know now, if president he would champion only property rights of foreign
investors here.
Despite sanctions, despite being denied state support by an MDC-T Finance
Minister, the peasants are proving the old adage about the old women of
Chivi who cooked rocks and drank soup.
The peasants, placed between a rock and a hard place by the hand of
Tsvangirais MDC-T party are not only reaping from the land, but begin to
feed into a national economy emaciated by sanctions.
Yet the MDC-T leader stood at Zimbabwe Grounds playing ignorant to glaring
findings, reported even from western capitals where his Friends only to a
landless Zimbabwe reside. The facts now finding light are that the
peasants are ploughing Zimbabwes agro-based economy back into health.
Upon the land an army of indigenous peasants, took over from white farmers,
are making steady advance with Zimbabwes main agricultural export.
They are expected to provide 170 million kilogrammes of tobacco this 2013,
more than the 140 kilogrammes reaped in 2012, which injected US$517 million
into the nations economy.
Peasants are on track, to match the 220 million kilogrammes produced by
white former commercial farmers.
Contrary to Tsvangirai misrepresentation, do they not build an economy in
a tobacco industry accounting for 10.7 percent of gross domestic product?
Meanwhile, across the whole agricultural sector as many as 245 000 of
peasants benefiting from land reform are said to be capable of generating
annual earnings of US$10 000.
If Mr Tsvangirai does the maths, how much is earned by 245 000 peasants
earning US$10 000 each.
It adds up to a whopping US$2 450 000 000 to be generated per annum, more
than the US$2,6 billion in foreign aid over a whole four years that
Tsvangirais European
Friends brag to have injected into the regime change agenda.
The Prime Minister should have taken time to tour youthful peasants
growing at least 40 hectares of potatoes in Nyanga following youth
empowerment interventions.
Had Tsvangirai and Tendai Biti supported them surely the young peasant
farmers would contribute significantly towards growing enough local produce,
reducing imports from South Africa. All to the benefit of the national
budget.
Instead, all Tsvangirai claims to have seen during his term as Prime
Minister is that peasants on the land are not working for the good of
Zimbabwes economy. Zvakaoma.
The man was too busy fighting for partisan interests to see an
indigenisation programme sure to work for the national interest.
Worse still, during his four years in government, the man was blinkered from
seeing beyond his trade unionist ideology.
All he remains focused on is us as factory workers, to sweat and labour for
Western capitalists called foreign investors.
So he would rather remove people from the farms to the industries were his
foreign investors would exploit and expropriate in the name of their
property rights.
Chilling thought, of peasants removed from their land by any MDC-T
government.
It provokes most disturbing images doesnt it, in the minds of a people
still traumatised by the ghost of a colonial authority violently
dispossessing them of their fertile lands.
Yet a whole president wannabe threatens such a fate to be relived upon the
peasants, a whole 245 000 of them and their families, millions really. Alas.
Tsvangirais economic vision for this country is that we all be turned into
worker bees, to toil in making honey for a queen with not a single iota of
Nehandas genes.
The queen he would have us slave for will never ensure that the honey
sustains our nation. Rather it is a British Queen, and her European court,
for whose companies we must harvest our countrys honey to sweeten western
economies.
The trade union raised man cannot see beyond the assembly lines, cannot
fathom life beyond the factory walls.
He cannot see the peasants enterprising hand, but only the hand of foreign
investors giving out wages never enough to sustain an entire peoples
socio-economic needs.
Thankfully, another Professor, Madhuku, now points out to Tsvangirais
narrow minded nature, failing to see beyond trade unionism. But what are
these Professors seeing that they are not taking good time to enlighten the
people on.
They must hasten to enlighten us now that we go to the ballot, to cast upon
our nations fate; to be worker bees or empowered peasants owning their
land. We must be made to have eyes that see and ears that hear. For there is
confusion isnt there, all within one man and his MDC-T party.
Tsvangirai, seeking to lead you and me, is a renowned flip flopper.
He says one thing only to mean the other; he turns rights only to take
immediate sharp left, embrace as lands foreign wolves among us. We will be
like sheep led by a confused Sheppard, all to be picked one by one by
marauding wolves.
The man disparages peasants given land, constituting a significant majority
of our indigenous numbers, while his lieutenant Biti calls vehicles
empowering our majority illegal.
Yet Tsvangirai will still claim he has a better answer, an alternative to
indigenisation, as if the peasants and our kin in local communities are not
the very majority being empowered by indigenisation. Maiwe zvangu, wanoda
hukuru awa.
They are at loss these leader wannabes, drowning in bitter JUICEs and now an
ART more graffiti that economic genius.
Professor Madhuku was to the point again, that The policies such as JUICE
are a clear sign that (Tsvangirai) is narrow minded and sees everything
through the eyes of a trade unionist.
They are at pains before the truth so glaring, which they distort and would
want to shut their eyes to.
Yet however much they may close their eyes the truth remains patiently
waiting for those eyes to be opened.
That truth is indigenisation and economic empowerment, of empowered
peasants, youth and local communities where Chiefs begin to confidently
preside over community trusts worth millions.
And the most damning truth to the lies and partisan interests lacking a
national cause, Mr Tsvangirai, is that it is an indigenisation empowering
those very workers you would simply throw a job at.
Indigenisation, Sir, transforms workers into more than hewers of wood and
condemned second class citizen within their economy.
Indigenisation is making workers own a direct and real share in companies
once solely foreign investor owned.
They are to be less exposed to high costs imposed by inflation and the
economic recession we saw in the west, were only the elite got state
bailouts while millions of workers remain destitute.
We must take time then, all those of us workers who found their way to
Zimbabwe Grounds on that day. We must deeply reflect and ponder.
If we are to be workers would we not better be workers within the framework
of indigenisation, workers with a stake in the hive, the economy for which
we toil. Pafungeyi.
Remember too in your reflections that it was Robert Gabriel Mugabe that
spoke to a nation at the first and still only true Start Rally at Zimbabwe
Grounds, on the eve of independence in 1980.
He spoke of his Zanu partys coming victory, surely anticipating a fight for
the peoples economic independence that lay ahead.
It is a fight Tsvangirai cannot fathom nor declare allegiance to such a
peoples cause.
And so a united Zanu PF today continues in its fight, this time for economic
emancipation to achieve total independence.
The next real Star Rally then, God grant us, shall be in the aftermath of
an empowered peoples victory by August 2013, when the same Robert Gabriel
Mugabe shall reclaim the dignity of a now molested Zimbabwe Grounds to
declare our nations economic independence.
Rangu Nyamurundira is a lawyer and an indigenisation consultant based in
Harare, Zimbabwe.
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni na Dk. Kiiza Besigye Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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