23 December 2007.n Tsvangirai
AS WE record the eighth Christmas after the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change in 1999, I wish to recognise our collective determination and resolve to transform the political face of our motherland against heavy odds.
We are pioneers among Africans: the first nation to confront an African dictator through democratic means, and the first post-colonial formation arising from the social movement to claim an extension of freedom and the realisation of the noble ideals of the liberation struggle. Unlike the situation in the rest of Africa, we remained steadfast in our refrain to resort to armed violence in order to be heard.
I am happy to note that we pinned our colours to a set of ideals that bind our nation and continued to address seemingly intractable political and democratic deficits perpetuated by Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF. We stretched ourselves, set the national agenda and celebrated the possible in a negative African political climate that initially scorned at our peaceful efforts and wrote us off as vassals of external hate and foreign manipulation.
Today Africa is with us: our SADC neighbours understand us and they are helping us to manage a messy political transition at the successful conclusion of our national project, our democratic struggle. We have won this struggle.
We now face a delicate process of transferring power to the people, rekindling hope and setting up institutions and a government over which the people have control and input.
For 27 years, Zimbabweans believed government was something that happens to them. The people ceded decisions and the essence of life to a criminal cabal, a criminal state. Trust, confidence and faith in an orderly system tumbled along, giving way to the emergence of a plethora of single issue protest groups within the broader democratic movement.
As we enter the New Year the people are poised to eject the status quo and to re-engage with the democratic process to complete the change into a New Zimbabwe. But given the delicacy of the transition, we need all voices on the table. Let us unite for the purposes of crossing this sensitive footbridge to a genuinely free and fair election whose outcome shall discourage further political disputes.
We have limited options. With millions away from home and a deepening humanitarian crisis and a debilitating national food shortage, Zimbabwe can ill-afford to delay the resolution of the national crisis, a day longer. We are at a crucial stage of our nation’s development.
Christmas offers us a superb occasion to put our differences aside, meet family and friends and to share our thoughts and scarce resources freely as a people. Christmas creates a period of giving, a period of empathy and a period of solidarity.
Christmas unites all. I wish to take this opportunity to appeal to the Church to pray for our nation at this time of greatest need; to pray for an orderly transition; and to pray for a Zimbabwe that emerges out of this dirty political envelop without life-threatening bruises. Across the political divide, we have a duty and a responsibility to guide ourselves and cross over into a new dispensation.
We have an enormous task ahead: we must rebuild the family; we must bequeath a normal birthright to our children; we must embark on a mammoth reconciliation and reconstruction programme to put our country back on the rails; and we must exercise extreme care and caution in order to rejoin the international community.
Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF rely on force and coercion to achieve their objectives. We have been through all that. Mugabe and Zanu PF believe in violence as a means to an end. We have sufficient experience to deal with that. Mugabe and Zanu PF understand deceit and insincerity. We must stop them in order to move forward as a nation.
The New Zimbabwe in our dreams requires a concerted national effort to effect a generational change-over of our national political leadership. The New Zimbabwe in our vision is premised on honesty and tolerance in our diversity. The respect we expect from the international community should be a mirror image of the accolades and acceptance we enjoy at home. Any attempt to derail the current transition shall drive us to the edge of a precipice and delay an evolutionary process into a new era.
I call upon SADC, as underwriters to the current negotiations between Zanu PF and the MDC, to invest further political capital into our transition. It is important that SADC sees the process right to the end. SADC institutions must move into Zimbabwe quickly to oversee the transition, help us raise hope and assist ordinary people to restrain our rogue regime from an impulsive, negative reaction at a time when Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF are certainly losing power and control.
Our main focus rests on a free and fair election. The conditions for such a plebiscite must satisfy all stakeholders. The conditions must pass a SADC and a universal test. There is no need for us to rush through a transition and end up with a flawed process, a flawed outcome and a future doubted at home and abroad. Arrogance is negative. Arrogance dampens confidence. Zimbabwe deserves better.
Our elections in 2000 resulted in 37 legal challenges. Mugabe and Zanu PF usurped the judiciary and the bulk of these challenges were never heard. The few that came under judicial scrutiny proved that the Movement for Democratic Change won that election. But we were, nevertheless, denied access to power.
The Presidential election in 2002 suffered the same fate. To this day, and a few months to another major election, the legal challenge to the process and the result in the 2002 election is still locked up in the courts, partly heard. A repeat of this backward way of life would finish us off all as a nation. Let us avoid falling into the same trap.
For participants in a national plane to derive meaning from their routine interaction, from their conversations and from democracy, there is a need for an environment secured by our diversity, the rule of law, a solid human rights culture, respect for private property rights and an embrace of universal norms and standards of behaviour. None of that obtains in the Zimbabwe we live in today. This transition is designed to lead to a complete reversal of the status quo. Let us all work hard to achieve that.
Together we can get out of the complicated political stalemate whose weight is evident everywhere. The stalemate has cost us our basic sustenance, our food reserves and our friends. The stalemate affects our relations with the international community.
Our neighbours are as concerned as ourselves with the absence of a political will, on the part of the Mugabe dictatorship, to accept a smooth transition to a new Zimbabwe. Without sufficient safeguards, insured by an amicable agreement and sound political will, we risk driving the nation – once again -- into a cul-de-sac. We remain concerned about the insincerity of Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF in this transitional process. Zanu PF’s insincerity and behaviour on the ground are causing immense anxiety and, in some cases, total uncertainty.
As individuals, as families, as communities and in our different capacities, we shall meet, pray, dialogue and dine with Zanu PF functionaries during this Christmas and New Year period. Let us implore on them to see the bigger picture, the national imperative and the national interest. Let us reason with them as kith and kin to accept that Zimbabwe is the subject, not their personal fears and trappings. Let us all put our heads together and ensure that Zimbabwe experiences a free and fair election next year.
May I wish you a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. It is my sincere hope and conviction that Zimbabwe shall be a different place in 2008.
Morgan Tsvangirai, President, Harare, Zimbabwe.
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