16 February 2004
Address by MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai to the NCA Public Meeting
Mr Chairman
Invited guests
Ladies and gentlemen
I have been asked to address you on the subject: Zimbabwe's Deepening Crisis. I have been particularly requested to make a specific reference to the question: Will the latest Cabinet reshuffle solve the Country's Problem?
I shall start by dealing with the last part of the request.
Since September 2003, the MDC took control of all the major towns and cities, a town board and one rural district council.
Since September 2003, we took over the reigns of power in earnest, at least, in local government.
About six million people now live in the urban areas. The majority have mandated the MDC to represent their interests and to speak for them. The people in the urban areas drive the political and development agenda for the nation.
The people in the urban areas are responsible for 60 to 70 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in Zimbabwe today. They support the MDC.
I am saying this to stress the fact that it is a complete waste of time to talk about the adventures of the ZANU PF regime in relation to the affairs of a country the regime does not control.
The regime lost the plot a long time ago. In a society where a regime has been totally rejected by the people, it is folly to discuss the effectiveness or otherwise of its rejected administration or the way and manner in which Robert Mugabe reshuffles such a discredited coterie of officials.
The people have forgotten about ZANU PF.
The nation eagerly awaits a new lease of life from an MDC government.
That is where our focus is today. That is the issue driving our agenda.
For that reason, we have put our machinery into high gear. We are ready to govern.
We have revised our policies, polished them up and consulted our natural allies in the democratic movement on the way forward.
The process will be completed at the next parliamentary and Presidential election when we increase our parliamentary majority and assume total power.
To get that result, we are launching a major national and international campaign towards a free and fair election.
We believe the people have been denied their voice for a very long time. Any meaningful election must be born out of a legitimate desire to obtain a genuine record of the will of the people.
We need national consensus, or at least an agreement, on how we conduct our elections.
We need to free our country from thuggery, from open theft, from violence, from fear and from exploitation if we are to obtain a legitimate result.
Freedom can only be underpinned by a democratic constitution and democratic values.
Experience from elsewhere shows that a democratic constitution would be impossible to put in place when the people are under a grip of tyranny.
Mugabe has recalled his old guard into his Cabinet. That old guard is a ruthless lot. That old guard, as you know, is entirely responsible for the mess we are in today.
The Zanu PF old guard can never allow the people to put together a democratic constitution.
What are required, in our view, are agreements and amendments to the existing framework to enable the people to register their democratic will.
We need changes to the electoral conditions.
We need an independent commission to supervise the election.
We need an open playground. Campaigns must take place anywhere.
The democratic space must be totally free to enable all the players to win or lose in comfort. After passing that hurdle, the people can then work on an irreversible path towards a people-driven constitution.
Such a constitution-making process is only possible when people can meet freely, anywhere in Zimbabwe, without thinking of either the threat of POSA, ZANU PF militias or rogue war veterans.
One of the not-so-new ministers, I am told, has declared the small village of Rusape a no-go area to everything: The MDC, Independent newspapers, and officials from civil society.
So how do we craft a people-driven constitution when such individuals are rewarded for such unbecoming and undemocratic behaviour.
A people-driven constitution can only come about when the people are able to communicate their ideas using a diverse media without fear.
We need the necessary space to speak out. We need the oxygen to spell out our views, our expectations, our aspirations and our definition of an ideal Zimbabwe.
We cannot put together a constitution when we are denied access to the public broadcaster and the public media.
As you all know, for nearly a decade, we have tried to knock some sense into the mind of ZANU PF.
The record is clear. At the beginning, we believed we could persuade Robert Mugabe to address our basic grievances.
We realised we were getting nowhere. We realised the crisis was deepening. Today, Zimbabwe requires a post-war reconstruction approach to get it out of the mess.
Zimbabwe requires a fresh start. Zimbabwe needs a new ideology with a social liberation thrust.
Yes, we won our independence in 1980. But we never enjoyed any freedom.
The national grievance in Zimbabwe today arose from the absence of essential institutional, cultural and constitutional safeguards necessary to entrench the people's freedoms.
We have never tasted our full individual liberties.
We have never been able to take for granted our personal safety and security.
Our struggle to further the ideals of the liberation struggle and to achieve an equitable, enabling and absolutely free society is being sabotaged by a ruling elite.
This elite, using nationalism as a cover, has usurped the people's voice. It has stolen our sovereign will to determine our own destiny.
The result was a crisis of governance.
The crisis of governance led to endemic corruption and political patronage. The crisis created a huge black market to fertilise corruption and political decay.
The crisis led to the establishment of political fiefdoms. The crisis is a Constitutional issue which requires a political settlement before it can be addressed.
There is so much misguided excitement about Mugabe's moves towards what he calls fighting corruption.
Mugabe today talks about elements in his party who are guilty of externalizing foreign currency.
Mugabe talks of a new monetary policy that would, in his view, suddenly flood the country with manna from heaven.
He has admitted that he has failed.
In past, he claimed that sanctions were the cause of the current economic crisis.
In the past, he claimed the MDC was the cause of the current economic crisis.
In the past, he pointed fingers at Tony Blair and George Bush.
Today, he says the crisis is being caused by the boys from Zvimba, Chiweshe and elsewhere.
These boys, Mr Mugabe, have your direct telephone line. You have been working with them all along. Corruption has been at your door step for the past 24 years!
This information has been in the public domain for many years. We don't understand why Mugabe claims to be making any new findings today.
These boys are senior members of your party.
They are the party.
They are in your Central Committee.
They are in your house.
You can't deal with them.
They will deal with you before you reach them.
What is happening within the regime's power structures could be the beginning of a new era within the beleaguered circle of this dictatorship.
At least for the nation at large, the source of our economic problem is becoming clear every day.
We sympathise with Governor Gono.
Where, in the world, have you seen a country being run by a governor of the Reserve Bank?
Gono is not a politician.
He may try his best.
But the problem is political.
As long as the political questions remain unresolved, Gono is simply going to give up.
Gono has no capacity to resolve political issues.
The political issues include:
the restoration of the rule law;
handling politically-induced production hold-ups;
reclaiming faith and confidence in the country's political leadership;
managing the question of legitimacy;
international isolation;
the debt trap;
and, the need for balance of payments support.
There are serious political questions and economic fundamentals which have to tackled by a legitimate government for whatever dreams Gono might have to be realized.
We need to tackle the broad political question and the rising democratic deficit. When our neighbours talk about talks in Zimbabwe, we listen with an open mind.
We are not interested in merely talking to Zanu PF. We are interested in the outcome of those talks. So far, there is nothing on the ground.
We still waiting for the goat to be slaughtered, so that we can sit down and begin the much talked about dialogue.
My message to Mr Mugabe is: I am still waiting for you to inform the nation as to when you want to meet me, your young brother, as you said at Vice President Muzenda's funeral.
The nation desperately needs relief.
We make it clear through our revised policies that we do not merely seek to change faces and replace the ruling elite in the government of Zimbabwe.
We seek to bring in a completely new culture.
The agenda for change pursued by the MDC resonates with the core values of the majority of ordinary Zimbabweans.
We seek to introduce far-reaching changes to our political culture and to our national fabric in order to empower all Zimbabweans in an all-inclusive manner irrespective of our differences and our diversity.
I stand for clean politics. I believe in fair play in any competition. I want to see a clean Zimbabwe.
I am against a process that is bound to distort our desire for authentic Constitutional reform. I maintain, once again, that it is impossible to achieve legitimate reform under the current conditions.
Constitutional reform remains a key priority in the MDC to enable Zimbabwe to regain itself as a promising nation.
We are together with the NCA in this struggle.
I believe in an autonomous civil society, which is politically active. Such a society must be non-partisan stand.
I also wish to see a comprehensive culture of debate taking root in Zimbabwe.
As I said the NCA annual general meeting, we should not, even when freedom is achieved, demobilize our civil society.
Civil society remains a very important tool to check on political excesses.
Civil society must empower the masses to enable them to tackle selfish political elites.
No government can survive when it is at war with civil society.
In conclusion, may I say the Zimbabwean crisis is now so deep that the only honourable thing for this dictatorship to do is to dissolve itself and surrender itself to the people.
I thank you.
Morgan Tsvangirai
President.
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