The secretary-general of the main faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, Tendai Biti, said party treasurer Roy Bennett was culturally Zimbabwean while his colleague David Coltart, who did not speak a word of the local language, would always be an outsider.
He said Bennett, who “speaks Shona better than me”, was nationally popular while Coltart was more concerned with international audiences more than local ones.
Biti said Coltart “saw everything in black and white- in a literal not a figurative sense”.
Biti was speaking on the possibility of inter-party dialogue to try to bring the two factions together, four months after the official split.
Full cable:
Viewing cable 06HARARE683, BITI ON MDC PLANS, INTER-PARTY ENGAGEMENT
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Reference ID |
Created |
Classification |
Origin |
VZCZCXRO5127
PP RUEHMR
DE RUEHSB #0683/01 1630730
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 120730Z JUN 06
FM AMEMBASSY HARARE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0186
INFO RUCNSAD/SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY
RUEHUJA/AMEMBASSY ABUJA 1228
RUEHAR/AMEMBASSY ACCRA 1064
RUEHDS/AMEMBASSY ADDIS ABABA 1234
RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA 0492
RUEHDK/AMEMBASSY DAKAR 0858
RUEHKM/AMEMBASSY KAMPALA 1285
RUEHNR/AMEMBASSY NAIROBI 3657
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 1057
RUEHRO/AMEMBASSY ROME 1696
RUEKDIA/DIA WASHDC//DHO-7//
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEHBS/USEU BRUSSELS
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHDC
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 1443
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHDC
RUFOADA/JAC MOLESWORTH RAF MOLESWORTH UK//DOOC/ECMO/CC/DAO/DOB/DOI//
RUEPGBA/CDR USEUCOM INTEL VAIHINGEN GE//ECJ23-CH/ECJ5M//
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 000683
SIPDIS
SIPDIS
AF/S FOR B. NEULING
NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR C. COURVILLE
AFR/SA FOR E. LOKEN
COMMERCE FOR BECKY ERKUL
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/31/2011
SUBJECT: BITI ON MDC PLANS, INTER-PARTY ENGAGEMENT
REF: (A) HARARE 424 (B) HARARE 355 (C) HARARE 95 (D)
03 HARARE 1971
Classified By: Charge d’Affaires, a.i., Eric T. Schultz under Section 1
——-
Summary
——-
¶1. (C) MDC anti-senate faction Secretary General Tendai Biti
on June 7 told poloff that resource constraints would
probably delay faction plans to get people on the streets.
He reported that ZANU-PF’s Mnangagwa and Mujuru factions each
were making pitches to faction President Morgan Tsvangirai,
with Mnangagwa even offering to subordinate himself in a
junior partnership. Biti stressed Tsvangirai’s continued
popularity and commitment to non-violence, and dismissed
rival faction MP David Coltart’s critique of intra-party
violence as overblown, naQve and self-serving. End summary.
——————————————— ———
Resource Constraints to Postpone Winter of Discontent?
——————————————— ———
¶2. (C) Biti advised that resource constraints would likely
prevent the anti-senate faction from proceeding with plans to
begin civil resistance plans before September. He said he
continued to advocate commencing actions by early July, but
he recognized that the party lacked key resources – i.e.
tranportation and salaried personnel – to pull anything off
successfully in the near term. He denied there was any
debate in the party over whether the people were ready to
participate in such an action. He said he would need
US$40,000 over a three month period to undertake a credible
national action plan.
———————————
Mnangagwa, Mujuru Come a-Courting
———————————
¶3. (C) The anti-senate faction’s Secretary-General confided
that faction president Morgan Tsvangirai was secretly
entertaining separate overtures from ZANU-PF’s Mnangagwa and
Mujuru factions. Each was seeking to have the anti-senate
faction join in some unspecified future power sharing
dispensation. According to Biti, Mnanagagwa was willing to
subordinate himself to Tsvangirai in exchange for cabinet
slots and protection guarantees for affiliated businesses.
Biti said Mujuru was only offering to take Tsvangirai in as a
junior partner, which he said reflected the Mujuru faction’s
continued primacy.
¶4. (C) Biti said he was not involved in the talks and could
not predict where they would end up. He acknowledged that
the “Unity Accords” experience, by which ZANU-PF swallowed
and neutralized its rival partner ZAPU during the 1980s,
would continue to make many wary of a deal. That said, an
“exhausted” populace might well accept a deal as the only way
to break a status quo that was destroying the country. He
said that until recently he would have been the last to
countenance a government of national unity but he was now
having second thoughts. In that regard, he said he and most
Zimbabweans would readily sacrifice accountability for Mugabe
and other ZANU-PF figures if that were the price of real
change.
——————————–
On Tsvangirai, Coltart, Violence
——————————–
HARARE 00000683 002 OF 003
¶5. (C) Biti emphasized the centrality of Morgan Tsvangirai
to the opposition’s political fortunes. Though not without
faults, Tsvangirai commanded more respect and enthusiasm from
the masses than any other figure in either faction of either
party. The tens of thousands he drew in rallies across the
country — and the overtures from ZANU-PFQ,s factions — were
testament to that. TsvangiraiQ,s commitment to non-violent
but open challenges to the regime reflected the desires of
the country.
¶6. (C) Biti was excoriating in his assessment of pro-senate
faction-aligned MP David Coltart’s recent missive (e-mailed
to AF/S) attacking the Tsvangirai faction for violence. He
asserted that the intra-party violence Coltart raised was
exaggerated and not encouraged or condoned by the party
leadership. He noted that those most reviled within the
anti-senate faction — Welshman Ncube and Gift Chimanakire,
for example — lived, worked and traveled openly in
vulnerable locations but suffered no harm. “If there wasn’t
a constant and convincing priority from the top on
non-violence, these people would have been attacked,” he
concluded.
¶7. (C) Biti he believed Coltart’s stated convictions were
genuine but naQve and played to his personal aggrandizement
at the expense of the party. Coltart was more concerned with
international audiences more than local ones. Biti said
Coltart “saw everything in black and white — in a literal
not a figurative sense.” Race and place colored all his
views. Biti compared Coltart unfavorably with Roy Bennett,
the nationally popular party treasurer who “speaks Shona
better than me.” Bennett was culturally Zimbabwean; Coltart,
who spoke not a word of local language, would always be an
outsider.
———
Bio Notes
———
¶8. (C) A polished and passionate speaker with a sharp sense
of humor, Biti is one of the party’s most intelligent and
versatile assets. He said Ncube had offered him the
presidency of the pro-senate faction but that he had no
regrets about remaining with Tsvangirai in spite of his
faults. At a social event that included the faction’s
vice-president and popular national spokesman, all deferred
to Biti. As he has in the past, Biti confided to poloff that
he was exhausted and that the party asked too much of him
because they always trusted he could do things better than
others could. He said he envied Arnold Tsunga, a fellow
lawyer who was to soon leave for a year on a Humphrey
Fellowship, and reiterated that he hoped to “take a year
abroad” in the coming years.
——-
Comment
——-
¶9. (C) Discreet inter-party communications and intrigue are
nothing new in Zimbabwe’s long polarized political
environment, and it would be premature to expect the latest
discussions will go any farther than in the past. Each group
involved in this kabuki so far seems still to be in a
probing, hedging posture rather than on the verge of doing
something bold to upset the status quo. That said, the talks
are symptomatic of the growing national frustration over
Mugabe’s lack of an exit strategy — a frustration that we
believe will continue to grow especially as the economy
HARARE 00000683 003 OF 003
continues to worsen. The apparent countenance of a
government of national unity, even in theory, by an
opposition hardliner such as Biti is a further testament to
the centrality in Zimbabwe today of the national “exhaustion”
to which Biti referred.
SCHULTZ
(12 VIEWS)
