It was almost like a chorus. Zimbabwe needs elections. The Zimbabwe National Union-Patriotic Front is delaying the implementation of the Global Political Agreement because it does not want to hold elections because it will lose. There are too many vacancies in Parliament but ZANU-PF is not willing to hold by-elections because it is afraid of losing. That was all in 2009, as people counted down days to September 11, the end of one-year after the signing of the GPA in 2008.
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An American academic has described the cables by former United States ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell which were recently released by Wikileaks as “cliché-ridden prose, dripping with patriotic commitment” but with very little insight into actual operations of American diplomacy in Zimbabwe, except promoting Dell’s own diplomatic career.
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Zimbabwe’s civil society continues to be divided over who should represent them in the Kimberley Process local Focal Point. The National Association of Non-Governmental Organisation (NANGO) programmes director Machinda Marongwe today said Harare lawyer Shamiso Mtisi had been confirmed by the KP Plenary in Jerusalem at the beginning of this month as the coordinator of the Local Focal Point (LFP). Mtisi is a representative of the Zimbabwe Environmental Lawyers Association.
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President Robert Mugabe is more clever and more ruthless than any other politician in Zimbabwe. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is brave, committed but is also flawed, indecisive, not readily open to advice and has questionable judgment in selecting those around him. Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara is young and ambitious but he has spent too much time reading US campaign messaging manuals and too little thinking about real issues.
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President Robert Mugabe’s repeated claims that the United States, and in particular Christopher Dell, its Ambassador to Zimbabwe from July 2004 to July 2007, wanted regime change in the country have been proven right according to documents released by Wikileaks through the New York Times. “Having said my piece repeatedly over the last three years, I won’t offer a lengthy prescription for our Zimbabwe policy,” Dell wrote before his departure to another trouble spot, Afghanistan. “My views can be stated very simply as stay the course and prepare for change. Our policy is working and it’s helping to drive change here. What is required is simply the grit, determination and focus to see this through. Then, when the changes finally come we must be ready to move quickly to help consolidate the new dispensation”. Below are Dell’s dispatches in full.
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Zimbabwe should speed up the promulgation of the Diamond Act because diamonds can make a decisive difference for the country. This can be a positive difference where the country’s gross domestic product will increase as a result of greater transparency and accountability of diamond resources to the State. Or it can be negative because the history of alluvial diamonds in Africa has been a sad one. But Zimbabwe cannot afford to be another Sierra Leone.
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Agriculture will drive Zimbabwe’s economy which will be in its third year of growth next year. The economy is expected to grow by 9.3 percent up from this year’s estimated 8.1 percent. The economy grew by 5.7 percent last year.
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