Mugabe a cash cow!

Several journalists whose only major story has been Mugabe, or who rose to fame after being "harassed" by Mugabe, will become irrelevant once he is gone.

According to one analyst, a lot of people that have entered into the fray are in fact spoilers who are thriving on Mugabe's bad image.

And they will do anything to make sure that there is no quick solution to Zimbabwe's problem.

Mugabe's alleged misrule saw the creation of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition in 2001.

The organisation says it represents more than 500 civic organisations, 250 of which are directly affiliated to the Crisis Committee.

The organisations are grouped under nine major coalitions which include, the constitution under the National Constitutional Assembly; election support under the Zimbabwe Election Supervisory Network; labour under the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions; media under the Media Institute of Southern Africa; transparency under Transparency International Zimbabwe; students under the Zimbabwe National Students Union; human rights under the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum; women and social, economic and policy issues.

It is not clear whether the coalition would serve any purpose if Mugabe goes though individual organisations could survive.

Though its mission seems to go beyond the crisis, donor fatigue could affect the organisation as there are already too many organisations fighting the same cause.

The coalition says its mission is to become the nerve centre that helps civil society coalitions with strategic planning and coordination of national programmes.

It says it will strive to respond timeously to government positions regarding various key policy areas and will share ideas and information for use by civil society groups in the articulation of credible, alternative and practical views.

It will strive to ensure the rapid development of a participatory democracy in Zimbabwe in areas of health, governance and parliament.

"We believe in the principles of pluralism and diversity in politics," it says.

Apparently though it backs the opposition Movement for Democratic Change most of the time, as the opposition is often denied a platform to air its views by the ruling ZANU-PF, it has condemned some moves taken by the MDC such as the mass stay-aways saying it appeared their purpose was to replace ZANU-PF with the MDC, yet the very reason why the MDC was formed was to bring about democracy and an acceptable national constitution.

Continued next page

(538 VIEWS)