Zimbabwe: The neighbor that arranged the political marriage of convenience is coming for marriage counselling.

Six months have gone by since the political marriage of convenience between Mugabe and Tsvangirai which was arranged by the then head of the neighboring household, Mbeki. Now the head of the neighboring household is Zuma and today he is visiting the Mugabe and Tsvangirai family called Zimbabwe whose parents have been having some marriage problems ever since the conception of the marriage of convenience. Zuma is expected to act as a marriage counselor for this troubled marriage when he comes as well as officiate at the family's annual agricultural show. The wife Tsvangirai has high hopes that Zuma will judge in his favour which is how the majority of the Zimbabwe family want him to because father Mugabe has showed disrespect to the sanctity of marriage as stated in the marriage contract. It has also emerged that father Mugabe is a gold digger whose main motive in agreeing to the marriage of convenience was because he thought that doing so would automatically open floodgates of donor funding for the Zimbabwe family whose bank coffers are at very low levels. He wasn't alone in thinking so, "the wife" Tsvangirai also thought he had the magic wand to make that happen and it only dawned on him that his magic wand can not cast any financial breakthrough spells when he went globe trotting waving his magic wand and came back with much less than he expected. What the couple failed to realise was that the donors were more concerned about the respect of human rights, property rights and the rule of law for the benefit of the Zimbabwe family than about Tsvangirai sharing "power" (the power is fake) with the autocratic Mugabe.

Anyway, let me get back to the marriage counselling sessions that Zuma is supposed to
contact between the Zimbabwe political marriage of convenience partners. Let me start by telling you the character of this marriage counselor Zuma so that you know the kind of person the Zimbabwe family is dealing with here. Zuma is a versatile politician. He has proven to be an exception to the old adage you can’t be everything to everybody. His political prowess is based on being a political chameleon of note who promises everybody what they want – from the hardcore capitalists to blue collar workers; from the poor black majority to the marginalised Afrikaners. Just show your colour and he will adapt his promises pitch to embrace you, whether he actually delivers the promises is not for me to say, ask South Africans, they are at a better vantage point to give you a correct answer. I can not predict what the outcome of this marriage counselling session will be because the political chameleon who is the marriage counselor might change color depending on who will be addressing the marriage problem to him at that moment in time and the result will be nothing solved. This marriage of convenience needs a marriage counselor who doesn't want to please everybody and makes a decisive fair judgement concerning who is right or wrong and tells the marriage partners of the best way forward without fear or favor. If the political chameleon decides to loose its changing color capabilities when it arrives in Zimbabwe then there is hope that he will provide a definite solution to this marriage.

I am not into marriages of convenience and this particular marriage has not improved the lives of the majority of the Zimbabwe family but the truth is that the collapse of the political marriage of convenience in Zimbabwe will adversely affect not only the Zimbabwe family but all the neighboring SADC families if it causes shortages or politically motivated violence in the country. If that happens, Zimbabwean refuges will flood neighboring countries and squatter there in squalid conditions that will bring the property value of their surroundings down, which is only a minor problem compared to the social and political de-stabilisation of the SADC region which will result . If Zuma counsels the Zimbabwean marriage with that thought in mind he is going to make sure that the marriage of convenience stays intact. On the other hand neighboring countries will benefit from the brain drain that will increase as Zimbabwean professionals flee to stable countries if the political marriage collapses. There their services will be very much appreciated. Take note that it is not only those with brains that will flee the country but even the manual workers will go and help build the infrastructure of neighbouring countries and the humble workers will go and clean the streets and toilets of neighbouring countries. Business in neighbouring countries will boom as Zimbabweans go shopping to cheaper shortage-free neighbouring countries. If Zuma counsels the marriage selfishly thinking of these business benefits then he is going to allow the marriage to collapse.

Let me end this article with an extract from www.kubatana.net to stress the point that its about time that Zuma sets the political record between Zimbabwe and SA right. This extract is a comment that one South African called Sally D made on an article on www.kubatana.net that was talking about the scrapping of visa requirements for Zimbabweans visiting South Africa. This is what she said.

We South Africans are partly responsibile for what’s happened in Zimbabwe and that’s one very good reason why we can’t complain now when millions of Zimbabweans arrive, desperate, at our door. We knew what was coming, our Government knew very well.
Yet on the one hand we had Thabo Mbeki denying the significance of human rights in Zimbabwe (compared with the importance of land redistribution, which bizarrely he thought wasn’t an “upside down view” of Africa), and SA voting to protect Mugabe again and again in multilateral institutions like the UN. On the other hand, South African corporates and utilities eager to ensure that their Zimbabwean business partners could keep up with ever-increasing debt repayments, even as the Zim currency collapsed and the Chefs spirited their millions away overseas. And even now, the SA Government calls for “sanctions” to be removed on these same kleptocrats and their foreign bank accounts.

I can remember the exact place I was when I heard on the radio news that our Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, ably assisted by convicted fraudster Tony Yengeni, reckoned the Zimbabwe Presidential election of 2002 “substantially free and fair”. It was completely sickening!! And COPE supporters should note that Terror Lekota, our brand-new Defender of the ANC’s Democratic Heritage, had previously professed himself
“deeply satisfied” with the reasons Mugabe gave him for refusing international election monitors - despite months of vicious State- sponsored violence against the oppostion, detention and deportation of journalists, and so forth. Someone should ask Lekota whether he’s still satisfied now that the full extent of the plunder and ruin of a beautiful, productive country has become obvious to the entire world, even us; and someone should ask Mbeki why he ever thought that the elimination of property rights could lead to people’s needs being met in Zimbabwe, whilst at the same time telling people that this kind of redistribution would never happen in SA.