The article below was written by Chenjerai Chitsaru. He is an exiled journalist from Zimbabwe. he is not allowed to practice his profession inside his homeland because of the restrictions imposed by his Government. Please visit their site. The link is HERE

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has emphasized time and again that the inclusive government is a temporary arrangement. For him, it’s not even good enough for an interim political and economic solution to the country’s problems.

He is keen, it would seem, to be back in the saddle, just as he was before he was toppled in 2008 and had to hurriedly and untidily arrange to be back in charge.

His period in charge after the 2008 election defeat by Morgan Tsvangirai has been fraught with tragedy. People have been killed – again. People have been harassed for the same reasons as before: if they were opposed to Zanu PF, then they were thumped, almost routinely.

Meanwhile, he has taken every opportunity to indicate to Tsvangirai and his MDC that the sooner they are out of this government, the happier he will be.

It was always a marriage of inconvenience: for Mugabe, it would last only until he can bring Zanu PF back to power in all its ugly, comprehensive one-party dictatorship glory. But the plans have not gone entirely according to the script drafted at Shake Shake building in Harare. Tsvangirai has managed to stick all kinds of spokes into his wheel.

He was playing golf as Mugabe and Zanu PF buried one of their heroes. Many people sympathized with Tsvangirai. Mugabe has used such occasions to excoriate the opposition in very strong, often unprintable language. Why would Tsvangirai allow himself to be present during such occasions?

He would have to be a glutton for punishment, wouldn’t he?

The conference in Maputo , called by Sadc, ended with what sounded like Sadc platitudes: a call upon all parties to re-engage and settle outstanding issues. The real, material difference was that, instead of Thabo Mbeki, there was Jacob Zuma.

It was always going to be almost sensational if Zuma turned out to be another Mbeki as far as the Zimbabwe imbroglio is concerned. The incentive for him, internationally and domestically, is to do better than Mbeki.

In the last election in his country, when a party ostensibly representing the failed Mbeki political ethos opposed the ANC, Zuma still came up tops. He would love to repeat that victory on the foreign front. His first victory could be a solution to the Zimbabwe crisis – never mind that his son-in-law, Welshman Ncube is a key member of the opposition.

But it must seem to Mugabe that the more obstacles he can throw in the way of the success of the unity government, the more his chances of organasiing his party for a thumping victory in the next elections, due perhaps during or after the 2010 Fifa Cup tournament in South Africa, How Zanu PF could win any election after the 2008 debacle would probably depend on how deep Mugabe is prepared to go to play dirty.

But the party will play dirty – there can be no illusion on that score. Zanu PF has a long dossier of playing dirty. This will always include violence on a large scale – unless the international observers are allowed free rein. In previous elections, there have been restrictions on the international observers. No-go areas for them included places where Zanu PF had already targeted for violence.

A free and fair election would give the MDC a thumping majority win in both presidential and parliamentary stakes. The only way Zanu PF could win would be through a massive campaign of violence or of rigging. Most people are itching to give the former ruling party a bloody nose.

Mugabe must be personally aware that he himself is no longer the most popular leader in the country. Since 2008, the Tsvangirai star has brightened with each campaign Mugabe has hatched against him. In spite of the rigid control of radio and television and newspapers, Mugabe and Zanu PF are not winning the propaganda war. A recent rally held by Tsvangirai in his party stronghold of Chitungwiza near Harare was so well-attended, observers believed in the election, Zanu PF would not win a single seat in that vast urban constituency – the third largest urban centre in the country, already controlled by the MDC..

Mugabe and Zanu PF now represent the failure of Zimbabwe as a state. Even citizens who are not politically passionate are anxious to see how the MDC would perform as a government. They know, to their grief, how horribly inept Zanu PF performed in nearly 30 years in government.

Most people have lived in fear of Zanu PF since independence. Its record of violence against the people is well-documented. When the MDC came on the scene in 1999, its slogan wasd in Shona urban slang; CHINJA MAITIRO. Change Your Ways. It was directed at Zanu PF which, for the 20 years since independence then, had pursued a policty of violence. Immediately, people responded positively to the MDC slogan: it eschewed violence. Zanu PF had used its youth brigade, its Green Bombers, the police, the army and the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) to implement its campaign of terror against all people presumed to be opposed to the government policies.

The MDC openly courted whites to its membership. It wasn’t a political ploy, as had been that of two previous opposition parties to court the whiter vote. Both had persuaded Ian Smith’s Rhodesia Front in its new guise of the Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (CAZ) into a partnership.. One was

led by Edgar Tekere, a former Mugabe lieutenant who challenged him in the 1990 presidential and parliamentary elections.. Later, a former magazine editor and human rights activist, Lupi Mushayakarara did the same.. She too sought a political alliance with Smith’s CAZ in an election. Tekere, at least, did well against Mugabe and won two seats for his party. But Ms Mushayakarara won nothing. She died in the United States a few years later.

Mugabe and Zanu PF must know that this bell is tolling for them. All the odds are staked against them. People in general feel sorry for Mugabe. He is an old man whose dream of a one-party state was never going to be realised, after the fall of the Berlin wall. He could not adjust and has still not adjusted to the existence of a formidable opposition party in the shape of the MDC… The truth is probably that he doesn’t know how to deal with this party. It is not violent and has no youth wing given to violence or even a women’s wing in the same shape as Zanu PF’s militant women’s brigade.

But Mugabe’s worst failure is with the economy. A country which should have inherited one of the soundest economies in southern Africa ended up with a pathetic economy with one of the worst performances in the world. Most people now know that sanctions or no sanctions, this economy owes its decline to the policies of a party which flirted with Marxist-Leninist policies, including a disastrous attempt at collectivization.Now people now recognise that Zanu PF long decided its leaders would not impoverish themselves for the sake of serving or saving the country. The fat cats in the party and the government are determined to be well-off, even if they lose the election. But this too could be a miscalculation. People may decide on an audit of their ill-gotten wealth. The fat would truly in the fire then.

The Zimbawe Journalists