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she purred deceptively as Tsvangirai stood at the podium aside grinning in boyish excitement.

Privately, the West offers no such hearty approbations. In a candid dispatch to Washington, Christopher Dell, the then American ambassador, described Morgan Tsvangirai as a “flawed” figure whose glaring lack of executive ability would make him an “albatross” around the necks of Zimbabweans. He cautioned that “massive hand-holding” would be necessary if the MDC ever came to power.

Ambassador Dell was right.
Tsvangirai is unqualified in so many different ways.
But we need not dwell on that.

What must trouble us is how this glaringly inadequate man has managed to mount an effective challenge against a significantly better resourced (intellectually and financially) ruling party.

Despise him as we might, Tsvangirai has successfully creamed off local authorities across the country and seized control of Parliament. Consider the genius of Robert Mugabe and juxtapose this against Tsvangirai’s many vices. Circumstances have forced the greater to suffer the indignity of drinking tea with the lesser.

One must grudgingly congratulate Tsvangirai. Given his limited abilities, he has done exceptionally well.

What follows is an examination of how Tsvangirai has exceeded his abilities and accomplished so far beyond his capacity.

When the economy screams
When motorists queued for days in long waits for fuel, what was their state of mind? When people found their savings and pensions wiped out by hyperinflation, whom did they blame? As the central bank printed higher denomination after higher denomination of bearer cheque, who bore the brunt of public displeasure? As food disappeared from supermarket shelves, how did the ordinary Zimbabwean interpret this troubled state of affairs?

This is where the MDC’s handlers outsmarted Zanu-PF. In all these troubles, public anger was directed at Zanu-PF. An effective Western narrative was laid out and largely swallowed by our people.
Robert Mugabe had taken a breadbasket and turned it into a basket case. The crisis was caused exclusively by the decision to take land from the white farmers. This was the narrative.

I wonder how the national consciousness would have been differently configured if we had all listened to Robin Cook threatening the late Stan Mudenge with retaliatory sanctions and vowing to bring such economic misery and hunger upon the country that the nation would turn on Zanu-PF and “stone them in the streets”.

How would the generality feel about the United States if they had heard Chester Crocker say: “To separate the Zimbabwean people from Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF we are going to have to make their economy scream, and I hope you senators have the stomach for what you have to do.”

How would the jobless feel about Tsvangirai if they had known with perfect clarity that he had conspired with these very forces to bring about self-serving economic sanctions with the specific objective of making life so unbearable that many would end up voting for a man who they would have ordinarily consider unqualified?

A cleverly told lie is often more persuasive than nonchalant truth. This is the predicament that Zanu-PF has suffered.

It took objective Western academics to redeem the Land Reform process and debunk the cronies-took-the-land narrative.

Is it our view that without this intervention from benevolent Western academics we are unable to tell our own persuasive story?

The challenge is not so much about policy as it is about articulating a persuasive narrative of the issues as you see them.

The Americans are bombing women and children in indiscriminate drone strikes and are holding men without trial at Guantanamo but they are thought of as noble protectors of global peace though this is at variance with reality. They are masters at articulating narratives and have invested heavily in this regard.

That Zanu-PF is blamed for the economic misery of the past decade explains why an inadequate party like MDC has made so much headway. But why has Zanu-PF allowed itself to be savaged in this way? The answer lies in human weakness.

The arrogance of justice
An unassailably just cause suffers the curse of arrogance. When we know we are right we often see no need to explain our actions.

When a just cause is coupled with power, this feeling of arrogant disregard is heightened. Needless to say, this is a strategic mistake and must be resisted even when one feels politically secure.

The assumption in Zimbabwe’s ruling classes was that the facts were so obvious that there was no need to invest in an aggressive media and diplomatic justification.

What a surprise for Robert Mugabe when CNN’s Christiane Amanpour charged in an interview “whites were being hounded out of the country.” This was a significant misconception coming from a well-respected journalist.

Christiane Amanpour was not being malicious, but was simply drawing her questions from her well of perception.

She clearly knew nothing about Lancaster House, the vile Claire Short, operation Murambatsvina (which she bizarrely thought involved the eviction of farm workers) and the quarter of a million peasants who were resettled on the farms.

As I mentioned earlier, we’ve had to wait for benevolent Western academics to educate the world as to the facts of our own country.

The ignorance displayed by Amanpour should not cause us to resent her or those similarly misinformed. Far from it! We should condemn our own inadequacy, our failure to find imaginative ways of communicating our message.

If only it was the case that this ignorance was confined to foreigners. A considerable number of our own people are equally held captive by the concerted disinformation campaign by Western forces and their domestic surrogates.

Many believe that sanctions are targeted and are nothing more than a slap on the wrist that merely bars Robert Mugabe from shopping in London.

They know nothing of the Chinhoyi council funds being held by the Americans.
They know nothing of the US$30 million in diamond revenues that has been confiscated by the Americans.

They know nothing of how the Americans intercepted fuel shipments destined for this country and offered to pay the oil companies if they did not deliver the oil.

How can they be outraged if they do not know? How can they know if we do not speak? If we speak, how can they listen if our language is not attractive and engaging?

Information created Tsvangirai
Information created Tsvangirai and it is information that will destroy him.
He is especially vulnerable because the facts (from which he has hitherto been insulated) stack so unfavourably against him.

It will be extremely difficult to explain his private meeting with the Americans urging them to maintain sanctions while feigning disapproval in public.

He will struggle to explain MDC’s claims that sanctions were targeted when AGRIBANK, ZB Bank, Chinhoyi council, ZMDC and a host of other critical entities were under sanctions.

How will Morgan Tsvangirai convince the new farmers to vote for him when he at one time vowed to kick them off the land?

The Makandiwa born-agains will also need convincing after that troubling footage of him telling the BBC that he believed same-sex marriage is a human right and hoped that this would be incorporated in the new Constitution.

Zanu-PF needs to put the economic troubles of the past decade squarely on Tsvangirai’s shoulders.
The story of economic sabotage through sanctions and the MDC’s complicity must be told with persuasion.

If voters see Chester Crocker plotting to make the economy “scream” they will be eager to punish Crocker’s surrogate, Tsvangirai, at the ballot.

Amai Jukwa is a loving mother of three. She respects Robert Mugabe, is amused by Tsvangirai and feels sorry for Mutambara.