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Morgan Tsvangirai

Lloyd Gumbo Senior Reporter—
MDC-T has been rapped for opposing Zanu-PF for the sake of it after a leaked WhatsApp chat exposed one of the party’s senior officials admitting that the Government’s 10-Point Plan for Economic Growth would turnaround the economy and spell doom for the opposition which bases its politics on protest votes.

Zanu-PF also dismissed as daydreaming, claims by MDC-T former deputy secretary-general Dr Tapiwa Mashakada that the revolutionary party plagiarises MDC-T policies. The ruling party and analysts castigated MDC-T for publicly attacking the 10-point plan recently enunciated by President Mugabe during his State of the Nation Address, while privately acknowledging its positive impact on the generality of Zimbabweans.

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The Herald revealed the hypocrisy yesterday when it published Dr Mashakada’s private acknowledgement that the policies adopted by the ruling party would see the economy revived and render the opposition irrelevant. This was contrary to MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s claim, through his spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka, that the 10-point plan rang hollow.

Analysts said Mr Tsvangirai’s party was out of sync with reality as Zanu-PF was working hard to revive the economy that was ravaged by the illegal sanctions imposed on the country by the West at the behest of MDC-T. Zanu-PF spokesperson and Economic Planning and Investment Promotion Minister Cde Simon Khaya Moyo, said the ruling party had nothing to “learn or steal” from the opposition.

“That’s the rhetoric that you get from empty vessels,” he said. “It’s just noise and nothing of substance. Their manifesto was about something called JUICE (Jobs, Upliftment, Investment, Capital and the Environment). “Zanu-PF doesn’t go for JUICE, we are going for growth of the economy. How can we copy something that never works anywhere in the world?

“Let them continue with their JUICE. We hope that will help them better than this daydreaming.” Cde Khaya Moyo said MDC-T sought relevance by claiming that Zanu-PF stole their ideas. He said the revolutionary party would continue on the path of economic recovery by implementing its 2013 election manifesto and economic blueprint, Zim-Asset that was beginning to bear fruits following the decision by several countries and individuals including Western countries to invest in Zimbabwe.

Political analyst, Mr Alexander Rusero, said the MDC-T was in denial as it pre-occupied itself with opposing every policy that the ruling party introduced.

“It came as a shock to read what Tapiwa Mashakada said about the 10-Point Plan that his party claimed was empty,” he said. “What the President gave in that 10-Point Plan was a summary of Zim-Asset. So for the MDC-T to claim that it’s their ideas defies logic particularly when it’s coming from a dignitary like Mashakada who is a former Minister of Economic Planning and a Doctor of Economics for that matter who is supposed to guide his party on economic issues.

“Ownership has to do with custodianship. So there is no way Zanu-PF would have taken ideas that were owned by the MDC-T. “What they (MDC-T) should learn is to give credit where it is due. That’s the politics of the 21st century. Opposition politics should not always be about opposing everything that the ruling party does or says,” he said.

University of Zimbabwe political scientist, Professor Charity Manyeruke, rapped the MDC-T for its hypocrisy. “What everyone knows is that the MDC-T has no alternative policies to offer compared to the Zanu-PF ones that have been accepted in the whole of Africa as the ones that can push African development. “MDC-T knows that they have nothing to offer because their election manifestos come from the West. They want to criticise Zanu-PF in public but acknowledge in private that its policies benefit the generality of Zimbabweans,” said Prof Manyeruke.

Political analyst and lawyer, Mr Terrence Hussein, said the weakness with the MDC-T was that it relied on developments in other political parties. “If a political party bases its fortunes on how badly or well its opponent is, it will not last long,” he said. “A party must be grounded on sound policies that the electorate can identify with. But to opportunely wait for an opponent to fall or rise to determine their fate does not make sense.

“Zanu-PF has applied policies that it feels are meant to benefit the generality of Zimbabweans based on economic principles that the MDC-T cannot claim to have copyrights.” Mr Hussein said the fact that the opposition acknowledged the importance of Zanu-PF policies in their private engagements while castigating the same in public exposed their hypocrisy.

Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Information Science at the National University of Science and Technology Dr Lawton Hikwa, said it was gratifying that the opposition now saw the light by identifying with policies that the ruling party introduced. “They are now coming around to acknowledge that these are the policies that benefit Zimbabweans regardless of the ideological differences they might have with the ruling party.

“I see it from a perspective that it was a good statement coming from them because now they have views that resonate with the generality of Zimbabweans,” he said.