Word: tsvangirai
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...Gweru, the sense of frustration was palpable. "Are we all doomed?" one audience member asked Tsvangirai. The day after the speech, I meet a group of MDC supporters in Bindura, an area of yellow-grass farms and bare granite hillsides an hour north of Harare, who share the gloom. MDC members there were among the worst affected by last year's violence. Mangezvo Chenjera, 38, an MDC village councilor, says that last June a ZANU mob smashed through the walls of his house, dragged him out, broke both his legs with iron bars and left him for dead...
...Tsvangirai was giving a speech the following day in Gweru, three hours southwest of Harare, and I drove down. A priest began the event with a prayer: "Visit this place, O Lord, and drive far from it all the snares of the enemy and rescue our nation from all the humongous problems we are facing." Tsvangirai was more upbeat. He acknowledged that Zimbabwe's transition was "not an easy one" and said the country was in a "period of uncertainty and anxiety, exacerbated by hard-liners who respect no rule of law and care nothing for the national good, putting...
...This is Tsvangirai's gamble. He wants the people who tried to kill him to believe he bears no grudge. (Since his wife died in March in a car accident in which he was also hurt, Tsvangirai finds himself repeatedly assuring his supporters that the crash was not another murder attempt.) He wants Zimbabweans and the world to rethink how they deal with Mugabe and other African Big Men. Demonizing them may be principled and cathartic, Tsvangirai believes, but it is ineffective. Criticism has done nothing to dislodge Muammar Gaddafi in Libya (in his 40th year in power...
...think of Mugabe as a madman and Zimbabwe as a country in flames, says Tsvangirai. (And he is right that Mugabe has always displayed a consistent, if despotic, logic and that the toll from last year's violence would amount to little more than a bad afternoon in Somalia or the Democratic Republic of Congo.) And don't seek rebellion or assassination - that's precisely what has hobbled Africa for 50 years. Instead, try showing your enemies respect and turning them into colleagues. Leave the old arguments and conflicts where they belong: in the past. Try peace. Try the future...
...trouble with evolution, as the Prime Minister went on to say, is that it sometimes can be "slow and frustrating." In the interview, Tsvangirai gave himself five years to transform his country. That may be realistic, but the pace can also make Tsvangirai's optimism feel premature. The power-sharing deal set out a timetable for a new constitution by October 2010, but that schedule is already slipping. The more obstacles Mugabe throws in Tsvangirai's way - the latest came on July 13 when protesting ZANU supporters forced the postponement of a conference on constitutional reform - the more what...