by Nobleman Runyanga
The MDC-Alliance co-vice president, Tendai Biti is a frustrated politician. He has allowed himself to be used by the US against his countrymen in the hope of eventually landing his party’s top post with that country’s assistance. His political career is, however, collapsing around him like a deck of cards.
Biti and other senior opposition members have consistently denied that they work with the US against the people and Government of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean folk wisdom advises that to establish the owner a dog that preys on the village’s fowls one just needs to beat it and, as it howls in pain, its owner will show himself promptly. Two years ago, when Biti was facing charges of inciting post-election violence that occurred on August 1 in Harare as well as the violation of the electoral laws by prematurely and illegally announcing results of the 30 July 2018 harmonised elections, the Americans swiftly and shamelessly leapt to his defence. They sought to pinion Government’s hand in the ongoing re-engagement by pressing for the dropping of the charges against Biti as a condition for the re-engagement.
Chairman of the US Committee on Foreign Relations sub-committee on Africa, Jeff Flake and the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Matthew Harrington, were on the forefront of pressing Government to disregard the rule of law for the sake of Biti during a hearing on Zimbabwe in December that year.
Biti is no one very important in the Zimbabwean society, but the Americans regarded him as useful. In fact, they acknowledged their friendship at the time.
“He is a friend of this committee and he’s been here a number of times, and I was pleased to see that you had that (the dropping of charges against Biti) among your list of things they (Government of Zimbabwe) could do. That would be a pretty visible, outward sign that they’re ready to move forward beyond the past,” said Flake in December 2018.
“Tendai Biti has been raised a couple of times here. I can say and I hope that you will take back to the Zimbabwe Government, if they’re not listening now to this, that it would be difficult to move forward with any type of relationship with Zimbabwe and move forward and progress on some of these issues while charges are still levelled against him and he is not allowed to travel freely, his passport has been revoked, I believe,” Flake said.
Such was the level of closeness to the American establishment that Biti enjoyed. He and the former MDC leader, the late Morgan Tsvangirai were consulted each time the US reviewed the sanctions against Zimbabwe. His stint as the Minister of Finance and Economic Development during the Government of Nation Unity and his routine, but disjointed criticism of Government on the performance of the economy placed him several rungs higher than Nelson Chamisa in the eyes of the Americans. In fact, for some time the Americans preferred him to Chamisa because they thought he understand the economy better, but not anymore.
Lately, the situation on the ground has proved Biti’s doomsday projections on the economy very wrong. In June this year Biti claimed that the economy would collapse, “We urgently need a political solution in this country because if we do not do that…there is going to be an implosion”. He has also been proved wrong as most economic indicators such as the exchange rate and basic commodity prices have stabilised since June.
Even inflation, which was spiralling since the beginning of the year, is now on the downward trajectory. Biti used to rely on the opinions of Steve Hanke, an American applied economist at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in the US to criticise Government, but Hanke has noted the success being registered by Government on the economic front. He has already disagreed with Biti over the country’s inflation. Biti insists that Zimbabwe’s economy is in a hyperinflation but Hanke disagreed. Biti has also twisted some information given to him by girlfriends in some international financial institutions in pursuit of his vile politics of sabotage agenda.
When the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) introduced the foreign currency auction system in June this year, Biti led from the front in dismissing the initiative and claiming that it would fail, but four months down the line he has been proved wrong. Realising that firming of the Zimbabwe dollar was no isolated chance event, Biti has taken to discrediting the initiative as a scam and a fraud. He has claimed without providing any evidence that the firming of the local currency against the green back was a “rigged” situation that was supported by debt from the African Export and Import Bank (Afreximbank).
It is because of such glaring and shameless falsehoods that the Americans are slowly giving him a wide berth.
Biti is not only fast losing company and support from the Americans. Even in his party, members are slowly realising how much of a poisoned mind he is. With Chamisa on his way to political perdition as a result of his unwise decision to disregard the MDC constitution, when he seized the control of the party from Thokozani Khupe in February 2018 following Tsvangirai’s death and his foolish choice to trash the Supreme Court of 31 March this year, which ruled that he had ascended to his party’s leadership irregularly, Biti was well-placed to replace Chamisa. His unbridled ambition and divisiveness, however, have alienated him from party’s grassroots members.
His odds are worsened by the fact that he called the late Tsvangirai names when they fell out in 2014 following the party’s poor showing during the 2013 harmonised elections. Tsvangirai remains a godlike object of worship in that party. His commitment to the MDC-Alliance is being questioned given that he once left the party and formed his own, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which was absorbed by the MDC-Alliance in 2018. While some excitable members of the party, such as the youth, agree with his calls for protests against Government, he is generally regarded with suspicion and general dislike.
In view of the foregoing reasons, Biti is increasingly cutting a lone political figure both in his party and among its Western backers. That is why he is now constantly wearing an angry face. That is why he is always irritable and emotionally charged even on the most non-emotive of issues. The politician is frustrated. He is angry that Chamisa failed him by not ensuring that he (Biti) had a second bite of the national Treasury cake, when the former lost the 30 July 2018 presidential election to President Emmerson Mnangagwa. He is bitter that he cannot garner enough support to land the leadership of the MDC-Alliance as his unbridled ambition to unseat Chamisa is being watched with an eagle eye.
In Zimbabwean street lingo, the youth would say, like Chamisa, anyura (he is doomed).
