Treason charges against Tsvangirai dismissed (WikiLeaks cables)

[denem]

Source: Africa Review

Treason charges against Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai arising from secret US documents made public by WikiLeaks will not stand the legal test but will be used to persecute President Robert Mugabe’s longtime foe, lawyers have warned.

Zimbabwe’s Attorney General Johannes Tomana at the weekend announced that a commission would be appointed to investigate the alleged “treasonous collusion” between officials from Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Western governments.

Hardliners from Mr Mugabe’s Zanu PF party have been calling for the prosecution of Mr Tsvangirai following revelations in the WikiLeaks website that he privately urged Western governments to maintain sanctions against the country.

Zanu PF at its conference two weeks ago also called on the inclusive government to come up with a law that would make it treasonous for anyone to call for sanctions against the country.

Read more: http://www.africareview.com/News/-/979180/1079776/-/i7dpc6z/-/

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One of the less positive consequences of the Wikileaks revelations.

How WikiLeaks Just Set Back Democracy in Zimbabwe
Atlantic, Dec. 28, 2010

Last year, early on Christmas Eve morning, representatives from the U.S., United Kingdom, Netherlands, and the European Union, arrived for a meeting with Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Appointed prime minister earlier that year as part of a power-sharing agreement after the fraud- and violence-ridden 2008 presidential election, Tsvangirai and his political party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), are considered Zimbabwe's greatest hopes for unseating the country's long-time de facto dictator Robert Mugabe and bringing democratic reforms to the country.

The topic of the meeting was the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by a collection of western countries, including the U.S. and E.U. Tsvangirai told the western officials that, while there had been some progress in the last year, Mugabe and his supporters were dragging their feet on delivering political reforms. To overcome this, he said that the sanctions on Zimbabwe "must be kept in place" to induce Mugabe into giving up some political power. The prime minister openly admitted the incongruity between his private support for the sanctions and his public statements in opposition. If his political adversaries knew Tsvangirai secretly supported the sanctions, deeply unpopular with Zimbabweans, they would have a powerful weapon to attack and discredit the democratic reformer.

Later that day, the U.S. embassy in Zimbabwe dutifully reported the details of the meeting to Washington in a confidential U.S. State Department diplomatic cable. And slightly less than one year later, WikiLeaks released it to the world.

The reaction in Zimbabwe was swift. Zimbabwe's Mugabe-appointed attorney general announced he was investigating the Prime Minister on treason charges based exclusively on the contents of the leaked cable. While it's unlikely Tsvangirai could be convicted on the contents of the cable alone, the political damage has already been done. The cable provides Mugabe the opportunity to portray Tsvangirai as an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe. Furthermore, it could provide Mugabe with the pretense to abandon the coalition government that allowed Tsvangirai to become prime minister in 2009.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/how-wikileaks-just-set-back-democracy-in-zimbabwe/68598/

Two points.
1. Of all of the countries attending the meeting with Tsvangirai, only one had it's diplomatic cables available to 3 million citizens with minimal security.
2. Robert Mugabe seldom needs much of an excuse for anything. Nevertheless, he has now has another golden sulphur opportunity.

[Pavulon]

1. This would be unintended consequences

from children playing at the adult's table. Just waiting for the first body that can be tied to the dump..

[denem]

2. Are you saying Morgan Tsvangirai is a child?

Or Mugabe's year long campaign again the MDC is worth supporting?

Or perhaps orgainized summary executions of homosexuals do not justify sanctions of any kind?

[Pavulon]

3. No that setting back democracy for lulz and swedish tail

is not quite a fair trade.. Wikileaks are children smearing shit everywhere just for the fun of it. No regard for effect downrange..

[larkrake]

4. our government daily does things without caring what happens down the line

don't be naive. The big governments and big corps kill people without a thought every day. Wikileaks don't express opinions or lies like our "journalists" do.This person would be removed by the powers that be with or without the cable exposed

[Pavulon]

5. Million Five is the skim so far,

lets see if Assange lives or is free to spend it..

[earcandle]

9. Wikileaks is not smearing shit... its releasing the reality... the truth sometimes stinks, but it

needs to air out and the pus to seep so that we can heal the
wounds for real... not keep playing games. 
Games that intend to continue to kill people and steal
resources from the poor countries.  

[Pavulon]

11. So all 250,000 cables are related to that?

I think not, they are a bunch of fucking monkeys slinging shit. We have to pay to clean the carpet when they are done.

[MH1]

18. if it's 'reality' in any sense, it's only a tiny fraction of 'reality'

when they put comparable info from every other major country on earth out there in the same way, get back to me, 'k?

[LanternWaste]

6. Children playing at the child's table.

More along the lines of "Children playing at the child's table."




"Just waiting for the first body that can be tied to the dump..."

As you have gone to great pains to let us all know since the Wiki cables broke. And yet... we're still waiting with baited breath for validity to these righteous prognostications based off petulant implications rather than evidence. :shrug:

[denem]

7. Careful, there's a two year old at that table

who has been known to throw his dummy around.

[Pavulon]

8. Maybe it was just redacted? Maybe that million five

makes julian worry less about the people who actually live in Zimbabwe. Did you read the OP's link?

[Ash_F]

10. Wikileaks did the right thing. The sanctions are wrong.

Tsvangirai is sneakily harming his own country to try to create public anger towards the current leadership. Both he and Mugabe are wealthy and do not feel the full impact of the sanctions. The poor do. It is a cruel and immoral political tactic.

The bottom line is that those sanctions are there because Black natives tried to get the land back from White colonialists. Land the English took with machine guns because they just had to get to that gold before the Germans and the Portuguese. Granted, by the time Blacks had enough power to even try land reform, it was a 'sins of the father' type scenario and original actors like Cecil Rhodes(Rhodesia)were long dead. However, their kin were reaping the rewards of past English crimes and did little to remedy the situation on their own. They were less than one percent of the population yet they controlled almost all of the land. Why would they want to change that?

ZANU-PF(Mugabe's party)may not be the best thing for the country's future but they fought hard and won their independence from a racist regime. That is something to keep in mind before flatly condemning them at the mention of their name. In the years since, one-party rule has lead to corruption and mismanagement as it does everywhere else, and the economic sanctions by bitter former superpowers are making it worse not better. The country needs better leaders but if Tsvangirai can not put the people before his political position, then he is not one of them. The people of Zimbabwe deserved to know what he was doing.







PS- It was not that long ago.

[struggle4progress]

12. You didn't actually read the alleged cable, did you? What Tsvangirai reportedly said

was that the countries imposing sanctions need to be willing to offer definite reductions in the sanctions in exchange for definite concessions from Mugabe -- otherwise there is no motivation for bargaining. The issue of the governors was brought up as a specific example: it seems to be a long-recognized and continuing issue

Tsvangirai fumes as Mugabe unilaterally appoints governors
By KITSEPILE NYATHI in Harare and Agencies
Posted Friday, October 8 2010 at 09:02
... President Mugabe unilaterally reappointed governors from his Zanu PF party, disregarding the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that underpins the unity government formed last year, which stipulates that he should consult Mr Tsvangirai. The governors’ term expired in August and Mr Mugabe was supposed to announce a new set, with five from his party, four from Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party and one from the formation led by Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara ... http://www.africareview.com/News/-/979180/1028516/-/iah5u5z/-/index.html

[Ash_F]

13. I did and it supports the OP as well as what I said.

:shrug:
I get your angle BUT the reason people are upset(and why the MDC's will rightfully suffer in public opinion and the next election) is because it is clear from the cables that the party leaders have supported these sanctions for some time and continue to do so. The reason they felt they needed to keep it a secret was because the average Zimbabwean citizen would not see this as 'bargaining' They would see it as cruel manipulation as any unbiased person should. The people who see it as bargaining are wealthy party leaders who will always live comfortably no matter what Zimbabwe's economic situation is.

Another thing that should be noted from the cable in question:
http://www.wikileaks.africanaristocrat.com/cable/2009/12/09HARARE1004.html
^It describes all these discussions and nowhere is any ZANU-PF representative a part of it. They still represent half the country yet most of the negotiations with the US happen with out them. I am for multiparty politics but don't trade one dictator for another.

[struggle4progress]

14. WikiLeaks probe should target Zanu PF: Lawyers

7/12/2010 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter

... "If there is a commission to look into WikiLeaks, it will have to investigate everything WikiLeaks has discussed, including officials from Zanu-PF. It cannot be selective," human rights lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa told a British newspaper.

Attorney General, Johannes Tomana, announced last week that a commission would be appointed to investigate the alleged "treasonous collusion" between former opposition leaders and Western governments ...

... Mtetwa warned that a successful prosection of Tsvangirai for treason would be legally problematic.

"From a legal perspective it would be folly. When it comes to witnesses, are they going to call back the former US ambassadors? The cables are based on opinion, not fact. There are a host of legal problems ...

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-4154-WikiLeaks+probe+legal+folly+Lawyer/news.aspx

[Ash_F]

15. OK, is posting tangential links common on this board?

I am not sure why that link was posted in reply to what I wrote. I do not disagree with anything the lawyer said. So once again I must :shrug: I did not say anything about whether Tsvangirai and Mutambara could or should be charged. I do not think they should. The loss of public opinion is enough.

My point is that given the history of region, and the current political context, Wiki-leaks was right to expose MDC's dealings. Morally, they did right here.

[struggle4progress]

17. You raised the issue of political fall-out: my link sheds further light on that issue

[Mojorabbit]

16. Welcome to DU

Great post.