Brian Chitemba

PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai should first win elections, then implement security reforms instead of engaging in a dim-witted cold war with the country’s service chiefs, analysts have said drawing parallels to what transpired in other African countries.
Tsvangirai and military commanders have been involved in public squabbles over Zimbabwe’s future leadership with the premier last week challenging them to quit the defence forces and contest elections. In turn, the commanders branded him a national security threat.
The attacks have become personal and have escalated tension between the defence forces and the MDC-T.
The public spat comes at a time when security reforms have become a political logjam between President Robert Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
For the neutral observer, the question is: What will happen if Tsvangirai and his party win the harmonised elections? Will Tsvangirai axe all senior security officers given that they have vowed never to salute him? Will the security chiefs stage a coup against the new establishment?
Defence forces chief General Constantine Chiwenga, army commander Lieutenant-General Philip Sibanda, Airforce boss Perence Shiri, Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri, Prison Services head Paradzai Zimondi and CIO director-general Happyton Bonyogwe have publicly displayed their disdain for Tsvangirai by saying the uniformed forces would only salute a president with liberation war credentials.
Bulawayo-based analyst Chamu Mutasa said Tsvangirai’s attacks on the security chiefs are aimed at trying to destroy a military and business clique running the affairs of state behind the scenes.
The military chiefs involved, Mutasa said, have the political and economic means to influence the day-to-day running of the state’s affairs.
He said Tsvangirai’s call for the securocrats to step down should be seen simply as his call for security sector reforms since he points to the service chiefs as a stumbling block in implementing security sector reforms in accordance with the GPA.
Mutasa said: “The Prime Minister is wasting time on those securocrats. He should concentrate on winning elections first and then start on the reforms. He should look at institutional reforms (instead of asking a few individuals to quit) because this is the problem. They have the guns and can plot a coup.”
Tsvangirai has no direct contact with the security chiefs who are regulated by the Defence Act leaving only Mugabe, as commander-in-chief of the Defence Forces, as the only one to deal with them.
The MDC-T accuses Mugabe and the securocrats of deploying army units to intimidate, beat up and even kill its supporters ahead of elections.
Realising that potential candidates with liberation credentials capable of leading this country are quickly running out, the military has allegedly positioned Chiwenga as a liberation war hero to take over from Mugabe.
The army’s move to tout Chiwenga’s name seems to be a thinly veiled warning to Mugabe’s Zanu PF party that should it fail to sort out the acrimonious succession issue, the uniformed forces would intervene by shoving their boss into the hot seat.
Mugabe, who is the glue that has kept Zanu PF intact and running this country for the past 31 years, has been battling poor health and old age triggering a scramble to replace him.
But are the service chiefs alone in their public declarations that they would not allow anyone to run this country as long as Mugabe is alive? Can the five service chiefs and the intelligence boss hold the entire country to ransom without the unqualified support of their subordinates to make such pronouncements which border on announcing an impending coup should Zanu PF lose?
So far, Zimbabweans have only heard those five defiantly vowing to resist any change on Zimbabwe’s political landscape. Do they have the backing of other senior and middle-ranked officers who have their eyes and ears among the rank and file?
If they all have a one track mind as the service chiefs, the analysts said, then the country might as well not waste time and resources holding elections since the military would simply implement its threat if Zanu PF loses.
Tsvangirai has called on the military elite to quit and face him in an election, but he has not made known who should replace them.
When Mugabe assumed power at Independence in 1980 and South Africa’s first black president Nelson Mandela came to power in 1994, they incrementally replaced the military chiefs with their trusted loyalists without issuing public threats to those who suppressed them during the fight for freedom.
Even the late Zambian President Frederick Chiluba never engaged in public spats with security chiefs when challenging the veteran leader Kenneth Kaunda and even went on to appoint Kaunda’s former military chief Christen Tembo as his vice president.
However, the already strained relations between Tsvangirai, who has the potential of winning the next elections, and the military make such a scenario almost impossible.

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