CAPE TOWN. Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai met with President Jacob Zuma on Thursday to ask for his help and to explain his reasons for withdrawing from Zimbabwe’s coalition government. “Working with Mugabe is like dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight – it’s nice from far, but far from nice,” he said.
Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would not pull out of the country’s fragile coalition government entirely just because Robert Mugabe showed himself to be an evil and untrustworthy bedfellow. “We want to teach him a real lesson,” explained spokesperson August Chimchimcheroo, “and we decided the best way to do that is not to answer his calls.”
He said the MDC would disengage from Cabinet until such a time that confidence and respect was restored between the partners.
When asked how, and at what point the MDC had ever respected Mugabe, spokesman Chimchimcheroo said it was hard not to revere a man who could muster up a 143% turnout at an election.
He said that while the MDC had initially been opposed to partnering Mugabe in a coalition government, they had eventually been won over when the octogenarian President allowed them to see his soft side.
“He likes Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain,” said Chimchimcheroo. “He cried when he watched The Colour Purple.
“At least that’s what he told us. We would never have agreed to work with him otherwise,” he said, before admitting that perhaps the MDC had been a little soft in negotiating with Mugabe.
“He told us he was Bob the nation builder and we asked ourselves, ‘Can he fix it?’
“With hindsight perhaps we got it wrong, but at the time our answer was a resounding, ‘Yes he can!’”
But he said he doubted the MDC’s decision to cease their participation in cabinet meetings would make any difference to Mugabe. “He just locks his office door and makes the decisions by himself anyway,” said Chimchimcheroo.
Meanwhile South African President Jacob Zuma has promised to do his best to help resolve the situation. A spokesperson for the President, Nananana Goodbye, said Zuma would probably write a letter to Mugabe, “asking him to play nice.”
Goodbye said that if that didn’t work, South Africa would probably agree to send election monitors to Zimbabwe, where a show of hands from the 217 remaining in the country would be encouraged as the easiest way to resolve future disputes.
