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| author/source:Cape Argus (SA) |
| published:Thu 14-Oct-2004 |
| posted on this site:Fri 15-Oct-2004 |
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| Article Type : News |
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| "Why would he hire a foreigner to do a job that millions of Zimbabweans would do for free?" |
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With missing state witnesses and a presiding judge who was given a prize farm by Robert Mugabe as the treason trial began in February last year, is the MDC leader's fate sealed? Shortly before opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai went on trial for treason, Zimbabwe's weekly newspaper The Independent published a reader's letter which read: "Why would Morgan Tsvangirai hire a foreigner to do a job that millions of Zimbabweans would do for free?" The foreigner was Iraqi-born Ari Ben Menashe, who falsely claimed to be a former Mossad agent who had emigrated to Canada. The job the letter writer referred to was plotting to assassinate President Robert Mugabe. The trial had a main plot and a maze of minor ones. There were missing state witnesses and a presiding judge who was given a prize farm by Mugabe as the trial began in February last year.
Tsvangirai was first charged with treason 13 days after Australian broadcaster SBS ran a documentary in February 2002 which claimed the MDC leader hired Ben Menashe to assassinate Mugabe. This was a month before the presidential election. Extracts from the documentary were immediately and repeatedly aired by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and state newspapers. Australian journalist Mark Davis made his case, as did state prosecutors in the trial, on claims of an assassination "plot" by Ben Menashe backed up by a secretly recorded video tape of a meeting Tsvangirai had in Montreal 10 weeks earlier. Tsvangirai told the court he hired Ben Menashe's shelf company, Dickens and Madson, to raise money and lobby for the MDC in north America. Ben Menashe claimed that the video tape proved that Tsvangirai hired his company (in front of two strangers and a woman taking notes) to kill Mugabe.
Tsvangirai was in Johannesburg when he got the news that SBS would air the documentary. It was the last time he could travel as his passport was surrendered in terms of his bail conditions. Also charged were MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube and MDC member of parliament Renson Gasela. Political commentator Brian Kagoro said the trial had, in some ways, "crippled" the MDC which won nearly half the parliamentary seats in the 1999 parliamentary elections when it was only nine months old. "It slowed down the MDC's diplomatic offensive, crippled its foreign relations because Morgan Tsvangirai, whether one likes it or not, was becoming an international figure. He was absent from the regional and foreign arena to answer questions, allegations, doubts and fears that people had about the MDC," Kagoro said. "Welshman Ncube was also out of the international arena so neither of the party's two top leaders were able to rebut the political onslaught from Zanu PF, particularly in Africa. Internally, because of the limitations imposed on them by treason charges, the MDC leadership became a lot more cautious for fear of aggravating their circumstances. Many demonstrations and political activities were scaled down. The trial also crippled the MDC financially.
"Treason" was used by both pre- and post-independence governments to quell political personalities. Zanu PF's founder Ndabaningi Sithole was convicted of treason and jailed in the Rhodesian era, and again by Mugabe, but died in 2000 before his appeal was heard. Dumiso Dabengwa, a leader of the Zimbabwe African People's Union, Zapu, and eight others were acquitted of treason two years after independence. George Bizos was appointed by the MDC to lead the defence team, not only for his skill, according to legal secretary David Coltart, but also for his moral reputation earned over decades in the anti-apartheid struggle. He regularly had the court in stitches as he doggedly, and often wittily, pursued Ben Menashe in cross examination. "I don't know," was Ben Menashe's stock answer, swaying and writhing and wringing his hands or staring at the ceiling of the wood-panelled courtroom. On one occasion, head flung back and gripping the front of the witness box, he shouted at Bizos: "Your reputation is very well known in the United States as a racist and an anti-feminist." Bizos told the court that he had proved that Ben Menashe was an "unmitigated liar" and an "international crook".
Lawyers in Harare are speculating on tomorrow's verdict and their predictions go something like this:
Guilty and immediate imprisonment ahead of sentence with Tsvangirai's appeal delayed until after the March general election. Speculation is that sentence will either be death or imprisonment for 10 to 15 years.
Not guilty, but with a long and arduous judgment replete with condemnations which the state will immediately appeal, but which will see Tsvangirai at least temporarily removed from bail and reunited with his passport.
Lawyers have quipped that Tsvangirai and Ncube, in particular, did commit a "crime". They were naive and failed to look Ben Menashe up on Google, which contains references to his brushes with the law pre-dating his engagement in Zimbabwe's political turmoil. This saga began with friendship between Gasela and Briton Rupert Johnson, who should have been a key state witness but never turned up. The court heard that Johnson and Gasela met during Zimbabwe's last serious drought in 1991-1992. Gasela was then chief executive of Zimbabwe's Grain Marketing Board and Johnson a wealthy commodity broker in Cape Town. Between the two of them grain was imported, distributed and no one starved. Gasela visited Johnson in Cape Town and then they lost contact. In 2001 Johnson, now living in Britain in reduced circumstances, contacted Gasela out of the blue and arranged for Tsvangirai to meet Ben Menashe, billed as a top lobbyist with White House connections, in London. A second London meeting followed. The defence argued the state had to prove all three meetings were involved in the assassination plot. Nowhere in the video tape of the third meeting in Montreal, the defence argued, is there any direct discussion of a plot to kill Mugabe. In other words, the defence said, the Montreal meeting does not stand alone evidentially and a conviction for treason depends on the state being able to prove that both the first two meetings in London had sinister purpose.
But that unravelled when Tsvangirai's co-accused, Ncube and Gasela, who were only at the two London meetings, were acquitted for lack of evidence. As the case wound up, the defence produced what it said was a final, fatal blow. The MDC had taken Ben Menashe to court in Canada to recover US$100 000 it paid him for lobbying. In answering affidavit, Ben Menashe said he was paid for an "innocent" assignment and the money landed in his account after the first London meeting. Ben Menashe earned US$615 000 from the Zimbabwean government for refund of expenses to set up the secret video recording and subsequent public relations on behalf of Mugabe. Justice Garwe refused the defence access to his employment contract, saying disclosure would be "prejudicial to national security".
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