The Right Honourable Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Mr Morgan Richard Tsvangirai arrived in UK on the 19th of June 2009. As promised on Saturday 20 June 2009 at about 1330 he duly arrived at the Southwark Cathedral to address more than one thousand Zimbabwean exiles and well wishers. MDC UK & Ireland's intelligence had been informed by sources close to the forces based here in the UK and Zimbabwe against the GNU, of plans to disrupt the Prime Minister's speech. Prior to addressing the crowds he met with MDC UK & Ireland Council (MDC UK's highest decision making body), but the meeting was cut short before any meaningful discussions could go under way as the PM was already late to address the Zimbabweans.
The crowd in the Cathedral which had started to build up from early morning was anxious to greet Zimbabwe's most famous politician our very own Obama. After welcoming him with a thunderous roar, the crowd listened without interruption up to the point when he mentioned that it was time for Zimbabwe exiles to come back home and participate in the rebuilding. It was at that particular juncture that the rented crowd started to jeer the Prime Minister, in their myopic thinking they thought the call by Prime Minister would jeorpadise their asylum claims. Genuine MDC members know that asylum claims are decided on an individual basis and that there is no blanket policy on Zimbabwe.
Prime Minister's message was clear, that GNU was making progress and they surely needed the greatest asset of Zimbabwe to contribute to the rebuilding of the country. How does the Prime Minister concile the fact that he is on a tour of Western nations to get financial aid for his government which he believes is making progress despite the presence of problems and turning around and saying that it is still too dangerous to return home. Even if one looked at his statements again you can see that this was a plea, noone is being forced to return to Zimbabwe. However those that are willing to return its time to go back and contribute to the re-building of Zimbabwe.
We also asked the Prime Minister about participation in the constitution making process and he mentioned that once the body has been set up to take contributions from the public they would also set out the modalities that allowed Zimbabweans in the diaspora to also contribute.
The evening ended very well for those that came to PM's Dinner at the Royal Overseas League in Central London. There the Prime Minister met a different constituency, the business people that need to invest in Zimbabwe and the activists as well that wanted to spend time with the Prime Minister. He was frank about his relationship with Mugabe. He pointed out that like any other relationships they have their own problems but he stressed that he was confident that this was the only viable solution to Zimbabwe's problems. He said that if MDC had not entered into this agreement then it could have turned Zimbabwe into another Somalia.
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