Lunch With the FT: 52 Classic Interviews (34 page)

He has spent most of the day at the Tuesday cabinet meeting. There he has to sit alongside Mugabe, whose supporters have spent a decade trying to crush the MDC. It must have been difficult, I say. He beams. ‘It was very good, very productive … It’s enlightening that everyone was serious about addressing the concerns.’

I raise my eyebrows. But are you not old enemies? Tsvangirai beams again. ‘If you were to enter the room you would not know who was who, MDC or Zanu-PF. The seating is Zanu-PF, MDC, Zanu-PF, MDC … and he [Mugabe] and I direct. We really do consult when things get out of hand.’

The Zanu-PF lion lying down with the MDC sheep: it is a charming vision of reconciliation but utterly unconvincing. Mugabe may have celebrated his 87th birthday a week before my visit but all the talk in Harare is that he is running rings around his 59-year-old prime minister – just as he outmanoeuvred other rivals, such as Joshua Nkomo, once they decided to stop opposing him and instead to share power. So I am all but lost for words at Tsvangirai’s Milquetoast reference to his and Mugabe’s latest meeting – as, I have been told, was David Cameron when he was given a similarly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed account by Tsvangirai at Davos earlier this year.

I relay instead that I had lunch that day with an MDC-supporting Zimbabwean businessman who had said gloomily that if there were a
free election the MDC would win 90 per cent of the vote – but that there would never be a free vote.

‘No, no, no, that’s rather pessimistic,’ Tsvangirai insists. He cites the role of regional bodies, which will in theory police the next election. I point out the craven stance of most regional leaders towards Mugabe when he bullied his and his party’s way to re-election in four elections between 2000 and 2008.

‘I know people are sceptical because we have had so many experiences of violence at elections before,’ he says. ‘But I have never given up hope. People may want to see instant change, like instant coffee, but we have chosen the evolutionary path not the revolutionary path and evolution is sometimes disappointing because it is slow.’

An aide knocks on the door bearing a tray of drinks. The prime minister and I opt for Coke. Luke has a Sprite. These are clearly the tipples of choice in the coalition – I was to drink Coke with a Zanu-PF minister the following night. The days of gin and tonics on the prime ministerial
stoep
finished 30 years ago, with the end of white rule. We raise our glasses in a toast. At a time of crumbling dynasties elsewhere, I ask, why has there been no revolution in Zimbabwe? Surely MDC supporters think the coalition government was a mistake? His answer is clear: Zimbabwe had its war of independence, so better negotiations than war.

We said back in 2005 we are going to drag Mugabe to the negotiating table for a transitional government, a new constitution and an election. That’s the path we defined and I don’t think we are off it … In the past two years it is a miracle what we have achieved.’ Then again, he adds: ‘I can’t even predict what will happen tomorrow. Suppose people wake tomorrow and say they don’t want this.’

So what are we to make of the ‘old man’? I ask. Over a decade the boot-boys of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF have killed hundreds of MDC supporters. Tsvangirai himself was viciously beaten four years ago, just a day after I had shared dinner with him. How does he judge Mugabe after seeing him so often at close quarters?

‘I used to think he was callous and all that,’ he says. ‘But you know what? He’s human after all. He’s very humane. There is a split personality between Mugabe the [revolutionary] hero and Mugabe the villain …’

I fear I am going to struggle to elicit an insightful word about one of
the world’s more notorious leaders but he allows himself the tiniest bit of mischief-making at the president’s expense. ‘If you confront him, he tends to close his mind and to say “I’m not guilty of violence. I’m not guilty of this. I’m not guilty …” ’ He and Luke laugh. I am reminded of an account of a recent meeting when Tsvangirai and his ebullient finance minister, Tendai Biti, were supposed to have insisted that the cabinet had to discuss the upsurge in violence. Mugabe nodded sombrely and told them it should be aired later in the meeting – and then skipped out of the room before it could come up, pleading tiredness.

So, how is Mugabe’s stamina? I ask – there is endless speculation that he has advanced prostate cancer. I recall how on meeting the president back in 1994 he answered questions with wit and verve. As for the cut and thrust of conversation, is he still as sharp as ever?

‘Yes, when he’s alert … not when he’s sleeping …’

Does Mugabe sometimes doze off in cabinet? The prime minister clearly feels he has said enough and leaves my question hanging. We turn to more concrete matters. Mugabe is promoting a long-mooted law which will force foreign businesses to give a 51 per cent stake to ‘indigenous’ business people. Investors are appalled, fearing this is the equivalent of the forced expropriations of Zimbabwe’s white-owned farms at the turn of the century. Tsvangirai is clear. Black Zimbabweans must be ‘empowered’ but not in this way. ‘We don’t support grabbing people’s property. The 51 per cent figure was a mistake. Who is going to come [and invest] if we do this?’

He also argues cogently that the international sanctions on Mugabe and his elite should be removed, on the grounds that the president has seized on them as his most powerful political argument. As so often in his career, he has whipped up nationalism and is inflaming rallies with his claim that he is the victim of persecution by the imperialist west.

‘We are in a vicious position. We want the sanctions removed but Zanu-PF is doing everything to ensure they are retained,’ he says. He is less convincing, however, on the other great political scandal: the apparent theft by state officials of tens of millions of dollars in taxes from Zimbabwe’s diamond fields. He pledges an audit and transparency. Fine words, I think, but who will bring the Zanu-PF culprits to book?

His mobile phone barely stops ringing. When one of his daughters calls, I am reminded of the reaction of a friend in Britain when she heard
I was going to see Tsvangirai. Her eyes filled with tears and she recalled how his wife Susan, mother of their six children, was killed in a car crash in March 2009, a month into the new government, and how just weeks later a three-year-old grandson died in the swimming pool in his garden. Tsvangirai seems almost surprised that I relay her response. He cannot be accused of Blairite or Clinton-style emoting. ‘It had a big impact … but eventually you move on,’ is all he says.

The sun has long since set. We repair to the washroom, which has the brightest lighting, for a photograph. The prime minister’s golf clubs lean against the wall. They have become a leitmotif for his MDC critics, who mutter he spends more time playing golf than fighting the good fight. Some party insiders echo the assessment of a former US ambassador, published on WikiLeaks, that Tsvangirai has ‘questionable judgement’. Then there is the speculation about his private life. On the day we meet, one of the local newspapers has as its front-page headline: ‘Tsvangirai fathered my child’. The accusation was at first denied but there has since been an out-of-court settlement. There have been other allegations but he is talking about revolutions and tyranny and I don’t interrupt.

In his office is another poster – this one of Nelson Mandela. The great statesman is smiling beneath the slogan: ‘There is no easy walk to freedom’. Tsvangirai is no Mandela. A better analogy is Lech Wałęsa, the Polish union leader whose finest days were in opposition and who proved rather better at rousing rallies than the subtleties of government.

I have over the years had a clandestine breakfast with Tsvangirai, dinner in a Johannesburg ballroom and now drinks, but still no formal lunch. It would signal a fairytale ending to his career if that lunch were to occur in the presidential palace. But he is up against one of the canniest and most ruthless politicians of our time. The chances of this happening seem as remote as ever – and may never come.

19 OCTOBER 1996

Taking sumo wrestler Akebono for bongo bongo soup, Hawaiian chicken salad, two plates of lemon butter veal, fried noodles, rice and …

By William Dawkins

The trouble with lunching with sumo wrestlers is keeping up. Akebono chose Trader Vic’s in the Hotel New Otani, a favourite hang-out of Japan’s biggest men. It is also the only place in Tokyo, he said, where he could get something like the home cooking of his birthplace, Hawaii.

I was surprised when he accepted the invitation. After all, Akebono Taro – the name means dawn boy – is a demi-god in Japan. Not only is he the first foreigner to have become a yokozuna, or grand champion, but he is also the tallest and heaviest yokozuna in history, at 6ft 8ins and 473lb. Perhaps it was human appetite – the chance to make a homely change from his usual lunch, sumo wrestlers’ stew of meat and vegetables – that tempted?

So it was with awe that I rose to offer my business card to an ample hand extended from the sleeve of a powder-blue kimono. It was the first time during my stay in Japan that I ever had to look up to someone. I duly did, and was surprised again, this time by the calmness of that face, no trace of that murderous determination you see from Akebono in the ring.

The yokozuna settled himself on to a broad stool, more like a cushioned coffee table, reserved by Trader Vic’s manager, accustomed to
accommodating big men. We were joined by Ushiomaru, a young trainee from Akebono’s stable invited along, said the yokozuna, as a reward for good performance in training. Ushiomaru, who looked a bit bruised I thought, just about managed to fit into a chair.

Akebono ordered for them both: alcohol-free pina coladas – no drink during training. They arrived embellished with cherries, slices of fruit, and straws, such thoughtful additions for men with chests so huge that lifting a glass to the mouth can be awkward.

Was he really gentle or fierce?

‘I’d say that I’m a gentle person,’ he said.

‘You don’t look so gentle in the ring …’ I replied naively.

‘I try to break my character apart, to be fighter in the ring and a regular person outside,’ he explained. The fighter part, while separate from the gentle man, is nevertheless sincere, like two sides of a coin, he added. Sometimes, he said, he really does feel that he wants to kill his opponent. It comes over naturally. ‘It’s like being in a different zone. If you are on top of the game, you just go into it,’ he said.

Then followed a silence while Akebono studied the menu with satisfaction. ‘Spare ribs before you get started?’ suggested the manager. The yokozuna declined and settled on bongo bongo soup – oysters, cream and garlic – followed by Hawaiian chicken salad. ‘I’m on a diet,’ he said, laughing at my look of slight disappointment. I ordered the same.

Conversation proved less halting than I had feared. Sumo wrestlers are supposed to be reticent, part of the personal dignity, or
hinkaku
, required to rise to the top. But
hinkaku
, it turns out, does not oblige you to keep your mouth shut. Was he really on a diet? Perhaps he had eaten before he came. Akebono laughed again. ‘Just joking … when you’ve reached your top fighting weight, you need to stabilize. When you start as a wrestler you need to eat and sleep a lot to build up your body. We are not all the same.’ He gestured at the youngster. When Akebono, now 27, arrived in Japan in 1988 he was a mere 300lb, a fair weight for the basketball player he then was.

Now, he reckons, he does not want to put on much more weight for fear of repeating the knee and shoulder injuries he has suffered recently. So instead of sleeping after a heavy lunch, like younger wrestlers do, he likes to work out in the gym and then curl up with a book, preferably
pulp fiction. His current reading,
Waiting to Exhale
, is a tale of the turbulent love lives of four professional black US women.

The bongo bongo soup arrived, in clam shells. A few loud slurps later it was gone. Likewise, the salad. A main course? I tentatively suggested. The waiter, no doubt expecting this, appeared without being called.

The yokozuna thought for a moment. He asked for two plates of lemon butter veal with yakisoba (fried noodles), with rice on the side, plus two more pina coladas for himself and the silent Ushiomaru. At this, the youngster perked up a bit. Sensing a challenge, I asked for the same.

As we waited for the veal, I asked Akebono what had been the hardest part of his lightning elevation to yokozuna. Only eight years ago he was Chad Rowan, with not much to show for himself beyond ball skills, a high school diploma and plans to go into hotel management. His main reason for accepting the invitation to train as a wrestler, from a family friend in the sumo business, was to learn Japanese, indispensable to anyone who wants a future in the Hawaiian hotel trade.

I had expected him to cite language as the highest hurdle. Surprisingly, Akebono replied that learning Japanese, while frustrating, was not the toughest bit. Like all unmarried wrestlers, he lives, sleeps and mostly eats in a stable with Japanese teammates. So there was no choice but to speak Japanese from day one. Now, he even talks Japanese in his sleep, according to dormitory stablemates.

The hardest thing, he said, was learning patience. ‘I used to get very frustrated. There is this seniority system. I was 18 when I came to Japan and I had these 15-year-old kids telling me to scrub the toilet and take out the rubbish, just because they had joined the stable before me. I used to get frustrated, because in practice, when they wrestled, they were weak. I had to learn to respect them. It wasn’t like that in Hawaii, where the strong one is the top right from the start. I used to be very quick to react to people and things. I had to learn to stop and think, not to react on the spur of the moment …’