Update on the Tsvangirai Car Crash.

It now appears that at the time of Friday's crash Morgan Tsvangirai, his wife, a bodyguard and a specialist driver were travelling in a Toyota Land Cruiser as part of a three vehicle convoy. As this convoy was around 85km away from it's scheduled destination it was met on the road by a heavy truck travelling in the opposite direction. This truck then crossed onto the wrong side of the road before swerving back into the correct lane. At this point either the back of the truck or the trailer the truck was pulling (reports differ) struck the Tsvangirai's Land Cruiser forcing it off the road and causing it to roll over three times. Neither the lead vehicle or the follow vehicle in the Tsvangirai convoy made contact with the truck or were damaged in the incident. The truck itself was property of USAID, the US governmental aid agency, but at the time was being driven by a Zimbabwean man who was employed by a UK based international development agency.

If these reports are accurate then it is highly unlikely that this crash was an accident. Instead it appears to have been orchestrated by British MI6 operatives using what the US and UK police would call a TPAC manoeuvre designed to crash and stop suspect vehicles that the police are pursuing. However that is not the same thing as saying it was an assassination attempt because it is possible they were only trying to give the impression of an assassination attempt without actually killing anyone. As with other British Intelligence operations the motivation for staging this accident were multi layered probably including;

1. To give the impression that Mr Mugabe was attempting to kill Mr Tsvangirai in order that this would lead to a feud that would cause Zimbabwe's government of national unity to collapse.
2. In the event that (1) failed the idea was to make it look as though the United States had staged the assassination attempt. The idea of this is to get Zimbabweans and other Africans to stop listening to the US and start listening to the UK in order to increase the UK's regional influence.
3. Increase factional tensions within the MDC by making them paranoid. This would undermine their ability to function as part of the national unity government making it more likely that coalition government would collapse.

For their part the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office has denied any involvement, issued a statement declaring that they believe to the crash to be a "genuine accident" and are refusing to answer any more questions on the matter. Within the UK this incident is going to provide an interesting backdrop to March 13th Comic Relief telethon which was set up to raise funds from UK based international development agencies working in Africa. This years Comic Relief comes the night before the UK hosted meeting of G20 fiance ministers ahead of April's G20 Summit.