Arthur Guseni Oliver Mutambara (born 25 May 1966) is a Zimbabwean politician. He became the President of the Movement for Democratic Change-Mutambara faction (MDC) in February 2006. He has worked as the Managing Director and CEO of Africa Technology and Business Institute since September 2003. Under a September 2008 power-sharing agreement, Mutambara became Deputy Prime Minister on 11 February 2009.
Mutambara was a noted leader of the student movement within Zimbabwe in 1988 and 1989, leading anti-government protests at the University of Zimbabwe which led to his arrest and imprisonment. He was later educated on a Rhodes Scholarship at Merton College, Oxford in the United Kingdom where he obtained a PhD in Robotics and Mechatronics, and in the United States where he spent time as a visiting Fellow in the same field, including both California Institute of Technology,Massachusetts Institute of Technology and FSU College of Engineering. He also worked as a lecturer on Business Strategy and as a consultant for McKinsey & Company.
Mutambara criticized government ministers for abusing Zimbabwe's land reform program, engaging in: "monopolistic politics of domination, corruption, and petty bourgeois accumulation."
Mutambara, a self-professed admirer of Che Guevara, has also expressed his intention to visit Cuba to learn more about its "successful resistance" to American sanctions.Mutambara added: "We have a lot to learn from Cuba which started its revolution in 1959, we will continue with our solidarity, continue with the struggle and strengthen our co-operation."
After Mutambara and Tsvangirai failed to unite on a single MDC candidate for the March 2008 presidential election, Mutambara said on 15 February that he would not run for President and that his faction would instead back Simba Makoni. Mutambara instead ran in the concurrent parliamentary election for a seat from the Zengeza East constituency, but he was placed third, with 1,322 votes, according to official results, behind the candidate of the Tsvangirai faction, who won 7,570 votes, and the ZANU-PF candidate, who won 3,042 votes.
The Tsvangirai faction won 99 seats in the parliamentary election and the Mutambara faction won 10, compared with 97 for ZANU-PF. On 28 April 2008, Mutambara and Tsvangirai announced that their factions were reuniting, thus enabling the MDC to have a clear parliamentary majority.
On 1 June 2008, Mutambara was arrested at his home in Harare. According to his lawyer, the arrest was due to an article he wrote in The Standard in April, which allegedly included "falsehoods" and "contempt of court". In this article, he blamed Mugabe for the state of the economy and accused the security forces of committing abuses.[13] On 3 June, Mutambara was released on a bail of 20 million Zimbabwean dollars but he did not go to jail, with the next court date being set for 17 June. After the hearing on 3 June, he described his own suffering as minor compared to that of the people, saying that Mugabe's "human rights violations" would fail and vowing that "we will triumph over evil".
On September 15, 2008, the leaders of the 14-member Southern African Development Community witnessed the signing of a power-sharing agreement between the two MDC factions and ZANU-PF. Under the deal, Mugabe will remain President, Tsvangirai will become Prime Minister, [15] the MDC will control the police, ZANU-PF will control the Army, and Mutambara will become Deputy Prime Minister.
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