MDC, liberation heroes it can’t
THE basis of Christianity is that man, by virtue of being born of sinful loins, carries the sins of his forebears. The Lord admits in Exodus 20 verse 4 that he is a jealous God who holds children answerable for the sins of their forebears to the third and fourth generation. As such each man has to break this chain of sin by being born again through baptism, after which the old should pass away and a new life in Christ begins.
It appears the neophytes in Government, in those shiny corridors of power in Government offices believe this biblical rebirth applies to politics, where even the politically ugly among us morphed into beautiful swans by taking the oath of office even as they quack like ugly ducklings.
I say so because disturbing things, very disturbing things have been happening in the corridors of power since February 13.
Our history of stolid, defiant opposition to neo-colonial domination, in the eyes of some, ended then and hitherto even selling out became acceptable in the spirit of ‘inclusivity.’ That is why even the likes of Eddie Cross of the ‘‘crash and burn’’ thinking, men who never lifted a finger to advance the nationalist cause, claim to be more Zimbabwean than the heroes who fought to bring the same Zimbabwe.
A spirited campaign is underway to re-cast our history and even national ethos to reflect a nation as old as February 13. This week Trudy Stevenson even boldly asked, in the Zimbabwe Independent, ‘‘whose history is it anyway?’’ And one Obert Gutu proposed a redefinition of national heroism, the setting up of a national Heroes commission to direct the exhumation of ‘‘undeserving characters’’ from the national shrine and the re-burial of ‘‘those luminaries who were denied national hero status.’’
Clear agenda-setting was at play throughout the Zimind and names of ‘‘luminaries’’ like Gift Tandare, Jestina Mukoko, Beatrice Mtetwa were bandied as deserving honour on National Heroes Day.
Reading these reports I came to understand why Giles Mutsekwa held a victory celebration in his Dangamvura/Chikanga constituency as VP Msika’s body lay in state in Harare. While, given Mutsekwa’s history in the RF it would be understandable if he belittles the role played by Msika, what of the likes of Biti who were educated free of charge because of the sacrifices of people like Msika? Biti was there in Chikanga where he was quoted telling MDC-T supporters to honour their own heroes like Learnmore Jongwe and Isaac Matongo.
Such utterances imply that the holding of the victory celebration at the time of the demise of a venerated national hero was not coincidental, and may not have been about Mutsekwa’s victory in the 2008 elections.
What kind of society are we creating with this so-called inclusive Government, and to what extent should this ‘‘inclusivity’’ be stretched? At this rate, who can blame Obama and Clinton for being a-historical in their utterances over Zimbabwe?
For during her whirlwind tour of Africa, Hillary — who appeared lost to the irony of having husband Bill pick Lewinsky-look-alikes in North Korea — was busy urging South Africa to turn against Zimbabwe. ‘‘Zuma has to get tough with Mugabe,’’ Hillary quipped to the SA media.
Hillary needs to acquaint herself with the history of southern Africa. The Zuma she was speaking about was still deemed a terrorist in the US as late as last year (assuming he was struck off the terror and sanctions list along with Mandela ahead of the latter’s 90th birthday). Zuma will never forget that his ANC compatriots traveled the world on Zimbabwean passports as the US barred them from its shores and gave the apartheid regime spirited backing to delay the onset of black majority rule. Clinton’s posturing might find purchase among Western-sponsored politicians but not those grounded in liberation ethos. Then of course, there was Obama, who only this year extended the economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, claiming — in Ghana — that the West had nothing to do with Zimbabwe’s economic downturn. This revisionist thinking is apparently aimed at recasting our proud history and pegging it from the year the MDC was formed. The illegal regime change lobby has to be deodorised as a fight for democracy, and its askaris as national heroes. And all this in the week we celebrated the real heroes who stepped to the plate when some of those passing themselves as ‘‘democrats’’ today ran or opposed. This earth, my brother!
* * * *
For the avoidance of doubt, the MDC was formed out of the West’s misplaced economics that it was cheaper to fund an opposition to topple Zanu-PF than fund a land reform programme to dispossess the children of Albion. The MDC has no proud history to speak of and the nation has precious little to emulate from the party’s leadership as currently constituted. The MDC formations, infact need to be born again, politically that is, and it is my fervent hope that February 13 signified that rebirth. Lets not forget that the economic sanctions we are reeling under were imposed at the behest of the party’s leadership, as such the MDC-T was complicit in the socio-economic regression we witnessed over the past decade, a regression that Biti says needs US$140billion to undo. And if that is the stuff heroes are made of, then Hitler is a pacifist.
* * * *
Nowhere in our history was any US administration found on the side of our fight for self-determination. Instead Washington has been consistently found on the side of those we fought against.
At the risk of having our history hijacked and made over, here are a few facts Hillary and Obama should never forget whenever they pass themselves off as champions of Zimbabwe’s democracy.
When Smith declared his UDI on November 11, 1965, the progressive world was naturally outraged and the UN Security Council responded by punishing the Smith regime with a raft of sanctions beginning that year till the brief restoration of British rule in December 1979.
Though the terms of the sanctions forbade trade or financial dealings with Rhodesia, the US supported the beleaguered settler regime regardless and covertly channeled assistance through apartheid South Africa.
US allies among them Portugal - then under Marcello Caetano, Israel, and Iran then under the US puppet — Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi — also assisted and traded with Rhodesia. In an attempt to bypass the UN sanctions, the US passed the Byrd Amendment in 1971 and continued to buy chrome from Rhodesia in violation of the UN sanctions. Washington’s argument, chrome was ‘‘a strategic raw material’’, yet the chrome was for the US auto industry.
As if that was not enough, the US also contributed to the establishment of an armaments industry in Rhodesia that enabled the RF to kill over 50 000 innocent Zimbabweans whose only "crime" was daring to demand majority rule.
Uncle Sam also provided the technical knowledge and support, again through apartheid South Africa, toward establishing the 700-kilometre Border Minefield Obstacle along our borders with Zambia and Mozambique. An obstacle that was aimed at stopping aspiring cadres from crossing to training camps and to blow-up trained combatants crossing back into Zimbabwe. What is more US mercenaries and servicemen joined the RF ranks, with many of them bringing back to Rhodesia military ideas and concepts from Vietnam.
For a detailed expose of the extent of Washington’s destabilisation of the Second Chimurenga, Hillary should read the 2001 book ‘‘From the Barrel of a Gun — The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980’’ by the African-American writer Gerald Horne. She can get a copy from the publishers, University of North Carolina Press at Chapel Hill failing which she can contact the Centre for Defence Studies at the University of Zimbabwe.
The bottom line is Washington not only significantly contributed to Rhodesia’s national income, which enabled the Smith regime to buy weapons to pulverise freedom fighters; it actually assisted Rhodesia’s fight against Zipra and Zanla combatants.
As such Hillary must read history before exercising her jaws on Zimbabwe. By acquainting herself with our history, she will find that her government — which today opposes the land reform programme — supported the Patriotic Front on land at the Lancaster House Constitutional Conference, with the then US president Jimmy Carter promising that Washington would significantly fund land reforms and also urged the British to do the same.
Carter’s promise — which was delivered by the then US ambassador to London, Kingman Brewster — was made after the Patriotic Front threatened to walk out of the Conference when the British sought to scuttle demands for land reforms. Clinton can access these revelations from the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk.
* * * *
Do not get me wrong, and this is not hate speech. Heroes emerge from all walks of life, and there are many heroes and heroines who have distinguished themselves in diverse fields. It is such people who can be adjudged by commissions or committees of eminent persons or even elders, and can have their own venerated ground on the plentiful land we acquired at considerable wrath from the West.
The National Heroes Acre was set up for heroes of the struggle for independence, which is why it is shaped like two juxtaposed AK47s and why it has a liberation museum at the entrance. It is simply not feasible to have Chamisa, who was born only two years shy of Independence, or Bennett and Mutsekwa who fought on the side of the RF decide on the heroes of the struggle for independence. There are simply some things that ‘‘can’t,’’ in the same way 1 — 2 can’t at grade one level?
* * * *
Now what is all this fuss about service chiefs and salute for the Prime Minister? I thought the question of who gets the salute is now in the public domain, the Commander-in-Chief of the ZDF and serving or retired commanders.
This week Internet ghost sites were awash with debate over whether the airforce commander saluted Tsvangirai during the Defence Forces Day, and the Zimind went one up by publishing an obscure picture on the front page that claimed to show Air Marshal Perrance Shiri saluting PM Tsvangirai.
I am sure that there were better pictures to show that Air Marshall Shiri was standing beside VP Mujuru and between VP Mujuru and the PM sat Retired General Solomon Mujuru, the former ZDF commander, who was obscured by the PM from the angle at which the Zimind picture was taken. So how could a salute jump the VP and the Retired General and be meant for the PM who was seated at the far end?
And assuming Air Marshal Shiri was saluting, the salute was evidently for his former boss, Rtd Gen Mujuru. More so military salutes are given and received when the giver and receiver are both standing upright and looking directly into each other’s faces. Looking at Air Marshal Shiri’s posture it was most likely he was greeting VP Mujuru.
Anyway only he can answer as to who he was ‘saluting’ or greeting but for the sages at Zimind it had to be a picture that matched their lead story.
Such is the nature of recasting history, at times it bids those doing it to carve headlines about sunrise on a dry savanna day.
caesar.zvayi@zimpapers.co.zw
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Friday, 14 August 2009
The propaganda about Zimbabwe cloaks an imperial mindset
The propaganda about Zimbabwe cloaks an imperial mindset
By Jordan Pearson
Zimbabwe, and the apparently rigged elections that saw Robert Mugabe win his 6th
consecutive term as President, is a story that’s all over the news at the
moment, and it’s a story that’s presented with unprecedented singularity; Mugabe
cast, in nearly every story, as an evil dictator who has ruined the country and
needs to go. This unanimity of opinion got me wondering: is Mugabe really that
rare, Hitleresque figure of ultimate evil? Maybe even more evil than Skullitor?
A little wider reading, particularly from African sources, presents a different
picture. That Zimbabwe is in a very bad way is indisputable; one of the worst
cases of hyperinflation in recorded history, people starving in what was once a
rich farming land, but while the reason for this is always attributed to
Mugabe’s inept and brutal leadership, the actual reasons are infinitely more
complex.
Missing from nearly all coverage of the issue is any consideration of its
historical context, and, more importantly, its global political-economic context
– that is, the international pervasiveness of Western economic dominance (why
it’s called “globalization,” I guess) and the impossibility of resisting it.
Zimbabwe’s dire situation seems to be less about a brutal dictator and more
about the government’s revolutionary resistance to Western economic
exploitation, or neo-colonialism. Everything is framed through the familiar
perspective that Mugabe is an “evil man”. The fact that he is an African makes
this a lot easier for Western audiences to accept, so too does the fact that
there’s probably a lot of truth to it, but before accepting this too easily ask
yourself, “Why?” Remember: “Evil Mugabe” was once “Sir Robert Mugabe,” and it
was only this month that Nelson Mandela was removed from the United States
terrorist watch list.
It’s not my intention in this to be an apologist for President Mugabe – he seems
like a real brute – but to point out some of the hypocrisies and
double-standards operating in this story, and to see why, of all the “brutal
dictators” in the world, this brutal dictator is being singled-out.
The spectacular hypocrisy with which our Western media operate is always
exaggerated when discussing black people, especially Africans. The absurdity of
the same countries that colonized (that is, invaded and destroyed) Africa now
telling African nations how to run themselves goes unnoticed by most. So does
the ridiculousness of stories calling for Western “humanitarian intervention” in
Zimbabwe (that is, the pretext to invade and destroy) in the world section of
newspapers next to stories about our humiliating defeats in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Do people really want to repeat the procedure of invading another
country on falsified humanitarian pretenses, attempting to exploit its resources
or geographical position, and having our asses handed back to us by the local
population?
And who the hell is George Bush to cast dispersions on a rigged election?
Zimbabwe first started getting this intense media attention in 2000, when
Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party started re-expropriating land back to black Africans by
confiscating it from white farmers (land which, of course, had originally been
stolen by the British). According to the media narrative, this is where the
country fell into decline. The subtext is, of course, that African’s don’t know
anything and will mess everything up in the absence of white guidance. This
completely ignores that most black Zimbabweans are either descendants of Bantu
civilizations that existed for literally 1000’s of years or Ndebele people, both
of whom prospered on the land long before Europeans set foot on it.
I remember once being told by someone that the answer to Africa’s problems was
not aid, but guidance: “If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day,” she
said, “but if we teach them how to fish, we’ll feed him and his family forever”.
At this, I had to point out that, “Sweetie, these people were fishing and eating
a long time before white people got there and messed everything up, and if you
teach a man to fish and then steal everything he catches, this guy and his
family are still gonna starve!”
These sorts of ideas are unthinkable in mainstream Western discussion of “third
world” problems. Completely uncovered in the news is the colonial legacy of
Britain in Zimbabwe, and its continued responsibility for Zimbabwe’s economic
cataclysm, in collusion with the United States and major international financial
institutions, who are punishing the country for failing to open itself up to be
robbed and pillaged. We are reminded on a daily basis that Mugabe is a
super-villian, while equally or much more oppressive dictatorships enjoy the
full support of the West and go unnoticed in the news, because their
governments’ make the country open for exploitation; governments like those of
neighboring Uganda and Rwanda, for example. Mugabe dares defy the dictates of
the United States, and so, like many other similar leaders before him, and
today, he has to go.
According to Stephen Gowans:
“The charge that the West is supporting civil society groups in Zimbabwe to
bring down the government isn’t paranoid speculation or the demagogic raving
of a government trying to cling to power by mobilizing anti-imperialist
sentiment. It’s a matter of public record. The US government has admitted that
“it wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is
working with the Zimbabwean opposition…trade unions, pro-democracy groups and
human rights organizations…to bring about a change of administration.”
Robert Mugabe is part of a group of people that fought a long, hard struggle
against Britain who ruled the country for ninety years in a way that makes the
current government look like Care Bears. Mugabe’s part in this struggle is one
of the things that gives him his wide support base in Zimbabwe and greater
Africa. While Zimbabwe rid itself of foreign political control in 1980 through
this struggle, the battle for economic independence continues. Says, Jabulani
Sibanda, the leader of the association of former guerrillas who won against
Britain:
“Our country was taken away in 1890. We fought a protracted struggle to
recover it and the process is still on. We gained political independence in
1980, got our land after 2000, but we have not yet reclaimed our minerals and
natural resources. The fight for freedom is still on until everything is
recovered for the people.”
This is exactly what President Mugabe is trying to achieve, the protection of
the revenues from Zimbabwe’s extensive natural resources and other industries
for the Zimbabwean people. This is his great crime as far as Western powers are
concerned, powers who demand open-door access to all African and third world
countries. This is also the great crime of Hugo Chavez, singled-out and vilified
for similar reasons.
Another great crime of Mugabe’s, a crime he also shares with Hugo Chavez, was to
turn his country away from the IMF after seeing the economically disastrous
consequences of implementing IMF structural adjustment conditions, which
Zimbabwe did from 1991-1995. The IMF declared Zimbabwe ineligible to use IMF
resources in 2001, which meant Zimbabwe could not pick up any credit from
markets without paying very high interest rates, and could not sell using
international banking. This is the true cause of the collapse of their currency.
This was, of course, done to punish Zimbabwe because the government had the
audacity to return the country’s land to its original owners.
We can see here how the former colonial owners still exercise great control over
the country, where, according to Mugabe, the British and their allies (including
my country, NZ)
“… influence other countries to cut their economic ties with us…the soft
loans, grants and investments that were coming our way, started decreasing and
in some cases practically petering out. Then the signals to the rest of the
world that Zimbabwe is under sanctions, that rings bells and countries that
would want to invest in Zimbabwe are being very cautious. And we are being
dragged through the mud every day on CNN, BBC, Sky News, and they are saying
to these potential investors ‘your investments will not be safe in Zimbabwe,
the British farmers have lost their land, and your investments will go the
same way.”
This brings us back to the fundamental point about the totality of Western
economic dominance: powerful nations like the UK and U.S. have almost total
control over developing nations – including the power to shut a country down,
and to unanimously condemn in the media any leader they dislike.
A significant clue, however, that the “worldwide” condemnation of Mugabe, as is
most often implied, may not be so utterly unanimous, is that much of the world
refuses to condemn him. China and Russia have repeatedly vetoed attempts by the
States and Britain at the UN Security Council to place heavier sanctions on the
country, and both these countries represent alternative sources of trade and
investment for Zimbabwe. F. William Engdahl contends that “Mugabe’s Biggest Sin”
is that he “has quietly been doing business, a lot of it, with one country which
has virtually unlimited need of strategic raw materials Zimbabwe can provide –
China” putting Zimbabwe (along with Sudan) “on the central stage of the new war
over control of strategic minerals in Africa between Washington and Beijing”.
[http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9707] Indeed, Zimbabwe is
a country with a lot of mineral wealth to which Western businesses want
exclusive access, for both their real and symbolic wealth: Zimbabwe serves as a
potential example to other countries wishing to protect their own resources, and
so must be made an example of. Closer ties with China may or may not necessarily
be a positive thing for the people of Zimbabwe; for example, China ships
significant amounts of weapons to the country. Strong criticism of China from
the U.S. for this however is yet another example of the spectacular hypocrisy
that goes unnoticed, when throughout this century and the last, the U.S. been
constantly arming the most brutal governments and terrorist organizations it
can. Zimbabwe, of course, has every right to develop trade with any country it
chooses, but is being brazenly punished by the West for pursuing new investment
not from the old imperialist powers.
Zimbabwe’s resistance to imperialism has meant the country has been singled-out,
cut-off, and gradually strangled. Gowans chronicles the process:
“In March 2002, Canada withdrew all direct funding to the government of
Zimbabwe. In 2005, the IT department at Zimbabwe’s Africa University
discovered that Microsoft had been instructed by the US Treasury Department to
refrain from doing business with the university. Western companies refuse to
supply spare parts to Zimbabwe’s national railway company, even though there
are no official trade sanctions in place.… Pressure will also be applied on
countries surrounding Zimbabwe to mount an economic blockade. The point of
sanctions is to starve the people of Zimbabwe into revolting against the
government to clear the way for the rise of the MDC and control, by proxy,
from London and Washington. Apply enough pressure and eventually the people
will cry uncle (or so goes the theory.).”
(A theory that worked so perfectly with Saddam Hussein, didn’t it? Only killing
an estimated 1,500,000 Iraqis before failing and being abandoned in favour of an
invasion that killed hundreds of thousands more.) So Zimbabwe is faced with a
shitty choice: maintain and have the country’s economy totally destroyed, or
give-up and submit to an economic ass-raping. Such is the totality of Western
economic dominance: sovereign nations don’t have choices, and sovereignty itself
doesn’t exist.
The political alternative, the MDC, or Movement for Democratic Change, lead by
Morgan Tsvangirai, who reportedly won the recent elections, is presented in the
news as Zimbabwe’s only hope for democracy and receives overwhelming media
support. Never once mentioned is that the MDC is primarily a representative of
Britain, the U.S. and their economic interests, and almost entirely funded by
foreign groups, with the expressed aim of opening Zimbabwe up for investment, or
in other words, exploitation. The party was formed in 1999, immediately after
the Zanu-PF government announced its land confiscation program. According to the
Gowans article, “The party was initially bankrolled by the British government’s
Westminster Foundation for Democracy and other European governments, including
Germany” and “acknowledged in February 2002 that [it] was financed by European
governments and corporations, which funnelled money through British political
consultants, BSMG”. The MDC receives this overwhelming media support, because it
operates as a front for Western business interests and in the event of being
elected would allow these interests to do as they please, transforming Zimbabwe
from a rebellious dictatorship to a well-behaved dictatorship, and thus not a
problem. With regards to policies that advance the interests of Zimbabwean
people, like returning land back to black African owners for example, Tsvangirai
has said it’s not acceptable as it “scares away investors, domestic and
international“. Investors are usually scared of justice.
The position that Mugabe and Zanu-PF hold onto power through violence and
intimidation alone, as advocated by all mainstream news, doesn’t seem to quite
add up either. While it seems that violence and intimidation undoubtedly occur,
Munyaradzi Gwisai, strong opponent of the Mugabe government as leader of the
International Socialist Organization in Zimbabwe, puts things in a different
perspective:
“There is no doubt about it – the regime is rooted among the population with a
solid social base. Despite the catastrophic economic collapse, Zanu-PF still
won more popular votes in parliament than the MDC in the March 29
parliamentary elections. Mugabe might have lost on the streets, but if you
count the actual votes, his party won more than the MDC in elections to the
House of Assembly and Senate. Zanu-PF won an absolute majority of votes in
five of the country’s 10 provinces, plus a simple majority in another
province. By contrast, the MDC won two provinces with an absolute majority and
two with a simple majority. But because we use first past the post, not
proportional representation, Zanu-PF’s votes were not translated into a
majority in parliament. It was only Mugabe himself, in the presidential
election, who did worse in terms of the popular vote.”
Mugabe’s support in Africa in general is also seemingly contradictory to the
story as we are told it. He’s often greeted with a heroes welcome when he
travels in Africa and African leaders have continually refused to outright
condemn him. This is usually explained away as being a case of Africans sticking
together, refusing to condemn “one of their own” no matter how deplorable their
leadership may be, because they don’t want to be seen as sell-outs or traitors
to the West. While this is bullshit, if it were true that Africans were prepared
to accept despotic rule by other Africans as preferable to agreement with us,
would this not indicate that our presence and opinions were not really wanted
there?
Our Western governments continued pontificating and intervention on the excuse
of human rights and democracy, even if they were genuine, demonstrate, as the
worst human rights violators on the planet, an incredible arrogance and
hypocrisy. In 2004, Mugabe was voted #3 in New Africa magazine’s issue of “100
Greatest Africans”. While Mugabe was outright condemned at the recent G8 summit
in Japan, there was no similar condemnation at the most recent AU summit.
Headlines covering the summit were generally phrased with implicit assumptions
that explicitly reveal the news’ sheer ridiculousness and partiality, even Al
Jazeera saying “African leaders fail to condemn Mugabe” . Fail to condemn
Mugabe?! Fail to? As if they were supposed to and didn’t? Here, you can clearly
see that nowadays media impartiality isn’t even a consideration – especially
when considering black people, and especially when considering Africa: at worst,
a continent incapable of managing itself, at best, just sticking together out of
racial solidarity.
The “Perils of Racial Solidarity” (if you’re not white) are evident anywhere,
like the current U.S. elections for example, where Obama had to disown his own
church (because his minister had the audacity to speak truthfully about 9/11),
and has had to generally cater to white people’s fears. Says, Kevin Alexander
Gray:
“Give a listen to the corporate media, and it’s pretty clear what tune black
voices are supposed to be singing. Obama is constantly called on to swear
allegiance to America – to prove he isn’t swearing allegiance to blacks. The
other way to say that is he’s supposed to swear allegiance to white, not
black, America. Meanwhile, the back end of that deal is that black Americans
are required to substitute Obama for real structural racial progress. As in,
‘You got your nominee. See, we’re not so racist or bad after all. Now shut
up!’”
Ultimately, all this shit is best summed-up by Africa’s Hitler himself, the
current President of Zimbabwe and former Sir Robert Mugabe, who, at his address
to the UN in October last year had this to say:
“The West still negates our sovereignties by way of control of our resources,
in the process making us mere chattels in out own lands, mere minders of its
trans-national interests. In my own country and other sister states in
Southern Africa, the most visible form of this control has been over land
despoiled from us at the onset of British colonialism.
That control largely persists, although it stands firmly challenged in
Zimbabwe, thereby triggering the current stand-off between us and Britain,
supported by her cousin states, most notably the United States and Australia.
Mr Bush, Mr. Blair and now Mr Brown’s sense of human rights precludes our
people’s right to their God-given resources, which in their view must be
controlled by their kith and kin. I am termed dictator because I have rejected
this supremacist view and frustrated the neo-colonialists.
Mr President,
Clearly the history of the struggle for out own national and people’s rights
is unknown to the president of the United States of America. He thinks the
Declaration of Human Rights starts with his last term in office! He thinks she
can introduce to us, who bore the brunt of fighting for the freedoms of our
peoples, the virtues of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What rank
hypocrisy!
Mr President,
I lost eleven precious years of my life in the jail of a white man whose
freedom and well- being I have assured from the first day of Zimbabwe’s
Independence. I lost a further fifteen years fighting white injustice in my
country.
Ian Smith is responsible for the death of well over 50 000 of my people. I
bear scars of his tyranny which Britain and America condoned. I meet his
victims everyday. Yet he walks free. He farms free. He talks freely,
associates freely under a black Government. We taught him democracy. We gave
him back his humanity.
He would have faced a different fate here and in Europe if the 50 000 he
killed were Europeans. Africa has not called for a Nuremberg trial against the
white world which committed heinous crimes against its own humanity. It has
not hunted perpetrators of this genocide, many of whom live to this day, nor
has it got reparations from those who offended against it. Instead it is
Africa which is in the dock, facing trial from the same world that persecuted
it for centuries.
Let Mr. Bush read history correctly. Let him realize that both personally and
in his representative capacity as the current President of the United States,
he stands for this “civilization” which occupied, which colonised, which
incarcerated, which killed. He has much to atone for and very little to
lecture us on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Mugabe’s message to George Bush is one all of us in the West could do with
paying attention to. You don’t have to stray far from the mainstream media to
get a much clearer perspective on Zimbabwe; perspectives, especially African,
that go a long way to answering the important questions around the issue.
Questions like: Why does Zimbabwe receive so much attention as a dictatorship,
when other dictatorships do not? What makes Zimbabwe special? Why was Mugabe
once a Knight and is now a villain? Why do countries like China and Russia’s
position on Zimbabwe differ so much from the U.S. and UK? Why won’t most other
African leaders condemn Mugabe? While the man may very well be a “dictator” or
“tyrant” or any of the other names he is called, he is clearly trying to protect
his country from exploitation, and so his country suffers for this.
He may be a dictator, but just like with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, we in the West
are applying one standard to Mugabe, another standard to all the other
dictators, and – from our position as the worst human rights abusers on Earth –
yet another standard to ourselves. Zimbabwe has been singled-out in the media
and Mugabe so thoroughly vilified because they have chosen to exercise the
country’s sovereignty, as opposed to being told what to do, and yet our news
preaches of bringing Zimbabwe democracy – just like we did in Iraq, eh? In the
words of evil-incarnate himself again: “Democracy… means self-rule, not rule by
outsiders.”
By Jordan Pearson
Zimbabwe, and the apparently rigged elections that saw Robert Mugabe win his 6th
consecutive term as President, is a story that’s all over the news at the
moment, and it’s a story that’s presented with unprecedented singularity; Mugabe
cast, in nearly every story, as an evil dictator who has ruined the country and
needs to go. This unanimity of opinion got me wondering: is Mugabe really that
rare, Hitleresque figure of ultimate evil? Maybe even more evil than Skullitor?
A little wider reading, particularly from African sources, presents a different
picture. That Zimbabwe is in a very bad way is indisputable; one of the worst
cases of hyperinflation in recorded history, people starving in what was once a
rich farming land, but while the reason for this is always attributed to
Mugabe’s inept and brutal leadership, the actual reasons are infinitely more
complex.
Missing from nearly all coverage of the issue is any consideration of its
historical context, and, more importantly, its global political-economic context
– that is, the international pervasiveness of Western economic dominance (why
it’s called “globalization,” I guess) and the impossibility of resisting it.
Zimbabwe’s dire situation seems to be less about a brutal dictator and more
about the government’s revolutionary resistance to Western economic
exploitation, or neo-colonialism. Everything is framed through the familiar
perspective that Mugabe is an “evil man”. The fact that he is an African makes
this a lot easier for Western audiences to accept, so too does the fact that
there’s probably a lot of truth to it, but before accepting this too easily ask
yourself, “Why?” Remember: “Evil Mugabe” was once “Sir Robert Mugabe,” and it
was only this month that Nelson Mandela was removed from the United States
terrorist watch list.
It’s not my intention in this to be an apologist for President Mugabe – he seems
like a real brute – but to point out some of the hypocrisies and
double-standards operating in this story, and to see why, of all the “brutal
dictators” in the world, this brutal dictator is being singled-out.
The spectacular hypocrisy with which our Western media operate is always
exaggerated when discussing black people, especially Africans. The absurdity of
the same countries that colonized (that is, invaded and destroyed) Africa now
telling African nations how to run themselves goes unnoticed by most. So does
the ridiculousness of stories calling for Western “humanitarian intervention” in
Zimbabwe (that is, the pretext to invade and destroy) in the world section of
newspapers next to stories about our humiliating defeats in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Do people really want to repeat the procedure of invading another
country on falsified humanitarian pretenses, attempting to exploit its resources
or geographical position, and having our asses handed back to us by the local
population?
And who the hell is George Bush to cast dispersions on a rigged election?
Zimbabwe first started getting this intense media attention in 2000, when
Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party started re-expropriating land back to black Africans by
confiscating it from white farmers (land which, of course, had originally been
stolen by the British). According to the media narrative, this is where the
country fell into decline. The subtext is, of course, that African’s don’t know
anything and will mess everything up in the absence of white guidance. This
completely ignores that most black Zimbabweans are either descendants of Bantu
civilizations that existed for literally 1000’s of years or Ndebele people, both
of whom prospered on the land long before Europeans set foot on it.
I remember once being told by someone that the answer to Africa’s problems was
not aid, but guidance: “If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day,” she
said, “but if we teach them how to fish, we’ll feed him and his family forever”.
At this, I had to point out that, “Sweetie, these people were fishing and eating
a long time before white people got there and messed everything up, and if you
teach a man to fish and then steal everything he catches, this guy and his
family are still gonna starve!”
These sorts of ideas are unthinkable in mainstream Western discussion of “third
world” problems. Completely uncovered in the news is the colonial legacy of
Britain in Zimbabwe, and its continued responsibility for Zimbabwe’s economic
cataclysm, in collusion with the United States and major international financial
institutions, who are punishing the country for failing to open itself up to be
robbed and pillaged. We are reminded on a daily basis that Mugabe is a
super-villian, while equally or much more oppressive dictatorships enjoy the
full support of the West and go unnoticed in the news, because their
governments’ make the country open for exploitation; governments like those of
neighboring Uganda and Rwanda, for example. Mugabe dares defy the dictates of
the United States, and so, like many other similar leaders before him, and
today, he has to go.
According to Stephen Gowans:
“The charge that the West is supporting civil society groups in Zimbabwe to
bring down the government isn’t paranoid speculation or the demagogic raving
of a government trying to cling to power by mobilizing anti-imperialist
sentiment. It’s a matter of public record. The US government has admitted that
“it wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is
working with the Zimbabwean opposition…trade unions, pro-democracy groups and
human rights organizations…to bring about a change of administration.”
Robert Mugabe is part of a group of people that fought a long, hard struggle
against Britain who ruled the country for ninety years in a way that makes the
current government look like Care Bears. Mugabe’s part in this struggle is one
of the things that gives him his wide support base in Zimbabwe and greater
Africa. While Zimbabwe rid itself of foreign political control in 1980 through
this struggle, the battle for economic independence continues. Says, Jabulani
Sibanda, the leader of the association of former guerrillas who won against
Britain:
“Our country was taken away in 1890. We fought a protracted struggle to
recover it and the process is still on. We gained political independence in
1980, got our land after 2000, but we have not yet reclaimed our minerals and
natural resources. The fight for freedom is still on until everything is
recovered for the people.”
This is exactly what President Mugabe is trying to achieve, the protection of
the revenues from Zimbabwe’s extensive natural resources and other industries
for the Zimbabwean people. This is his great crime as far as Western powers are
concerned, powers who demand open-door access to all African and third world
countries. This is also the great crime of Hugo Chavez, singled-out and vilified
for similar reasons.
Another great crime of Mugabe’s, a crime he also shares with Hugo Chavez, was to
turn his country away from the IMF after seeing the economically disastrous
consequences of implementing IMF structural adjustment conditions, which
Zimbabwe did from 1991-1995. The IMF declared Zimbabwe ineligible to use IMF
resources in 2001, which meant Zimbabwe could not pick up any credit from
markets without paying very high interest rates, and could not sell using
international banking. This is the true cause of the collapse of their currency.
This was, of course, done to punish Zimbabwe because the government had the
audacity to return the country’s land to its original owners.
We can see here how the former colonial owners still exercise great control over
the country, where, according to Mugabe, the British and their allies (including
my country, NZ)
“… influence other countries to cut their economic ties with us…the soft
loans, grants and investments that were coming our way, started decreasing and
in some cases practically petering out. Then the signals to the rest of the
world that Zimbabwe is under sanctions, that rings bells and countries that
would want to invest in Zimbabwe are being very cautious. And we are being
dragged through the mud every day on CNN, BBC, Sky News, and they are saying
to these potential investors ‘your investments will not be safe in Zimbabwe,
the British farmers have lost their land, and your investments will go the
same way.”
This brings us back to the fundamental point about the totality of Western
economic dominance: powerful nations like the UK and U.S. have almost total
control over developing nations – including the power to shut a country down,
and to unanimously condemn in the media any leader they dislike.
A significant clue, however, that the “worldwide” condemnation of Mugabe, as is
most often implied, may not be so utterly unanimous, is that much of the world
refuses to condemn him. China and Russia have repeatedly vetoed attempts by the
States and Britain at the UN Security Council to place heavier sanctions on the
country, and both these countries represent alternative sources of trade and
investment for Zimbabwe. F. William Engdahl contends that “Mugabe’s Biggest Sin”
is that he “has quietly been doing business, a lot of it, with one country which
has virtually unlimited need of strategic raw materials Zimbabwe can provide –
China” putting Zimbabwe (along with Sudan) “on the central stage of the new war
over control of strategic minerals in Africa between Washington and Beijing”.
[http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9707] Indeed, Zimbabwe is
a country with a lot of mineral wealth to which Western businesses want
exclusive access, for both their real and symbolic wealth: Zimbabwe serves as a
potential example to other countries wishing to protect their own resources, and
so must be made an example of. Closer ties with China may or may not necessarily
be a positive thing for the people of Zimbabwe; for example, China ships
significant amounts of weapons to the country. Strong criticism of China from
the U.S. for this however is yet another example of the spectacular hypocrisy
that goes unnoticed, when throughout this century and the last, the U.S. been
constantly arming the most brutal governments and terrorist organizations it
can. Zimbabwe, of course, has every right to develop trade with any country it
chooses, but is being brazenly punished by the West for pursuing new investment
not from the old imperialist powers.
Zimbabwe’s resistance to imperialism has meant the country has been singled-out,
cut-off, and gradually strangled. Gowans chronicles the process:
“In March 2002, Canada withdrew all direct funding to the government of
Zimbabwe. In 2005, the IT department at Zimbabwe’s Africa University
discovered that Microsoft had been instructed by the US Treasury Department to
refrain from doing business with the university. Western companies refuse to
supply spare parts to Zimbabwe’s national railway company, even though there
are no official trade sanctions in place.… Pressure will also be applied on
countries surrounding Zimbabwe to mount an economic blockade. The point of
sanctions is to starve the people of Zimbabwe into revolting against the
government to clear the way for the rise of the MDC and control, by proxy,
from London and Washington. Apply enough pressure and eventually the people
will cry uncle (or so goes the theory.).”
(A theory that worked so perfectly with Saddam Hussein, didn’t it? Only killing
an estimated 1,500,000 Iraqis before failing and being abandoned in favour of an
invasion that killed hundreds of thousands more.) So Zimbabwe is faced with a
shitty choice: maintain and have the country’s economy totally destroyed, or
give-up and submit to an economic ass-raping. Such is the totality of Western
economic dominance: sovereign nations don’t have choices, and sovereignty itself
doesn’t exist.
The political alternative, the MDC, or Movement for Democratic Change, lead by
Morgan Tsvangirai, who reportedly won the recent elections, is presented in the
news as Zimbabwe’s only hope for democracy and receives overwhelming media
support. Never once mentioned is that the MDC is primarily a representative of
Britain, the U.S. and their economic interests, and almost entirely funded by
foreign groups, with the expressed aim of opening Zimbabwe up for investment, or
in other words, exploitation. The party was formed in 1999, immediately after
the Zanu-PF government announced its land confiscation program. According to the
Gowans article, “The party was initially bankrolled by the British government’s
Westminster Foundation for Democracy and other European governments, including
Germany” and “acknowledged in February 2002 that [it] was financed by European
governments and corporations, which funnelled money through British political
consultants, BSMG”. The MDC receives this overwhelming media support, because it
operates as a front for Western business interests and in the event of being
elected would allow these interests to do as they please, transforming Zimbabwe
from a rebellious dictatorship to a well-behaved dictatorship, and thus not a
problem. With regards to policies that advance the interests of Zimbabwean
people, like returning land back to black African owners for example, Tsvangirai
has said it’s not acceptable as it “scares away investors, domestic and
international“. Investors are usually scared of justice.
The position that Mugabe and Zanu-PF hold onto power through violence and
intimidation alone, as advocated by all mainstream news, doesn’t seem to quite
add up either. While it seems that violence and intimidation undoubtedly occur,
Munyaradzi Gwisai, strong opponent of the Mugabe government as leader of the
International Socialist Organization in Zimbabwe, puts things in a different
perspective:
“There is no doubt about it – the regime is rooted among the population with a
solid social base. Despite the catastrophic economic collapse, Zanu-PF still
won more popular votes in parliament than the MDC in the March 29
parliamentary elections. Mugabe might have lost on the streets, but if you
count the actual votes, his party won more than the MDC in elections to the
House of Assembly and Senate. Zanu-PF won an absolute majority of votes in
five of the country’s 10 provinces, plus a simple majority in another
province. By contrast, the MDC won two provinces with an absolute majority and
two with a simple majority. But because we use first past the post, not
proportional representation, Zanu-PF’s votes were not translated into a
majority in parliament. It was only Mugabe himself, in the presidential
election, who did worse in terms of the popular vote.”
Mugabe’s support in Africa in general is also seemingly contradictory to the
story as we are told it. He’s often greeted with a heroes welcome when he
travels in Africa and African leaders have continually refused to outright
condemn him. This is usually explained away as being a case of Africans sticking
together, refusing to condemn “one of their own” no matter how deplorable their
leadership may be, because they don’t want to be seen as sell-outs or traitors
to the West. While this is bullshit, if it were true that Africans were prepared
to accept despotic rule by other Africans as preferable to agreement with us,
would this not indicate that our presence and opinions were not really wanted
there?
Our Western governments continued pontificating and intervention on the excuse
of human rights and democracy, even if they were genuine, demonstrate, as the
worst human rights violators on the planet, an incredible arrogance and
hypocrisy. In 2004, Mugabe was voted #3 in New Africa magazine’s issue of “100
Greatest Africans”. While Mugabe was outright condemned at the recent G8 summit
in Japan, there was no similar condemnation at the most recent AU summit.
Headlines covering the summit were generally phrased with implicit assumptions
that explicitly reveal the news’ sheer ridiculousness and partiality, even Al
Jazeera saying “African leaders fail to condemn Mugabe” . Fail to condemn
Mugabe?! Fail to? As if they were supposed to and didn’t? Here, you can clearly
see that nowadays media impartiality isn’t even a consideration – especially
when considering black people, and especially when considering Africa: at worst,
a continent incapable of managing itself, at best, just sticking together out of
racial solidarity.
The “Perils of Racial Solidarity” (if you’re not white) are evident anywhere,
like the current U.S. elections for example, where Obama had to disown his own
church (because his minister had the audacity to speak truthfully about 9/11),
and has had to generally cater to white people’s fears. Says, Kevin Alexander
Gray:
“Give a listen to the corporate media, and it’s pretty clear what tune black
voices are supposed to be singing. Obama is constantly called on to swear
allegiance to America – to prove he isn’t swearing allegiance to blacks. The
other way to say that is he’s supposed to swear allegiance to white, not
black, America. Meanwhile, the back end of that deal is that black Americans
are required to substitute Obama for real structural racial progress. As in,
‘You got your nominee. See, we’re not so racist or bad after all. Now shut
up!’”
Ultimately, all this shit is best summed-up by Africa’s Hitler himself, the
current President of Zimbabwe and former Sir Robert Mugabe, who, at his address
to the UN in October last year had this to say:
“The West still negates our sovereignties by way of control of our resources,
in the process making us mere chattels in out own lands, mere minders of its
trans-national interests. In my own country and other sister states in
Southern Africa, the most visible form of this control has been over land
despoiled from us at the onset of British colonialism.
That control largely persists, although it stands firmly challenged in
Zimbabwe, thereby triggering the current stand-off between us and Britain,
supported by her cousin states, most notably the United States and Australia.
Mr Bush, Mr. Blair and now Mr Brown’s sense of human rights precludes our
people’s right to their God-given resources, which in their view must be
controlled by their kith and kin. I am termed dictator because I have rejected
this supremacist view and frustrated the neo-colonialists.
Mr President,
Clearly the history of the struggle for out own national and people’s rights
is unknown to the president of the United States of America. He thinks the
Declaration of Human Rights starts with his last term in office! He thinks she
can introduce to us, who bore the brunt of fighting for the freedoms of our
peoples, the virtues of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What rank
hypocrisy!
Mr President,
I lost eleven precious years of my life in the jail of a white man whose
freedom and well- being I have assured from the first day of Zimbabwe’s
Independence. I lost a further fifteen years fighting white injustice in my
country.
Ian Smith is responsible for the death of well over 50 000 of my people. I
bear scars of his tyranny which Britain and America condoned. I meet his
victims everyday. Yet he walks free. He farms free. He talks freely,
associates freely under a black Government. We taught him democracy. We gave
him back his humanity.
He would have faced a different fate here and in Europe if the 50 000 he
killed were Europeans. Africa has not called for a Nuremberg trial against the
white world which committed heinous crimes against its own humanity. It has
not hunted perpetrators of this genocide, many of whom live to this day, nor
has it got reparations from those who offended against it. Instead it is
Africa which is in the dock, facing trial from the same world that persecuted
it for centuries.
Let Mr. Bush read history correctly. Let him realize that both personally and
in his representative capacity as the current President of the United States,
he stands for this “civilization” which occupied, which colonised, which
incarcerated, which killed. He has much to atone for and very little to
lecture us on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Mugabe’s message to George Bush is one all of us in the West could do with
paying attention to. You don’t have to stray far from the mainstream media to
get a much clearer perspective on Zimbabwe; perspectives, especially African,
that go a long way to answering the important questions around the issue.
Questions like: Why does Zimbabwe receive so much attention as a dictatorship,
when other dictatorships do not? What makes Zimbabwe special? Why was Mugabe
once a Knight and is now a villain? Why do countries like China and Russia’s
position on Zimbabwe differ so much from the U.S. and UK? Why won’t most other
African leaders condemn Mugabe? While the man may very well be a “dictator” or
“tyrant” or any of the other names he is called, he is clearly trying to protect
his country from exploitation, and so his country suffers for this.
He may be a dictator, but just like with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, we in the West
are applying one standard to Mugabe, another standard to all the other
dictators, and – from our position as the worst human rights abusers on Earth –
yet another standard to ourselves. Zimbabwe has been singled-out in the media
and Mugabe so thoroughly vilified because they have chosen to exercise the
country’s sovereignty, as opposed to being told what to do, and yet our news
preaches of bringing Zimbabwe democracy – just like we did in Iraq, eh? In the
words of evil-incarnate himself again: “Democracy… means self-rule, not rule by
outsiders.”
Thursday, 13 August 2009
A war veteran's memo.
By Mafira Kureva
I WAS touched by the article by Jane Madembo dated September 8, 2008 entitled: “Will the real war veterans please stand up? [1]” I am myself a war veteran and I briefly sketch my profile below.
I left for the war in 1975, at the age of 14 when I was in Form II at then St. Mary’s Hunyani Secondary School. On arrival in Mozambique I stayed at Zhunda briefly then went on to Nyadzonya in October 1975. At Nyadzonya I underwent my basic political education and training in military tactics using wooden guns. I left in April 1976 for Chimoio where I completed my military training then joined Wampoa Political Academy (whose history is hidden from Zimbabweans).
I then became a political instructor first at Chimoio, then Chibavava holding camps, which have been termed refugee camps by those who manipulate history for their ends. I briefly stayed at Beira (Manga Base) before going to operate in Mutambara Detachment covering the areas of Chayamiti, Muusha, Gwindingwi Estate, Chimanimani etc. I was wounded in battle and went back to Mozambique then to Chaminuka Sector, Mazowe Detachment. I operated in Tete Province till the ceasefire in 1979. We were then moved into the Assembly Points.
This brief sketch is to illustrate that I do not doubt my standing as a war veteran of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle and I am not shy about it.
My answer to Jane’s touching plea is as follows. It is sad that the history of our struggle for emancipation as a nation is yet to be written. I say this because whatever is claimed to have been written is not the truth of what we know as veterans of the liberation struggle of Zimbabwe, at least from my view point.
What I have so far read except for few marginalised texts, is about the history of the ruling elite, about the heroism of nationalists and their exploits. For example, I know of many comrades who lost their limbs at Nyadzonya on that fateful 9 August 1976 when Morrison Nyathi attacked the camp. But towards Heroes Days, ZBC presents what it terms the history of the armed struggle. And whom do they show about the Nyadzonya attack – Eddison Zvobgo and Simon Muzenda who say they were driven to the scene as a delegation.
They say what they saw long after the attack was over and the bodies were in a state of decomposition. Even Zvobgo, the eloquent Chicago lawyer, struggles to capture the images to convince the media about the devastation at Nyadzonya. The simple question is: why has our society, intellectuals, ruling clique, politicians and the state failed to give audience to people who really suffered these experiences? Why has our society tended to shun us even well before the negative picture painted about us now?
After Independence we were treated worse than the rebels of Sierra Leone, for example. I mean it literally, not figuratively. Do you know that no one who fought the liberation struggle of Zimbabwe was ever rehabilitated, mentally, physically, socially or economically? Yet the rebels of Sierra Leone were rehabilitated? To bring the issue home, do you know that the Rhodesian soldiers were given pensions, medical attention, retrenchment packages, alternative employment and retraining for them to fit back into civilian life? But this was not done to the war veterans. Why? The answer is simple. The ruling nationalists had an agenda of liberation that was different from that of the fighters, peasants and farm workers in the struggle. They quickly forged an alliance with the very same people the struggle was fighting against and this created a fissure in the movement. The peasants, war veterans and farm workers were relegated. If you see people, they parade as war veterans, next time ask yourself the interest of the person who is making that parade.
Relegation of war veterans is well-known as it was captured in the print media from 1980s-90s. Their suffering was debated in Parliament but nothing was done about it. This is what led to the street demonstrations against Mugabe, Zanu-PF and the state in the 1990s as Jane herself recalls. The point is that the revolution of the masses, the poor and the exploited was highjacked by the ruling elite who wanted to advance their interests with white capital. That is what led to the invasions of land beginning in 1997/98, led by the war veterans.
The actual issue at hand then was not just white capital but the alliance between the ruling classes with white capital. This is why the Zimbabwean issue is so complex and not a simple Zanu-PF/MDC issue. As Jane recalls Mugabe was at the centre of attack by the war veterans until they besieged State House after holding ministers hostage, stopping an American businessmen investment conference, demonstrating in the streets etc. But what was the reaction of our society to this?
The ZCTU, which was the leading civil society movement then failed even to utter a statement of support, contrary to their usual stunts for teachers, doctors industrial workers when they strike for more pay and improvement on their living conditions. War veterans were not even asking for improvement, but for basic survival. I know many who died of wounds they had sustained during the war because they were not treated after independence. Why did society keep quiet when war veterans rose against Zanu-PF, Mugabe and the state?
Now, when the government was forced to pay back what was due to the war veterans what happened? Workers and the whole society was mobilised against war veterans and there is all mockery and scorn about the $50 000 pay-outs yet the Rhodesian Security Forces who earned this without resorting to the streets did not get this treatment. Why? In any case, that money was looted again by people who really did not participate in the war as fighters. Many of those people you hear were in the armed struggle were actually in Maputo perhaps closer to the Indian Ocean than they were to the border with Zimbabwe. A lot of these were recruited by letter from overseas with the purpose of displacing real fighters from the leadership of the struggle and this persisted after independence. Have you ever asked yourself why war veterans never featured in Zanu- PF structures despite their mobilisation skills and demands by the peasants that they be part of the structures?
Nationalists do not have the same agenda with war veterans and the later have remained a threat. As such they are silenced and our society, because of ignorance, has danced to the tune of the nationalists and alienated their own heroes. The propaganda about marauding war veterans is clearly a creation of the ruling class because they know that if the people would unite with the war veterans then they cannot manage to terrorize anyone and commit all those atrocities that Jane mentions.
The people of Zimbabwe should know that war veterans are not as cheap as presented by the media and the ruling elite. But it is not only the ruling elite who have presented the war veterans as such, the international media, local media and opposition politicians as well. All these people also want to gain mileage from this depiction. It is easier to convince anyone that someone is committing atrocities against the other only if there is evidence that the victim is weaker. War veterans being militarily trained, with a record put by especially western trained scholars and ruling class that they were murderers during the war, it becomes easy to construct violence around war veterans.
But is this true?
Yes, war veterans started the land occupations as I said but I challenge anyone who would want to carry scientific research to come with evidence that confirms extreme violence against white farmers, farm workers etc committed by war veterans. I researched in the Mazowe, Mutepatepa and Nyabira areas for a PhD study. I am sincere about this. Another researcher, Angus Selby, a son of a white farmer, also did research in that area just to demonstrate that I am not just a war veteran trying to protect my lot. I have not read anywhere Selby has pointed out that anyone was killed in that area.
In my personal archives I have letters written by white farmers, High Court documents besides interviews I did with them and the land occupiers and these illustrate that the white farmers themselves are aware that war veterans were not violent. They did not want to totally dispossess the white farmers of land but to share. They wanted land to be distributed to the landless peasants; not the ruling elite. I was there myself. I took part in it and with a very clear cause for that matter. I am not even ashamed of that role. Through the process I even made some of my best friendship with white farmers and I could give specific names if this were not to infringe upon their rights.
When the ruling elite discovered that the war veterans had managed to occupy land and were moving to distribute it to the needy and simultaneously managing to have little effect on white commercial farming as they targeted unused land, excess land and multiple ownership farms the state knew that the war veterans had demonstrated their heroism and mission of not only redressing the land grievance but also managing to accommodate their former enemies, the white farmers. What did this mean to the ruling class?
They would lose support as the people would clearly see that war veterans, who had not been afforded an opportunity to rule the country, were better that the nationalists. The opposition also panicked and instead of uniting with the war veterans they were against them and campaigned against land seizures as if they did not know this national grievance and its potential danger. Once again the ruling elite sought to discredit the war veterans and it implemented the Fast Track Land Reform without making revealing to anyone that they were seeking to negate the initiatives of the war veterans.
The objective of that fast track programme was to thwart the war veteran-led land movement to cripple their ability to mobilise the masses to claim national wealth which they had been denied, worsening during ESAP. The ruling class did not want the masses to have faith in the true heroes of the nation. This would erode their power base and trust and support would shift from them to war veterans. This is why you see that the fast track programme targeted the war veterans and peasants who had occupied land and weeded them out. Even the Charles Utete Commission report points out this dispossession of war veterans.
A question that has not been asked is, “Why did the ruling elites carry out Murambatsvina? And our society seems to forget so easily as well. Remember the famous story that Comrade Chinx stood on the roof of his house when the bull dozer was about to raze it to the ground? Who is Chinx, the singer? Chinx Chingaira, the war veteran! War veterans had moved to engulf the urban areas in their mobilisation for resource distribution among the marginalised and they gave land to the urban poor for housing. They even attempted to form housing co-operatives in order to safeguard the interests of these poor people.
This was the most frightening thing to the ruling elite and the opposition alike.
The opposition and Zanu-PF had both thrived on holding on to the workers and peasants exclusively as their constituencies. The land movement broke this and merged the two struggles. War veterans had taken the struggle for economic emancipation of the marginalised Zimbabweans at a very high scale. The opposition was put in an awkward position of condemning land allocation to the urban poor through land occupations yet it purported to stand for their cause and to fight for their rights. So what was wrong with war veterans getting land and distributing it to the landless workers? Were they not fulfilling the very cause they went to war for? In the end the picture painted by the opposition about war veterans is exactly the one the ruling elite would want portrayed. They have the same agenda when it comes to real emancipation of Zimbabwe’s peasants and workers.
Another thing, do you know that Murambatsvina was followed by Chikorokoza Chapera? Why did the opposition keep silent about this? What was the motive of the ruling elite? All this was an attempt to hit at the rural occupiers so that the ruling class would assert its power. They wanted to dislocate the rural workers so that they had no economic means to propagate their ideas and exercise their will freely. And again the conditions of small scale mining were created by the land occupations, everyone knows that. Chikorokoza as we know it today was part of land occupations. But again only the peasants and farm workers know the truth because they are part of these struggles in which the rest join hands against war veterans.
The answer therefore to Jane’s touching question and plea is that our society has to distinguish between war veterans and Zanu-PF ruling elite. They have to judge correctly when war veterans taken action in the interests of the poor and support that. Otherwise society will continue to take actions which are against the interests of the majority and in the interest of those who are only fighting to get into power in order to do exactly the same as those who are there or the whites who colonized us.
What would this mean for the emancipation of the marginalised people?
For me as a war veteran, this is the moral question that hounds me. I see beyond MDC and Zanu-PF, beyond Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe. I consider my historic mission as being that of fighting for the poor. I know that many want to create a bad image of me precisely because they have a different agenda.
This is true about the Zanu-PF ruling elite, including Robert Mugabe, the opposition including Morgan Tsvangirai and international capital which would prefer either or both of these than the war veterans. They realise that emancipation of the marginalised poor of Zimbabwe means cutting strings of exploitation of the nation’s resources by these imperialists.
The new revolution towards Africa’s emancipation in the post-colonial era will have triumphed!
I WAS touched by the article by Jane Madembo dated September 8, 2008 entitled: “Will the real war veterans please stand up? [1]” I am myself a war veteran and I briefly sketch my profile below.
I left for the war in 1975, at the age of 14 when I was in Form II at then St. Mary’s Hunyani Secondary School. On arrival in Mozambique I stayed at Zhunda briefly then went on to Nyadzonya in October 1975. At Nyadzonya I underwent my basic political education and training in military tactics using wooden guns. I left in April 1976 for Chimoio where I completed my military training then joined Wampoa Political Academy (whose history is hidden from Zimbabweans).
I then became a political instructor first at Chimoio, then Chibavava holding camps, which have been termed refugee camps by those who manipulate history for their ends. I briefly stayed at Beira (Manga Base) before going to operate in Mutambara Detachment covering the areas of Chayamiti, Muusha, Gwindingwi Estate, Chimanimani etc. I was wounded in battle and went back to Mozambique then to Chaminuka Sector, Mazowe Detachment. I operated in Tete Province till the ceasefire in 1979. We were then moved into the Assembly Points.
This brief sketch is to illustrate that I do not doubt my standing as a war veteran of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle and I am not shy about it.
My answer to Jane’s touching plea is as follows. It is sad that the history of our struggle for emancipation as a nation is yet to be written. I say this because whatever is claimed to have been written is not the truth of what we know as veterans of the liberation struggle of Zimbabwe, at least from my view point.
What I have so far read except for few marginalised texts, is about the history of the ruling elite, about the heroism of nationalists and their exploits. For example, I know of many comrades who lost their limbs at Nyadzonya on that fateful 9 August 1976 when Morrison Nyathi attacked the camp. But towards Heroes Days, ZBC presents what it terms the history of the armed struggle. And whom do they show about the Nyadzonya attack – Eddison Zvobgo and Simon Muzenda who say they were driven to the scene as a delegation.
They say what they saw long after the attack was over and the bodies were in a state of decomposition. Even Zvobgo, the eloquent Chicago lawyer, struggles to capture the images to convince the media about the devastation at Nyadzonya. The simple question is: why has our society, intellectuals, ruling clique, politicians and the state failed to give audience to people who really suffered these experiences? Why has our society tended to shun us even well before the negative picture painted about us now?
After Independence we were treated worse than the rebels of Sierra Leone, for example. I mean it literally, not figuratively. Do you know that no one who fought the liberation struggle of Zimbabwe was ever rehabilitated, mentally, physically, socially or economically? Yet the rebels of Sierra Leone were rehabilitated? To bring the issue home, do you know that the Rhodesian soldiers were given pensions, medical attention, retrenchment packages, alternative employment and retraining for them to fit back into civilian life? But this was not done to the war veterans. Why? The answer is simple. The ruling nationalists had an agenda of liberation that was different from that of the fighters, peasants and farm workers in the struggle. They quickly forged an alliance with the very same people the struggle was fighting against and this created a fissure in the movement. The peasants, war veterans and farm workers were relegated. If you see people, they parade as war veterans, next time ask yourself the interest of the person who is making that parade.
Relegation of war veterans is well-known as it was captured in the print media from 1980s-90s. Their suffering was debated in Parliament but nothing was done about it. This is what led to the street demonstrations against Mugabe, Zanu-PF and the state in the 1990s as Jane herself recalls. The point is that the revolution of the masses, the poor and the exploited was highjacked by the ruling elite who wanted to advance their interests with white capital. That is what led to the invasions of land beginning in 1997/98, led by the war veterans.
The actual issue at hand then was not just white capital but the alliance between the ruling classes with white capital. This is why the Zimbabwean issue is so complex and not a simple Zanu-PF/MDC issue. As Jane recalls Mugabe was at the centre of attack by the war veterans until they besieged State House after holding ministers hostage, stopping an American businessmen investment conference, demonstrating in the streets etc. But what was the reaction of our society to this?
The ZCTU, which was the leading civil society movement then failed even to utter a statement of support, contrary to their usual stunts for teachers, doctors industrial workers when they strike for more pay and improvement on their living conditions. War veterans were not even asking for improvement, but for basic survival. I know many who died of wounds they had sustained during the war because they were not treated after independence. Why did society keep quiet when war veterans rose against Zanu-PF, Mugabe and the state?
Now, when the government was forced to pay back what was due to the war veterans what happened? Workers and the whole society was mobilised against war veterans and there is all mockery and scorn about the $50 000 pay-outs yet the Rhodesian Security Forces who earned this without resorting to the streets did not get this treatment. Why? In any case, that money was looted again by people who really did not participate in the war as fighters. Many of those people you hear were in the armed struggle were actually in Maputo perhaps closer to the Indian Ocean than they were to the border with Zimbabwe. A lot of these were recruited by letter from overseas with the purpose of displacing real fighters from the leadership of the struggle and this persisted after independence. Have you ever asked yourself why war veterans never featured in Zanu- PF structures despite their mobilisation skills and demands by the peasants that they be part of the structures?
Nationalists do not have the same agenda with war veterans and the later have remained a threat. As such they are silenced and our society, because of ignorance, has danced to the tune of the nationalists and alienated their own heroes. The propaganda about marauding war veterans is clearly a creation of the ruling class because they know that if the people would unite with the war veterans then they cannot manage to terrorize anyone and commit all those atrocities that Jane mentions.
The people of Zimbabwe should know that war veterans are not as cheap as presented by the media and the ruling elite. But it is not only the ruling elite who have presented the war veterans as such, the international media, local media and opposition politicians as well. All these people also want to gain mileage from this depiction. It is easier to convince anyone that someone is committing atrocities against the other only if there is evidence that the victim is weaker. War veterans being militarily trained, with a record put by especially western trained scholars and ruling class that they were murderers during the war, it becomes easy to construct violence around war veterans.
But is this true?
Yes, war veterans started the land occupations as I said but I challenge anyone who would want to carry scientific research to come with evidence that confirms extreme violence against white farmers, farm workers etc committed by war veterans. I researched in the Mazowe, Mutepatepa and Nyabira areas for a PhD study. I am sincere about this. Another researcher, Angus Selby, a son of a white farmer, also did research in that area just to demonstrate that I am not just a war veteran trying to protect my lot. I have not read anywhere Selby has pointed out that anyone was killed in that area.
In my personal archives I have letters written by white farmers, High Court documents besides interviews I did with them and the land occupiers and these illustrate that the white farmers themselves are aware that war veterans were not violent. They did not want to totally dispossess the white farmers of land but to share. They wanted land to be distributed to the landless peasants; not the ruling elite. I was there myself. I took part in it and with a very clear cause for that matter. I am not even ashamed of that role. Through the process I even made some of my best friendship with white farmers and I could give specific names if this were not to infringe upon their rights.
When the ruling elite discovered that the war veterans had managed to occupy land and were moving to distribute it to the needy and simultaneously managing to have little effect on white commercial farming as they targeted unused land, excess land and multiple ownership farms the state knew that the war veterans had demonstrated their heroism and mission of not only redressing the land grievance but also managing to accommodate their former enemies, the white farmers. What did this mean to the ruling class?
They would lose support as the people would clearly see that war veterans, who had not been afforded an opportunity to rule the country, were better that the nationalists. The opposition also panicked and instead of uniting with the war veterans they were against them and campaigned against land seizures as if they did not know this national grievance and its potential danger. Once again the ruling elite sought to discredit the war veterans and it implemented the Fast Track Land Reform without making revealing to anyone that they were seeking to negate the initiatives of the war veterans.
The objective of that fast track programme was to thwart the war veteran-led land movement to cripple their ability to mobilise the masses to claim national wealth which they had been denied, worsening during ESAP. The ruling class did not want the masses to have faith in the true heroes of the nation. This would erode their power base and trust and support would shift from them to war veterans. This is why you see that the fast track programme targeted the war veterans and peasants who had occupied land and weeded them out. Even the Charles Utete Commission report points out this dispossession of war veterans.
A question that has not been asked is, “Why did the ruling elites carry out Murambatsvina? And our society seems to forget so easily as well. Remember the famous story that Comrade Chinx stood on the roof of his house when the bull dozer was about to raze it to the ground? Who is Chinx, the singer? Chinx Chingaira, the war veteran! War veterans had moved to engulf the urban areas in their mobilisation for resource distribution among the marginalised and they gave land to the urban poor for housing. They even attempted to form housing co-operatives in order to safeguard the interests of these poor people.
This was the most frightening thing to the ruling elite and the opposition alike.
The opposition and Zanu-PF had both thrived on holding on to the workers and peasants exclusively as their constituencies. The land movement broke this and merged the two struggles. War veterans had taken the struggle for economic emancipation of the marginalised Zimbabweans at a very high scale. The opposition was put in an awkward position of condemning land allocation to the urban poor through land occupations yet it purported to stand for their cause and to fight for their rights. So what was wrong with war veterans getting land and distributing it to the landless workers? Were they not fulfilling the very cause they went to war for? In the end the picture painted by the opposition about war veterans is exactly the one the ruling elite would want portrayed. They have the same agenda when it comes to real emancipation of Zimbabwe’s peasants and workers.
Another thing, do you know that Murambatsvina was followed by Chikorokoza Chapera? Why did the opposition keep silent about this? What was the motive of the ruling elite? All this was an attempt to hit at the rural occupiers so that the ruling class would assert its power. They wanted to dislocate the rural workers so that they had no economic means to propagate their ideas and exercise their will freely. And again the conditions of small scale mining were created by the land occupations, everyone knows that. Chikorokoza as we know it today was part of land occupations. But again only the peasants and farm workers know the truth because they are part of these struggles in which the rest join hands against war veterans.
The answer therefore to Jane’s touching question and plea is that our society has to distinguish between war veterans and Zanu-PF ruling elite. They have to judge correctly when war veterans taken action in the interests of the poor and support that. Otherwise society will continue to take actions which are against the interests of the majority and in the interest of those who are only fighting to get into power in order to do exactly the same as those who are there or the whites who colonized us.
What would this mean for the emancipation of the marginalised people?
For me as a war veteran, this is the moral question that hounds me. I see beyond MDC and Zanu-PF, beyond Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe. I consider my historic mission as being that of fighting for the poor. I know that many want to create a bad image of me precisely because they have a different agenda.
This is true about the Zanu-PF ruling elite, including Robert Mugabe, the opposition including Morgan Tsvangirai and international capital which would prefer either or both of these than the war veterans. They realise that emancipation of the marginalised poor of Zimbabwe means cutting strings of exploitation of the nation’s resources by these imperialists.
The new revolution towards Africa’s emancipation in the post-colonial era will have triumphed!
Sadc Tribunal does not exist - 10 August 2009
Sadc Tribunal does not exist - 10 August 2009
By Mabasa Sasa
THE Sadc Tribunal that has passed two judgments perceived to be an attempt to reverse the country's land reform programme is illegitimate because two-thirds of the regional body's membership has not ratified the protocol that seeks to create the Southern African court.
According to a presentation by Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa to his regional counterparts and Sadc attornies-general, said only five countries have so far ratified the protocol and an amendment to the document.
This means by law the Sadc Tribunal does not exist and raises questions as to why the bloc's secretariat has allowed it to even sit in the first place.
Separate investigations have also revealed that the Sadc Secretariat has been enforcing other protocols and treaties that have not yet been ratified by two-thirds of the membership.
Part of Minister Chinamasa's presentation to the July 23-August 3 meeting in South Africa, states: "The Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe is surprised that in its haste to judge Zimbabwe, the Tribunal has not examined the history of the treaty and the protocol on the Tribunal, an exercise which was necessary in order to determine whether the protocol came into force and, if so, whether Zimbabwe is a party to it.
"We had not raised this issue before as an indication of our good intentions but the referral of this matter to the Summit leaves us with no option but to question the Tribunal's omission to address so fundamental a question."
Only Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius and Namibia have ratified the protocol, meaning that the Tribunal remains in existence as a proposal only.
Seventy-nine Zimbabwean white commercial farmers applied to the Sadc Tribunal to reverse the acquisition of their farms by Government for purposes of resettlement.
The Tribunal subsequently passed two judgments in favour of the farmers; an interim relief and a final relief order barring Government from acquiring their farms.
However, Government has said it will not recognise these orders because the Tribunal does not yet exist.
Regional justice ministers deferred their discussions and will meet on the sidelines of the Sadc Summit in the DRC in September.
In an interview yesterday, Minister Chinamasa said: "According to the Treaties Status Report given to us by the Sadc Secretariat itself, only five countries have ratified the protocol and its amendment. This is short of the required two-thirds majority and thus the Tribunal does not exist.
"In fact, Zimbabwe is not even one of the five countries that ratified. The Tribunal is not in a position to exercise jurisdiction even on the five who have ratified.
"The Sadc Treaty of 1992 requires that any protocols must be ratified by two-thirds of the total membership. Over and above this, the constitutions of the member states oblige them to first have any treaties approved by their own parliaments before any ratification.
"There has never been any basis for the Tribunal to exercise jurisdiction and trying to do so is a grave violation of Zimbabwe's Constitution, the Sadc Treaty and international law.
"It is quite an embarrassing situation because both the Tribunal and the Sadc Secretariat have egg on their faces."
He said the Tribunal should have on its own initiative first sought to establish if it was legally constituted and the secretariat should have never allowed protocols to enter into force before the requisite ratification.
"The Tribunal itself and any judgments it purports to pass on anyone are null and void. To move forward, the secretariat must seek to regularise the enforcement of protocols.
"On our part, Zimbabwe will not ratify that protocol until the relationship between the Tribunal and domestic courts is clarified because right now it looks as if there are people who want to make it a court of appeal superior to member states' own highest courts."
Zimbabwe's Supreme Court, sitting as a Constitutional Court, ruled against the 79 farmers and upheld the constitutionality of the land reform programme.
They successfully appealed to the Tribunal but the judgments cannot be enforced.
Observers said there was a possibility that the white farming community intended to use the Tribunal to reverse the land reform programme by getting a regional court to bar acquisitions and overturn the resettlement that has already taken place.
On the issue of the enforcement of other protocols, it has emerged that Sadc could have been using up to 10 agreements that are yet to be ratified.
Source: Herald (Zimbabwe Government)
By Mabasa Sasa
THE Sadc Tribunal that has passed two judgments perceived to be an attempt to reverse the country's land reform programme is illegitimate because two-thirds of the regional body's membership has not ratified the protocol that seeks to create the Southern African court.
According to a presentation by Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa to his regional counterparts and Sadc attornies-general, said only five countries have so far ratified the protocol and an amendment to the document.
This means by law the Sadc Tribunal does not exist and raises questions as to why the bloc's secretariat has allowed it to even sit in the first place.
Separate investigations have also revealed that the Sadc Secretariat has been enforcing other protocols and treaties that have not yet been ratified by two-thirds of the membership.
Part of Minister Chinamasa's presentation to the July 23-August 3 meeting in South Africa, states: "The Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe is surprised that in its haste to judge Zimbabwe, the Tribunal has not examined the history of the treaty and the protocol on the Tribunal, an exercise which was necessary in order to determine whether the protocol came into force and, if so, whether Zimbabwe is a party to it.
"We had not raised this issue before as an indication of our good intentions but the referral of this matter to the Summit leaves us with no option but to question the Tribunal's omission to address so fundamental a question."
Only Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius and Namibia have ratified the protocol, meaning that the Tribunal remains in existence as a proposal only.
Seventy-nine Zimbabwean white commercial farmers applied to the Sadc Tribunal to reverse the acquisition of their farms by Government for purposes of resettlement.
The Tribunal subsequently passed two judgments in favour of the farmers; an interim relief and a final relief order barring Government from acquiring their farms.
However, Government has said it will not recognise these orders because the Tribunal does not yet exist.
Regional justice ministers deferred their discussions and will meet on the sidelines of the Sadc Summit in the DRC in September.
In an interview yesterday, Minister Chinamasa said: "According to the Treaties Status Report given to us by the Sadc Secretariat itself, only five countries have ratified the protocol and its amendment. This is short of the required two-thirds majority and thus the Tribunal does not exist.
"In fact, Zimbabwe is not even one of the five countries that ratified. The Tribunal is not in a position to exercise jurisdiction even on the five who have ratified.
"The Sadc Treaty of 1992 requires that any protocols must be ratified by two-thirds of the total membership. Over and above this, the constitutions of the member states oblige them to first have any treaties approved by their own parliaments before any ratification.
"There has never been any basis for the Tribunal to exercise jurisdiction and trying to do so is a grave violation of Zimbabwe's Constitution, the Sadc Treaty and international law.
"It is quite an embarrassing situation because both the Tribunal and the Sadc Secretariat have egg on their faces."
He said the Tribunal should have on its own initiative first sought to establish if it was legally constituted and the secretariat should have never allowed protocols to enter into force before the requisite ratification.
"The Tribunal itself and any judgments it purports to pass on anyone are null and void. To move forward, the secretariat must seek to regularise the enforcement of protocols.
"On our part, Zimbabwe will not ratify that protocol until the relationship between the Tribunal and domestic courts is clarified because right now it looks as if there are people who want to make it a court of appeal superior to member states' own highest courts."
Zimbabwe's Supreme Court, sitting as a Constitutional Court, ruled against the 79 farmers and upheld the constitutionality of the land reform programme.
They successfully appealed to the Tribunal but the judgments cannot be enforced.
Observers said there was a possibility that the white farming community intended to use the Tribunal to reverse the land reform programme by getting a regional court to bar acquisitions and overturn the resettlement that has already taken place.
On the issue of the enforcement of other protocols, it has emerged that Sadc could have been using up to 10 agreements that are yet to be ratified.
Source: Herald (Zimbabwe Government)
Mugabe is the last man standing.
Baffour's Beefs by Baffour Ankomah - August/Sept 2009
When one sinner repents…
Cameron Duodu puts it more aptly in our cover story: “If [President
Obama] is to do anything meaningful to address the hopes [invested
in him by Africa], he will have to unlearn a lot about Africa
himself, and educate his fellow G8 leaders too”. For a brother who
has sat in the US Senate since November 2004 to pretend not to know
the shenanigans that went on when the two houses of Congress rushed
through, in a mere 30 minutes, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic
Recovery Act in December 2001, an Act which in one fell swoop
imposed stringent economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, to come to Accra
and tell the whole world in a major policy speech to Africa, that
“the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwe
economy over the last decade”, well, he is a brother and Beefs is
prepared to give him time to unlearn… It is too early to knock him.
But could somebody please tell him not to go around the world making
such irascible statements!
Anyway, those of you who haven’t read the Bible before, please come
with me to Luke chapter 15 verse 10. There you find this quote:
“There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner
that repents.” Imagine one sinner causing a stoppage in Heaven – for
the angels know how to have a good time, you know. Rejoicing is big
business up there, and they don’t joke about it. So just imagine
what happened there in early July 2009 when Michael Holman,
ex-Zimbabwean and ex-Africa editor of the British business daily,
Financial Times, repented (see p. 32 of this issue). What joy we
must all have to welcome him and his ilk back into reality. Until he
recanted, Holman, a white Zimbabwean, born and bred in Zimbabwe, who
like others before him such as Lord Malloch Brown found fame outside
the land of their birth, had been one of the chief drivers of the
bandwagon that campaigned ceaselessly, for the past 10 years, for
Mugabe’s head. You can therefore imagine the joy in Heaven when this
sinner repented, and wrote in early July exhorting his kith and kin
in the West that it is “Time to do business with Mugabe”.
Holman can be theatrical when it suits him: “It is time for Western
governments to admit defeat, swallow their pride, re-engage in
Zimbabwe, and do business with Robert Mugabe,” he thunders in his
opening paragraph. “Far from being driven by ethical concerns about
dealing with a dictator,” he goes on, “the West in general, and
Britain in particular, is motivated by pique, seeking revenge on the
man who has outwitted them, rather than acting in the long-term
interests of Zimbabwe… “The first step [of the re-engagement
process],” Holman continues, “is to acknowledge an uncomfortable
truth: Mr Mugabe has won the battle for Zimbabwe. True, the price
has been high … but his victory is more than Pyrrhic… He has
presided over a fundamental change of an African economy. His
popularity in much of Africa is undeniable, and the landless of
Kenya, South Africa and Namibia look on his work with admiration…
Whatever Mr Tsvangirai might say in public, it would be political
suicide to attempt to return white farms to their former owners.
Never again will a 5,000-strong minority own much of the country’s
best farmland; and though it has cost Zimbabwe dear, Mugabe has
created a lasting legacy, having radically changed the racially
distorted land tenure structure he inherited at independence in
1980.” Hallelujah! Angels know how to rejoice when a sinner repents!
If I, Baffour Ankomah, son of a Ghanaian farmer who had no help from
his government for all his life (he died in 1988), had written what
Michael Holman has just written, it would not have seen the light of
day, not even in New African, the magazine I have worked for, for 21
solid years, 10 of which have seen me in the editor’s chair! For I
did write on the same lines in January 2009, for this very column,
Baffour’s Beefs, and our Group Publisher, a man of strong liberal
tradition and open-mindedness, who loves Africa to bits, wanted a
change from the constant focus on Zimbabwe. And so my column did not
appear – in New African! I would have beaten Holman to it by six
long months!
Now that Holman has opened the floodgates, surely not even “a
surfeit of Zimbabwe coverage” is going to stop me from quoting a wee
bit from my spiked January column. Commenting on Obama’s electoral
victory and stretching it to cover another victory in Southern
Africa (at least to discerning Africans), I wrote: “I know I will be
damned for saying this, but I will still say it because it is the
truth – here we have the success of the first leader in both pre-
and post-independence African history to be still standing after
having been assailed for 10 long years by the combined might of the
nations of European stock: President Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
“Looking back into history, from the first encounter of Europeans
with Africans on our shores, we can’t find one single example of an
African – leader, community or nation – that was assailed by the
nations of European stock and survived! The Asantes held the British
at bay over seven debilitating wars but finally succumbed in 1900.
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was cut down in five years of assault by the
nations of European stock; his economy then overwhelmingly dependent
on cocoa exports, collapsed dramatically when an artificial credit
crunch was induced in Ghana by the West via the deliberate
manipulation of the world cocoa price which fell calamitously from a
high of £480 a ton in the early 1960s to an incredible £60 a ton by
1965. In 1999, 33 years after Nkrumah’s overthrow, the British
daily, The Times, admitted in a leader comment that ‘Nkrumah was
brought low by the cocoa price’. “Patrice Lumumba fared even worse
in Congo; he was gone within seven months of independence, his
Belgian killers cutting up his body as a butcher does beef, and
dousing it in a barrel of acid to obliterate the evidence.
Today, the descendants of the same people come to us as preachers of
human rights, democracy and good governance. May the Good Lord help
them to see beyond their feeding spoons! Yes, just look around you,
in Africa’s pre- and post-independence history, every one of our
leaders who was disliked by the nations of European stock was cut
down and overthrown… And behaving to type, for the past 10 years …
President Mugabe has been under a continuous assault by the nations
of European stock. And as they did to Nkrumah’s Ghana, they have
deliberately engineered an artificial credit crunch in Zimbabwe,
cutting the country off from the international financial system for
8 years now, and thereby inducing an economic implosion and an
inflation rate the likes of which have never been seen since the bad
days of Germany between 1914 and 1923.
“And yet, at issue in Zimbabwe is a just cause – the land issue. I
have gone back to my scrapbook to find this entry for Charles
Powell, Mrs Thatcher’s long-time foreign policy advisor who, while
at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1979, was instrumental in
the Zimbabwe independence negotiations at Lancaster House. Talking
about Zimbabwe’s land issue in an interview with David Dimbleby for
a BBC1 documentary broadcast on 24 June 2000, Powell said on camera:
‘We tackled it really from the point of view of the Rhodesian
regime, not the future of Zimbabwe. The real concern at the
beginning was to offer guarantees, assurances, protection, to the
white farmers.’ “All told, with high inflation, an economy on its
knees, and an electorate justifiably voting with their stomachs or
‘stoning the leadership’ as the late Robin Cook had warned would
happen, Mugabe was a ripe candidate for a big fall. But what do we
see – the man is still standing! Though wounded somewhat
politically, he has nonetheless become the very first black African
leader to be undefeated after 10 years of brutal assault by the
nations of European stock. Is it the beginning of the turning of the
tables?”
Holman ahoy
Michael Holman has the answer: “It is time for Western governments
to admit defeat, swallow their pride, re-engage in Zimbabwe, and do
business with Robert Mugabe… [It is time] to acknowledge an
uncomfortable truth: Mr Mugabe has won the battle for Zimbabwe.”
Well, it calls for celebration, Mr Obama. The West is responsible
for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade!
If not, Holman could not implore the West “to admit defeat” – for
what? Lying in bed? No, Mr Obama, Mugabe could “not have won the
battle for Zimbabwe” without having been engaged on the battlefield
by the West. That war for regime change destroyed the Zimbabwean
economy!
Today, Morgan Tsvangirai (Zimbabwe’s new prime minister), has been
telling anybody with ears to hear that inflation has been brought
down from a stultifying 500 billion per cent to 3 per cent in four
months. Let’s ask ourselves: How does one reduce inflation from 500
billion per cent to 3 per cent in four months? This can only be done
by the son of God, and for all we know Tsvangirai & Co are no sons
of God. Whatever they say, the truth (which some of us have been
writing about for the past 8 years) is that much of what has
happened in Zimbabwe since 2000 has been artificial and once you
remove that artificiality, everything comes back to normal – just
like that! It is not magic. It is common sense. Just imagine Gordon
Brown’s government in the UK, which has borrowed to its eyelids,
being barred from borrowing any more money, Britain would go to pot.
Imagine what the same policy will do to an African country dependent
on foreign assistance.
On 7 July, Prof Welshman Ncube (a former opposition stalwart and now
Zimbabwe’s trade and commerce minister) admitted at a conference in
London that “the sanctions regime” in Zimbabwe goes beyond the
“travel bans and assets freeze” fed to the world by Western
governments and their media. “The “Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic
Recovery Act [passed by the US] is not about travel bans… Economic
sanctions were imposed even on industries some of which are under my
ministry,” Ncube said. One day, Mugabe, like Nkrumah, will be
rehabilitated and those of us who stood with him in the fight for
African ownership, dignity and pride will share in the honour of his
magnificent victory so theatrically pronounced by Michael Holman. I
may be lying in my grave by then, but take it from me, nobody will
be able to take the honour away from the man who “has won the battle
for Zimbabwe” in the teeth of stiff opposition from the West.
When one sinner repents…
Cameron Duodu puts it more aptly in our cover story: “If [President
Obama] is to do anything meaningful to address the hopes [invested
in him by Africa], he will have to unlearn a lot about Africa
himself, and educate his fellow G8 leaders too”. For a brother who
has sat in the US Senate since November 2004 to pretend not to know
the shenanigans that went on when the two houses of Congress rushed
through, in a mere 30 minutes, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic
Recovery Act in December 2001, an Act which in one fell swoop
imposed stringent economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, to come to Accra
and tell the whole world in a major policy speech to Africa, that
“the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwe
economy over the last decade”, well, he is a brother and Beefs is
prepared to give him time to unlearn… It is too early to knock him.
But could somebody please tell him not to go around the world making
such irascible statements!
Anyway, those of you who haven’t read the Bible before, please come
with me to Luke chapter 15 verse 10. There you find this quote:
“There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner
that repents.” Imagine one sinner causing a stoppage in Heaven – for
the angels know how to have a good time, you know. Rejoicing is big
business up there, and they don’t joke about it. So just imagine
what happened there in early July 2009 when Michael Holman,
ex-Zimbabwean and ex-Africa editor of the British business daily,
Financial Times, repented (see p. 32 of this issue). What joy we
must all have to welcome him and his ilk back into reality. Until he
recanted, Holman, a white Zimbabwean, born and bred in Zimbabwe, who
like others before him such as Lord Malloch Brown found fame outside
the land of their birth, had been one of the chief drivers of the
bandwagon that campaigned ceaselessly, for the past 10 years, for
Mugabe’s head. You can therefore imagine the joy in Heaven when this
sinner repented, and wrote in early July exhorting his kith and kin
in the West that it is “Time to do business with Mugabe”.
Holman can be theatrical when it suits him: “It is time for Western
governments to admit defeat, swallow their pride, re-engage in
Zimbabwe, and do business with Robert Mugabe,” he thunders in his
opening paragraph. “Far from being driven by ethical concerns about
dealing with a dictator,” he goes on, “the West in general, and
Britain in particular, is motivated by pique, seeking revenge on the
man who has outwitted them, rather than acting in the long-term
interests of Zimbabwe… “The first step [of the re-engagement
process],” Holman continues, “is to acknowledge an uncomfortable
truth: Mr Mugabe has won the battle for Zimbabwe. True, the price
has been high … but his victory is more than Pyrrhic… He has
presided over a fundamental change of an African economy. His
popularity in much of Africa is undeniable, and the landless of
Kenya, South Africa and Namibia look on his work with admiration…
Whatever Mr Tsvangirai might say in public, it would be political
suicide to attempt to return white farms to their former owners.
Never again will a 5,000-strong minority own much of the country’s
best farmland; and though it has cost Zimbabwe dear, Mugabe has
created a lasting legacy, having radically changed the racially
distorted land tenure structure he inherited at independence in
1980.” Hallelujah! Angels know how to rejoice when a sinner repents!
If I, Baffour Ankomah, son of a Ghanaian farmer who had no help from
his government for all his life (he died in 1988), had written what
Michael Holman has just written, it would not have seen the light of
day, not even in New African, the magazine I have worked for, for 21
solid years, 10 of which have seen me in the editor’s chair! For I
did write on the same lines in January 2009, for this very column,
Baffour’s Beefs, and our Group Publisher, a man of strong liberal
tradition and open-mindedness, who loves Africa to bits, wanted a
change from the constant focus on Zimbabwe. And so my column did not
appear – in New African! I would have beaten Holman to it by six
long months!
Now that Holman has opened the floodgates, surely not even “a
surfeit of Zimbabwe coverage” is going to stop me from quoting a wee
bit from my spiked January column. Commenting on Obama’s electoral
victory and stretching it to cover another victory in Southern
Africa (at least to discerning Africans), I wrote: “I know I will be
damned for saying this, but I will still say it because it is the
truth – here we have the success of the first leader in both pre-
and post-independence African history to be still standing after
having been assailed for 10 long years by the combined might of the
nations of European stock: President Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
“Looking back into history, from the first encounter of Europeans
with Africans on our shores, we can’t find one single example of an
African – leader, community or nation – that was assailed by the
nations of European stock and survived! The Asantes held the British
at bay over seven debilitating wars but finally succumbed in 1900.
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was cut down in five years of assault by the
nations of European stock; his economy then overwhelmingly dependent
on cocoa exports, collapsed dramatically when an artificial credit
crunch was induced in Ghana by the West via the deliberate
manipulation of the world cocoa price which fell calamitously from a
high of £480 a ton in the early 1960s to an incredible £60 a ton by
1965. In 1999, 33 years after Nkrumah’s overthrow, the British
daily, The Times, admitted in a leader comment that ‘Nkrumah was
brought low by the cocoa price’. “Patrice Lumumba fared even worse
in Congo; he was gone within seven months of independence, his
Belgian killers cutting up his body as a butcher does beef, and
dousing it in a barrel of acid to obliterate the evidence.
Today, the descendants of the same people come to us as preachers of
human rights, democracy and good governance. May the Good Lord help
them to see beyond their feeding spoons! Yes, just look around you,
in Africa’s pre- and post-independence history, every one of our
leaders who was disliked by the nations of European stock was cut
down and overthrown… And behaving to type, for the past 10 years …
President Mugabe has been under a continuous assault by the nations
of European stock. And as they did to Nkrumah’s Ghana, they have
deliberately engineered an artificial credit crunch in Zimbabwe,
cutting the country off from the international financial system for
8 years now, and thereby inducing an economic implosion and an
inflation rate the likes of which have never been seen since the bad
days of Germany between 1914 and 1923.
“And yet, at issue in Zimbabwe is a just cause – the land issue. I
have gone back to my scrapbook to find this entry for Charles
Powell, Mrs Thatcher’s long-time foreign policy advisor who, while
at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1979, was instrumental in
the Zimbabwe independence negotiations at Lancaster House. Talking
about Zimbabwe’s land issue in an interview with David Dimbleby for
a BBC1 documentary broadcast on 24 June 2000, Powell said on camera:
‘We tackled it really from the point of view of the Rhodesian
regime, not the future of Zimbabwe. The real concern at the
beginning was to offer guarantees, assurances, protection, to the
white farmers.’ “All told, with high inflation, an economy on its
knees, and an electorate justifiably voting with their stomachs or
‘stoning the leadership’ as the late Robin Cook had warned would
happen, Mugabe was a ripe candidate for a big fall. But what do we
see – the man is still standing! Though wounded somewhat
politically, he has nonetheless become the very first black African
leader to be undefeated after 10 years of brutal assault by the
nations of European stock. Is it the beginning of the turning of the
tables?”
Holman ahoy
Michael Holman has the answer: “It is time for Western governments
to admit defeat, swallow their pride, re-engage in Zimbabwe, and do
business with Robert Mugabe… [It is time] to acknowledge an
uncomfortable truth: Mr Mugabe has won the battle for Zimbabwe.”
Well, it calls for celebration, Mr Obama. The West is responsible
for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade!
If not, Holman could not implore the West “to admit defeat” – for
what? Lying in bed? No, Mr Obama, Mugabe could “not have won the
battle for Zimbabwe” without having been engaged on the battlefield
by the West. That war for regime change destroyed the Zimbabwean
economy!
Today, Morgan Tsvangirai (Zimbabwe’s new prime minister), has been
telling anybody with ears to hear that inflation has been brought
down from a stultifying 500 billion per cent to 3 per cent in four
months. Let’s ask ourselves: How does one reduce inflation from 500
billion per cent to 3 per cent in four months? This can only be done
by the son of God, and for all we know Tsvangirai & Co are no sons
of God. Whatever they say, the truth (which some of us have been
writing about for the past 8 years) is that much of what has
happened in Zimbabwe since 2000 has been artificial and once you
remove that artificiality, everything comes back to normal – just
like that! It is not magic. It is common sense. Just imagine Gordon
Brown’s government in the UK, which has borrowed to its eyelids,
being barred from borrowing any more money, Britain would go to pot.
Imagine what the same policy will do to an African country dependent
on foreign assistance.
On 7 July, Prof Welshman Ncube (a former opposition stalwart and now
Zimbabwe’s trade and commerce minister) admitted at a conference in
London that “the sanctions regime” in Zimbabwe goes beyond the
“travel bans and assets freeze” fed to the world by Western
governments and their media. “The “Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic
Recovery Act [passed by the US] is not about travel bans… Economic
sanctions were imposed even on industries some of which are under my
ministry,” Ncube said. One day, Mugabe, like Nkrumah, will be
rehabilitated and those of us who stood with him in the fight for
African ownership, dignity and pride will share in the honour of his
magnificent victory so theatrically pronounced by Michael Holman. I
may be lying in my grave by then, but take it from me, nobody will
be able to take the honour away from the man who “has won the battle
for Zimbabwe” in the teeth of stiff opposition from the West.
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
Gabriel Shumba at it again.
This uncle tom never seizes to amaze me. The last time i commented on his behavior was when he was campaigning for the 'invasion of zimbabwe' Iraq-style by Britain and America. I will not go to that topic for now.
However the Uncle Tom is at his antics again. Joining in a vicious battle in which some imperialist mineral prospecting western companies and thugs have been working flat out to make sure if they dont mine and sell Zimbabwe's diamonds, then no one can. You wonder how a black Zimbabwean 'lawyer' becomes a pawn in such a filthy game. No wonder it took mr Shumba more years than the average to complete his first degree, it seems thinking is not one of his attributes.
What a slave.
However the Uncle Tom is at his antics again. Joining in a vicious battle in which some imperialist mineral prospecting western companies and thugs have been working flat out to make sure if they dont mine and sell Zimbabwe's diamonds, then no one can. You wonder how a black Zimbabwean 'lawyer' becomes a pawn in such a filthy game. No wonder it took mr Shumba more years than the average to complete his first degree, it seems thinking is not one of his attributes.
What a slave.
Violet Gonda plays the white farmers' hangman on Chinotimba..
A fascinating hot seat interview between our plump cheeked Violet Gonda and the war veteran. You cant help cringing can you. The fake american accent, bizzare accusations on Chinotimba from violet about 'invading white farmers' land'. Aha, and Chinoz was straight to the point, knickers and all.
Hanzi, land yaka inivhedwa ndeyababa vako here. Indeed, i agree with Chinoz. Violet haana kukwana. Apart from trying to prove she can speak better Hingirishi with a pseudo americanized zim accent than chinotimba, thre was nothing Violet brought to that interview.
Hanzi, land yaka inivhedwa ndeyababa vako here. Indeed, i agree with Chinoz. Violet haana kukwana. Apart from trying to prove she can speak better Hingirishi with a pseudo americanized zim accent than chinotimba, thre was nothing Violet brought to that interview.
Thursday, 6 August 2009
A Handsome Investment Opportunity: Washington’s Plan for a Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe
A Handsome Investment Opportunity: Washington’s Plan for a Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe
Posted in Imperialism, Zimbabwe by gowans on July 21, 2009
By Stephen Gowans
Washington’s plan for a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe has been sketched out by Michelle D. Gavin, White House advisor and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council [1], while she was a research fellow at the influential Council on Foreign Relations. In Planning for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe [2], a paper which spells out “a vision for (Zimbabwe’s) future and a plan for how to get there,” Gavin explains how the “existing roster of (Zimbabwe’s) civil society leaders…lends itself to the U.S. desire” to put Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources, including its farmland, up for sale to U.S. investors. Gavin cautions that a populist and nationalist reaction against the U.S. plan could arise, and recommends three counter measures: a job creation program; co-opting the corps of Zimbabwe’s middle-level military officers with training programs, exchanges and pay increases; and entrepreneurship programs to divert the energies and attention of politicized youth.
What is the Council on Foreign Relations?
The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) is the largest U.S. ruling class policy organization. Founded in 1921 by bankers, lawyers and scholars interested in carving out a larger role for the United States in world affairs, the organization’s membership is today dominated by finance bankers, corporate executives, and lawyers, supplemented by journalists, scholars and government and military officials.
The CFR is funded by corporations, wealthy individuals and sales of its journal, Foreign Affairs. Its most important function is to bring together small discussion groups, of 15 to 25 corporate executives, State Department and Pentagon officials, and academics, to explore specific issues in foreign affairs and identify policy alternatives. Discussion groups often lead to study groups, led by a research fellow, Gavin’s role at the CFR. As sociologist William Domhoff explains,
“The goal of such study groups is a detailed statement of the problem by the scholar leading the discussion. Any book that eventuates from the group is understood to express the views of its academic author, not of the council or the members of the study group, but the books are nonetheless published with the sponsorship of the CFR.” [3]
The books and papers are sent to the State Department, where their recommendations are often adopted, either as a result of the prestige of the CFR or because members of the CFR circulate freely between the organization and the State Department and National Security Council. Gavin herself is emblematic of this career path.
Gavin’s Analysis
It is quite astonishing that the United States can deny that it is imperialist, when scholars, government and military officials and CEOs, meet under the auspices of the CFR to plan the future of other countries. In an affront to democracy and geography, Gavin, a U.S. citizen, articulates the CFR’s “vision for (Zimbabwe’s) future and a plan for how to get there.”
Gavin attributes Zimbabwe’s economic difficulties to “gross mismanagement,” rather than U.S. efforts to undermine Zimbabwe’s economy, a commonly practiced deception by U.S. officials. While “President Mugabe and his cronies frequently claim that Western sanctions are sabotaging the Zimbabwean economy,” she writes, this cannot be true because “there are no trade sanctions on Zimbabwe.” True, there are no formal trade sanctions, but there are plenty of financial sanctions, a point of which Gavin must surely be aware. She was a long-serving foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, a co-sponsor of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery of Act of 2001 (ZDERA), along with Hillary Clinton (now U.S. Secretary of State), Joseph Biden (now U.S. Vice-President) and the arch racist Jesse Helms. Gavin, herself, describes ZDERA as “a law prohibiting U.S. support for both debt relief and any new assistance for Zimbabwe from the international financial institutions.” This means that Zimbabwe has been barred from accessing development assistance and balance of payment support since 2001, a virtual economic death sentence for a Third World country. Gavin’s deception extends to claiming that while “it is true that major donors oppose extending any additional support to Zimbabwe at international financial institutions, Zimbabwe’s own deep arrears and the ZANU-PF government’s unwillingness to pursue sustainable economic policies prevent this support from being extended anyway.” If this is true, why did the U.S. government go to the trouble of creating ZDERA? And why is Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Finance, now under the control of the U.S.-backed Movement for Democratic Change, complaining that ZDERA is undermining its efforts to bring about an economic recovery? In May, Finance Minister Tendai Biti pointed out that,
“The World Bank has right now billions and billions of dollars that we have access to but we can’t access those dollars unless we have dealt with and normalized our relations with the IMF. We cannot normalize our relations with the IMF because of the voting power, it’s a blocking voting power of America and people who represent America on that board cannot vote differently because of ZDERA.” [4]
As bad as ZDERA is, it’s not the only financial sanctions regime the United States has used to sabotage Zimbabwe’s economy. Addressing the Senate Foreign Relations African Affairs Subcommittee, Jendaya Frazer, who was George W. Bush’s top diplomat in Africa, noted that the United States had imposed financial restrictions on 135 individuals and 30 businesses. U.S. citizens and corporations who violate the sanctions face penalties ranging from $250,000 to $500,000. “We are looking to expand the category of Zimbabweans who are covered. We are also looking at sanctions on government entities as well, not just individuals.” She added that the U.S. Treasury Department was looking into ways to target sectors of Zimbabwe’s critical mining industry. [5]
On July 25, 2008 Bush announced that sanctions on Zimbabwe would be stepped up. He outlawed U.S. financial transactions with a number of key Zimbabwe companies and froze their U.S. assets. The enterprises included: the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (which controls all mineral exports); the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company; Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe; Osleg, or Operation Sovereign Legitimacy, the commercial arm of Zimbabwe’s army; Industrial Development Corporation; the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe; ZB Financial Holdings; and the Agriculture Development Bank of Zimbabwe. [6]
Two other aspects of Gavin’s comments on Zimbabwe’s economy must be addressed.
First, her reference to senior Zimbabwe officials as “cronies” of Robert Mugabe: This is a transparent effort to discredit Zimbabwe’s government through name-calling, a hoary practice that, during the Cold War, led U.S. officials and mass media to adopt differential terminology depending on whether they were referring to capitalist or socialist countries. The Soviet Union had a “regime”, “secret police”, “satellites” and an “empire” while the United States had a “government,” “security organizations,” “allies,” and “strategic interests.” The propaganda function of the term “cronies” becomes evident when used against the United States. Were we to talk of Obama and his cronies (his top advisors and cabinet officials) we would be dismissed as crude propagandists. “Cronies” not only serves a clear propaganda function, it also reflects Washington’s frustration with Mugabe’s having built up a loyal circle of advisors and political lieutenants, whose members the United States has been unable to co-opt.
Second, Gavin’s attributing “Zimbabwe’s own deep arrears” to international lending institutions to the former “ZANU-PF government’s unwillingness to pursue sustainable economic policies,” requires some explanation of what sustainable economic policies are. Sustainable economic policies, from the point of view of the World Bank, IMF and the North Atlantic financial elite that dominates these organizations, are policies which benefit the lenders. Credit does not come without strings attached, and the strings are often deeply inimical to local populations. The economic policies the Mugabe government pursued, under the guidance of the World Bank and IMF, hardly sustained the people of Zimbabwe.
“In January 1991, Zimbabwe adopted its Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP), designed primarily by the World Bank. The program called for the usual prescription of actions advocated by Western financial institutions, including privatization, deregulation, a reduction of government expenditures on social needs, and deficit cutting. User fees were instituted for health and education, and food subsidies were eliminated. Measures protecting local industry from foreign competition were also withdrawn.
“The impact was immediate. While pleasing for Western investors, the result was a disaster for the people of Zimbabwe. According to one study, the poorest households in Harare saw their income drop over 12 percent in the year from 1991 to 1992 alone, while real wages in the country plunged by a third over the life of the program. Falling income levels forced people to spend a greater percentage of their income on food, and second-hand clothes were imported to compensate for the inability of most of Zimbabwe’s citizens to purchase new clothing. A 1994 survey in Harare found that 90 percent of those interviewed felt that ESAP had adversely affected their lives. The rise in food prices was seen as a major problem by 64 percent of respondents, while many indicated that they were forced to reduce their food intake. ESAP resulted in mass layoffs and crippled the job market so that many were unable to find any employment at all. In the communal areas, the rise in fertilizer prices meant that subsistence farmers were no longer able to fertilize their land, resulting in lower yields. ESAP also mandated the elimination of price controls, allowing those shop owners in communal area who were free of competition to mark prices up dramatically…By 1995, over one third of Zimbabwe’s citizens could not afford a basic food basket, shelter and clothing. From 1991 to 1995, Zimbabwe experienced a sharp deindustrialization, as manufacturing output fell 40 percent.
“The government of Zimbabwe felt it could no longer endure this debacle, and by the end of the 1990’s, started moving away from the neoliberal program. Finally, in October 2001, the abandonment of ESAP was officially announced. ‘Enough is enough,’ declared President Mugabe.” [7]
Zimbabwe: A handsome investment opportunity
Gavin estimates that the overall costs of undoing the damage of U.S. economic sabotage “fall between $3 billion and $4.5 billion over five years,” representing a substantial investment for the U.S. government. But “such a substantial investment makes sense,” Gavin concludes, because “private investors have expressed strong enthusiasm for Zimbabwe’s long-term potential.”
However, taking advantage of Zimbabwe’s long-term investment potential may not be easy, she cautions, for the suspicions of populist and nationalist Zimbabweans must be overcome. “The United States and others should be aware of nationalist and populist sensitivities,” she warns. The creation of “a reform agenda” and “a more favorable investment climate” could lead Zimbabweans to believe that U.S. involvement ”is leading to a selling off of valuable natural resources in deals that are lucrative for foreign investors but do little for the Zimbabwean people.”
Zimbabweans’ experiences with World Bank and IMF economic structural adjustment programs of the 1990s, and the experiences of Serbia – in which the United States created a reform agenda and more favorable investment climate after the socialist-inclined Slobodan Milosevic was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup – serve as warnings. In Serbia, U.S. involvement led to a selling off of publicly and socially-owned assets in deals that were lucrative for foreign investors but did little for the Serb people.
“In Serbia dollars have accomplished what bombs could not. After U.S.-led international sanctions were lifted with Milosevic’s ouster in 2000, the United States emerged as the largest single source of foreign direct investment. According to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, U.S. companies have made $1 billion worth of ‘committed investments’ represented in no small part by the $580 million privatization of Nis Tobacco Factory (Phillip Morris) and a $250 million buyout of the national steel producer by U.S. Steel. Coca-Cola bought a Serbian bottled water producer in 2005 for $21 million. The list goes on.” [8]
Meanwhile, in the former Serb province of Kosovo, the
“coal mines and electrical facilities, the postal service, the Pristina airport, the railways, landfills, and waste management systems have all been privatized. As is the case across the Balkans, ‘publicly-owned enterprises’ are auctioned for a fraction of their value on the private market with little or no compensation for taxpayers.” [9]
Prior to the U.S. corporate takeover, the Yugoslav economy consisted largely of state- and socially-owned enterprises, leaving little room for U.S. profit-making opportunities, not the kind of place U.S. banks, corporations and investors are keen on. That the toppling of Milosevic had everything to do with opening space for U.S. investors and corporations was evident in chapter four of the U.S.-authored Rambouillet ultimatum, an ultimatum Milosevic rejected, triggering weeks of NATO bombing. The first article called for a free-market economy and the second for privatization of all government-owned assets. NATO bombs seemed to have had an unerring ability to hit Yugoslavia’s socially-owned factories and to miss foreign-owned ones. This was an economic take-over project.
To lull Zimbabweans into accepting the selling off of their valuable natural resources, Gavin recommends that U.S. investors establish “a corporate code of conduct that takes into account these sensitivities” and that they “be sensitive to Zimbabwe’s urgent need for job creation when considering how they might protect and nurture long-term investments.”
This says that U.S. investors should tread carefully when gobbling up Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources, and that creating jobs may be a way to stifle nationalist and populist sentiment.
The outcome of “the more open investment climate,” of course, would be to deliver ownership of Zimbabwe’s natural resources and economy to the corporations, investment banks and wealthy investors represented among CFR members, while Zimbabweans are relegated to the subordinate role of employees. U.S. investors would create jobs to reduce nationalist opposition, but this would be a sop. The Zanu-PF program of making Zimbabweans masters in their own house would be reversed, and Zimbabweans would return to the role of creating wealth for foreign owners, mired in poverty and condemned to perpetual underdevelopment.
Restoring private property rights
Zimbabwe’s long-term potential for U.S. investors can’t be realized unless investments are protected from expropriation. “The core conditions for a resumption of assistance” therefore “must include…repeal of the legislation passed in recent years” that “gutted private property rights,” Gavin writes.
Restoring private property rights is also critical to Washington’s plan for Zimbabwe’s farmland. The essence of the plan is to clear “away obstacles to private investment,” by according ownership rights to families on redistributed land. They would be able to sell their land, transferring ownership to the highest bidder. At the same time, expropriated white farmers would be fully compensated, thereby acquiring the means and the legal structure to reclaim their farms. Foreign investors could also buy large tracts of lands, helping to “facilitate the consolidation of small parcels into more economically viable entities.” This is a vision of a commercial agricultural sector based on ownership of vast tracts of land by foreign corporations and white farmers restored to their former dominant positions, in which black Zimbabweans are relegated to the role of farm workers, or, once again, to the least favorable land.
Gavin worries about politicized youth, especially those who participated in “farm invasions and youth militia activities,” presumably because they represent an activist nationalist sector likely to oppose the selling off of Zimbabwean’s natural resources, including its farmland. In order to divert their energies, Gavin recommends “programming for youth through credit schemes, technology-focused skill building, programs to foster entrepreneurship and empowerment initiatives designed to give young people an ongoing, institutionalized voice in government.” This borrows from the successful strategy of ruling class organizations in the United States to move the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements off the streets and to bog them down in legalistic and bureaucratic activities. This was done, in part, by funding voter registration drives and lowering the voting age to 18 from 21 – anything to remove militants from the streets and to bring them into formal institutional structures the ruling class dominates.
“By 1963, the civil rights movement was becoming more militant, and the ‘black power’ slogan, first used by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, made elites nervous. The Ford and Rockefeller foundations responded by creating the National Urban Coalition to transform ‘black power’…into ‘black capitalism’.” [10] This was done by providing funding for the same kinds of activities Gavin wants to promote in a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe: micro-credit loans, entrepreneurship programs, and engagement of youth in electoral and parliamentary processes.
The culmination of this program in the United States was the election of Barack Obama, who, in a recent speech to mark the centennial of the NAACP, described his election, blacks in political office, and black CEOs running Fortune 500 corporations, as the final goal of the civil rights movement. Because a militant black power movement was hijacked and turned into a movement for black capitalism, the United States remains profoundly unequal in employment, income, opportunity and education, with blacks on the bottom rung of the ladder. By Obama’s own admission, “African Americans are out of work more than just about anybody else…are more likely to suffer from a host of diseases but less likely to own health insurance than just about anybody else…” and “an African American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a prison.” [11] To illustrate how effectively the co-opting of the black power movement has emasculated efforts to end oppression of blacks in the United States, the best Obama can offer to redress the appalling level for racial inequality is to urge black U.S. citizens to do what he urged Africans in his Ghana speech to do: stop blaming others and try harder.
“We’ve got to say to our children, yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crimes and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood you will face challenges that somebody in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. But that’s not a reason to get bad grades—that’s not a reason to cut class—that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands—you cannot forget that. That’s what we have to teach all of our children. No excuses. No excuses. You get that education, all those hardships will just make you stronger, better able to compete. Yes we can.” [12]
There’s nothing wrong with a determined approach to overcoming obstacles, but there’s an ambiguity in Obama’s message that borders on racism. It’s clear that he acknowledges that blacks face obstacles, and it’s also clear that he does not foresee the obstacles being removed, otherwise why would he urge blacks to overcome them, rather than act collectively to eliminate them? The ambiguity arises because Obama urges blacks not to attribute their condition to the obstacles they face. Why not? If the obstacles are real, why not acknowledge them, and organize politically to remove them? The alternative interpretation is that Obama means the obstacles are not formidable, and that blacks are using them as an excuse to cover up for personal failings. If this is indeed what Obama means, his analysis is deeply racist. By contrast, Zanu-PF has worked to remove obstacles to black Zimbabweans left in place by the country’s colonial heritage and hasn’t adopted the Obama approach of leaving racist structures in place while bidding the victims to pick themselves up by the bootstraps.
To consolidate its control over Zimbabwe, Washington plans to energetically engage “middle-level officers” of Zimbabwe’s military, purged of “clearly political actors,” in “a dialogue about security sector reform.” Middle-level officers would be targeted for pay increases, to be underwritten by “donors other than the United States,” who Gavin believes would “be best equipped to assist with this.” It is standard operating procedure in the imperialist playbook to engage the officer corps of countries to be subordinated to outside control. As Szymanski and Goertzel explain, imperialist military power can be
“exerted through the support of local military institutions and the resultant gratitude of the officer corps. The local military establishment frequently are willing to support the imperialists against their own people. Metropolitan countries train the officers of Third World armies, either in the metropolitan countries (the top officers), or in Third World countries (low-level officers.) They provide military advisers at all levels of the chain of command, and they provide the modern weapons of war—airplanes, tanks, artillery, etc.—on which Third World armies are totally dependent.” [13]
This is the CFR’s vision for Zimbabwe. True to imperialist practice, Gavin recommends that the United States secure the loyalty of Zimbabwe’s middle-level officers with training programs, exchanges and technical assistance. She expresses frustration that Zimbabwe’s senior officer corps, many of whose members are ideologically committed to national independence, remain loyal to Mugabe and his nationalist goals. Middle-level officers would be promised promotions to replace loyal senior officers, who would be purged.
Conclusion
While working as a research fellow at the CFR, Michelle Gavin set forth the vision of the United States’ top executives, investment bankers and corporate lawyers for Zimbabwe’s future and a plan for how to get there. Not surprisingly, the future the CFR envisions is one of a more open investment climate in which U.S. corporations, banks and investors can buy Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources and purchase vast tracts of farmland to establish profitable commercial agribusinesses. Having moved to the U.S. National Security Council as Senior Director for African Affairs, Gavin is ideally situated to see the CFR plan and vision she articulated converted into action.
To guard against the United States realizing its plan to plunder their wealth, Zimbabweans should recognize that:
* The United States is working through civil society actors to achieve its goal of reversing the gains of land reform and selling off Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources.
* Washington has followed a two-step approach to Zimbabwe’s economy. First, sabotage it, and then attribute the country’s economic difficulties to “mismanagement.” In this way, Washington creates the conditions to bleed support for Zanu-PF, if it can control Zimbabweans’ understanding of why their economy is in crisis. Washington created the economic hardships Zimbabweans face, through the Economic Structural Adjustment Programs of the 1990s and financial sanctions since 2001. It’s important for Washington to avoid blame for Zimbabwe’s crippled economy, and to attribute blame wholly to Zanu-PF. Accordingly, Washington will continue to minimize, if not hide altogether, the role of its financial sanctions in undermining Zimbabwe’s economy, citing mismanagement as the cause. The North Atlantic mass media, which tends to uncritically reflect the pronouncements of U.S. officials on foreign affairs, will echo Washington’s fabrications.
* If Washington manages to sideline Zanu-PF, and the U.S.-backed MDC secures a decisive grip on power, Washington will pressure the MDC to create a reform agenda that emphasizes the creation of an investment climate favorable to the sale of Zimbabwe’s natural resources, and its state-owned assets, including arable farmland, to foreign investors.
* Programs to promote entrepreneurship, training and skills development will be used to depoliticize Zimbabwe’s youth so that their patrimony can be stolen from under their feet. Job creation will be used as a sop to mollify nationalist sentiment. In this, Zimbabweans should recognize that the economic sabotage policies of the United States and its North Atlantic partners are implicated in the problem of mass unemployment, and that foreign investors, while promoting job creation as a necessary political maneuver to guard against a populist reaction to the sell-off of Zimbabwe’s assets, will allow unemployment to rise again once Zimbabwe has been parceled out to foreign investors.
* The United States will seek to safeguard the investment of its banks, corporations and wealthy individuals, by co-opting the middle-level officer corps, and using Zimbabwe’s military as an extension of U.S. military power, to suppress populist revolts.
1. http://myafrica.allafrica.com/view/people/main/id/07UF2C6ymSBPq5-O.html. Accessed July 20, 2009. “Opinion: Obama’s Africa Policy,” Maternal Health, Medical News Today, July 13, 2009, describes Gavin as a White House advisor. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/157217.php
2. Michelle D. Gavin, Planning for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe, CSR No. 31, October, 2007. Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Zimbabwe_CSR31.pdf
3. G. William Domhoff, “Who Rules America? Power and Politics, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Fourth Edition, 2002.
4. The Herald (Zimbabwe) May 5, 2009.
5. TalkZimbabwe.com, July 16, 2008.
6. The New York Times, July 26, 2008; The Washington Post, July 26, 2008; The Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe), July 27, 2008.
7. Gregory Elich, Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit, Llumina Press, 2006.
8. Elise Hugus, “Eight Years After NATO’s ‘Humanitarian War’: Serbia’s new ‘third way’”, Z Magazine, April 2007, Volume 20, Number 4.
9. Ibid.
10. Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, State University of New York Press, 2003.
11. Remarks by the President to the NAACP Centennial Convention, New York, July 17, 2009.
12. Ibid.
13. Albert J. Szymanski and Ted George Goertzel, Sociology: Class, Consciousness, and Contradictions, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1979.
Posted in Imperialism, Zimbabwe by gowans on July 21, 2009
By Stephen Gowans
Washington’s plan for a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe has been sketched out by Michelle D. Gavin, White House advisor and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council [1], while she was a research fellow at the influential Council on Foreign Relations. In Planning for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe [2], a paper which spells out “a vision for (Zimbabwe’s) future and a plan for how to get there,” Gavin explains how the “existing roster of (Zimbabwe’s) civil society leaders…lends itself to the U.S. desire” to put Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources, including its farmland, up for sale to U.S. investors. Gavin cautions that a populist and nationalist reaction against the U.S. plan could arise, and recommends three counter measures: a job creation program; co-opting the corps of Zimbabwe’s middle-level military officers with training programs, exchanges and pay increases; and entrepreneurship programs to divert the energies and attention of politicized youth.
What is the Council on Foreign Relations?
The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) is the largest U.S. ruling class policy organization. Founded in 1921 by bankers, lawyers and scholars interested in carving out a larger role for the United States in world affairs, the organization’s membership is today dominated by finance bankers, corporate executives, and lawyers, supplemented by journalists, scholars and government and military officials.
The CFR is funded by corporations, wealthy individuals and sales of its journal, Foreign Affairs. Its most important function is to bring together small discussion groups, of 15 to 25 corporate executives, State Department and Pentagon officials, and academics, to explore specific issues in foreign affairs and identify policy alternatives. Discussion groups often lead to study groups, led by a research fellow, Gavin’s role at the CFR. As sociologist William Domhoff explains,
“The goal of such study groups is a detailed statement of the problem by the scholar leading the discussion. Any book that eventuates from the group is understood to express the views of its academic author, not of the council or the members of the study group, but the books are nonetheless published with the sponsorship of the CFR.” [3]
The books and papers are sent to the State Department, where their recommendations are often adopted, either as a result of the prestige of the CFR or because members of the CFR circulate freely between the organization and the State Department and National Security Council. Gavin herself is emblematic of this career path.
Gavin’s Analysis
It is quite astonishing that the United States can deny that it is imperialist, when scholars, government and military officials and CEOs, meet under the auspices of the CFR to plan the future of other countries. In an affront to democracy and geography, Gavin, a U.S. citizen, articulates the CFR’s “vision for (Zimbabwe’s) future and a plan for how to get there.”
Gavin attributes Zimbabwe’s economic difficulties to “gross mismanagement,” rather than U.S. efforts to undermine Zimbabwe’s economy, a commonly practiced deception by U.S. officials. While “President Mugabe and his cronies frequently claim that Western sanctions are sabotaging the Zimbabwean economy,” she writes, this cannot be true because “there are no trade sanctions on Zimbabwe.” True, there are no formal trade sanctions, but there are plenty of financial sanctions, a point of which Gavin must surely be aware. She was a long-serving foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, a co-sponsor of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery of Act of 2001 (ZDERA), along with Hillary Clinton (now U.S. Secretary of State), Joseph Biden (now U.S. Vice-President) and the arch racist Jesse Helms. Gavin, herself, describes ZDERA as “a law prohibiting U.S. support for both debt relief and any new assistance for Zimbabwe from the international financial institutions.” This means that Zimbabwe has been barred from accessing development assistance and balance of payment support since 2001, a virtual economic death sentence for a Third World country. Gavin’s deception extends to claiming that while “it is true that major donors oppose extending any additional support to Zimbabwe at international financial institutions, Zimbabwe’s own deep arrears and the ZANU-PF government’s unwillingness to pursue sustainable economic policies prevent this support from being extended anyway.” If this is true, why did the U.S. government go to the trouble of creating ZDERA? And why is Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Finance, now under the control of the U.S.-backed Movement for Democratic Change, complaining that ZDERA is undermining its efforts to bring about an economic recovery? In May, Finance Minister Tendai Biti pointed out that,
“The World Bank has right now billions and billions of dollars that we have access to but we can’t access those dollars unless we have dealt with and normalized our relations with the IMF. We cannot normalize our relations with the IMF because of the voting power, it’s a blocking voting power of America and people who represent America on that board cannot vote differently because of ZDERA.” [4]
As bad as ZDERA is, it’s not the only financial sanctions regime the United States has used to sabotage Zimbabwe’s economy. Addressing the Senate Foreign Relations African Affairs Subcommittee, Jendaya Frazer, who was George W. Bush’s top diplomat in Africa, noted that the United States had imposed financial restrictions on 135 individuals and 30 businesses. U.S. citizens and corporations who violate the sanctions face penalties ranging from $250,000 to $500,000. “We are looking to expand the category of Zimbabweans who are covered. We are also looking at sanctions on government entities as well, not just individuals.” She added that the U.S. Treasury Department was looking into ways to target sectors of Zimbabwe’s critical mining industry. [5]
On July 25, 2008 Bush announced that sanctions on Zimbabwe would be stepped up. He outlawed U.S. financial transactions with a number of key Zimbabwe companies and froze their U.S. assets. The enterprises included: the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (which controls all mineral exports); the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company; Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe; Osleg, or Operation Sovereign Legitimacy, the commercial arm of Zimbabwe’s army; Industrial Development Corporation; the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe; ZB Financial Holdings; and the Agriculture Development Bank of Zimbabwe. [6]
Two other aspects of Gavin’s comments on Zimbabwe’s economy must be addressed.
First, her reference to senior Zimbabwe officials as “cronies” of Robert Mugabe: This is a transparent effort to discredit Zimbabwe’s government through name-calling, a hoary practice that, during the Cold War, led U.S. officials and mass media to adopt differential terminology depending on whether they were referring to capitalist or socialist countries. The Soviet Union had a “regime”, “secret police”, “satellites” and an “empire” while the United States had a “government,” “security organizations,” “allies,” and “strategic interests.” The propaganda function of the term “cronies” becomes evident when used against the United States. Were we to talk of Obama and his cronies (his top advisors and cabinet officials) we would be dismissed as crude propagandists. “Cronies” not only serves a clear propaganda function, it also reflects Washington’s frustration with Mugabe’s having built up a loyal circle of advisors and political lieutenants, whose members the United States has been unable to co-opt.
Second, Gavin’s attributing “Zimbabwe’s own deep arrears” to international lending institutions to the former “ZANU-PF government’s unwillingness to pursue sustainable economic policies,” requires some explanation of what sustainable economic policies are. Sustainable economic policies, from the point of view of the World Bank, IMF and the North Atlantic financial elite that dominates these organizations, are policies which benefit the lenders. Credit does not come without strings attached, and the strings are often deeply inimical to local populations. The economic policies the Mugabe government pursued, under the guidance of the World Bank and IMF, hardly sustained the people of Zimbabwe.
“In January 1991, Zimbabwe adopted its Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP), designed primarily by the World Bank. The program called for the usual prescription of actions advocated by Western financial institutions, including privatization, deregulation, a reduction of government expenditures on social needs, and deficit cutting. User fees were instituted for health and education, and food subsidies were eliminated. Measures protecting local industry from foreign competition were also withdrawn.
“The impact was immediate. While pleasing for Western investors, the result was a disaster for the people of Zimbabwe. According to one study, the poorest households in Harare saw their income drop over 12 percent in the year from 1991 to 1992 alone, while real wages in the country plunged by a third over the life of the program. Falling income levels forced people to spend a greater percentage of their income on food, and second-hand clothes were imported to compensate for the inability of most of Zimbabwe’s citizens to purchase new clothing. A 1994 survey in Harare found that 90 percent of those interviewed felt that ESAP had adversely affected their lives. The rise in food prices was seen as a major problem by 64 percent of respondents, while many indicated that they were forced to reduce their food intake. ESAP resulted in mass layoffs and crippled the job market so that many were unable to find any employment at all. In the communal areas, the rise in fertilizer prices meant that subsistence farmers were no longer able to fertilize their land, resulting in lower yields. ESAP also mandated the elimination of price controls, allowing those shop owners in communal area who were free of competition to mark prices up dramatically…By 1995, over one third of Zimbabwe’s citizens could not afford a basic food basket, shelter and clothing. From 1991 to 1995, Zimbabwe experienced a sharp deindustrialization, as manufacturing output fell 40 percent.
“The government of Zimbabwe felt it could no longer endure this debacle, and by the end of the 1990’s, started moving away from the neoliberal program. Finally, in October 2001, the abandonment of ESAP was officially announced. ‘Enough is enough,’ declared President Mugabe.” [7]
Zimbabwe: A handsome investment opportunity
Gavin estimates that the overall costs of undoing the damage of U.S. economic sabotage “fall between $3 billion and $4.5 billion over five years,” representing a substantial investment for the U.S. government. But “such a substantial investment makes sense,” Gavin concludes, because “private investors have expressed strong enthusiasm for Zimbabwe’s long-term potential.”
However, taking advantage of Zimbabwe’s long-term investment potential may not be easy, she cautions, for the suspicions of populist and nationalist Zimbabweans must be overcome. “The United States and others should be aware of nationalist and populist sensitivities,” she warns. The creation of “a reform agenda” and “a more favorable investment climate” could lead Zimbabweans to believe that U.S. involvement ”is leading to a selling off of valuable natural resources in deals that are lucrative for foreign investors but do little for the Zimbabwean people.”
Zimbabweans’ experiences with World Bank and IMF economic structural adjustment programs of the 1990s, and the experiences of Serbia – in which the United States created a reform agenda and more favorable investment climate after the socialist-inclined Slobodan Milosevic was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup – serve as warnings. In Serbia, U.S. involvement led to a selling off of publicly and socially-owned assets in deals that were lucrative for foreign investors but did little for the Serb people.
“In Serbia dollars have accomplished what bombs could not. After U.S.-led international sanctions were lifted with Milosevic’s ouster in 2000, the United States emerged as the largest single source of foreign direct investment. According to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, U.S. companies have made $1 billion worth of ‘committed investments’ represented in no small part by the $580 million privatization of Nis Tobacco Factory (Phillip Morris) and a $250 million buyout of the national steel producer by U.S. Steel. Coca-Cola bought a Serbian bottled water producer in 2005 for $21 million. The list goes on.” [8]
Meanwhile, in the former Serb province of Kosovo, the
“coal mines and electrical facilities, the postal service, the Pristina airport, the railways, landfills, and waste management systems have all been privatized. As is the case across the Balkans, ‘publicly-owned enterprises’ are auctioned for a fraction of their value on the private market with little or no compensation for taxpayers.” [9]
Prior to the U.S. corporate takeover, the Yugoslav economy consisted largely of state- and socially-owned enterprises, leaving little room for U.S. profit-making opportunities, not the kind of place U.S. banks, corporations and investors are keen on. That the toppling of Milosevic had everything to do with opening space for U.S. investors and corporations was evident in chapter four of the U.S.-authored Rambouillet ultimatum, an ultimatum Milosevic rejected, triggering weeks of NATO bombing. The first article called for a free-market economy and the second for privatization of all government-owned assets. NATO bombs seemed to have had an unerring ability to hit Yugoslavia’s socially-owned factories and to miss foreign-owned ones. This was an economic take-over project.
To lull Zimbabweans into accepting the selling off of their valuable natural resources, Gavin recommends that U.S. investors establish “a corporate code of conduct that takes into account these sensitivities” and that they “be sensitive to Zimbabwe’s urgent need for job creation when considering how they might protect and nurture long-term investments.”
This says that U.S. investors should tread carefully when gobbling up Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources, and that creating jobs may be a way to stifle nationalist and populist sentiment.
The outcome of “the more open investment climate,” of course, would be to deliver ownership of Zimbabwe’s natural resources and economy to the corporations, investment banks and wealthy investors represented among CFR members, while Zimbabweans are relegated to the subordinate role of employees. U.S. investors would create jobs to reduce nationalist opposition, but this would be a sop. The Zanu-PF program of making Zimbabweans masters in their own house would be reversed, and Zimbabweans would return to the role of creating wealth for foreign owners, mired in poverty and condemned to perpetual underdevelopment.
Restoring private property rights
Zimbabwe’s long-term potential for U.S. investors can’t be realized unless investments are protected from expropriation. “The core conditions for a resumption of assistance” therefore “must include…repeal of the legislation passed in recent years” that “gutted private property rights,” Gavin writes.
Restoring private property rights is also critical to Washington’s plan for Zimbabwe’s farmland. The essence of the plan is to clear “away obstacles to private investment,” by according ownership rights to families on redistributed land. They would be able to sell their land, transferring ownership to the highest bidder. At the same time, expropriated white farmers would be fully compensated, thereby acquiring the means and the legal structure to reclaim their farms. Foreign investors could also buy large tracts of lands, helping to “facilitate the consolidation of small parcels into more economically viable entities.” This is a vision of a commercial agricultural sector based on ownership of vast tracts of land by foreign corporations and white farmers restored to their former dominant positions, in which black Zimbabweans are relegated to the role of farm workers, or, once again, to the least favorable land.
Gavin worries about politicized youth, especially those who participated in “farm invasions and youth militia activities,” presumably because they represent an activist nationalist sector likely to oppose the selling off of Zimbabwean’s natural resources, including its farmland. In order to divert their energies, Gavin recommends “programming for youth through credit schemes, technology-focused skill building, programs to foster entrepreneurship and empowerment initiatives designed to give young people an ongoing, institutionalized voice in government.” This borrows from the successful strategy of ruling class organizations in the United States to move the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements off the streets and to bog them down in legalistic and bureaucratic activities. This was done, in part, by funding voter registration drives and lowering the voting age to 18 from 21 – anything to remove militants from the streets and to bring them into formal institutional structures the ruling class dominates.
“By 1963, the civil rights movement was becoming more militant, and the ‘black power’ slogan, first used by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, made elites nervous. The Ford and Rockefeller foundations responded by creating the National Urban Coalition to transform ‘black power’…into ‘black capitalism’.” [10] This was done by providing funding for the same kinds of activities Gavin wants to promote in a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe: micro-credit loans, entrepreneurship programs, and engagement of youth in electoral and parliamentary processes.
The culmination of this program in the United States was the election of Barack Obama, who, in a recent speech to mark the centennial of the NAACP, described his election, blacks in political office, and black CEOs running Fortune 500 corporations, as the final goal of the civil rights movement. Because a militant black power movement was hijacked and turned into a movement for black capitalism, the United States remains profoundly unequal in employment, income, opportunity and education, with blacks on the bottom rung of the ladder. By Obama’s own admission, “African Americans are out of work more than just about anybody else…are more likely to suffer from a host of diseases but less likely to own health insurance than just about anybody else…” and “an African American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a prison.” [11] To illustrate how effectively the co-opting of the black power movement has emasculated efforts to end oppression of blacks in the United States, the best Obama can offer to redress the appalling level for racial inequality is to urge black U.S. citizens to do what he urged Africans in his Ghana speech to do: stop blaming others and try harder.
“We’ve got to say to our children, yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crimes and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood you will face challenges that somebody in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. But that’s not a reason to get bad grades—that’s not a reason to cut class—that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands—you cannot forget that. That’s what we have to teach all of our children. No excuses. No excuses. You get that education, all those hardships will just make you stronger, better able to compete. Yes we can.” [12]
There’s nothing wrong with a determined approach to overcoming obstacles, but there’s an ambiguity in Obama’s message that borders on racism. It’s clear that he acknowledges that blacks face obstacles, and it’s also clear that he does not foresee the obstacles being removed, otherwise why would he urge blacks to overcome them, rather than act collectively to eliminate them? The ambiguity arises because Obama urges blacks not to attribute their condition to the obstacles they face. Why not? If the obstacles are real, why not acknowledge them, and organize politically to remove them? The alternative interpretation is that Obama means the obstacles are not formidable, and that blacks are using them as an excuse to cover up for personal failings. If this is indeed what Obama means, his analysis is deeply racist. By contrast, Zanu-PF has worked to remove obstacles to black Zimbabweans left in place by the country’s colonial heritage and hasn’t adopted the Obama approach of leaving racist structures in place while bidding the victims to pick themselves up by the bootstraps.
To consolidate its control over Zimbabwe, Washington plans to energetically engage “middle-level officers” of Zimbabwe’s military, purged of “clearly political actors,” in “a dialogue about security sector reform.” Middle-level officers would be targeted for pay increases, to be underwritten by “donors other than the United States,” who Gavin believes would “be best equipped to assist with this.” It is standard operating procedure in the imperialist playbook to engage the officer corps of countries to be subordinated to outside control. As Szymanski and Goertzel explain, imperialist military power can be
“exerted through the support of local military institutions and the resultant gratitude of the officer corps. The local military establishment frequently are willing to support the imperialists against their own people. Metropolitan countries train the officers of Third World armies, either in the metropolitan countries (the top officers), or in Third World countries (low-level officers.) They provide military advisers at all levels of the chain of command, and they provide the modern weapons of war—airplanes, tanks, artillery, etc.—on which Third World armies are totally dependent.” [13]
This is the CFR’s vision for Zimbabwe. True to imperialist practice, Gavin recommends that the United States secure the loyalty of Zimbabwe’s middle-level officers with training programs, exchanges and technical assistance. She expresses frustration that Zimbabwe’s senior officer corps, many of whose members are ideologically committed to national independence, remain loyal to Mugabe and his nationalist goals. Middle-level officers would be promised promotions to replace loyal senior officers, who would be purged.
Conclusion
While working as a research fellow at the CFR, Michelle Gavin set forth the vision of the United States’ top executives, investment bankers and corporate lawyers for Zimbabwe’s future and a plan for how to get there. Not surprisingly, the future the CFR envisions is one of a more open investment climate in which U.S. corporations, banks and investors can buy Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources and purchase vast tracts of farmland to establish profitable commercial agribusinesses. Having moved to the U.S. National Security Council as Senior Director for African Affairs, Gavin is ideally situated to see the CFR plan and vision she articulated converted into action.
To guard against the United States realizing its plan to plunder their wealth, Zimbabweans should recognize that:
* The United States is working through civil society actors to achieve its goal of reversing the gains of land reform and selling off Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources.
* Washington has followed a two-step approach to Zimbabwe’s economy. First, sabotage it, and then attribute the country’s economic difficulties to “mismanagement.” In this way, Washington creates the conditions to bleed support for Zanu-PF, if it can control Zimbabweans’ understanding of why their economy is in crisis. Washington created the economic hardships Zimbabweans face, through the Economic Structural Adjustment Programs of the 1990s and financial sanctions since 2001. It’s important for Washington to avoid blame for Zimbabwe’s crippled economy, and to attribute blame wholly to Zanu-PF. Accordingly, Washington will continue to minimize, if not hide altogether, the role of its financial sanctions in undermining Zimbabwe’s economy, citing mismanagement as the cause. The North Atlantic mass media, which tends to uncritically reflect the pronouncements of U.S. officials on foreign affairs, will echo Washington’s fabrications.
* If Washington manages to sideline Zanu-PF, and the U.S.-backed MDC secures a decisive grip on power, Washington will pressure the MDC to create a reform agenda that emphasizes the creation of an investment climate favorable to the sale of Zimbabwe’s natural resources, and its state-owned assets, including arable farmland, to foreign investors.
* Programs to promote entrepreneurship, training and skills development will be used to depoliticize Zimbabwe’s youth so that their patrimony can be stolen from under their feet. Job creation will be used as a sop to mollify nationalist sentiment. In this, Zimbabweans should recognize that the economic sabotage policies of the United States and its North Atlantic partners are implicated in the problem of mass unemployment, and that foreign investors, while promoting job creation as a necessary political maneuver to guard against a populist reaction to the sell-off of Zimbabwe’s assets, will allow unemployment to rise again once Zimbabwe has been parceled out to foreign investors.
* The United States will seek to safeguard the investment of its banks, corporations and wealthy individuals, by co-opting the middle-level officer corps, and using Zimbabwe’s military as an extension of U.S. military power, to suppress populist revolts.
1. http://myafrica.allafrica.com/view/people/main/id/07UF2C6ymSBPq5-O.html. Accessed July 20, 2009. “Opinion: Obama’s Africa Policy,” Maternal Health, Medical News Today, July 13, 2009, describes Gavin as a White House advisor. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/157217.php
2. Michelle D. Gavin, Planning for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe, CSR No. 31, October, 2007. Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Zimbabwe_CSR31.pdf
3. G. William Domhoff, “Who Rules America? Power and Politics, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Fourth Edition, 2002.
4. The Herald (Zimbabwe) May 5, 2009.
5. TalkZimbabwe.com, July 16, 2008.
6. The New York Times, July 26, 2008; The Washington Post, July 26, 2008; The Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe), July 27, 2008.
7. Gregory Elich, Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit, Llumina Press, 2006.
8. Elise Hugus, “Eight Years After NATO’s ‘Humanitarian War’: Serbia’s new ‘third way’”, Z Magazine, April 2007, Volume 20, Number 4.
9. Ibid.
10. Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, State University of New York Press, 2003.
11. Remarks by the President to the NAACP Centennial Convention, New York, July 17, 2009.
12. Ibid.
13. Albert J. Szymanski and Ted George Goertzel, Sociology: Class, Consciousness, and Contradictions, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1979.
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
Violet Gonda at it again: Blow jobbing white farmers
How can Violet Gonda compare Dr Chihombori's medical practice in America to a white farmer's farm. Did Dr Chihombori rob or loot the practice from some American native or receive it from an ancestor who looted some American native at gun point?
This sister is a fool.
Broadcast: July 10, 2009
Violet Gonda: The land issue is a very emotive one for Zimbabweans. On the Hot Seat this week we attempt to get to the bottom of this contentious issue with guests Dr Arikana Chihombori and John Worsley Worswick. Dr Chihombori is an American citizen of Zimbabwean origin and has been at the centre of controversy since her attempt to take over a commercial farm in the Chegutu area. She also hit the headlines when she accompanied the Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to the inauguration of the South African President Jacob Zuma.
The MDC say that she is Tsvangirai’s niece and there has been concern that a member of the prime minister’s family is involved in illegal farm grabs. John Worsley Worswick is a spokesperson for the pressure group Justice for Agriculture and has been campaigning for many years on behalf of the commercial farmers. Let’s start with Dr Chihombori – you are planning to take over a farm in the Chegutu area that is owned already by the Cremer family, why?
Arikana Chihombori: Well let me start by correcting your statement – I have never tried to take over a farm, period. I have an offer letter, this application for land was put in over seven years ago and like I said to you at one point the initial offer letter also turned out to be a double allocation which was fine by me because the acreage was a little larger than I thought my sister could handle. It wasn’t until over a year ago that another offer letter was given and again I never had the opportunity to view any land. The same was true with the first property, I’d never seen it before, the land was allocated, it was vacant and my assumption was, when the second offer letter came with 60 hectares, I felt comfortable that my sister could work a smaller plot and I’d never seen it before. I never was given a choice to choose so I assumed it was another available land just like the previous one was. So I’ve never tried to take any land, I only have an offer letter, plain and simple. So I did not choose whether it was going to be Chegutu or Mutare or anywhere, I had no choice. I don’t even know why this particular plot was offered to me, an offer letter is all I have.
VG: OK, you are an American citizen and I understand you have a large medical practice in the US where you have lived for the last 30 years, so how do you qualify for an offer letter?
AC: When I applied, if I remember correctly, I had to also be qualified in terms of my ability to operate a farm, financially that is and my assumption was they felt comfortable that I would be able to support a farm financially. But this was over seven years ago, it’s probably getting close to eight, nine years ago, I can’t tell you exactly when I put in the application but I felt that it was because financially I could support a farm.
VG: I spoke to the Cremers and they said your sister first came to their farm with an offer letter that was dated 2007 and then later on one that was dated December 2008, so does this mean you were given three offer letters?
AC: Like I said, my sister has my power of attorney, of course you can only get one offer letter. The first offer letter was the one that was the double allocation and I’m told the DA was asked to straighten that situation. It was my assumption that I was going to be allocated a smaller portion of the original offer but to my surprise, a totally different farm was offered other than the one that was originally offered which I thought was simply going to be sub-divided and I would be allocated a smaller portion of that original offer, but that did not happen.
VG: On the issue of your status, I am presuming that you have dual citizenship, an American citizenship and a Zimbabwean citizenship?
AC: Well when I put in the initial application I was still a permanent resident in the US, I have subsequently become a citizen.
VG: But in Zimbabwe, dual citizenship is not allowed.
AC: To be honest with you, it really did not matter as far as I was concerned, my sister was going to work the land but secondly it is my understanding that we are now allowed, dual citizenship is now allowed in Zimbabwe.
VG: John, what are your thoughts on this?
John W. Worswick: Well Violet what I have heard so far highlights the chaotic nature of this so-called land reform programme that we’ve witnessed over the last nine years in the country, multiple offer letters, I’m led to believe the first offer letter was for a farm that was already derelict and probably wouldn’t have been attractive at all. The comments in terms of not being involved in the violent take over is not true because according to the Cremers’ testimony, Dr Chihombori’s sister went there with thugs and put thugs in place on the farm in January of this year with a view these were invaders, indisputably invaders onto the property and the only reason that they pulled off the property was they argued three days later that they were not being paid enough to drive this eviction.
AC: Actually I would like to disagree with that particular story. Look, prior to coming to Zimbabwe in May of this year, I had not been to Zimbabwe for almost 20 months, my last visit to Zimbabwe was in 2007, I want to say August or September. So as far as what was happening on the farm, I can only go by what my sister told me. I am aware of the situation when she went with the, I’m not sure if it was the land officer or just someone from the lands office in Chegutu and that is the situation I discussed with you pertaining to the abuse that took place. Other than that I know she has been back on the farm, again trying to talk to Mr Cremer. The story about trying to invade the farm, I’m not familiar with it. In January certainly I hadn’t been to Zimbabwe, since the previous year.
JW: Can I come in there - yes, indisputably it was Dr Chihombori’s sister that was there in January that went onto the farm with these invaders but indisputably also she was acting probably with the power of attorney of Dr Chihombori but certainly acting as her agent on that front. I’d also like to comment on the dual citizenship issue in that provision has been made in the next amendment to the Constitution which has not even been debated in parliament at this stage to allow for dual citizenship but as we stand at the moment, and certainly at the time of these two offer letters the law states basically that from the moment Dr Chihombori accepted American citizenship and swore an oath of allegiance to the United States of America, it automatically rescinded her Zimbabwean passport and she became ineligible and the onus was on her at that stage to avail yourself of the law and be aware of exactly the circumstances of accepting that offer letter.
AC: Well I am aware, this is what I’ve been told that the current unity government document does state that dual citizenship is allowed. The offer letter was given prior to my becoming a citizen, but again, that’s neither here nor there.
VG: What about the process though of taking farms. You’ve said that you were given an offer letter but do you think that is how it should be done that a person can just be given an offer letter and you just walk onto someone’s farm and say I’m taking it over? I don’t know, what can you say about that?
AC: I think that is rather a crude way of putting it as it is my understanding that according to the Lancaster agreement of 1980, the land reform was going to take place and also the Lancaster agreement clearly stated the process which land reform was going to occur. It’s also my understanding that the process of allocating, re-allocating the land started with Section Three letter. The Section Three letter was supposed to give the farmer three years and during these three years the farmer is supposed to come and negotiate with the government, put in an application, identify which section of his farm the farmer was going to keep and the rest would be re-allocated. Keep in mind some of the farmers owned thousands of hectares, so clearly I’m hoping John, that we are in agreement that the land reform needed to take place, the inequalities pertaining to land needed to be addressed.
So after three years, if the farmer had not approached the government or submitted an application, a Section Five letter would be issued and I’m also told this Section letter would give the farmer six months to come and submit an application for an allocation for a smaller piece of land or negotiate with the government which ever way and if again the farmer continued to disregard the Section Five letter, the final letter would be the Section Eight. By the time Section Eight letter was issued it was the understanding that the farmer was unwilling to negotiate with the government, unwilling to apply for a smaller portion of the previous farm and it was after the Section Eight letter that the government was now free to reallocate the farm as it wished as the farmer would not have been willing to apply for a smaller portion.
With that backdrop it seems to me there was enough time given for a farmer who was willing to clearly say let’s do what’s right. Surely how can someone have 20000 hectares, 80000 hectares. The process itself, I may be wrong in how I see it, but I think if that was followed, it seems to me the allocation, the land reform programme would have gone on a little bit smoother but when farmers refuse to put in an application, refuse to agree to share the land, then it started a totally different problem. Where we end up after that it just depends on human feelings.
VG: I’ll come to John just now to get his reaction to this but still Dr Chihombori, with the current chaotic process don’t you think there should be proper procedures that should be followed to redistribute land to all who needs it?
AC: I quite agree with you. Yes there needs to be proper procedures and like I said that was my understanding the three letters. It seems to me it was a procedure that if followed, could work but unfortunately you are dealing with issues of beneficiaries and dispossessions and it is a touchy issue. So even when you try to deal with it in the best of environments, it is a difficult situation no doubt about it.
VG: John do you agree that land redistribution was long overdue?
JW: Yes absolutely Violet I don’t think you’ll find a single Zimbabwean especially a Zimbabwean farmer that would argue against the necessity for the equal distribution of the land in Zimbabwe although the statistics have been distorted by the propaganda. We have been all for meaningful land reform but certainly what we’ve seen in the last nine years, ten years since the start of the land invasions is absolute chaos.
I’d like to comment on Dr Chihombori’s ignorance with regard to the legal procedure in Zimbabwe because what she is saying there would have been heaven for us here in Zimbabwe in terms of due process, it’s not the case at all and I think it needs to be clarified.
The original Land Acquisition Act which was brought in in 1992 was a just Act and it involved merely a preliminary notice of acquisition, a Section Five notice which had a validity of two years and gave a farmer due warning. He then would be involved in a court process through a Section Seven having a fair hearing in a court of law to argue his case and win it on merit if the State, and it was incumbent on the State to prove the necessity of taking the land and the suitability of the piece of land being targeted.
Now what we saw in 2002 was the 2002 May amendment to the land acquisition act, wherein a Section Eight which in itself was an acquisition order and an eviction order rolled into one could be issued to a farmer ahead of a Section Seven. So a farmer could be evicted off his property within 90 days of receiving a Section Eight and never been called to court at all and farmers had the right to object on receipt of a Section Five preliminary notice and most farmers did, not all but certainly most farmers did object because the process of acquisition now was absolutely unjust in that it could take a farmer two years, having been kicked off his farm, illegally evicted, it could take him two years before he had a fair hearing in a court and if he won his case at that stage it would be an empty victory in that he would be returning to a farm that was now derelict and this is where the problem started.
We saw many other very unjust laws put in place, there was another amendment that year that allowed for the targeting now of any property that had been under agricultural use over the last 50 years which brought into the target sphere for acquisition urban properties and we’ve had urban properties targeted, anything over two hectares has been targeted for acquisition and deemed to be suitable and necessary.
We then had the repealing of Sections 6A and Six B of the Act, of the Land Acquisition Act and this was a provision whereby farmers could cede property, either old farms if they were multi farm owners or parts of their farm to protect the residual part of the farm and at the time had political policy put in place in terms of maximum farm sizes and we had in excess of 1200 farmers who went down this road and gave away farms and part of their farms and that at the end of the day because three years later we saw the repealing in 2004, we saw the repealing of Sections Six A and Six B of the Act and even in spite of some farmers having formalised this agreement to cede land to the State to protect the residual part of their farm, in the administrative courts there was no basis in law with the repeal of Section Six A and Six B - those farmers were now in a very precarious position out there having ceded property.
We then eventually got to 2005 where there were 4500 cases in the administrative court challenging the acquisition process as having been flawed. We have thousands of cases in the High Court with court orders that were allowing farmers to go back onto their farms but these are not being upheld because of the breakdown of the rule of law in farming areas and the police not prepared to support the sheriff in reinstating these farmers back on their farms.
So the whole legal process at that stage was totally flawed and with all the amendments, 17, to the constitution of Zimbabwe promulgated and in one fell swoop the land was nationalised and from that moment onwards, any farmer that had received a Section Five notice, preliminary notice of acquisition was now deemed to be State land. And certainly this quite recently has been struck down or deemed by the SADC court to be in conflict with SADC protocols and should never have been enacted in the first place. Even at the time, the advice from the legal fraternity was that it conflicted with other parts of Zimbabwe’s constitution.
Now given what Dr Chihombori has said in terms of her perception of what the law was, certainly as a Zimbabwe citizen looking to become a beneficiary of land, certainly I believe it should have been incumbent upon her to make herself aware of the legal process and to make sure that the legal process had been followed because we are talking about the displacement of farming families and although the world seemed to focus on commercial farming families and we’ve only got 4500 of those originally, we’re talking about displacement on average of 140 farm worker families on each property.
So today on the farm worker committee we’re talking about close on to 600 000 families, total population of about 1.8 million people, we’ve had 90% of them displaced and we’ve had gross human rights violations on farms to the extent that we believe it constitutes a crime against humanity and we have a situation where we are recording mortality amongst the farm worker community directly attributable to this of in excess of 20% and could be even over 30%.
VG: Let me bring in Dr Chihombori, what can you say about this because I remember the last time we spoke you had much to say about the treatment of farm workers on commercial farms and also if I may begin by getting your reaction to what John said in this interview where he said your “pretty ignorant” to quote his words on the issues to do with the legal processes, what can you say about this?
AC: The issues that he raised in terms of the various amendments, to expect me to have kept up with the various amendments is ridiculous. If you simply put in an application, do you really need to go in and investigate the laws of the country as a citizen to say am I entitled to be applying for a mortgage loan? Do you investigate the amendments that have been done to one’s ability to obtain a loan from a bank? Of course not. So to expect me to have kept up with the laws and the amendments and the constitution – that’s ridiculous so I won’t even go there. That’s a discussion that John at some point hopefully Violet will have someone from the government to discuss those issues.
I am not representing the government in any way, the conversation that I’m here to have according to Violet is what has happened and everything else particularly pertaining to the treatment that my sister received and what I know as just a regular individual what’s happening in my own perception and understanding of what I’ve seen on the ground. Now I’m not going to stand here and answer on policies to do with the Zimbabwean government, I’m not representing the government and therefore those questions should be left to someone from the government.
Now moving on to your next question about mistreatment or rather what I’ve always perceived as human rights violations on the farms, let me start by saying there was a question of how did I get the Cremer farm. I did call the minister of lands in Chegutu and specifically posed him that question – how did you choose to give me this particular farm, unlike any other farm or the previous allocation two, three years ago. They really couldn’t give me a response except that he was one of the farmers who refused to put in an application for his own allocation, so that was the response that I was given. And I was also further told that those farmers who have put in an application for land have been allocated land.
The other farmers who did not get land allocated is because they didn’t put in their applications. Mr Cremer I am told is one of them. That is the only reason they would give me as to why they gave me that farm. Let me also make another point that the original farm that was allocated a few years ago it had a homestead, my sister was not interested in homestead, the farm was close enough to Harare, she was fine with just a smaller allocation of that farm. You could drive back and forth from Harare to the farm, it was not far from the farm at all so in terms of saying the farm is developed I don’t even know what the Cremer farm has except what I saw in passing in May, there was some flower growing going on, other than that I have no clue what the Cremer farm has.
So the issue of saying this farm is developed, and some other farm was not developed is mute, the previous farm was quite fine by my sister and the homestead had nothing to do with it.
Now the abuse of other farmers by the current workers, now the reason I agreed to have this dialogue is because I feel as a human being understanding a simple land issue that is Zimbabwe, it’s a complicated situation, it’s a very difficult situation we all end up in. You have those who have been dispossessed, now you are looking at both sides
The white farmers can look at themselves as beneficiaries at one point but are now considering themselves dispossessed. But you could also take the blacks and call them beneficiaries currently but are previous dispossessed. So it’s a very tricky situation whichever way you want to look at it and when you analyse the situation and you take somebody like John and you take somebody like myself, we both have families that were both beneficiaries and dispossessed, so then where do we go which is why I agreed to this conversation. So it takes John and I realistically looking at the situation and being fair as we look at the situation. This house belongs to both of us, we can keep fighting about this house but at some point we need to stop and say John, it’s got four bedrooms, you get two bedrooms, I get two, if we have to share the living room we share the living room but at some point an honest, genuine, sincere approach to the land reform is in place.
VG: But Dr Chihombori, this is where I go back to my earlier question that is this though how things should be done in Zimbabwe? We know that there were a lot of historical imbalances and one could ask you how would you like it if the native Americans decided that they wanted to take your business and then just go and take it because this is precisely what is happening even with the way you narrated how you got the offer letter and how you were given this farm. Is this the way to do it because you also don’t know what happens on the Cremer farm in terms of the kind of production that happens on that farm and this has been the case with many of the farms. How do you respond to this?
AC: Well I go back to the Lancaster Agreement. The Lancaster Agreement clearly stated the way the land issue was going to be handled. At some point we fell off the tracks in terms of following the Lancaster Agreement. If the Lancaster Agreement was followed it was a document that was supposed to make sure this process was carried on legally and professionally and equitably…
VG: But you as an individual and as a professional do you think how you acquired the offer letter to take another commercial farm that is already productive, do you think that is the way to do it?
AC: No to be honest with you like I said I did not expect an allocation of a farm that was functioning…
VG: But that’s how it’s been like.
AC: Contrary to what I’ve heard and I’ve got a few names of people who were actually given farms that were vacant. The original allocation for me was vacant, like I said I had hoped that I would get a smaller portion of the same farm, it was vacant. There are many people who have been allocated farms that were vacant, this young lady I’m talking about, her farm was vacant.
VG: Let me come to John. John can you respond to some of the issues raised by Dr Chihombori and if I can just point out a few, she talked about farmers, commercial farmers who failed to actually put in their own application for allocation and also the treatment of farm workers. Can you talk to us about some of these issues?
JW: Yes indeed Violet. Can we deal firstly about this particular farm that has been allocated to her. One’s got to look at it against a background of thousands of farms are lying vacant today not having been subscribed to or taken up or if they were taken up they’ve then been abandoned whether it be by A1 settlers or A2 farmers, new farmers, in that they didn’t have title, they didn’t have the skills to make a success of it. Now surely the government should focus on reallocation of those farms rather than interfering with a farm that is productive and has already been downsized. Certainly that’s the situation with the Cremer property, it was substantially downsized from 900 hectares down to 60 hectares and remains a very intensive, highly lucrative property, employing over 300 people.
The process itself with regard to the vetting of beneficiaries for the programme has been substantially flawed in that according to the Land Acquisition Act a board should be set up to vet applicants for farms whether A1 or A2 to assess whether they were suitable and had the requisite skills to farm and not just as Dr Chihombori mentions here that she had the financial wherewithal. It’s interesting also to note that her sister was an applicant and was turned down more than likely because she didn’t have the financial wherewithal to do it but certainly the process of vetting has not taken place at all. It’s not being done by the board, it’s being done by a minister who in the law should have no power to issue these offer letters.
The offer letters themselves, we’ve had various legal opinions over the years because of this are substantially flawed. The fact that there’s multiple offer letters for a single property, there are other properties that have never had an offer letter issued on them and should have done highlights the fact it’s all so flawed.
With regard to the farm worker plight on farms, all the more reason for them to reallocate farms that have already been left or abandoned. We have the issue of landless peasants not being given these farms, we’ve had the political hierarchy and businessmen who have been allocated the farms, it certainly hasn’t gone to the landless peasants and in many cases where it has gone to A1 settlers, the landless peasants, they’ve been displaced from those farms by chefs. So there’s a further injustice in the whole process and all the time the farm workers are the ones who take the brunt of this.
Statistics show only 25% of the farm workers are still in residence on farms, many of them refusing to work for the new farmers because it is tantamount to slave labour. We’re talking about a differential today where existing commercial farmers are using US$30 a month as a minimum wage and many of them paying more than that if you take into account rations, that they are given but new farmers are paying two to three, four dollars either, a lot of them are political chefs and very wealthy men who are arguing that they can’t afford to pay more than two or three US dollars a month. Some we have of record, some farm workers who were working to try and hold onto their homes and having to work for no cash realisation a month, they were driven into a cashless society and I’ll deal with the implications of that in a moment, they were given a couple of slices of bread and a cup of tea each day and if they worked the whole month they were given a bucket, roughly 20 kgs of maize.
The implications of becoming cashless are very alarming in that they can’t benefit from subsidized education if you don’t have any cash for paying towards putting your kids into school. Likewise on the health service side you cannot take advantage of medical help through clinics, what little was left, if you couldn’t pay something towards that so as a cashless society of farm workers and we’re looking at a large number of them, we’re looking at 1.5 million people with their dependents having been displaced off farms, the results of this are very alarming and when one looks at how it was done, the illegal eviction of farm workers and it is on going as a current issue at the moment, farm workers are being evicted off farms it’s tantamount to gross human rights violations, the right to shelter and a home is a basic human right, the right to work is a basic human right as well so we’re very alarmed about this being ongoing even in spite of high court orders that have been issued for those farm workers to stay in situ.
VG: The discussion with Dr Chihombori and John Worsley Worswick concludes next week where we ask if there are any possible ways that the farming community brought the land invasions upon themselves.
Monday, 6 July 2009
Benn slams UK hypocrisy on Zimbabwe
Benn slams UK hypocrisy on Zim
by:
BRITAIN has no right to lecture Zimbabwe on democracy because of a shameful colonial legacy, veteran Labour Party politician Tony Benn has said.
The former UK government minister and Labour’s second longest serving MP trained as a pilot for Britain’s World War II effort in white-ruled Southern Rhodesia.
In an interview for the BBC’s Five Minutes television programme broadcast on Saturday, the left wing grandee said criticism of the Zimbabwe government was “total hypocrisy” given the legacy of white colonial rule.
He said: “I learnt to fly in what’s now Zimbabwe. When I was there, there was no democracy at all.
“All the good land had been stolen and given to white farmers; no African had votes; it was a criminal offence to have a skilled job and now we lecture Zimbabwe on democracy … it’s totally hypocrisy!”
Benn said his heroes were “great model leaders” Mandela, Ghandi and Tutu, “none of them European and none of them white”.
He added: “I think it’s very important to remember that teaching is the key thing, history is made by teachers and movements and not by political leaders.”
Benn, currently president of the Stop the War Coalition, has met all three men, and Ghandi in particular left a mark on him – but he doesn’t remember exactly what India’s pre-eminent political and spiritual leader said to him.
Benn, who was MP in the House of Commons for almost 50 years, said: “Ghandi was sitting on the floor, and I sat down and listened to him. I can’t remember what he said but the power of the man, and the power of none violence is huge in the world.”
Story from : NEWZIMBABWE.COM NEWS:
Published On: Monday, July 06, 2009 11:00 AM GMT
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news/news.aspx?newsID=564
© New Zimbabwe News
by:
BRITAIN has no right to lecture Zimbabwe on democracy because of a shameful colonial legacy, veteran Labour Party politician Tony Benn has said.
The former UK government minister and Labour’s second longest serving MP trained as a pilot for Britain’s World War II effort in white-ruled Southern Rhodesia.
In an interview for the BBC’s Five Minutes television programme broadcast on Saturday, the left wing grandee said criticism of the Zimbabwe government was “total hypocrisy” given the legacy of white colonial rule.
He said: “I learnt to fly in what’s now Zimbabwe. When I was there, there was no democracy at all.
“All the good land had been stolen and given to white farmers; no African had votes; it was a criminal offence to have a skilled job and now we lecture Zimbabwe on democracy … it’s totally hypocrisy!”
Benn said his heroes were “great model leaders” Mandela, Ghandi and Tutu, “none of them European and none of them white”.
He added: “I think it’s very important to remember that teaching is the key thing, history is made by teachers and movements and not by political leaders.”
Benn, currently president of the Stop the War Coalition, has met all three men, and Ghandi in particular left a mark on him – but he doesn’t remember exactly what India’s pre-eminent political and spiritual leader said to him.
Benn, who was MP in the House of Commons for almost 50 years, said: “Ghandi was sitting on the floor, and I sat down and listened to him. I can’t remember what he said but the power of the man, and the power of none violence is huge in the world.”
Story from : NEWZIMBABWE.COM NEWS:
Published On: Monday, July 06, 2009 11:00 AM GMT
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news/news.aspx?newsID=564
© New Zimbabwe News
Sunday, 5 July 2009
UK Policy on Zimbabwe (2002 document)
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UK POLICY ON ZIMBABWE
1. Introduction
Since coming to power in 1997, the UK Government under Anthony Blair has
pursued the following policy objectives in its relations with Zimbabwe and the
ZANU (PF) Government under President Robert Gabriel Mugabe:
• to destabilize and derail the Government’s land reform programme to give
white farmers extended monopoly over Zimbabwe’s most fertile arable land;
• to perpetuate the marginalisation of the black African majority in rural areas to
form a huge reserve for cheap agricultural labour;
• to remove ZANU (PF) and President Mugabe from power and replace them
with the more pliant and directionless MDC and its president, Morgan
Tsvangirai;
• to use coercive diplomacy in the EU, the Commonwealth, and the United
States to conscript them to impose declared and undeclared sanctions on the
Government and people of Zimbabwe;
• to manipulate the IMF, the World Bank and other financial institutions to
withdraw loans and balance of payment support to Zimbabwe to cripple its
economy and generate widespread domestic discontent and disillusionment
against the ZANU (PF) Government and President Robert Gabriel Mugabe;
• to stunt the growth of genuine democracy, the rule of law and people–
empowerment as a means to create a human rights and governance crisis in
Zimbabwe and the isolation of the Zimbabwe Government internationally;
• to employ its immense print and electronic media out–reach to lie about and
demonise Zimbabwe to incite international hostility against the Government;
and
• to fund non–governmental organisations to arouse and incite internal
domestic upheavals to make Zimbabwe ungovernable.
Over the same period, the Zimbabwe Government under ZANU (PF) and
President Robert Mugabe has pursued the following policy objectives in its
relations with the United Kingdom:
• to draw to the UK Government’s attention its obligations to fund the land
reform programme and to compensate white farmers whose land Government
would acquire for redistribution to the landless black Africans, as agreed
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during the Lancaster House Conference on the Independence of Zimbabwe in
1979;
• to convince the UK Government that the redistribution of land to the landless
black Africans was a bilateral agenda between the UK and Zimbabwe and
should be undertaken as such, with the international community having to get
involved only at the joint invitation by the UK and Zimbabwe governments;
• to convince the UK Government that the redistribution of land to the landless
black Africans could not be delayed beyond 2000 and that any delay would
see the landless peasants taking the law into their own hands through
spontaneous land occupations and the eviction of white farmers from the
land; and
• to convince the UK Government that the Zimbabwe Government is committed
to democracy, non–racism and social justice, noting that the struggle for the
independence of Zimbabwe sought to establish these values in Zimbabwe.
In pursuit of these objectives, the Zimbabwe Government has maintained its
appeal to the United Kingdom Government to relate to Zimbabwe more
constructively by:
• entering into direct bilateral dialogue on all outstanding aspects of the land
redistribution process, and especially:
(a) the payment of compensation to white farmers whose land has been
acquired for resettlement;
(b) the rehabilitation of former farm workers rendered jobless and food
insecure by the land resettlement programme;
(c) the extension of start – up support and provision of continuous back – up
support to the new black farmers;
(d) the provision of infrastructure, especially roads, clinics, schools and
marketing facilities in newly settled areas; and
(e) the extension of continuous humanitarian assistance especially to
cushion the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Zimbabwe has repeatedly called upon the UK Government to discontinue its
covert and overt actions to cause change of Government in Zimbabwe,
especially because both the Parliament and President of Zimbabwe were put into
office by the choice of the majority and through sound democratic processes.
That the MDC’s president, Morgan Tsvangirai, lost the March 2002 Presidential
Elections should be accepted without pique, or vengeance because it was the
result of the people’s choice expressed in a free and non-coercive manner
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through a secure ballot. The majority of external governmental and non-
governmental election observers judged the Presidential Elections positively, with
the exception of those with the pre–meditated mission to find fault with them,
especially if Morgan Tsvangirai lost.
Contrary to the policy of the Zimbabwe Government to engage the Blair
Government, Blair’s policy on Zimbabwe has been openly hostile to the
Zimbabwe Government since 1997 when he came to power in the United
Kingdom.
In addition to disowning British obligations towards the redistribution of land as
agreed at Lancaster House in 1979, the Blair Government set upon a determined
course of action to cause a change of Government in Zimbabwe. With every
effort of the Government of Zimbabwe to remind him of his country’s obligations
to Zimbabwe under the Lancaster House Agreement, Prime Minister Blair’s
determination to remove President Mugabe became more and more vicious and
relentless.
We will illustrate the issues raised above in the remainder of this paper.
2. Blair and the Land Crisis in Zimbabwe
Contrary to the claim by Tony Blair’s government that Zimbabwe’s problems are
of its own making, it is very clear that Britain and particularly, Blair’s government,
is at the core of Zimbabwe’s economic and political crisis, either as a form of
vengeance over loss of colony or as a personal grudge against President Robert
Mugabe and his government or simply as a means to satisfy Britain’s desire to
have a trouble spot elsewhere in the world as a popularity gimmick to rally the
British electorate behind Blair. The Blair government has embarked on a massive
international diplomatic and media campaign to deny this allegation and blame
the crisis in the country on the Government’s land reform programme. Although it
has repeatedly claimed that it is not opposed to land reform in Zimbabwe, an
examination of the UK’s actions towards Zimbabwe since 1980 would reveal that
it has always been Britain’s policy to delay the land reform programme by
pursuing a gradualist approach which would maintain the status quo or take at
least 150 years to deliver land to the landless black majority.
The seeds of this gradualist approach were sown at the Lancaster House
Conference through the inclusion of the following conditions in the agreements
which brought about Zimbabwe’s independence:
• Land acquisition was to be on a willing–seller/willing-buyer basis during the
first ten years of independence. This provision, which was enshrined in the
Lancaster House Constitution, severely constrained the Government’s ability
to acquire land for resettlement purposes as farmers were either unwilling to
sell their land or asked for exorbitant prices.
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• The Government of Zimbabwe was to provide counterpart funds and match
British funding dollar for pound. Due to inadequate resources, the new
Government could not allocate enough resources from its meagre budget to
match British funding, resulting in only £26.5 million out of the £30 million
pledged by the British Government for land acquisition on a willing–
seller/willing-buyer basis being utilised. The balance of £3.5 was eventually
not disbursed after the programme hit a snag.
As part of this strategy, the British also sent a number of technical missions to
Zimbabwe, whose overt intention was to show British interest in the land reform
programme, when, in fact, the strategic objective was to complicate matters to
achieve the delay or derailment of the programme. A case in point was the 1988
Overseas’ Development Assistance (ODA) sponsored Land Resettlement in
Zimbabwe, Evaluation Report by J Cusworth and J Walker of Bradford
University in the UK, which concluded that the programme had a high economic
rate of return (12.5%) compared to other development programmes on the
continent and had benefited the rural poor. However, latching onto the mission’s
observation that the first phase of resettlement had “little or no impact on the
plight of the communal areas that still suffer from land degradation due to
population pressure”, a point the Government of Zimbabwe had also emphasised
in seeking additional funds to complete the land reform programme, the then
British Overseas Development Minister Lynda Chalker, wrote to the then
Zimbabwe Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development, the late Dr
Bernard Chidzero, in 1992 outlining her government’s proposals on reforming the
land reform programme.
A second ODA Land Appraisal Mission, comprising J Cusworth, M Adams, E
Cassidy, M Lowcock and F Tempest was dispatched to Zimbabwe in 1996 to
carryout further evaluation of the land reform programme. As in 1988, the
mission also concluded that the programme had benefited mostly the landless
rural poor.
A Zimbabwean delegation subsequently went to London in 1996 to present a
report on the institutional and other reforms that the Government had put in place
to improve the effectiveness of the land reform programme as suggested by
Lynda Chalker, but the report was not discussed as the British authorities
preferred to concentrate on a review of assistance policy and new
conditionalities. Lynda Chalker’s letter marked the end of donor funding for the
land reform programme and any funds disbursed afterwards were solely for the
purpose of completing on – going projects. Nevertheless, dialogue between the
two countries continued, but the Conservative Party was defeated in the 1997
general elections before concluding negotiations on new funding for the land
reform programme. By that time only 3, 5 million hectares had been acquired for
resettlement.
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With the coming into office of Tony Blair’s government following New Labour’s
election victory in 1997, the British Government cut off all meaningful dialogue
with Zimbabwe as it repudiated Britain’s colonial responsibility to fund land
reform in Zimbabwe as agreed at Lancaster House. In what was then described
by the Economist magazine as imperial amnesia, the new British Minister for
Development, Ms Claire Short, wrote to the then Minister of Lands, Agriculture
and Rural Resettlement of Zimbabwe, Honourable Kumbirai Kangai, stating her
Government’s policy as follows:
“I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special
responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a
new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former
colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were
colonised not colonisers.”
In its attempt to evade its colonial responsibility, the British Government has
sought to rewrite the Lancaster House agreement, declaring boldly in an undated
“Memorandum on Zimbabwe”:
“The UK Government accepts, and has always accepted, that land reform is
essential if Zimbabwe is to develop to the benefit of all its citizens. But it
has never accepted that the solution is to hand over large sums of money
to the Zimbabwe Government on an unconditional basis. We did not agree
this at Lancaster House in 1980 and we will not in future. We made clear
that funding for land reform was beyond the capacity of any single donor.”
This position was reiterated in a note verbale sent to Diplomatic Missions and
International Organisations accredited to Zimbabwe on 23 October 2002 saying:
“At the Lancaster House Conference in 1979, the British Government
outlined its support for land reform. Lord Carrington, then British Foreign
Secretary, drew attention to the fact that any serious land resettlement
programme would be beyond the scope of any one donor to fund. But the
British Government undertook to support the efforts of the Government of
Zimbabwe to obtain international assistance.”
British duplicity is best noticed and understood when it is recalled that the country
which publicly undertook to mobilize international assistance towards
Zimbabwe’s land reform programme is the same country which, at the same
time, is leading an international hate-campaign against Zimbabwe and its land
reform programme.
The Blair Government has been roundly criticised over its “imperial amnesia” not
only by the Government of Zimbabwe but also by prominent British politicians
such as Lord Owen, Foreign Secretary under the Labour Government of Jim
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Callaghan (1977 – 1999), who, in a newspaper article on 23 April 2000,
unequivocally stated:
“The last Labour Government in 1977 under Jim Callaghan promised
substantial sums: £75 million pounds from Britain and US$520 million from
the United States”.
Similarly, Lord Peter Carrington, former British Foreign Secretary, who brokered
the Lancaster House Agreement, has called on the UK government to meet its
promises in helping to pay for land resettlement and agricultural reform.
Carrington told SABC news on 29 October 2002 that the programme was started
in good faith – but was halted amid suspicions over how the funds were used,
adding:
“There was a disproportionate amount of good arable land in the hands of
the white farmers and what was proposed was that we should help not pay
entirely but help out with compensation for those farmers. And the
Americans incidentally said they would do the same thing. And this went
all right, I mean we did help for some time.”
In spite of the suspicions in White Hall that land reform was benefiting “Mugabe’s
cronies,” Carrington, a member of the British House of Lords and the Zimbabwe
Democracy Trust, an organisation formed in April 2000 to fuel dissent in
Zimbabwe, said that the payments should go ahead, but directly to farmers
whose land has been acquired for resettlement.
“You could help them in some way, and we always envisioned spending
the money in this way and it seemed to me sensible to do so. But I got a
very wintry answer from the government about this, and I am wondering
what else I can do”, he said.
Criticism of the British policy of meddling itself in the land reform programme in
Zimbabwe has also come from an unlikely quarter, Commercial Farmers Union
Director David Hasluck, who recently lashed out at the British government for
approaching the land question in Zimbabwe without regard to the country’s
history and British commitments made at Lancaster House.
For its part, the Government of Zimbabwe was taken aback by the new British
position as it repudiated the cornerstone of the Lancaster House Agreement and
effectively removed any prospects of resuming co-operation on the basis of that
agreement. However, the Government of Zimbabwe accepted this reality and
following a meeting in Brussels between His Excellency President Robert
Mugabe and the then European Commissioner for Development, Professor Joao
de Deus Pinheiro in January 1998, decided to appeal to the international
community for assistance through an International Land Donors’ Conference that
was held in Harare from 9–11 September 1998. The Donors’ Conference agreed
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on basic principles for international assistance to the land reform programme and
set up a task force of major donors to prepare documents for a two-year
Inception Phase, which would kick-off Phase II of a donor supported land
acquisition and resettlement programme. Although the UK, whose reluctance to
join the other donors had been evident throughout the conference, refused to join
this task force, it exerted a negative influence on the other donors by proposing
that a consulting firm be appointed to do an economic returns analysis of the
programme to date and assess how far it alleviated poverty among the chronic
poor in Zimbabwe, thus effectively killing the Inception Phase in its tracks. As a
result, nothing was achieved, not even the purchase of the 118 farms then on
offer.
Having failed to secure donor funding for the land reform programme as a result
of these British machinations at the Land Donors’ Conference and being keenly
aware of the growing impatience and land hunger among the landless black
majority, the Parliament of Zimbabwe on 6 April 2000 amended the Constitution
of Zimbabwe to empower the Government to compulsorily acquire land for
resettlement purposes and absolve it of any responsibility for paying
compensation for land acquired for this purpose. The Constitutional amendment
placed responsibility for compensating farmers whose land would be acquired for
resettlement on the British Government, while the Government of Zimbabwe
would only be required to pay for improvements on the land. This prompted the
Blair Government, for the first time, to invite Zimbabwe to send a team to London
to discuss funding for the land reform programme following a meeting in Cairo
between His Excellency President Mugabe and then British Foreign Secretary
Robin Cook brokered by President Obasanjo of Nigeria.
However, no material progress was achieved at the London meeting as the
British Government refused to offer any funds for the land reform programme
beyond the £30 million pounds already offered to Zimbabwe in 1999 in the
country programme published by DFID, whose stringent conditionalities rendered
it totally inaccessible. £5 million already offered but still not distributed to non-
governmental organisations and civil societies in Zimbabwe was also thrown in to
bring the total to £36 million. The British Government stubbornly refused to move
forward and evaded the issue of Britain’s colonial responsibilities. In the end, the
Zimbabwean delegation left London with the conviction that the meeting had
been a stage-managed media circus designed by the British Government to play
to the British public, which had already been primed to expect a tough position.
The concluding statement issued on 27 April 2000 at the end of the meeting was
illustrative in this respect:
“The UK delegation reiterated its commitment to enhanced developmental
support for Zimbabwe, as set out in the DFID (Department for International
Development) Zimbabwe Country Strategy Paper. This could provide an
additional 36 million pounds over the next two years for the UK
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development programme in Zimbabwe provided the conditions are met for
moving to the high case scenario”.
Similarly, although Britain accepted the conclusion reached at Abuja on 6
September 2001 that land was at the core of the crisis in Zimbabwe and
undertook to make a significant financial contribution to the land reform
programme as well as encourage other donors to do the same, it has not fulfilled
this obligation. By contrast, the Government of Zimbabwe has already fulfilled all
its obligations arising from the Abuja meeting as evidenced by the lessening of
tensions within the country.
It is quite clear from the foregoing that it is an abiding objective of all British
Governments to delay the land reform programme in Zimbabwe. Delayed access
to land by the indigenous African majority would guarantee the continued
occupation of Zimbabwean land by Anglo-Saxons in Britain, and elsewhere in the
Anglo-Saxon diaspora.
It had always been hoped that with increasing population growth in rural areas,
more and more Africans would drift into commercial farmland as cheap labour.
The so-often repeated success and profitability of Zimbabwean commercial
agriculture was principally the result of African cheap labour. Most farm workers
were paid in salt, beans and mealie meal, with no cash left for them to send their
children to school, nor to clinics and hospitals for treatment.
The impoverishment of indigenous Africans became an abiding strategy of all
white colonial settler regimes who wanted to exploit African poverty and
backwardness to augment their profits and comfort.
No wonder agricultural production rose to such a flowery level, turning the
country into a bread basket for the entire region. It is therefore, primarily because
of profit considerations that the British are bitterly opposed to the land reform
programme as it would empower the majority of the people and reduce the
supply of cheap labour and by extension, the profits of white farmers.
3. Blair’s Pursuit of “Regime Change” in Zimbabwe
The coming into office of Tony Blair’s government in 1997 coincided with the
Government of Zimbabwe’s twin decisions to legally compulsorily acquire 1800
white owned farms for the resettlement of landless peasants and to send troops
to the DRC. This provoked the wrath of the British Government which had
encouraged Rwanda and Uganda to invade the DRC. The best minds were
assigned to come up with an effective strategy to cripple Zimbabwe’s economy
as well as bring down its Government. The policy framework of such a strategy
was well articulated by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw during a debate in the
House of Commons on 8 January 2002 when he said:
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“Our approach has been to internationalise the issue, while taking a firm
lead within all the international forums in which we speak. That is why the
General Affairs Council – the Foreign Affairs Council – of the European
Union is in train to take firm action on this; why I called a meeting of
Commonwealth Ministers for 20 December; why I have spelled out to the
House that if the situation in Zimbabwe continues to disintegrate we will
argue for Zimbabwe’s suspension from the Commonwealth.”
The Foreign Secretary added exasperatedly during the same debate:
“I repeat that I have been trying to ensure that Zimbabwe, not Britain, is
isolated for the terrible actions that President Mugabe and his henchmen
are taking. That has received the approbation of many Conservative Back
Benchers, as well as Labour Members. --- One of my key aims has been to
ensure that the issue ceases to be a bilateral one and is made an issue of
shared concern by the international community.”
The EU was immediately prevailed upon to commission a study on Zimbabwe in
1998 by the Conflict Prevention Network, a network of academic institutions, non-
governmental organisations and “independent experts”, which is part of the
European Union Analysis and Evaluation Centre. The CPN report entitled
“Zimbabwe – A Conflict Study of A Country Without Direction” was duly
presented to the EU’s Africa Working Group in December 1998 for use in making
recommendations on Zimbabwe. Of note was the EU report’s recommendation
that for things to go “right” in Zimbabwe, President Mugabe must go. This could
be done through civil society, notably the trade union movement or NGOs,
through organised urban uprisings, the implied possibility of discontent in the
armed forces, the exploitation of perceived rifts in the ruling ZANU (PF), and the
transformation of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions into a political party.
The prediction was that President Mugabe would not last till the 2002
Presidential Elections. The EU report singled out the land reform programme and
Zimbabwe’s involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo for special
mention as prime pretexts for their hostility towards Zimbabwe.
In the UK itself, the EU report’s recommendation to topple President Mugabe
was carried forward at Chatham House during a meeting of the Royal Institute of
International Affairs on 24 January 1999, whose theme was “Zimbabwe – Time
for Mugabe to Go?.” The meeting considered a number of options for achieving
this objective, including masterminding a military coup, upheavals in the streets
and manoeuvres within the ruling party, ZANU (PF). The Chatham House
meeting identified “confiscating” white – owned land and sending troops to the
DRC as underlying excuses for their attacks on the Zimbabwe Government. A
similar meeting held at the US State Department on 23 March 1999, obviously at
the instigation of the British, also deliberated on ways of removing President
Mugabe from power. The US State Department meeting resolved that the best
way for achieving this would be to work through NGOs, find ways to divide the
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Shonas and Ndebeles, probe the ruling party for weak spots with a view to
subverting it, and generally make Zimbabwe ungovernable. The conveners of the
US State Department meeting emphasised Zimbabwe’s presence in the DRC as
a problematic issue.
Other prominent personalities in the UK and the US with substantial economic
interests in Zimbabwe and ties to the Ian Smith’s racist Rhodesian regime,
stepped forward to implement these scenarios for “regime change” arising from
the recommendations of the EU report. Most notable among them are the
members of the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, who include four former British
Foreign Secretaries – Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Lord Douglas Hurd, Lord Peter
Carrington and Lord Geoffrey Howe as well as a former US Assistant Secretary
of State, Dr Chester Crocker. Other members are Sir John Collins, Lord Steel of
Aikwood, Lord Taylor of Warwick and Lady Soames. The primary mover in the
organisation is reputed to be Sir John Collins, the Zimbabwean Chairman of
National Power, the largest British energy company, which also has substantial
investments in Zimbabwe. Rifkind is involved with an Australian company which
has mining interests in Zimbabwe, while Chester Crocker sits on the Board of
Directors of Ashanti Goldfields, which owns gold mines in Zimbabwe. The
Zimbabwe Democracy Trust fostered the birth of the opposition MDC under the
pretext of promoting democracy and has orchestrated a well-funded advocacy for
that party through the private and international media with the intention of
demonising ZANU (PF) and undermining land reform in Zimbabwe.
For its part, the British government has not disguised its designs in Zimbabwe as
demonstrated by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s declaration during a question
and answer session in the House of Commons on 25 June 2002 that:
“What I would like to happen is very clear. I would like President Mugabe to
recognise the error of his ways and the disaster into which he has plunged
Zimbabwe. I would like him to leave office, allow elections to take place
immediately, stop interfering with humanitarian relief, get the farmers,
whether they are white, Indian or black, back on to the land ---- I am asked
how that would happen, but that is the point. I say to Opposition Members
that the issue for the international community is how we do this. That is the
truth of it.”
These sentiments were echoed by Tony Cunningham, MP for Workington, who
said during the same question and answer session:
“I am sure we would all agree that the sooner he (President Mugabe) goes,
the better, not just for Zimbabwe, but for the entire region.”
In pursuit of this objective therefore, the British government has exerted its
immense diplomatic and economic clout as well as control of global media to
demonise President Robert Mugabe, isolate Zimbabwe internationally and deny
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the country access to vital international financial support. First to be targeted at
the diplomatic level was the European Union, for the obvious reason that
members are required to act in concert on foreign policy matters under the
provisions of the Maastricht Treaty, the founding charter of the European Union,
thus forcing countries such as Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and
Spain, which have no quarrel with Zimbabwe, to support the British position.
Furthermore, the Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and its
former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP), though not yet
ratified by the majority of European Union countries, would give the EU
considerable leverage over Zimbabwe. The British government has achieved
some notable success on the Maastricht Treaty track, as evidenced by the EU’s
imposition of so – called “targeted sanctions” on Zimbabwe on 18 February 2002,
while its machinations on the Cotonou Agreement track were thwarted by the
Southern Africa group, which twice mobilised ACP countries to resist attempts by
British members of the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly to sponsor
condemnatory resolutions on Zimbabwe in March 2000 (Abuja) and October
2000 (Brussels). Most recently, the fifth ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary session,
which was scheduled to be held in Brussels on 25 November 2002, was
abandoned after ACP countries resisted attempts to prevent Zimbabwean
ministers from attending the meeting, despite threats by the head of the EU
parliamentary delegation, Glenys Kinnock, to withdraw development aid. This
setback on the Cotonou track notwithstanding, Jack Straw could, however,
assure the House of Commons during the question and answer session on 25
June 2002 that:
“The sanctions that I was able to ensure that the European Union imposed
in February are stronger and more extensive …”
In what was widely perceived as a racist onslaught on a black country by white
supremacists, the British government, with support from Australia, Canada and
New Zealand, also took its relentless campaign to isolate Zimbabwe to the
Commonwealth, with then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook falsely claiming in
February 2001 that he had agreed with Commonwealth Secretary General Don
McKinnon to place Zimbabwe on the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group’s
agenda, even though that body did not have the mandate to discuss the situation
in the country. CMAG was eventually prevailed upon to illegally discuss
Zimbabwe at its meeting in London on 30 January 2002 but rejected demands by
the UK and its allies to have Zimbabwe suspended from the Commonwealth.
Having failed to secure a suspension, Tony Blair took his campaign to the
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that was held at Coolum,
Australia from 1 – 4 March 2002. But tempers flared at Coolum over attempts by
the UK and its allies to prejudge the 9 – 10 March Presidential poll before it was
even held, with President Thabo Mbeki declaring that:
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“-- those inspired by notions of white supremacy are free to depart (leave
the Commonwealth) if they feel that membership of the association
reduces them to a repugnant position imposed by inferior blacks.”
He added that the outcry against the Commonwealth decision to set up a troika
to decide on how to deal with Zimbabwe after the election:
“-- reflected a stubborn and arrogant mindset at all times that the white
world must lead.”
A livid Tony Blair immediately broke with convention by distancing himself from
the customary end–of–summit consensus and attacked the 54–nation
organisation for postponing a decision on sanctions, saying he hoped the
Commonwealth would eventually:
“-- do the right thing. If it does not, its credibility is at issue; if it does not
act in circumstances where it is plain that a member country has held an
election which has not been fair.”
In a final broadside at African countries, which had stood by Zimbabwe, Tony
Blair told reporters before his departure from Coolum that:
“If there is any sense in which African countries appear to be ambivalent
towards good governance – that is the one thing that will undermine the
confidence of the western world in helping them. The credibility of my
country, investment in my country, doesn’t depend on Zimbabwe. But for
Africa it is a major issue, on which their credibility and the possibility of
investment flows depend. --- There are no half measures about democracy.
It is for Africa that if countries are not behaving democratically --- that we
are seen to act.”
This theme was picked up by a number of speakers in the House of Lords on 6
March 2002 after Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted in an address to the House
of Commons on the same day that he had failed to secure Zimbabwe’s
suspension at Coolum. Drawing heavily on claims by US Assistant Secretary of
State, Walter Kansteiner that:
“The road to NEPAD lies through Harare,”
several speakers called for strong linkages between support for NEPAD and firm
action on Zimbabwe. Most striking in this respect were the remarks by Lord Astor
of Hever who said:
“We must now make it clear that the kind of aid anticipated by NEPAD is
dependent on recipient governments demonstrating a return to good
governance and an acceptance of the will of democracy. --- It is imperative
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that we send the strongest possible message to the SADC countries that
they should take action against the man who threatens to plunge the entire
region into a catastrophic economic and political meltdown. All democratic
nations have a responsibility to try and preserve democracy wherever it is
threatened.”
The message was not lost on the primary sponsors of NEPAD, Presidents Mbeki
and Obasanjo, who, in spite of the endorsement of the outcome of the
Presidential elections by the official observer missions from their own countries,
voted to suspend Zimbabwe from the councils of the Commonwealth for a period
of twelve months, paving the way for an ecstatic Jack Straw to declare in the
House of Commons on 25 June 2002 that:
“One of the many things that we have done is to secure a situation
whereby the decision on the suspension of Zimbabwe from the councils of
the Commonwealth was taken not by us, not by the Commonwealth
Ministerial Action Group, of which the United Kingdom is a member, but by
a troika of the current chair of the Commonwealth, Prime Minister Howard
of Australia, and two key members – President Obasanjo of Nigeria and
President Mbeki of South Africa. It is hugely to their credit that they made
the decision that they did once the Commonwealth observers found that
the elections were not free and fair.”
Having secured the isolation of Zimbabwe in the West, the UK government
turned its attention to attacking Zimbabwe’s economy with the intention of
creating political instability in the country. To achieve this objective, the UK
enlisted the support of the United States, with which it enjoys a “special
transatlantic relationship,” in denying Zimbabwe access to international lines of
credit. The Bush Administration obliged by signing the Zimbabwe Democracy
and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 into law on 21 December 2001, which
among other things, instructed American officials in international financial
institutions to:
“oppose and vote against any extension by the respective institution of any
loan, credit, or guarantee to the government of Zimbabwe ---- and to vote
against any reduction or cancellation of indebtedness owed by the
Government of Zimbabwe.”
The Act also authorised President Bush to:
“fund an independent and free press and electronic media in Zimbabwe.”
US$6 million was subsequently granted for aid to “democracy and governance
programmes,” a euphemism for groups seeking to topple the Government of
Zimbabwe. Also acting in terms of the same law, the Bush Administration on 22
February 2002 imposed “targeted sanctions” on senior government, ZANU (PF),
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business and church leaders following the imposition of similar sanctions by the
European Union on 18 February 2002.
The impact of the US policy of “opposing any extension of loans, credit or
guarantees to Zimbabwe” by international financial institutions was immediately
evident as the International Monetary Fund, which on 24 September 2001 had
declared Zimbabwe ineligible to use the general resources of the IMF and
removed Zimbabwe from the list of countries eligible to borrow resources under
the Fund’s Poverty and Growth Facility over non–payment of US$53 million in
debt service payments, followed this up with a declaration of non–cooperation
and suspension of technical assistance to Zimbabwe on 13 June 2002. The
IMF’s declaration of non–cooperation was intended to discourage lending by
other financial institutions, putting additional pressure on Zimbabwe’s economy.
Due to the decline in foreign trade and the denial of credit, unemployment in
Zimbabwe rose to 70 percent, while three fourths of the population were
classified as poor.
A relentless campaign of negative publicity against Zimbabwe mounted at the
same time the British government embarked on its diplomatic campaign to isolate
Zimbabwe internationally also created perceptions of instability, which scared
away investors and led to capital flight from Zimbabwe. Foreign direct investment
in the country slumped from a peak of US$426 million in 1998 to US$5, 4 million
in 2001 as investors fled from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. A number of
company closures in the last two years are suspected to have been motivated
primarily by political considerations, not unfavourable macro economic
conditions. Similarly, the many travel advisories issued by western Embassies in
Harare warning citizens not to travel to Zimbabwe also served the same purpose
of denying Zimbabwe access to foreign currency. This policy is set to continue for
the foreseeable future following Jack Straw’s assurances to British
parliamentarians on 14 March 2002 that:
“But I can tell the House today that we will continue to oppose any access
by Zimbabwe to international financial resources until a more
representative government is in place.”
In the mean time, the crippling foreign currency shortage has made it difficult for
Zimbabwe to service loan repayments, leading to the withdrawal of international
credit facilities for the importation of fuel, electricity as well as capital and
commercial goods. This has led to stunted industrial activity, low exports, high
interest rates, high inflation, company closures, massive lay-offs and a crippling
brain drain, which are intended to arouse discontent against the Government and
political polarisation within Zimbabwe.
While the British government likes to blame President Mugabe for the worsening
economic situation in the country, it is nevertheless quick to assume credit for
creating this situation. For example, in a spirited response to shadow Foreign
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Secretary Michael Ancram’s allegations in the House of Commons on 25 June
2002 that sanctions were not working, Jack Straw had this to say:
“A year ago, President Mugabe expected to be treated, and was treated in
capitals around the world, as a legitimate head of state. Today, he is
condemned by the Commonwealth, the European Union and the United
States. He is increasingly shunned by other African governments and has
been declared by the International Monetary Fund to be in non–cooperation
and subject to sanctions and suspensions. That international consensus
has come about not least as a result of the painstaking diplomatic activity
of the British Government.”
Having created the conditions for disaffection and political instability in
Zimbabwe, the British government now intervened directly in the internal affairs
of the country with the intention of subverting its democratic processes. Working
through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, an organisation that
receives 95% of its funding from the British government and whose board of
governors includes representatives from each of the three major political parties
in the UK, the British government clandestinely poured substantial amounts of
money into the opposition MDC for use in a combination of violent campaigning,
bribery and smear tactics against the legitimate government of Zimbabwe. At the
behest of the Blair regime, the Foundation financed sorties into Zimbabwe by
operatives, organised seminars and assisted in designing and printing political
party cards for the MDC. Some of the Foundation’s “projects”, a euphemism for
subversive activities, were brazenly published on its website www.wfd.org. The
website was subsequently cleaned up after the Government of Zimbabwe
presented the material to the international community as evidence of British
interference in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe. However, the following entries
remain indelibly etched in the minds of many Zimbabweans:
Zimbabwe: DOA Further Assistance to Oversee Election Organisation: £13
876.00 to fund the Conservative Party to provide the opposition to Robert
Mugabe, in Zimbabwe, with support from like-minded democratic parties in
Africa;
Zimbabwe: Opposition Visit to UK: £4 460.00 to fund the Conservative Party
to provide assistance to the opposition forces in Zimbabwe ahead of
presidential and other elections by bringing to the UK leaders of two
opposition parties for briefings; £4 980.00 to provide assistance to
opposition forces in Zimbabwe ahead of presidential and other elections by
bringing to the UK key leaders of the movements for briefings on the
promotion of democratic change in Zimbabwe;
MDC Party Development: £30 000.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist the
MDC to consolidate party structures throughout the country;
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MDC Women Candidates: £5 263.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist the
MDC to produce campaign material specifically for women candidates and
voters in the run-up to the General Election in June 2000;
MDC Purchase of Photocopier: £4 375.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist
the MDC in Zimbabwe to purchase a photocopier to produce materials in
preparation for the elections in June 2000;
MDC Elections Assistance: £8 594.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist the
MDC to increase political awareness through the radio, in advance of the
elections in June 2000;
MDC Production of Leaflets: £18 750.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist
the MDC to produce leaflets in preparation for the election in June 2000;
MDC Media Communications for Women: £7 018.00 to fund the Labour
Party to assist the MDC in targeting women voters through media
communications to encourage them to vote in the election due in June
2000;
Training of MDC Election Monitors: £19 982.00 to fund the Labour Party to
assist the MDC to train party representatives on election monitoring
techniques for the June 2000 elections;
Zimbabwe - Membership Cards for the MDC: £10 000.00 to fund the Labour
Party to assist the MDC to produce membership cards before their first
national conference in early 2000;
Training for MDC Election Monitors: £10 000.00 to fund the Liberal
Democrats to assist the MDC to train party representatives on election
monitoring techniques for the General Election due in June 2000;
Training for MDC Election Monitors: £10 000.00 to fund the Labour Party to
provide further assistance to the MDC in a project part-funded with the UK
Liberal Democrats to continue to train MDC party representatives in
election monitoring techniques for the June 2000 elections;
Support for Youth and Women’s Chairpersons of MDC: £12 600.00 to
provide salary support through the Liberal Democrats for the Youth and
Women’s chairpersons for the MDC in Zimbabwe in 2001;
MDC Voter Registration and Women’s Outreach: £12 300.00 to fund the
Conservative Party to assist the MDC for voter registration by providing a
full-time co-ordinator and also facilitating a women’s outreach programme
in advance of the Presidential election;
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MDC Provincial Workshops: £10 625.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist
the MDC to organize workshops on election strategy in preparation for the
forthcoming Presidential elections starting from July 2001;
MDC Elections Assistance: £10 119.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist
the MDC to organize a women’s and youth conference in 2001 in the run-up
to the Presidential election;
MDC Production of Materials: £12 649.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist
the MDC to produce materials in preparation for the Presidential election.
The Westminster Foundation for Democracy also funded NGOs such as the
Foundation for Democracy in Zimbabwe, (FODEZI), which received £3000.00
to carry out a range of activities, including voter education, radio and TV
programmes, training seminars for young potential political leaders and
public meetings, and ZimRights, which received £10 000.00 towards the
purchase of offices, and £110 368.00 to support its activities for the period
1997-1999.
The British government has also masterminded the formation and funding of
subversive organisations such as the Amani Trust, and provided financial
support, through European Union channels, to numerous other “non –
governmental organisations” whose sole purpose appears to be to agitate for the
unconstitutional overthrow of President Mugabe through the abuse of
humanitarian assistance. These organisations have already sowed discord in
communities where they are operating by distributing food aid on the basis of
political affiliation, as well as giving aid stocks to the opposition for distribution as
part of its campaign.
Again through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the British
Government sought to use the media to distort the democratic process in
Zimbabwe. £9 800.00 was provided to enable “Horizon” magazine (described
by WFD as an independent political journal) to gain full benefit from new
equipment, and £9 400.00 for the magazine to undertake a six - month
marketing campaign to increase its sales and revenue from advertising. A
further £13 999.00 was disbursed to purchase office equipment, cover a
percentage of overheads and pay the salary for a full-time business
manager during 1999.
When the premises of The Daily News, a British-funded opposition paper, were
bombed by unknown criminals, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy
disbursed £20 000.00 to cover the costs of sending two “experts” to Zimbabwe to
assess the damage. At that stage, the British High Commissioner openly
acknowledged “British interest” in the opposition newspaper.
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A “Media Reform Campaign” was also funded by the WFD to the tune of £5
000.00 to enable the Media Institute of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe to
produce a range of materials to be used in its media law reform campaign.
The materials were distributed in 2000, the year of the parliamentary elections.
In spite of this massive array of interventionist measures in support of the MDC,
the British government was still not confident about the MDC’s ability to remove
President Mugabe from power by legitimate means and sought to achieve that
outcome by trying to rig the March 2002 Presidential elections through
underhand tactics such as the foiled attempt to suspend Zimbabwe from the
Commonwealth at Coolum a few days before the elections; assertions by Tony
Blair at Coolum, which were later parroted by Prime Minister Helen Clark of New
Zealand, that the elections would only be judged to have been free and fair if the
MDC won; and sponsorship of fake opinion polls by the Financial Gazette just
before the elections, which predicted a “crushing defeat” for President Mugabe in
the elections. Earlier in February 2002, the British government’s media allies at
the National Post in Canada, had, in an editorial on 22 February 2002,
attempted to incite the Zimbabwean people to overthrow President Mugabe or
even kill him, saying:
“But Zimbabwe is not a totalitarian state such as North Korea: When it
becomes plain to almost all Zimbabweans that Mr Mugabe is at the root of
their problems, he will be overthrown or killed. Either outcome would
lessen the country’s miseries and open the door for the nation’s diplomatic
and economic rehabilitation.”
To vent their ire after the people of Zimbabwe resoundingly voted to retain
Robert Mugabe as President in a massive show of confidence in his land reform
policies, the British Government and its allies refused to recognise the outcome
of the elections and vowed to intensify their efforts to topple him from power. This
has seen the UK, which broke off diplomatic relations with Libya over the
Lockerbie bombing in 1988, making overtures to the Libyan government in order
to wreck the friendship between that country and Zimbabwe. The assessment
was that Libya would be prepared to dump Zimbabwe in exchange for
normalised relations with the West. A message was subsequently put out for the
obvious consumption of UK watchers in Tripoli when Jack Straw told the House
of Commons on 25 June 2002 that:
“Libya’s route back into the international community partly depends on its
showing a responsible attitude towards Zimbabwe and in respect of Sierra
Leone. We are aware of that, and it is a point that has repeatedly been
made to Libya in the dialogue that is taking place.”
Furthermore, junior Foreign Minister Mike O’Brien, in an apparent attempt to woo
Libya towards Britain’s campaign to dent Zimbabwe’s international image, raised
the ante when he told reporters in South Africa on 3 August 2002 that:
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“We have decided that Gaddafi no longer wants to be involved in
international terrorism. Gaddafi has condemned al – Qaeda and expressed
outrage over the September 11 attacks. We’ve been seeking to engage
Libya across a number of issues following a hard headed assessment of
Libya’s position. We hope Libya will engage seriously with the West and
indeed other countries --- and that will mean a country that has a fairly
large degree of influence in the Arab world and Africa will move away from
being a pariah state towards helping the international community and
preserving peace.”
In what is a logical step in the script to complete the international isolation of
Zimbabwe as well as consolidate and broaden declared and non–declared
sanctions already imposed by the EU, the US and white Commonwealth
countries, the British government has now shifted the focus of its attack to the
United Nations Security Council, where it recently demanded that Zimbabwe be
required to respond to the report of the UN Panel on the Illegal Plunder of DRC
Resources, the only country required to do so. The recent appeal by Morgan
Tsvangirai to the Security Council for UN intervention to stop “state sponsored
violence against the defenceless people of Zimbabwe” was obviously
orchestrated, at the instigation of the British government, to create justification for
making Zimbabwe a Security Council issue.
4. President Mugabe’s response to British hostility to the Land Reform
Programme
In spite of the intense British hostility to the land reform programme in Zimbabwe,
President Mugabe has remained resolute in his efforts to redistribute land to the
landless indigenous black majority and has eloquently and courageously told
Blair to end his government’s colonial policies on Zimbabwe and to mind his own
business and that of his country and keep his “pink nose out of our affairs”. He
has also maintained that Britain has a continuing obligation to pay compensation
to the white farmers whom successive British governments have encouraged to
forcibly occupy Zimbabwean land. In September 2002, he took Zimbabwe’s case
to the international community, telling delegates at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg that landlessness is at the
root of the endemic poverty and underdevelopment which black Zimbabweans
have endured through the full century of British occupation of their land. Judging
by the thunderous applause which punctuated his now famous speech at
Johannesburg, President Mugabe spoke for the poor, dispossessed and
downtrodden in all parts of the world and struck a resonant code in the hearts of
many Heads of State, business leaders and civic society groups attending the
WSSD, when he said that:
“ --- we in Zimbabwe understand only too well that sustainable
development is not possible without agrarian reforms that acknowledge in
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our case, that land comes first before all else, and that all else grows from
and off the land. This is the one asset that not only defines the
Zimbabwean personality and demarcates sovereignty but also an asset that
has a direct bearing on the fortunes of the poor and prospects for their
immediate empowerment and sustainable development. Indeed, ours is an
agrarian economy, an imperative that renders the issue of access to land
paramount. --- But we say this as Zimbabweans, we have fought for our
land. We have fought for our sovereignty. Small as we are, we have won
our independence and we are prepared to shed our blood in sustenance
and maintenance and protection of that independence. ---We don’t mind
having and bearing sanctions, banning us from Europe. We are not
Europeans. We have not asked for an inch of Europe, any square inch of
that territory. So Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe. ”
Through the Fast Track Land Reform Programme, President Mugabe and his
government have accorded the majority black Zimbabwean people’s grievances
the urgency they deserved and exposed the folly and futility of Britain’s gradualist
policies towards the eradication of poverty among his landless compatriots. As a
result, over 1.6 million people have benefited from the land reform programme
between July 2000 and August 2002, ending a century of landlessness and
poverty for the Zimbabwean people.
Having waged a bitter and protracted armed struggle to bring democracy to
Zimbabwe, President Mugabe and his government have relentlessly stuck to the
principle of democracy, facing the opposition five times in parliamentary elections
and twice in Presidential elections, which he and his party, ZANU (PF), won
convincingly. The people of Zimbabwe have hailed these elections as free and
fair, while the progressive world, including governments and civil societies, have
similarly hailed the elections as free, fair and legitimate and recognised the
verdict of the national electorate. At the same time, the international community
has applauded the fact that there is not a single political prisoner in Zimbabwe,
showing that Zimbabweans enjoy freedoms of speech and association.
President Mugabe and his government have also exposed the neo–colonial
agenda of the British government and warned the EU, the Commonwealth and
the United Nations not to join Britain’s attacks on Zimbabwe. Hence, he won the
sympathy and support of many nations, both big and small, when he appealed to
the 57
th
Session of the UN General Assembly to:
“ --- convey to Britain and especially to its current Prime Minister, Mr Tony
Blair, that Zimbabwe ceased to be a British colony in 1980 after Prince
Charles had gracefully lowered the British flag called the Union Jack. He
should also please be informed that the people of Zimbabwe waged an
armed revolutionary struggle for their independence and stand ready to
defend it in the same way. We want to be left in peace to carryout our just
reforms and developmental plans as we peacefully interact and cooperate
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with other countries within the region, the African continent and the
international community. We refuse to be an extension of Europe.”
Although the EU, the UN and white Commonwealth countries are quick to deny
that they are pursuing a British agenda in Zimbabwe, it is an undeniable fact that
the UK has been on a crusade to entice and conscript the EU and the
Commonwealth to take sides in its bilateral differences with Zimbabwe and has
succeeded in doing so. In several instances, Britain itself has taken no direct
actions on Zimbabwe, but by ruse and stratagem made the EU and the
Commonwealth fight it out with Zimbabwe using declared and undeclared
economic sanctions.
By leading the struggle for economic liberation on the side of black
Zimbabweans, President Mugabe has inspired the poor and dispossessed blacks
in Africa and the Diaspora to assume their individual and collective dignity and to
struggle continuously for economic emancipation, for their land rights and for
reparations against slavery and colonial subjugation. His call for just land reforms
in Zimbabwe has therefore, been echoed by the landless in Kenya, Namibia,
South Africa and among dispossessed indigenous communities in countries such
as Australia and Canada.
Leading a weakened small country, which refuses to bow down to international
pressure in the conviction that right is on its side, President Mugabe has assured
the weak nations of the world, especially those of Africa, the Caribbean and the
Pacific, that there can be equal sovereignty between big and small nations and
that principle, honesty and determination can be the bases of strength for leaders
of both small and big nations who respect human rights and human dignity and
subject themselves to international laws and conventions. President Mugabe and
his government have always and continue to subject themselves to the values,
conventions, protocols and resolutions of the United Nations, the African Union
and SADC and join them in condemning attempts of some countries to interfere
in the internal affairs of others, especially the actions of those who seek to
impose their will upon others through military processes.
And yet, President Mugabe is the leader and Zimbabwe is the country Mr Blair
and Britain want to demonise, and condemn. We urge the progressive
international community to see through all this British hypocrisy and duplicity and
relate with Zimbabwe in a mutually supportive way, and with respect.
MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
12 December 2002
1
UK POLICY ON ZIMBABWE
1. Introduction
Since coming to power in 1997, the UK Government under Anthony Blair has
pursued the following policy objectives in its relations with Zimbabwe and the
ZANU (PF) Government under President Robert Gabriel Mugabe:
• to destabilize and derail the Government’s land reform programme to give
white farmers extended monopoly over Zimbabwe’s most fertile arable land;
• to perpetuate the marginalisation of the black African majority in rural areas to
form a huge reserve for cheap agricultural labour;
• to remove ZANU (PF) and President Mugabe from power and replace them
with the more pliant and directionless MDC and its president, Morgan
Tsvangirai;
• to use coercive diplomacy in the EU, the Commonwealth, and the United
States to conscript them to impose declared and undeclared sanctions on the
Government and people of Zimbabwe;
• to manipulate the IMF, the World Bank and other financial institutions to
withdraw loans and balance of payment support to Zimbabwe to cripple its
economy and generate widespread domestic discontent and disillusionment
against the ZANU (PF) Government and President Robert Gabriel Mugabe;
• to stunt the growth of genuine democracy, the rule of law and people–
empowerment as a means to create a human rights and governance crisis in
Zimbabwe and the isolation of the Zimbabwe Government internationally;
• to employ its immense print and electronic media out–reach to lie about and
demonise Zimbabwe to incite international hostility against the Government;
and
• to fund non–governmental organisations to arouse and incite internal
domestic upheavals to make Zimbabwe ungovernable.
Over the same period, the Zimbabwe Government under ZANU (PF) and
President Robert Mugabe has pursued the following policy objectives in its
relations with the United Kingdom:
• to draw to the UK Government’s attention its obligations to fund the land
reform programme and to compensate white farmers whose land Government
would acquire for redistribution to the landless black Africans, as agreed
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during the Lancaster House Conference on the Independence of Zimbabwe in
1979;
• to convince the UK Government that the redistribution of land to the landless
black Africans was a bilateral agenda between the UK and Zimbabwe and
should be undertaken as such, with the international community having to get
involved only at the joint invitation by the UK and Zimbabwe governments;
• to convince the UK Government that the redistribution of land to the landless
black Africans could not be delayed beyond 2000 and that any delay would
see the landless peasants taking the law into their own hands through
spontaneous land occupations and the eviction of white farmers from the
land; and
• to convince the UK Government that the Zimbabwe Government is committed
to democracy, non–racism and social justice, noting that the struggle for the
independence of Zimbabwe sought to establish these values in Zimbabwe.
In pursuit of these objectives, the Zimbabwe Government has maintained its
appeal to the United Kingdom Government to relate to Zimbabwe more
constructively by:
• entering into direct bilateral dialogue on all outstanding aspects of the land
redistribution process, and especially:
(a) the payment of compensation to white farmers whose land has been
acquired for resettlement;
(b) the rehabilitation of former farm workers rendered jobless and food
insecure by the land resettlement programme;
(c) the extension of start – up support and provision of continuous back – up
support to the new black farmers;
(d) the provision of infrastructure, especially roads, clinics, schools and
marketing facilities in newly settled areas; and
(e) the extension of continuous humanitarian assistance especially to
cushion the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Zimbabwe has repeatedly called upon the UK Government to discontinue its
covert and overt actions to cause change of Government in Zimbabwe,
especially because both the Parliament and President of Zimbabwe were put into
office by the choice of the majority and through sound democratic processes.
That the MDC’s president, Morgan Tsvangirai, lost the March 2002 Presidential
Elections should be accepted without pique, or vengeance because it was the
result of the people’s choice expressed in a free and non-coercive manner
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through a secure ballot. The majority of external governmental and non-
governmental election observers judged the Presidential Elections positively, with
the exception of those with the pre–meditated mission to find fault with them,
especially if Morgan Tsvangirai lost.
Contrary to the policy of the Zimbabwe Government to engage the Blair
Government, Blair’s policy on Zimbabwe has been openly hostile to the
Zimbabwe Government since 1997 when he came to power in the United
Kingdom.
In addition to disowning British obligations towards the redistribution of land as
agreed at Lancaster House in 1979, the Blair Government set upon a determined
course of action to cause a change of Government in Zimbabwe. With every
effort of the Government of Zimbabwe to remind him of his country’s obligations
to Zimbabwe under the Lancaster House Agreement, Prime Minister Blair’s
determination to remove President Mugabe became more and more vicious and
relentless.
We will illustrate the issues raised above in the remainder of this paper.
2. Blair and the Land Crisis in Zimbabwe
Contrary to the claim by Tony Blair’s government that Zimbabwe’s problems are
of its own making, it is very clear that Britain and particularly, Blair’s government,
is at the core of Zimbabwe’s economic and political crisis, either as a form of
vengeance over loss of colony or as a personal grudge against President Robert
Mugabe and his government or simply as a means to satisfy Britain’s desire to
have a trouble spot elsewhere in the world as a popularity gimmick to rally the
British electorate behind Blair. The Blair government has embarked on a massive
international diplomatic and media campaign to deny this allegation and blame
the crisis in the country on the Government’s land reform programme. Although it
has repeatedly claimed that it is not opposed to land reform in Zimbabwe, an
examination of the UK’s actions towards Zimbabwe since 1980 would reveal that
it has always been Britain’s policy to delay the land reform programme by
pursuing a gradualist approach which would maintain the status quo or take at
least 150 years to deliver land to the landless black majority.
The seeds of this gradualist approach were sown at the Lancaster House
Conference through the inclusion of the following conditions in the agreements
which brought about Zimbabwe’s independence:
• Land acquisition was to be on a willing–seller/willing-buyer basis during the
first ten years of independence. This provision, which was enshrined in the
Lancaster House Constitution, severely constrained the Government’s ability
to acquire land for resettlement purposes as farmers were either unwilling to
sell their land or asked for exorbitant prices.
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• The Government of Zimbabwe was to provide counterpart funds and match
British funding dollar for pound. Due to inadequate resources, the new
Government could not allocate enough resources from its meagre budget to
match British funding, resulting in only £26.5 million out of the £30 million
pledged by the British Government for land acquisition on a willing–
seller/willing-buyer basis being utilised. The balance of £3.5 was eventually
not disbursed after the programme hit a snag.
As part of this strategy, the British also sent a number of technical missions to
Zimbabwe, whose overt intention was to show British interest in the land reform
programme, when, in fact, the strategic objective was to complicate matters to
achieve the delay or derailment of the programme. A case in point was the 1988
Overseas’ Development Assistance (ODA) sponsored Land Resettlement in
Zimbabwe, Evaluation Report by J Cusworth and J Walker of Bradford
University in the UK, which concluded that the programme had a high economic
rate of return (12.5%) compared to other development programmes on the
continent and had benefited the rural poor. However, latching onto the mission’s
observation that the first phase of resettlement had “little or no impact on the
plight of the communal areas that still suffer from land degradation due to
population pressure”, a point the Government of Zimbabwe had also emphasised
in seeking additional funds to complete the land reform programme, the then
British Overseas Development Minister Lynda Chalker, wrote to the then
Zimbabwe Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development, the late Dr
Bernard Chidzero, in 1992 outlining her government’s proposals on reforming the
land reform programme.
A second ODA Land Appraisal Mission, comprising J Cusworth, M Adams, E
Cassidy, M Lowcock and F Tempest was dispatched to Zimbabwe in 1996 to
carryout further evaluation of the land reform programme. As in 1988, the
mission also concluded that the programme had benefited mostly the landless
rural poor.
A Zimbabwean delegation subsequently went to London in 1996 to present a
report on the institutional and other reforms that the Government had put in place
to improve the effectiveness of the land reform programme as suggested by
Lynda Chalker, but the report was not discussed as the British authorities
preferred to concentrate on a review of assistance policy and new
conditionalities. Lynda Chalker’s letter marked the end of donor funding for the
land reform programme and any funds disbursed afterwards were solely for the
purpose of completing on – going projects. Nevertheless, dialogue between the
two countries continued, but the Conservative Party was defeated in the 1997
general elections before concluding negotiations on new funding for the land
reform programme. By that time only 3, 5 million hectares had been acquired for
resettlement.
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With the coming into office of Tony Blair’s government following New Labour’s
election victory in 1997, the British Government cut off all meaningful dialogue
with Zimbabwe as it repudiated Britain’s colonial responsibility to fund land
reform in Zimbabwe as agreed at Lancaster House. In what was then described
by the Economist magazine as imperial amnesia, the new British Minister for
Development, Ms Claire Short, wrote to the then Minister of Lands, Agriculture
and Rural Resettlement of Zimbabwe, Honourable Kumbirai Kangai, stating her
Government’s policy as follows:
“I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special
responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a
new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former
colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were
colonised not colonisers.”
In its attempt to evade its colonial responsibility, the British Government has
sought to rewrite the Lancaster House agreement, declaring boldly in an undated
“Memorandum on Zimbabwe”:
“The UK Government accepts, and has always accepted, that land reform is
essential if Zimbabwe is to develop to the benefit of all its citizens. But it
has never accepted that the solution is to hand over large sums of money
to the Zimbabwe Government on an unconditional basis. We did not agree
this at Lancaster House in 1980 and we will not in future. We made clear
that funding for land reform was beyond the capacity of any single donor.”
This position was reiterated in a note verbale sent to Diplomatic Missions and
International Organisations accredited to Zimbabwe on 23 October 2002 saying:
“At the Lancaster House Conference in 1979, the British Government
outlined its support for land reform. Lord Carrington, then British Foreign
Secretary, drew attention to the fact that any serious land resettlement
programme would be beyond the scope of any one donor to fund. But the
British Government undertook to support the efforts of the Government of
Zimbabwe to obtain international assistance.”
British duplicity is best noticed and understood when it is recalled that the country
which publicly undertook to mobilize international assistance towards
Zimbabwe’s land reform programme is the same country which, at the same
time, is leading an international hate-campaign against Zimbabwe and its land
reform programme.
The Blair Government has been roundly criticised over its “imperial amnesia” not
only by the Government of Zimbabwe but also by prominent British politicians
such as Lord Owen, Foreign Secretary under the Labour Government of Jim
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Callaghan (1977 – 1999), who, in a newspaper article on 23 April 2000,
unequivocally stated:
“The last Labour Government in 1977 under Jim Callaghan promised
substantial sums: £75 million pounds from Britain and US$520 million from
the United States”.
Similarly, Lord Peter Carrington, former British Foreign Secretary, who brokered
the Lancaster House Agreement, has called on the UK government to meet its
promises in helping to pay for land resettlement and agricultural reform.
Carrington told SABC news on 29 October 2002 that the programme was started
in good faith – but was halted amid suspicions over how the funds were used,
adding:
“There was a disproportionate amount of good arable land in the hands of
the white farmers and what was proposed was that we should help not pay
entirely but help out with compensation for those farmers. And the
Americans incidentally said they would do the same thing. And this went
all right, I mean we did help for some time.”
In spite of the suspicions in White Hall that land reform was benefiting “Mugabe’s
cronies,” Carrington, a member of the British House of Lords and the Zimbabwe
Democracy Trust, an organisation formed in April 2000 to fuel dissent in
Zimbabwe, said that the payments should go ahead, but directly to farmers
whose land has been acquired for resettlement.
“You could help them in some way, and we always envisioned spending
the money in this way and it seemed to me sensible to do so. But I got a
very wintry answer from the government about this, and I am wondering
what else I can do”, he said.
Criticism of the British policy of meddling itself in the land reform programme in
Zimbabwe has also come from an unlikely quarter, Commercial Farmers Union
Director David Hasluck, who recently lashed out at the British government for
approaching the land question in Zimbabwe without regard to the country’s
history and British commitments made at Lancaster House.
For its part, the Government of Zimbabwe was taken aback by the new British
position as it repudiated the cornerstone of the Lancaster House Agreement and
effectively removed any prospects of resuming co-operation on the basis of that
agreement. However, the Government of Zimbabwe accepted this reality and
following a meeting in Brussels between His Excellency President Robert
Mugabe and the then European Commissioner for Development, Professor Joao
de Deus Pinheiro in January 1998, decided to appeal to the international
community for assistance through an International Land Donors’ Conference that
was held in Harare from 9–11 September 1998. The Donors’ Conference agreed
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on basic principles for international assistance to the land reform programme and
set up a task force of major donors to prepare documents for a two-year
Inception Phase, which would kick-off Phase II of a donor supported land
acquisition and resettlement programme. Although the UK, whose reluctance to
join the other donors had been evident throughout the conference, refused to join
this task force, it exerted a negative influence on the other donors by proposing
that a consulting firm be appointed to do an economic returns analysis of the
programme to date and assess how far it alleviated poverty among the chronic
poor in Zimbabwe, thus effectively killing the Inception Phase in its tracks. As a
result, nothing was achieved, not even the purchase of the 118 farms then on
offer.
Having failed to secure donor funding for the land reform programme as a result
of these British machinations at the Land Donors’ Conference and being keenly
aware of the growing impatience and land hunger among the landless black
majority, the Parliament of Zimbabwe on 6 April 2000 amended the Constitution
of Zimbabwe to empower the Government to compulsorily acquire land for
resettlement purposes and absolve it of any responsibility for paying
compensation for land acquired for this purpose. The Constitutional amendment
placed responsibility for compensating farmers whose land would be acquired for
resettlement on the British Government, while the Government of Zimbabwe
would only be required to pay for improvements on the land. This prompted the
Blair Government, for the first time, to invite Zimbabwe to send a team to London
to discuss funding for the land reform programme following a meeting in Cairo
between His Excellency President Mugabe and then British Foreign Secretary
Robin Cook brokered by President Obasanjo of Nigeria.
However, no material progress was achieved at the London meeting as the
British Government refused to offer any funds for the land reform programme
beyond the £30 million pounds already offered to Zimbabwe in 1999 in the
country programme published by DFID, whose stringent conditionalities rendered
it totally inaccessible. £5 million already offered but still not distributed to non-
governmental organisations and civil societies in Zimbabwe was also thrown in to
bring the total to £36 million. The British Government stubbornly refused to move
forward and evaded the issue of Britain’s colonial responsibilities. In the end, the
Zimbabwean delegation left London with the conviction that the meeting had
been a stage-managed media circus designed by the British Government to play
to the British public, which had already been primed to expect a tough position.
The concluding statement issued on 27 April 2000 at the end of the meeting was
illustrative in this respect:
“The UK delegation reiterated its commitment to enhanced developmental
support for Zimbabwe, as set out in the DFID (Department for International
Development) Zimbabwe Country Strategy Paper. This could provide an
additional 36 million pounds over the next two years for the UK
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development programme in Zimbabwe provided the conditions are met for
moving to the high case scenario”.
Similarly, although Britain accepted the conclusion reached at Abuja on 6
September 2001 that land was at the core of the crisis in Zimbabwe and
undertook to make a significant financial contribution to the land reform
programme as well as encourage other donors to do the same, it has not fulfilled
this obligation. By contrast, the Government of Zimbabwe has already fulfilled all
its obligations arising from the Abuja meeting as evidenced by the lessening of
tensions within the country.
It is quite clear from the foregoing that it is an abiding objective of all British
Governments to delay the land reform programme in Zimbabwe. Delayed access
to land by the indigenous African majority would guarantee the continued
occupation of Zimbabwean land by Anglo-Saxons in Britain, and elsewhere in the
Anglo-Saxon diaspora.
It had always been hoped that with increasing population growth in rural areas,
more and more Africans would drift into commercial farmland as cheap labour.
The so-often repeated success and profitability of Zimbabwean commercial
agriculture was principally the result of African cheap labour. Most farm workers
were paid in salt, beans and mealie meal, with no cash left for them to send their
children to school, nor to clinics and hospitals for treatment.
The impoverishment of indigenous Africans became an abiding strategy of all
white colonial settler regimes who wanted to exploit African poverty and
backwardness to augment their profits and comfort.
No wonder agricultural production rose to such a flowery level, turning the
country into a bread basket for the entire region. It is therefore, primarily because
of profit considerations that the British are bitterly opposed to the land reform
programme as it would empower the majority of the people and reduce the
supply of cheap labour and by extension, the profits of white farmers.
3. Blair’s Pursuit of “Regime Change” in Zimbabwe
The coming into office of Tony Blair’s government in 1997 coincided with the
Government of Zimbabwe’s twin decisions to legally compulsorily acquire 1800
white owned farms for the resettlement of landless peasants and to send troops
to the DRC. This provoked the wrath of the British Government which had
encouraged Rwanda and Uganda to invade the DRC. The best minds were
assigned to come up with an effective strategy to cripple Zimbabwe’s economy
as well as bring down its Government. The policy framework of such a strategy
was well articulated by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw during a debate in the
House of Commons on 8 January 2002 when he said:
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“Our approach has been to internationalise the issue, while taking a firm
lead within all the international forums in which we speak. That is why the
General Affairs Council – the Foreign Affairs Council – of the European
Union is in train to take firm action on this; why I called a meeting of
Commonwealth Ministers for 20 December; why I have spelled out to the
House that if the situation in Zimbabwe continues to disintegrate we will
argue for Zimbabwe’s suspension from the Commonwealth.”
The Foreign Secretary added exasperatedly during the same debate:
“I repeat that I have been trying to ensure that Zimbabwe, not Britain, is
isolated for the terrible actions that President Mugabe and his henchmen
are taking. That has received the approbation of many Conservative Back
Benchers, as well as Labour Members. --- One of my key aims has been to
ensure that the issue ceases to be a bilateral one and is made an issue of
shared concern by the international community.”
The EU was immediately prevailed upon to commission a study on Zimbabwe in
1998 by the Conflict Prevention Network, a network of academic institutions, non-
governmental organisations and “independent experts”, which is part of the
European Union Analysis and Evaluation Centre. The CPN report entitled
“Zimbabwe – A Conflict Study of A Country Without Direction” was duly
presented to the EU’s Africa Working Group in December 1998 for use in making
recommendations on Zimbabwe. Of note was the EU report’s recommendation
that for things to go “right” in Zimbabwe, President Mugabe must go. This could
be done through civil society, notably the trade union movement or NGOs,
through organised urban uprisings, the implied possibility of discontent in the
armed forces, the exploitation of perceived rifts in the ruling ZANU (PF), and the
transformation of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions into a political party.
The prediction was that President Mugabe would not last till the 2002
Presidential Elections. The EU report singled out the land reform programme and
Zimbabwe’s involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo for special
mention as prime pretexts for their hostility towards Zimbabwe.
In the UK itself, the EU report’s recommendation to topple President Mugabe
was carried forward at Chatham House during a meeting of the Royal Institute of
International Affairs on 24 January 1999, whose theme was “Zimbabwe – Time
for Mugabe to Go?.” The meeting considered a number of options for achieving
this objective, including masterminding a military coup, upheavals in the streets
and manoeuvres within the ruling party, ZANU (PF). The Chatham House
meeting identified “confiscating” white – owned land and sending troops to the
DRC as underlying excuses for their attacks on the Zimbabwe Government. A
similar meeting held at the US State Department on 23 March 1999, obviously at
the instigation of the British, also deliberated on ways of removing President
Mugabe from power. The US State Department meeting resolved that the best
way for achieving this would be to work through NGOs, find ways to divide the
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Shonas and Ndebeles, probe the ruling party for weak spots with a view to
subverting it, and generally make Zimbabwe ungovernable. The conveners of the
US State Department meeting emphasised Zimbabwe’s presence in the DRC as
a problematic issue.
Other prominent personalities in the UK and the US with substantial economic
interests in Zimbabwe and ties to the Ian Smith’s racist Rhodesian regime,
stepped forward to implement these scenarios for “regime change” arising from
the recommendations of the EU report. Most notable among them are the
members of the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, who include four former British
Foreign Secretaries – Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Lord Douglas Hurd, Lord Peter
Carrington and Lord Geoffrey Howe as well as a former US Assistant Secretary
of State, Dr Chester Crocker. Other members are Sir John Collins, Lord Steel of
Aikwood, Lord Taylor of Warwick and Lady Soames. The primary mover in the
organisation is reputed to be Sir John Collins, the Zimbabwean Chairman of
National Power, the largest British energy company, which also has substantial
investments in Zimbabwe. Rifkind is involved with an Australian company which
has mining interests in Zimbabwe, while Chester Crocker sits on the Board of
Directors of Ashanti Goldfields, which owns gold mines in Zimbabwe. The
Zimbabwe Democracy Trust fostered the birth of the opposition MDC under the
pretext of promoting democracy and has orchestrated a well-funded advocacy for
that party through the private and international media with the intention of
demonising ZANU (PF) and undermining land reform in Zimbabwe.
For its part, the British government has not disguised its designs in Zimbabwe as
demonstrated by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s declaration during a question
and answer session in the House of Commons on 25 June 2002 that:
“What I would like to happen is very clear. I would like President Mugabe to
recognise the error of his ways and the disaster into which he has plunged
Zimbabwe. I would like him to leave office, allow elections to take place
immediately, stop interfering with humanitarian relief, get the farmers,
whether they are white, Indian or black, back on to the land ---- I am asked
how that would happen, but that is the point. I say to Opposition Members
that the issue for the international community is how we do this. That is the
truth of it.”
These sentiments were echoed by Tony Cunningham, MP for Workington, who
said during the same question and answer session:
“I am sure we would all agree that the sooner he (President Mugabe) goes,
the better, not just for Zimbabwe, but for the entire region.”
In pursuit of this objective therefore, the British government has exerted its
immense diplomatic and economic clout as well as control of global media to
demonise President Robert Mugabe, isolate Zimbabwe internationally and deny
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the country access to vital international financial support. First to be targeted at
the diplomatic level was the European Union, for the obvious reason that
members are required to act in concert on foreign policy matters under the
provisions of the Maastricht Treaty, the founding charter of the European Union,
thus forcing countries such as Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and
Spain, which have no quarrel with Zimbabwe, to support the British position.
Furthermore, the Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and its
former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP), though not yet
ratified by the majority of European Union countries, would give the EU
considerable leverage over Zimbabwe. The British government has achieved
some notable success on the Maastricht Treaty track, as evidenced by the EU’s
imposition of so – called “targeted sanctions” on Zimbabwe on 18 February 2002,
while its machinations on the Cotonou Agreement track were thwarted by the
Southern Africa group, which twice mobilised ACP countries to resist attempts by
British members of the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly to sponsor
condemnatory resolutions on Zimbabwe in March 2000 (Abuja) and October
2000 (Brussels). Most recently, the fifth ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary session,
which was scheduled to be held in Brussels on 25 November 2002, was
abandoned after ACP countries resisted attempts to prevent Zimbabwean
ministers from attending the meeting, despite threats by the head of the EU
parliamentary delegation, Glenys Kinnock, to withdraw development aid. This
setback on the Cotonou track notwithstanding, Jack Straw could, however,
assure the House of Commons during the question and answer session on 25
June 2002 that:
“The sanctions that I was able to ensure that the European Union imposed
in February are stronger and more extensive …”
In what was widely perceived as a racist onslaught on a black country by white
supremacists, the British government, with support from Australia, Canada and
New Zealand, also took its relentless campaign to isolate Zimbabwe to the
Commonwealth, with then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook falsely claiming in
February 2001 that he had agreed with Commonwealth Secretary General Don
McKinnon to place Zimbabwe on the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group’s
agenda, even though that body did not have the mandate to discuss the situation
in the country. CMAG was eventually prevailed upon to illegally discuss
Zimbabwe at its meeting in London on 30 January 2002 but rejected demands by
the UK and its allies to have Zimbabwe suspended from the Commonwealth.
Having failed to secure a suspension, Tony Blair took his campaign to the
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that was held at Coolum,
Australia from 1 – 4 March 2002. But tempers flared at Coolum over attempts by
the UK and its allies to prejudge the 9 – 10 March Presidential poll before it was
even held, with President Thabo Mbeki declaring that:
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“-- those inspired by notions of white supremacy are free to depart (leave
the Commonwealth) if they feel that membership of the association
reduces them to a repugnant position imposed by inferior blacks.”
He added that the outcry against the Commonwealth decision to set up a troika
to decide on how to deal with Zimbabwe after the election:
“-- reflected a stubborn and arrogant mindset at all times that the white
world must lead.”
A livid Tony Blair immediately broke with convention by distancing himself from
the customary end–of–summit consensus and attacked the 54–nation
organisation for postponing a decision on sanctions, saying he hoped the
Commonwealth would eventually:
“-- do the right thing. If it does not, its credibility is at issue; if it does not
act in circumstances where it is plain that a member country has held an
election which has not been fair.”
In a final broadside at African countries, which had stood by Zimbabwe, Tony
Blair told reporters before his departure from Coolum that:
“If there is any sense in which African countries appear to be ambivalent
towards good governance – that is the one thing that will undermine the
confidence of the western world in helping them. The credibility of my
country, investment in my country, doesn’t depend on Zimbabwe. But for
Africa it is a major issue, on which their credibility and the possibility of
investment flows depend. --- There are no half measures about democracy.
It is for Africa that if countries are not behaving democratically --- that we
are seen to act.”
This theme was picked up by a number of speakers in the House of Lords on 6
March 2002 after Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted in an address to the House
of Commons on the same day that he had failed to secure Zimbabwe’s
suspension at Coolum. Drawing heavily on claims by US Assistant Secretary of
State, Walter Kansteiner that:
“The road to NEPAD lies through Harare,”
several speakers called for strong linkages between support for NEPAD and firm
action on Zimbabwe. Most striking in this respect were the remarks by Lord Astor
of Hever who said:
“We must now make it clear that the kind of aid anticipated by NEPAD is
dependent on recipient governments demonstrating a return to good
governance and an acceptance of the will of democracy. --- It is imperative
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that we send the strongest possible message to the SADC countries that
they should take action against the man who threatens to plunge the entire
region into a catastrophic economic and political meltdown. All democratic
nations have a responsibility to try and preserve democracy wherever it is
threatened.”
The message was not lost on the primary sponsors of NEPAD, Presidents Mbeki
and Obasanjo, who, in spite of the endorsement of the outcome of the
Presidential elections by the official observer missions from their own countries,
voted to suspend Zimbabwe from the councils of the Commonwealth for a period
of twelve months, paving the way for an ecstatic Jack Straw to declare in the
House of Commons on 25 June 2002 that:
“One of the many things that we have done is to secure a situation
whereby the decision on the suspension of Zimbabwe from the councils of
the Commonwealth was taken not by us, not by the Commonwealth
Ministerial Action Group, of which the United Kingdom is a member, but by
a troika of the current chair of the Commonwealth, Prime Minister Howard
of Australia, and two key members – President Obasanjo of Nigeria and
President Mbeki of South Africa. It is hugely to their credit that they made
the decision that they did once the Commonwealth observers found that
the elections were not free and fair.”
Having secured the isolation of Zimbabwe in the West, the UK government
turned its attention to attacking Zimbabwe’s economy with the intention of
creating political instability in the country. To achieve this objective, the UK
enlisted the support of the United States, with which it enjoys a “special
transatlantic relationship,” in denying Zimbabwe access to international lines of
credit. The Bush Administration obliged by signing the Zimbabwe Democracy
and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 into law on 21 December 2001, which
among other things, instructed American officials in international financial
institutions to:
“oppose and vote against any extension by the respective institution of any
loan, credit, or guarantee to the government of Zimbabwe ---- and to vote
against any reduction or cancellation of indebtedness owed by the
Government of Zimbabwe.”
The Act also authorised President Bush to:
“fund an independent and free press and electronic media in Zimbabwe.”
US$6 million was subsequently granted for aid to “democracy and governance
programmes,” a euphemism for groups seeking to topple the Government of
Zimbabwe. Also acting in terms of the same law, the Bush Administration on 22
February 2002 imposed “targeted sanctions” on senior government, ZANU (PF),
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business and church leaders following the imposition of similar sanctions by the
European Union on 18 February 2002.
The impact of the US policy of “opposing any extension of loans, credit or
guarantees to Zimbabwe” by international financial institutions was immediately
evident as the International Monetary Fund, which on 24 September 2001 had
declared Zimbabwe ineligible to use the general resources of the IMF and
removed Zimbabwe from the list of countries eligible to borrow resources under
the Fund’s Poverty and Growth Facility over non–payment of US$53 million in
debt service payments, followed this up with a declaration of non–cooperation
and suspension of technical assistance to Zimbabwe on 13 June 2002. The
IMF’s declaration of non–cooperation was intended to discourage lending by
other financial institutions, putting additional pressure on Zimbabwe’s economy.
Due to the decline in foreign trade and the denial of credit, unemployment in
Zimbabwe rose to 70 percent, while three fourths of the population were
classified as poor.
A relentless campaign of negative publicity against Zimbabwe mounted at the
same time the British government embarked on its diplomatic campaign to isolate
Zimbabwe internationally also created perceptions of instability, which scared
away investors and led to capital flight from Zimbabwe. Foreign direct investment
in the country slumped from a peak of US$426 million in 1998 to US$5, 4 million
in 2001 as investors fled from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. A number of
company closures in the last two years are suspected to have been motivated
primarily by political considerations, not unfavourable macro economic
conditions. Similarly, the many travel advisories issued by western Embassies in
Harare warning citizens not to travel to Zimbabwe also served the same purpose
of denying Zimbabwe access to foreign currency. This policy is set to continue for
the foreseeable future following Jack Straw’s assurances to British
parliamentarians on 14 March 2002 that:
“But I can tell the House today that we will continue to oppose any access
by Zimbabwe to international financial resources until a more
representative government is in place.”
In the mean time, the crippling foreign currency shortage has made it difficult for
Zimbabwe to service loan repayments, leading to the withdrawal of international
credit facilities for the importation of fuel, electricity as well as capital and
commercial goods. This has led to stunted industrial activity, low exports, high
interest rates, high inflation, company closures, massive lay-offs and a crippling
brain drain, which are intended to arouse discontent against the Government and
political polarisation within Zimbabwe.
While the British government likes to blame President Mugabe for the worsening
economic situation in the country, it is nevertheless quick to assume credit for
creating this situation. For example, in a spirited response to shadow Foreign
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Secretary Michael Ancram’s allegations in the House of Commons on 25 June
2002 that sanctions were not working, Jack Straw had this to say:
“A year ago, President Mugabe expected to be treated, and was treated in
capitals around the world, as a legitimate head of state. Today, he is
condemned by the Commonwealth, the European Union and the United
States. He is increasingly shunned by other African governments and has
been declared by the International Monetary Fund to be in non–cooperation
and subject to sanctions and suspensions. That international consensus
has come about not least as a result of the painstaking diplomatic activity
of the British Government.”
Having created the conditions for disaffection and political instability in
Zimbabwe, the British government now intervened directly in the internal affairs
of the country with the intention of subverting its democratic processes. Working
through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, an organisation that
receives 95% of its funding from the British government and whose board of
governors includes representatives from each of the three major political parties
in the UK, the British government clandestinely poured substantial amounts of
money into the opposition MDC for use in a combination of violent campaigning,
bribery and smear tactics against the legitimate government of Zimbabwe. At the
behest of the Blair regime, the Foundation financed sorties into Zimbabwe by
operatives, organised seminars and assisted in designing and printing political
party cards for the MDC. Some of the Foundation’s “projects”, a euphemism for
subversive activities, were brazenly published on its website www.wfd.org. The
website was subsequently cleaned up after the Government of Zimbabwe
presented the material to the international community as evidence of British
interference in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe. However, the following entries
remain indelibly etched in the minds of many Zimbabweans:
Zimbabwe: DOA Further Assistance to Oversee Election Organisation: £13
876.00 to fund the Conservative Party to provide the opposition to Robert
Mugabe, in Zimbabwe, with support from like-minded democratic parties in
Africa;
Zimbabwe: Opposition Visit to UK: £4 460.00 to fund the Conservative Party
to provide assistance to the opposition forces in Zimbabwe ahead of
presidential and other elections by bringing to the UK leaders of two
opposition parties for briefings; £4 980.00 to provide assistance to
opposition forces in Zimbabwe ahead of presidential and other elections by
bringing to the UK key leaders of the movements for briefings on the
promotion of democratic change in Zimbabwe;
MDC Party Development: £30 000.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist the
MDC to consolidate party structures throughout the country;
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MDC Women Candidates: £5 263.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist the
MDC to produce campaign material specifically for women candidates and
voters in the run-up to the General Election in June 2000;
MDC Purchase of Photocopier: £4 375.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist
the MDC in Zimbabwe to purchase a photocopier to produce materials in
preparation for the elections in June 2000;
MDC Elections Assistance: £8 594.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist the
MDC to increase political awareness through the radio, in advance of the
elections in June 2000;
MDC Production of Leaflets: £18 750.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist
the MDC to produce leaflets in preparation for the election in June 2000;
MDC Media Communications for Women: £7 018.00 to fund the Labour
Party to assist the MDC in targeting women voters through media
communications to encourage them to vote in the election due in June
2000;
Training of MDC Election Monitors: £19 982.00 to fund the Labour Party to
assist the MDC to train party representatives on election monitoring
techniques for the June 2000 elections;
Zimbabwe - Membership Cards for the MDC: £10 000.00 to fund the Labour
Party to assist the MDC to produce membership cards before their first
national conference in early 2000;
Training for MDC Election Monitors: £10 000.00 to fund the Liberal
Democrats to assist the MDC to train party representatives on election
monitoring techniques for the General Election due in June 2000;
Training for MDC Election Monitors: £10 000.00 to fund the Labour Party to
provide further assistance to the MDC in a project part-funded with the UK
Liberal Democrats to continue to train MDC party representatives in
election monitoring techniques for the June 2000 elections;
Support for Youth and Women’s Chairpersons of MDC: £12 600.00 to
provide salary support through the Liberal Democrats for the Youth and
Women’s chairpersons for the MDC in Zimbabwe in 2001;
MDC Voter Registration and Women’s Outreach: £12 300.00 to fund the
Conservative Party to assist the MDC for voter registration by providing a
full-time co-ordinator and also facilitating a women’s outreach programme
in advance of the Presidential election;
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MDC Provincial Workshops: £10 625.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist
the MDC to organize workshops on election strategy in preparation for the
forthcoming Presidential elections starting from July 2001;
MDC Elections Assistance: £10 119.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist
the MDC to organize a women’s and youth conference in 2001 in the run-up
to the Presidential election;
MDC Production of Materials: £12 649.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist
the MDC to produce materials in preparation for the Presidential election.
The Westminster Foundation for Democracy also funded NGOs such as the
Foundation for Democracy in Zimbabwe, (FODEZI), which received £3000.00
to carry out a range of activities, including voter education, radio and TV
programmes, training seminars for young potential political leaders and
public meetings, and ZimRights, which received £10 000.00 towards the
purchase of offices, and £110 368.00 to support its activities for the period
1997-1999.
The British government has also masterminded the formation and funding of
subversive organisations such as the Amani Trust, and provided financial
support, through European Union channels, to numerous other “non –
governmental organisations” whose sole purpose appears to be to agitate for the
unconstitutional overthrow of President Mugabe through the abuse of
humanitarian assistance. These organisations have already sowed discord in
communities where they are operating by distributing food aid on the basis of
political affiliation, as well as giving aid stocks to the opposition for distribution as
part of its campaign.
Again through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the British
Government sought to use the media to distort the democratic process in
Zimbabwe. £9 800.00 was provided to enable “Horizon” magazine (described
by WFD as an independent political journal) to gain full benefit from new
equipment, and £9 400.00 for the magazine to undertake a six - month
marketing campaign to increase its sales and revenue from advertising. A
further £13 999.00 was disbursed to purchase office equipment, cover a
percentage of overheads and pay the salary for a full-time business
manager during 1999.
When the premises of The Daily News, a British-funded opposition paper, were
bombed by unknown criminals, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy
disbursed £20 000.00 to cover the costs of sending two “experts” to Zimbabwe to
assess the damage. At that stage, the British High Commissioner openly
acknowledged “British interest” in the opposition newspaper.
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A “Media Reform Campaign” was also funded by the WFD to the tune of £5
000.00 to enable the Media Institute of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe to
produce a range of materials to be used in its media law reform campaign.
The materials were distributed in 2000, the year of the parliamentary elections.
In spite of this massive array of interventionist measures in support of the MDC,
the British government was still not confident about the MDC’s ability to remove
President Mugabe from power by legitimate means and sought to achieve that
outcome by trying to rig the March 2002 Presidential elections through
underhand tactics such as the foiled attempt to suspend Zimbabwe from the
Commonwealth at Coolum a few days before the elections; assertions by Tony
Blair at Coolum, which were later parroted by Prime Minister Helen Clark of New
Zealand, that the elections would only be judged to have been free and fair if the
MDC won; and sponsorship of fake opinion polls by the Financial Gazette just
before the elections, which predicted a “crushing defeat” for President Mugabe in
the elections. Earlier in February 2002, the British government’s media allies at
the National Post in Canada, had, in an editorial on 22 February 2002,
attempted to incite the Zimbabwean people to overthrow President Mugabe or
even kill him, saying:
“But Zimbabwe is not a totalitarian state such as North Korea: When it
becomes plain to almost all Zimbabweans that Mr Mugabe is at the root of
their problems, he will be overthrown or killed. Either outcome would
lessen the country’s miseries and open the door for the nation’s diplomatic
and economic rehabilitation.”
To vent their ire after the people of Zimbabwe resoundingly voted to retain
Robert Mugabe as President in a massive show of confidence in his land reform
policies, the British Government and its allies refused to recognise the outcome
of the elections and vowed to intensify their efforts to topple him from power. This
has seen the UK, which broke off diplomatic relations with Libya over the
Lockerbie bombing in 1988, making overtures to the Libyan government in order
to wreck the friendship between that country and Zimbabwe. The assessment
was that Libya would be prepared to dump Zimbabwe in exchange for
normalised relations with the West. A message was subsequently put out for the
obvious consumption of UK watchers in Tripoli when Jack Straw told the House
of Commons on 25 June 2002 that:
“Libya’s route back into the international community partly depends on its
showing a responsible attitude towards Zimbabwe and in respect of Sierra
Leone. We are aware of that, and it is a point that has repeatedly been
made to Libya in the dialogue that is taking place.”
Furthermore, junior Foreign Minister Mike O’Brien, in an apparent attempt to woo
Libya towards Britain’s campaign to dent Zimbabwe’s international image, raised
the ante when he told reporters in South Africa on 3 August 2002 that:
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“We have decided that Gaddafi no longer wants to be involved in
international terrorism. Gaddafi has condemned al – Qaeda and expressed
outrage over the September 11 attacks. We’ve been seeking to engage
Libya across a number of issues following a hard headed assessment of
Libya’s position. We hope Libya will engage seriously with the West and
indeed other countries --- and that will mean a country that has a fairly
large degree of influence in the Arab world and Africa will move away from
being a pariah state towards helping the international community and
preserving peace.”
In what is a logical step in the script to complete the international isolation of
Zimbabwe as well as consolidate and broaden declared and non–declared
sanctions already imposed by the EU, the US and white Commonwealth
countries, the British government has now shifted the focus of its attack to the
United Nations Security Council, where it recently demanded that Zimbabwe be
required to respond to the report of the UN Panel on the Illegal Plunder of DRC
Resources, the only country required to do so. The recent appeal by Morgan
Tsvangirai to the Security Council for UN intervention to stop “state sponsored
violence against the defenceless people of Zimbabwe” was obviously
orchestrated, at the instigation of the British government, to create justification for
making Zimbabwe a Security Council issue.
4. President Mugabe’s response to British hostility to the Land Reform
Programme
In spite of the intense British hostility to the land reform programme in Zimbabwe,
President Mugabe has remained resolute in his efforts to redistribute land to the
landless indigenous black majority and has eloquently and courageously told
Blair to end his government’s colonial policies on Zimbabwe and to mind his own
business and that of his country and keep his “pink nose out of our affairs”. He
has also maintained that Britain has a continuing obligation to pay compensation
to the white farmers whom successive British governments have encouraged to
forcibly occupy Zimbabwean land. In September 2002, he took Zimbabwe’s case
to the international community, telling delegates at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg that landlessness is at the
root of the endemic poverty and underdevelopment which black Zimbabweans
have endured through the full century of British occupation of their land. Judging
by the thunderous applause which punctuated his now famous speech at
Johannesburg, President Mugabe spoke for the poor, dispossessed and
downtrodden in all parts of the world and struck a resonant code in the hearts of
many Heads of State, business leaders and civic society groups attending the
WSSD, when he said that:
“ --- we in Zimbabwe understand only too well that sustainable
development is not possible without agrarian reforms that acknowledge in
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our case, that land comes first before all else, and that all else grows from
and off the land. This is the one asset that not only defines the
Zimbabwean personality and demarcates sovereignty but also an asset that
has a direct bearing on the fortunes of the poor and prospects for their
immediate empowerment and sustainable development. Indeed, ours is an
agrarian economy, an imperative that renders the issue of access to land
paramount. --- But we say this as Zimbabweans, we have fought for our
land. We have fought for our sovereignty. Small as we are, we have won
our independence and we are prepared to shed our blood in sustenance
and maintenance and protection of that independence. ---We don’t mind
having and bearing sanctions, banning us from Europe. We are not
Europeans. We have not asked for an inch of Europe, any square inch of
that territory. So Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe. ”
Through the Fast Track Land Reform Programme, President Mugabe and his
government have accorded the majority black Zimbabwean people’s grievances
the urgency they deserved and exposed the folly and futility of Britain’s gradualist
policies towards the eradication of poverty among his landless compatriots. As a
result, over 1.6 million people have benefited from the land reform programme
between July 2000 and August 2002, ending a century of landlessness and
poverty for the Zimbabwean people.
Having waged a bitter and protracted armed struggle to bring democracy to
Zimbabwe, President Mugabe and his government have relentlessly stuck to the
principle of democracy, facing the opposition five times in parliamentary elections
and twice in Presidential elections, which he and his party, ZANU (PF), won
convincingly. The people of Zimbabwe have hailed these elections as free and
fair, while the progressive world, including governments and civil societies, have
similarly hailed the elections as free, fair and legitimate and recognised the
verdict of the national electorate. At the same time, the international community
has applauded the fact that there is not a single political prisoner in Zimbabwe,
showing that Zimbabweans enjoy freedoms of speech and association.
President Mugabe and his government have also exposed the neo–colonial
agenda of the British government and warned the EU, the Commonwealth and
the United Nations not to join Britain’s attacks on Zimbabwe. Hence, he won the
sympathy and support of many nations, both big and small, when he appealed to
the 57
th
Session of the UN General Assembly to:
“ --- convey to Britain and especially to its current Prime Minister, Mr Tony
Blair, that Zimbabwe ceased to be a British colony in 1980 after Prince
Charles had gracefully lowered the British flag called the Union Jack. He
should also please be informed that the people of Zimbabwe waged an
armed revolutionary struggle for their independence and stand ready to
defend it in the same way. We want to be left in peace to carryout our just
reforms and developmental plans as we peacefully interact and cooperate
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with other countries within the region, the African continent and the
international community. We refuse to be an extension of Europe.”
Although the EU, the UN and white Commonwealth countries are quick to deny
that they are pursuing a British agenda in Zimbabwe, it is an undeniable fact that
the UK has been on a crusade to entice and conscript the EU and the
Commonwealth to take sides in its bilateral differences with Zimbabwe and has
succeeded in doing so. In several instances, Britain itself has taken no direct
actions on Zimbabwe, but by ruse and stratagem made the EU and the
Commonwealth fight it out with Zimbabwe using declared and undeclared
economic sanctions.
By leading the struggle for economic liberation on the side of black
Zimbabweans, President Mugabe has inspired the poor and dispossessed blacks
in Africa and the Diaspora to assume their individual and collective dignity and to
struggle continuously for economic emancipation, for their land rights and for
reparations against slavery and colonial subjugation. His call for just land reforms
in Zimbabwe has therefore, been echoed by the landless in Kenya, Namibia,
South Africa and among dispossessed indigenous communities in countries such
as Australia and Canada.
Leading a weakened small country, which refuses to bow down to international
pressure in the conviction that right is on its side, President Mugabe has assured
the weak nations of the world, especially those of Africa, the Caribbean and the
Pacific, that there can be equal sovereignty between big and small nations and
that principle, honesty and determination can be the bases of strength for leaders
of both small and big nations who respect human rights and human dignity and
subject themselves to international laws and conventions. President Mugabe and
his government have always and continue to subject themselves to the values,
conventions, protocols and resolutions of the United Nations, the African Union
and SADC and join them in condemning attempts of some countries to interfere
in the internal affairs of others, especially the actions of those who seek to
impose their will upon others through military processes.
And yet, President Mugabe is the leader and Zimbabwe is the country Mr Blair
and Britain want to demonise, and condemn. We urge the progressive
international community to see through all this British hypocrisy and duplicity and
relate with Zimbabwe in a mutually supportive way, and with respect.
MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
12 December 2002
Friday, 3 July 2009
China: When bullets begin to flower
China: When bullets begin to flower
When goodness triumphs to ring loudest across the veld, even the dead stir back to life.
China’s decision to grant Zimbabwe a staggering US$950m credit barely a week after the Prime Minister’s dry-womb trip to the West, has sent tremors far and deep, certainly right into the sanctum of MDC-T.
His claim that his Secretary-General, now Finance Minister in the Inclusive Government, Tendai Biti, negotiated the deal, rings fatuous and ridiculous.
Why would he choose to go to the barren West when the generous East so beckoned? Why would he time the fulfilment of such a wonderful deal so close to the empty one of the West, all to invite such a damning comparison upon his all-time benefactors?
If anything, this claim confirms the tremors I refer to.
But first things first.
Let the parameters of this piece be made clear. Both the managers and hosts of the Prime Minister’s ill-fated trip undermined the trip’s claim to national status or purpose.
The trip was decidedly narrow, by composition, host preferences and by outcome.
That reality acquits me from any politeness, taking me right into the murky world of party politics.
Fate’s pace and parcel.
So, back to substance. Play the US$200-plus little the MDC leader got against the stupendous sum China has given Zimbabwe through Government, then you give the mathematical magnitude to MDC-T’s worries.
Here was a man who ventured out into the western world — first home to him — wrapped in lofty people-goals, all in the hope of what he mistook for guaranteed plenty. Politically, he hoped the trip would ram home his wish status as the only wielder of the golden key to the vaults of the "monied" West.
That way, he would have placed himself implacably high, well on the messiah pedestal, to great grief of Zanu-PF, great personal grief of President Mugabe.
But fate had its own pace and parcel for him. Instead of bagfuls of money, drums of enhanced leverage against Zanu-pf (PF), he came back limping, dragging a vast list of governance beatitudes and conditionalities the hungry and expectant could never eat.
For the face of an Inclusive Government which had risen and received embrace as "manna" from the West, all this hardly added up.
Today the MDC leader stands very short as a pathetic anti-Christ figure who dared to make a sermon on the mountain, without feeding the hungry five thousand, all of them down and to earth. It is going to be a long while before they are ready to forgive him.
Fighting the task and task-man
Zanu-pf (PF)’s propaganda mandarins did not help matters. Wrestling initiative, they framed the Prime Minister’s trip as Mugabe-initiated, as Mugabe-defined, a position Tsvangirai is still battling to shake off. They defined the trip around the twin objectives of getting the utterly illegal sanctions removed, and of securing soft loans — not grants — for the sanctions-wrecked Zimbabwe economy.
Against such a filling propaganda take by Zanu-pf (PF), the MDC leader and his acolytes were quite appropriately galled.
They frantically sought to challenge this forming and settling orthodoxy to the story, indeed to re-frame the whole trip well outside of the twin orders, twin purpose, clearly with enormous difficulties, in all attempts with ever diminishing success.
That included the wrap-up press conference given this week. For how else would one reframe the trip away from the twin objectives, away from the twin tasking executive — the Cabinet and the President — and still justify to the hungry the use of public funds? And to justify the more than three weeks this public figure was out of the country?
And if sanctions are the only outstanding reason for present penury, how would one distance the Prime Minister of this country from attacking them to enhance public weal?
You do not want propaganda which coincides with reality, much less one which leaves you rebelliously wondering directionless within its overbearing framework.
It was an unenviable bind, one spawning near desperate, multinational response by way of the Andrew Chadwick-led, USAID-funded newsletter, itself an utterly poor show which gave the MDC more headaches and fury.
The Chamisas, the Bangos, themselves real owners of the propaganda portfolio of the MDC, had been left out, and did not find this whole "white" effort exactly quite polite, exactly well-intentioned, would they?
Another second-level tribute to the efficacious Zanu-pf-PF propaganda mandarins.
In Zanu-pf-PF’s duodenum
Much worse, liberating the Prime Minister from the politically pregnant emissary status ascribed to him by unremitting media pot boilers, meant making him personally responsible for the whole trip and its disastrous outcome.
Much early in the Inclusive Government, in fact well before its constitution, the western world had warned Mugabe would suffer Tsvangirai in the power-sharing deal in order to use him to unlock the fabulously giving heart of Europe and America.
With enough silver and gold, they added, Tsvangirai would be dumped right into the chewing gut of Zanu-pf-PF, much the same way PF-Zapu went.
This propaganda by Zanu-pf-PF mandarins appeared to validate this visceral fear in the West. Had Zanu-pf-PF turned Tsvangirai into the thin end of the wedge with which to prise open Europe and America’s hitherto unyielding heart?
Was Tsvangirai and his MDC already on his way to Zanu-pf-PF’s duodenum, a deadly process whose preface was the fatal inclusive kiss of Pretoria?
Still the MDC propagandists reasoned it much better to free the Premier from emissary status and deal later with the full load of trip failure, well docked on the premier’s doorstep. Wakava mufakwose.
The trip did not convince the West the Prime Minister was his own emissary. Equally, the trip brought nothing back home, leaving him more vulnerable to swallowing.
The US$8,3 billion Biti claims Zimbabwe needs has become the shibboleth by which his boss fails the test. The US$200 million is now read against this enormous figure.
And how it falls far, far short! Jonathan Moyo, in Parliament the sole leader and member of Zimbabwe’s official opposition, was not slow to stick in the first deadly dagga.
Tsvangirai went out on an ego-trip, as a Prime Minister of NGOs, cut in the lethally persuasive Jonathan!
One liner that was such a dramatic and humiliating shrinkage for a man whose stature would have risen beyond the dust of party politics to the pinnacle of national leadership.
Diminishing leverage, stature
Now the hard facts. After a three-week sojourn in the wild Worst — sorry, West, MDC-T comes back with a hugely diminished stature and leverage in the Inclusive Government.
So does its embattled leader whose options have shrunk to a mere two: that of disappearing deeper into the smothering arms of the dictating West, or shrinking to a second-rate Mugabe through latter-day, catch-up radicalism.
Founded on claims of wielding the key to ending "isolation" and mobilising resources — re-engagement and mobilising transitional assistance in MDC lingo — the trip which saw Tsvangirai limping home on empty, simply made him and MDC party as much victims of sanctions as Mugabe and his Zanu-pf-PF.
The only and soon-to-prove decisive difference being that Tsvangirai and his MDC are viewed as careless and deserving victims who invited sanctions, again in the vain hope of plenty, while Zanu-pf-PF is seen as carrying the cross for daring assert a national good.
Across continents, across leadership temperaments and personalities, Tsvangirai was told in very clear and no uncertain tones that sanctions would not come off, with the same voices adding soto voce, unless the goals for putting them in place are met!
He seemed to agree that Zimbabwe had not done much to deserve relief. This was mildly complicit.
Thanks to McGee, the whole admission was transfigured into downright incrimination when the restless US ambassador, in a remarkable verbal miscue, put it plainly, bluntly: Tsvangirai would not seek the removal of sanctions because he knows and shares in the purpose for which the sanctions were put in place in the first place!
Hau!
And precious little was left to imagination.
The sanctions had been put in place for two goals: the reversal of land reforms, and delivery of Mugabe’s head on a platter, the second being a prime enabler to the first goal.
Beneath inclusivity
And during the trip, a new word entered the political vocabulary of Zimbabwe: "incremental".
The MDC-T’s purpose in the Inclusive Government in the about four months that have gone by, has been to subtly loosen President Mugabe’s hold on levers of power, in the ultimate hope of pushing him off and out, while "incrementally" enlarging Tsvangirai’s hand on the wheel of the vessel of State.
This is what young Chamisa meant when he said — ungainly in my view — we agreed to share power in order to "take it". Victoria Falls "bonding" was a power-profiling and assessment exercise in the bureaucracy, pending a sequenced, surgical attack on carriers of the State.
Innocent STERP was the facade. After it, an observation post (OP) or sentinel disposal strategy for the bureaucracy was worked out: plaint players in the bureaucracy getting won over, brittle ones meriting a bad name — "hardliners" — before being hanged! You want to
understand the attack of the likes of Gono, Tomana, JOC and lately information leadership, in that context.
A different strategy — charm and technicality (land audit) — is being attempted for the land sector.
When angry Tapa was set on him
The burden on the MDC leader was to convince his Western funders that the strategy was working, was delivering.
Or so expected the West. Plainly, he did not. If anything, he irritated them: by denying any land invasions; re-characterising Mugabe as a big, kind heart, rare and reserved for statesmen; denying any human rights abuses, in fact making Mugabe’s and his own fate Siamese.
He made the fatal error of honesty in a world accustomed to deceptive politics.
After all the game plan had been made plain: the stage-managed Amnesty International visit and damning report; the cold reception in Holland which set the tone, the debate and subsequent more-sanctions resolution in the US Senate, the false Human Rights Watch report on diamonds, already known but to be published later.
All these efforts were to be underpinned by a Tsvangirai full of complaints against Mugabe as an untrustworthy partner in the Inclusive Government. Tsvangirai did not shore up this
political position and livid Albion set Tapa and all on him, at Southwalk.
Icho!
This is the broad context within which to appreciate what China has done to the politics of Zimbabwe.
Globally embattled, globally vilified, the Zimbabwe revolution seemed orphaned, condemned both in the East and in the West. Although those in Zanu-PF knew better, China appeared hostile, or at best reticent.
Russia appeared languid. Both seemed not too keen to go beyond gestures in the Security Council, although admittedly very important at the time. Zanu-pf-PF’s Zimbabwe appeared easy to rescue, harder to nourish and defend.
But with what has happened this week, China has moved in emphatically, clearly showing the sun truly rises in the East, dies in the West. Morgan Tsvangirai’s beatitudinal West! And China has done it in such a way that even the common man in Zimbabwe visualises how foreign policy matters domestically.
China’s guns which only yesterday brought freedom to Zimbabwe, have today flowered to trigger real, unconditional welfare for the liberated. The credit touches on welfare pillars, development pillars so, so sorely lacking. What remains to be seen is whether Zanu-pf-PF can be helped. Will it have the courage to reassert the role of the central bank on the back of this credit? Indeed to end this Multilateral Donor Trust Fund, itself an economy within an economy, indeed a government within a government?
Indeed to reassert the place of the new farmer, the nationalist entrepreneur, both of them orphaned by the inclusive Government?
Or will it, as before feed the treacherously fawning managerial bourgeoisie that had so quickly abandoned it for a new suitor, a new benefactor?
Those who had taken to platforms to denounce Zanu-pf-PF and its leadership at Trade Fairs are already dusting their party regalia, sharpening their words for another round of praise poetry. For the daffodil is blossoming again.
Charira!
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
When goodness triumphs to ring loudest across the veld, even the dead stir back to life.
China’s decision to grant Zimbabwe a staggering US$950m credit barely a week after the Prime Minister’s dry-womb trip to the West, has sent tremors far and deep, certainly right into the sanctum of MDC-T.
His claim that his Secretary-General, now Finance Minister in the Inclusive Government, Tendai Biti, negotiated the deal, rings fatuous and ridiculous.
Why would he choose to go to the barren West when the generous East so beckoned? Why would he time the fulfilment of such a wonderful deal so close to the empty one of the West, all to invite such a damning comparison upon his all-time benefactors?
If anything, this claim confirms the tremors I refer to.
But first things first.
Let the parameters of this piece be made clear. Both the managers and hosts of the Prime Minister’s ill-fated trip undermined the trip’s claim to national status or purpose.
The trip was decidedly narrow, by composition, host preferences and by outcome.
That reality acquits me from any politeness, taking me right into the murky world of party politics.
Fate’s pace and parcel.
So, back to substance. Play the US$200-plus little the MDC leader got against the stupendous sum China has given Zimbabwe through Government, then you give the mathematical magnitude to MDC-T’s worries.
Here was a man who ventured out into the western world — first home to him — wrapped in lofty people-goals, all in the hope of what he mistook for guaranteed plenty. Politically, he hoped the trip would ram home his wish status as the only wielder of the golden key to the vaults of the "monied" West.
That way, he would have placed himself implacably high, well on the messiah pedestal, to great grief of Zanu-PF, great personal grief of President Mugabe.
But fate had its own pace and parcel for him. Instead of bagfuls of money, drums of enhanced leverage against Zanu-pf (PF), he came back limping, dragging a vast list of governance beatitudes and conditionalities the hungry and expectant could never eat.
For the face of an Inclusive Government which had risen and received embrace as "manna" from the West, all this hardly added up.
Today the MDC leader stands very short as a pathetic anti-Christ figure who dared to make a sermon on the mountain, without feeding the hungry five thousand, all of them down and to earth. It is going to be a long while before they are ready to forgive him.
Fighting the task and task-man
Zanu-pf (PF)’s propaganda mandarins did not help matters. Wrestling initiative, they framed the Prime Minister’s trip as Mugabe-initiated, as Mugabe-defined, a position Tsvangirai is still battling to shake off. They defined the trip around the twin objectives of getting the utterly illegal sanctions removed, and of securing soft loans — not grants — for the sanctions-wrecked Zimbabwe economy.
Against such a filling propaganda take by Zanu-pf (PF), the MDC leader and his acolytes were quite appropriately galled.
They frantically sought to challenge this forming and settling orthodoxy to the story, indeed to re-frame the whole trip well outside of the twin orders, twin purpose, clearly with enormous difficulties, in all attempts with ever diminishing success.
That included the wrap-up press conference given this week. For how else would one reframe the trip away from the twin objectives, away from the twin tasking executive — the Cabinet and the President — and still justify to the hungry the use of public funds? And to justify the more than three weeks this public figure was out of the country?
And if sanctions are the only outstanding reason for present penury, how would one distance the Prime Minister of this country from attacking them to enhance public weal?
You do not want propaganda which coincides with reality, much less one which leaves you rebelliously wondering directionless within its overbearing framework.
It was an unenviable bind, one spawning near desperate, multinational response by way of the Andrew Chadwick-led, USAID-funded newsletter, itself an utterly poor show which gave the MDC more headaches and fury.
The Chamisas, the Bangos, themselves real owners of the propaganda portfolio of the MDC, had been left out, and did not find this whole "white" effort exactly quite polite, exactly well-intentioned, would they?
Another second-level tribute to the efficacious Zanu-pf-PF propaganda mandarins.
In Zanu-pf-PF’s duodenum
Much worse, liberating the Prime Minister from the politically pregnant emissary status ascribed to him by unremitting media pot boilers, meant making him personally responsible for the whole trip and its disastrous outcome.
Much early in the Inclusive Government, in fact well before its constitution, the western world had warned Mugabe would suffer Tsvangirai in the power-sharing deal in order to use him to unlock the fabulously giving heart of Europe and America.
With enough silver and gold, they added, Tsvangirai would be dumped right into the chewing gut of Zanu-pf-PF, much the same way PF-Zapu went.
This propaganda by Zanu-pf-PF mandarins appeared to validate this visceral fear in the West. Had Zanu-pf-PF turned Tsvangirai into the thin end of the wedge with which to prise open Europe and America’s hitherto unyielding heart?
Was Tsvangirai and his MDC already on his way to Zanu-pf-PF’s duodenum, a deadly process whose preface was the fatal inclusive kiss of Pretoria?
Still the MDC propagandists reasoned it much better to free the Premier from emissary status and deal later with the full load of trip failure, well docked on the premier’s doorstep. Wakava mufakwose.
The trip did not convince the West the Prime Minister was his own emissary. Equally, the trip brought nothing back home, leaving him more vulnerable to swallowing.
The US$8,3 billion Biti claims Zimbabwe needs has become the shibboleth by which his boss fails the test. The US$200 million is now read against this enormous figure.
And how it falls far, far short! Jonathan Moyo, in Parliament the sole leader and member of Zimbabwe’s official opposition, was not slow to stick in the first deadly dagga.
Tsvangirai went out on an ego-trip, as a Prime Minister of NGOs, cut in the lethally persuasive Jonathan!
One liner that was such a dramatic and humiliating shrinkage for a man whose stature would have risen beyond the dust of party politics to the pinnacle of national leadership.
Diminishing leverage, stature
Now the hard facts. After a three-week sojourn in the wild Worst — sorry, West, MDC-T comes back with a hugely diminished stature and leverage in the Inclusive Government.
So does its embattled leader whose options have shrunk to a mere two: that of disappearing deeper into the smothering arms of the dictating West, or shrinking to a second-rate Mugabe through latter-day, catch-up radicalism.
Founded on claims of wielding the key to ending "isolation" and mobilising resources — re-engagement and mobilising transitional assistance in MDC lingo — the trip which saw Tsvangirai limping home on empty, simply made him and MDC party as much victims of sanctions as Mugabe and his Zanu-pf-PF.
The only and soon-to-prove decisive difference being that Tsvangirai and his MDC are viewed as careless and deserving victims who invited sanctions, again in the vain hope of plenty, while Zanu-pf-PF is seen as carrying the cross for daring assert a national good.
Across continents, across leadership temperaments and personalities, Tsvangirai was told in very clear and no uncertain tones that sanctions would not come off, with the same voices adding soto voce, unless the goals for putting them in place are met!
He seemed to agree that Zimbabwe had not done much to deserve relief. This was mildly complicit.
Thanks to McGee, the whole admission was transfigured into downright incrimination when the restless US ambassador, in a remarkable verbal miscue, put it plainly, bluntly: Tsvangirai would not seek the removal of sanctions because he knows and shares in the purpose for which the sanctions were put in place in the first place!
Hau!
And precious little was left to imagination.
The sanctions had been put in place for two goals: the reversal of land reforms, and delivery of Mugabe’s head on a platter, the second being a prime enabler to the first goal.
Beneath inclusivity
And during the trip, a new word entered the political vocabulary of Zimbabwe: "incremental".
The MDC-T’s purpose in the Inclusive Government in the about four months that have gone by, has been to subtly loosen President Mugabe’s hold on levers of power, in the ultimate hope of pushing him off and out, while "incrementally" enlarging Tsvangirai’s hand on the wheel of the vessel of State.
This is what young Chamisa meant when he said — ungainly in my view — we agreed to share power in order to "take it". Victoria Falls "bonding" was a power-profiling and assessment exercise in the bureaucracy, pending a sequenced, surgical attack on carriers of the State.
Innocent STERP was the facade. After it, an observation post (OP) or sentinel disposal strategy for the bureaucracy was worked out: plaint players in the bureaucracy getting won over, brittle ones meriting a bad name — "hardliners" — before being hanged! You want to
understand the attack of the likes of Gono, Tomana, JOC and lately information leadership, in that context.
A different strategy — charm and technicality (land audit) — is being attempted for the land sector.
When angry Tapa was set on him
The burden on the MDC leader was to convince his Western funders that the strategy was working, was delivering.
Or so expected the West. Plainly, he did not. If anything, he irritated them: by denying any land invasions; re-characterising Mugabe as a big, kind heart, rare and reserved for statesmen; denying any human rights abuses, in fact making Mugabe’s and his own fate Siamese.
He made the fatal error of honesty in a world accustomed to deceptive politics.
After all the game plan had been made plain: the stage-managed Amnesty International visit and damning report; the cold reception in Holland which set the tone, the debate and subsequent more-sanctions resolution in the US Senate, the false Human Rights Watch report on diamonds, already known but to be published later.
All these efforts were to be underpinned by a Tsvangirai full of complaints against Mugabe as an untrustworthy partner in the Inclusive Government. Tsvangirai did not shore up this
political position and livid Albion set Tapa and all on him, at Southwalk.
Icho!
This is the broad context within which to appreciate what China has done to the politics of Zimbabwe.
Globally embattled, globally vilified, the Zimbabwe revolution seemed orphaned, condemned both in the East and in the West. Although those in Zanu-PF knew better, China appeared hostile, or at best reticent.
Russia appeared languid. Both seemed not too keen to go beyond gestures in the Security Council, although admittedly very important at the time. Zanu-pf-PF’s Zimbabwe appeared easy to rescue, harder to nourish and defend.
But with what has happened this week, China has moved in emphatically, clearly showing the sun truly rises in the East, dies in the West. Morgan Tsvangirai’s beatitudinal West! And China has done it in such a way that even the common man in Zimbabwe visualises how foreign policy matters domestically.
China’s guns which only yesterday brought freedom to Zimbabwe, have today flowered to trigger real, unconditional welfare for the liberated. The credit touches on welfare pillars, development pillars so, so sorely lacking. What remains to be seen is whether Zanu-pf-PF can be helped. Will it have the courage to reassert the role of the central bank on the back of this credit? Indeed to end this Multilateral Donor Trust Fund, itself an economy within an economy, indeed a government within a government?
Indeed to reassert the place of the new farmer, the nationalist entrepreneur, both of them orphaned by the inclusive Government?
Or will it, as before feed the treacherously fawning managerial bourgeoisie that had so quickly abandoned it for a new suitor, a new benefactor?
Those who had taken to platforms to denounce Zanu-pf-PF and its leadership at Trade Fairs are already dusting their party regalia, sharpening their words for another round of praise poetry. For the daffodil is blossoming again.
Charira!
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Violet Gonda's 'hot seat' of ice for Andrew Pocock.
After behaving like Pocock is her Sugar Daddy, Violet Gonda then goes on to ask leading questions.
Leading questions to answers that are sweet to her ears.
There are some sharp questions she should have asked, only if she wasnt a political activist masquerading as a journalist.
For example, one could easily ask why Andrew Pocock feels the Black Zimbabwean tax payer should compensate white farmers for stealing his land? Why would anyone pay for being colonized, having your land stolen and being dumped at gunpoint in malarial, tsetse infested, hot, dry, infertile 'reserves'? Under normal circumstances its actually the white farmer who would pay compensation for the loss blacks incurred. No?
Greed and low self esteem always corrupts our people. Violet Gonda is a prize idiot.
Interview: UK's Andrew Pocock
by: Violet Gonda
Britain's outgoing ambassador to Zimbabwe Andrew Pocock was a guest on SW Radio Africa's Hotseat programme. In his final interview as Britain's top diplomat to Harare, he categorically says his country has no moral or legal obligation to compensate Zimbabwe's displaced white farmers. Host Violet Gonda asked the questions:
Broadcast: June 26, 2009
Violet Gonda: My guest on the Hot Seat programme this week is Andrew Pocock, the outgoing UK Ambassador to Zimbabwe. Hallo Ambassador Pocock.
Andrew Pocock: Violet, how are you?
Gonda: I’m OK. How are things going there in Zimbabwe?
Pocock: Well, we are in an interesting position. There are winds of change but there’s still quite a long way to go.
Gonda: Right, has there been a significant shift though in the political situation in Zimbabwe?
Pocock: Yes I think there has. The new government itself has changed the politics of Zimbabwe and I think indeed the formation of that government reflects the political dead end that Zimbabwe had reached last year when the then regime had no ideas or solutions for the crisis they had themselves created. So this new government and its emergence is a shift and is significant but I think perhaps not quite yet decisive because there is a great deal more work to be done.
Gonda: Can you tell us a bit more about that – what progress have you seen so far and what have been the failures of the coalition government?
Pocock: Progress and failure – I think they’re two big issues. There has been progress to start with that on the micro-economic side, on micro-economic reforms, I think including the trimming of powers from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe which as you know was once virtually a parallel government. Ironically it was the Reserve Bank governor’s printing to extinction of the Zimbabwe dollar that helped a bit, it killed hyper-inflation at a stroke, it allowed dollarisation and the use of real money and that has allowed some small economic recovery and the ability to buy and sell and save. And in the public sector a move to cash budgeting and better revenue rating that’s helped with the budget and again new measures – the abolition of price controls for instance that’s helped the private sector – so there’s some good news here. The other element of good news is the beginnings of reconnection with the international financial institutions. That’s very important and Zimbabwe’s friends, including the UK, are helping with this.
But I think it is perhaps a little bit too early for full rejoicing – there’s a very long way to go on restoring trust and confidence. There’s still too much about the systems here that are not transparent or accountable and that leads us to areas where there hasn’t been I think yet success or enough success and that’s the politics. In almost all the areas that are traditional here – human rights, the justice system, the media, land invasions, corruption – there’s still a great deal of work to be done. I think the new government is trying to address this but it is heavy sledding.
Gonda: What about in terms of the leadership itself – do you think Robert Mugabe has relinquished sufficient powers?
Pocock: I don’t think he has. I think the issue of the power balance in the new government is still very much a work in progress. The fact is that Zanu-PF has run this state for 29 years and it still controls the hard levers of power. I mean the army, the police, the courts, the official media and key elements of the civil service. They have no intention in the short term of relinquishing this. It’s a question of the MDC slowly inserting itself into the processes of the state and I think they’re making progress on that but again there’s work to do.
Gonda: What about some of the accusations that Robert Mugabe has made against western countries especially Britain where he believes that Britain is responsible for the crisis in Zimbabwe. What are your thoughts on this, do you think Mugabe really believes that Britain is responsible for the crisis or is it a matter of convenience to blame the old colonial master?
Pocock: Well I think it is certainly a convenient thing to say. It’s hard to know whether Zanu-PF really believe that the United Kingdom is responsible for the crisis or whether as you say it is a matter of convenience. It’s probably a combination. If one repeats something long enough, enough people begin to believe it including oneself. The truth is, as we see it, that the crisis is as a direct consequence of very bad policy choices, of the unrestrained exercise of executive power and a pretty complete disregard for the impact of all this on Zimbabwe’s people and economy. I’m being direct about it because I think it needs to be said. So what we do need to see is a change of mindset. I’m quite happy to accept that it needs to be on more than one side, but a change of mindset is needed.
Gonda: On the issue of a change of mindset do you think that western countries are ever going to be able to trust a party like Zanu-PF?
Pocock: Well I think frankly there will have to be some evolution, some change in the way that Zanu-PF see the world, a change in their policies and a change in the way of doing business. I want to be clear about this Violet, this is not the UK dictating terms to Zanu-PF or anyone else, what I’m saying is simply as we see it, a matter of reality. Certain forms of behaviour in the modern world have certain consequences. Zanu-PF need to look very carefully at how they approach the outside world and what they do then is up to them but it’s worth just making clear that people, including I think crucially Zimbabweans will then make their own judgement on how that process works and whether trust and confidence is fully possible.
Gonda: I was going to ask that for the sake of progress should Zimbabwe and western countries forget the past.
Pocock: No I don’t think we should forget the past. I mean forgetting the past usually condemns us to repeat it. I think we must learn from the past and try jointly to move on. Learning from the past means a genuine recognition on all sides of mistakes; mistakes in policy, mistakes in analysis, mistakes in implementation. And to begin the process of moving on I think we need a genuine dialogue and that hasn’t fully started yet and of course there are elements of the inclusive government we talk to very freely. There are other elements we don’t yet do but that process is beginning and the joint visit to London last week, which included the Zimbabwean Foreign Minister I think is a potentially important first step in sitting down and looking very carefully at the balance of accounts. But this is not a question of forgetting the past as I say, it’s a question of learning from it.
Gonda: What do you think should be done to people who are guilty of human rights violations?
Pocock: I think that’s a question very much for Zimbabweans themselves to decide. There’s no question that the charge sheet in Zimbabwe is long and grim but there are many models in Southern Africa for dealing with this, for national healing and there are Ministers in Zimbabwe now for precisely that, to truth and justice commissions on to a full judicial process. But I think very much, and so does the British government, that this is a matter for Zimbabweans to decide for themselves.
Gonda: But as an observer? You wouldn’t have any views on this?
Pocock: Well I think it’s very difficult for the nation to move on without some accounting for what has happened and it goes back to the 1980s in Matabeleland as well, not just recent history, so there does need to be an accounting. How that’s done, what mechanisms are chosen, what process is used is as I say very much for Zimbabweans, it is not something that either the United Kingdom or indeed Zimbabwe’s western friends would wish to insert themselves into. That’s for people here to decide.
Gonda: Right. Let’s talk a bit about the land issue. You mentioned earlier on that that the invasions are carrying on, but just a bit of background, Mugabe has always accused the British of reneging on provisions of the Lancaster House agreement - on the issue of compensating white commercial farmers. Is this accurate in your view?
Pocock: I think when I go to my grave Violet, Lancaster House will be found tattooed on my liver, but let me just say very plainly, and I’m glad you asked the question – accusations of Britain reneging on Lancaster House are simply not accurate. It’s one of the convenient myths that have unfortunately dogged our relationship. We fulfilled all our Lancaster House obligations. And let me say by the way in passing, that Lancaster House was a treaty that worked. It ended a civil war, it transferred sovereignty to the new Zimbabwean government, it helped unite warring factions into a single security force and it still, ironically, provides Zimbabwe with its only working constitution 29 years after it was framed.
But we did meet our obligations. During the period of the 1980s the UK spent 44 million pounds on land reform which was a substantial sum at the time. We did it on a willing seller, willing buyer basis as had been agreed and we only stopped funds for land when it was clear that land was not being passed to the poor and the landless. That is not reneging, that is simply pointing to the evidence and it’s also resisting the proposition that has crept in that the UK somehow has unlimited liability forever and a day to fund land reform in Zimbabwe.
The Lancaster House never said anything like that. What Lancaster House said and what we undertook then was (a) to do everything we could to help with land reform (b) to contribute substantially ourselves and (c) to seek support from others in the international community. Now we did all that so this is really again another urban or rural myth that we need at some early stage to lay to rest.
Gonda: But I understand that (former) Minister Claire Short actually wrote a letter and I think it was in 1997 saying that Britain no longer has any obligation. Now do you think that letter could have, to some extent, influenced the events which resulted in the land invasions?
Pocock: I think what was unfortunate was that it was a two page letter which the government here seems to have read only the first half. It made comments about how Britain looked at its obligations under land reform and Lancaster House but what it then very clearly stated at length and in terms was that Britain had no intention of ceasing its development relationship with Zimbabwe but what it wished to do was to find a different way of doing it. To move from where we were to a relationship that dealt more with helping the poor, relieving poverty and on the basis of that, what was asked of the Zimbabwean government was a dialogue on the best means of moving that forward. Sadly that dialogue never emerged. What happened was a powerful reaction from Harare that accused us of reneging on treaty obligations when that was never stated in the letter nor was it intended or implied. What was being sought was a different kind of development relationship.
So one of the misunderstandings to put it no more strongly of the past, one which we’ve tried to revisit on occasions and not had the political contacts in which to do it. So again, something that needs to be looked at in its proper context and moved on from.
Gonda: Is this something that the two governments have started working on?
Pocock: Yes it is. Not solely on issues of land, they’re important but they’re not the only issue on the agenda - but in terms of looking at how we might begin reconstructing a relationship. Zimbabwe’s important to the UK and vice versa. So although we’re at a very early stage we have begun that process and that is a good thing.
Gonda: Now the white commercial farmers want compensation and they’re demanding US$5 billion from the Zimbabwean government. What are your thoughts on that?
Pocock: Well I think their requirement for compensation from the Zimbabwean government is probably the right legal process. Whether it has any practical impact is another matter. Compensation is a very tangled issue. In the fairly recent past, the Zimbabwean government has said that compensation rests with the United Kingdom. Well it does not – either legally or morally. In Lancaster House, sovereignty was transferred to the new Zimbabwean government.
The disruption on the farms was not caused by anything to do with the United Kingdom, it was driven by Zimbabwean government policy therefore we have no legal obligation for compensation. We’ve never accepted that and we won’t. But people have been, as the SADC tribunal has recently reiterated, unlawfully and unconstitutionally displaced from their personal property.
And I think and I hope as we move into the future, as we reach a situation where the restoration of commercial agriculture is possible, it won’t be on the old paternalistic basis, it will be on some new foundation but when we reach that point, as part of the natural justice, as part of building confidence for future investors, some element of compensation for people unconstitutionally displaced might be considered. I think we haven't got anywhere near the mechanisms and we certainly haven't decided who would pay for that compensation or indeed how much it would be but I think in natural justice, some form of address to this should be considered and I hope in due course will.
Gonda: That’s what I was going to ask – is it possible to ever see the United Kingdom actually providing compensation directly to the white commercial farmers for land that had been taken by the Zimbabwe government - so it’s not completely or totally off the table, it is possible that the UK could provide compensation directly to the white farmers?
Pocock: No I don’t think in the way you suggest Violet, not at all. What I’m trying to say is that if we get to the issue of compensation it will be in the context of some broad land commission or other institutional assessment of what might be done to re-revive commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe. That’s a very broad issue. Compensation is one part of it. If we do reach closure on the broader issue and compensation can be addressed, I’m sure the United Kingdom would wish to be part of that but it is not something that we will take on singly and solely, it is not something we feel we have legal or moral obligations to. But we do recognise there is a case in natural justice to compensate people illegally deprived of their property. So it is a rather more, rather broader context than you’re suggesting. It is not a bilateral obligation, this is something that we think needs to be addressed in a much wider context.
Gonda: And of course the Prime Minister is denying the severity of farm invasions, but the commercial farmers say the invasions are continuing. Now is it of concern to the diplomatic community when they hear Mr Tsvangirai saying the reports of farm invasions have been overblown?
Pocock: Well I’ve said that farm invasions certainly are continuing. They accelerated indeed and I think not without coincidence from the actual formation of the inclusive government in February. And farm invasions include by the way, pressure on the last remaining wildlife conservancies in the south of Zimbabwe which are not only a biological asset but could and should be a trigger to improve, resume tourism to this country. So that’s worrying in itself - but I think this programme is intended to put pressure on the Prime Minister and on the MDC, but it is also extremely damaging to Zimbabwe’s image, to its economy and to its potential for recovery. It discourages investment and it hurts people so I think it does remain a major issue that will have to be grappled with. Frankly there is no avoiding this.
Gonda: But does it concern the diplomatic community that it’s the Prime Minister who’s also saying the situation is not as bad as it sounds and there are no fresh farm invasions that are happening right now?
Pocock: Well what I would say is we’re continuing to talk to the Prime Minister and his office and the MDC generally about our concerns in this. Not may I add from the hysterical, stereotypical point of a background of a British ambassador complaining constantly about land, this is a very broad concern within the international community for the reasons I’ve mentioned – it damages the economy and the country’s image but we are in constant contact with the Prime Minister and his office on this.
Gonda: And what is his response?
Pocock: Well his response is concern. I think what he’s said in public that his response is concern as it should be so this is an issue that we will continue to discuss
Gonda: What is the UK’s position on lifting restrictive measures that have an economic impact?
Pocock: Well let me first say there are no restrictive measures that have an economic impact. This is again one of these myths that has been convenient in the past. Let me put on record for the umpteenth time – there are no economic sanctions from the European Union or the United Kingdom which is a part of the EU and there never have been. The only restrictive measures are a visa ban, an asset freeze on 243 individuals and an arms embargo - full stop. There is no other measure so the alleged economic impact I think is another effort to lay off blame for domestic policy failure.
And in the international financial institutions for instance where there’s recently been publicity that the UK has raised its ban on IFI lending – well we never had a ban so we couldn’t raise it. The reason why there is no lending from the international financial institutions is because of Zimbabwe’s arrears. If a country fails to pay its debts to the international financial institutions they stop lending and I’m afraid Zimbabwe owes 1.2 billion dollars or thereabouts, mostly in arrears.
So there is no block, it is simply a question of Zimbabwean debt which is a complicated one. But let me say the UK and indeed our international friends are helping Zimbabwe and the new financial minister to re-engage with the IFIs which is a lengthy process but a crucial one.
The IFIs are responding. They are sending teams, the IMF has sent Article Four mission, the World Bank has a mission here at the moment and they are also contributing technical assistance. But there will be no new resource until the debt issue is addressed but continued engagement will continue even though that is subject to sustained policy change. But as I said earlier, we’re seeing policy change on the micro economic side so there is some progress here.
Gonda: Has the UK been trading with Zimbabwe in the last few years?
Pocock: The UK has never ceased trading with Zimbabwe. In fact until fairly recently until the virtual complete collapse of the Zimbabwe economy in 2007, Zimbabwe actually had a trade surplus with the United Kingdom. We bought minerals and other things from Zimbabwe and exported very little because Zimbabwe couldn’t pay for it. So the idea that we never traded with Zimbabwe is again not true. There is no economic impediment to that and we have done so, we continue to do so and we hope, if we move in the right direction, that trade can resume again.
Gonda: But there have been reports saying that the British government has been putting pressure on UK companies, for example those that buy produce from farms that were taken over from white farmers. Is this the policy of the British government?
Pocock: My impression was it was very much a policy of supermarkets and other people who felt they had a responsibility to trade fairly and who didn’t therefore wish to be taking produce from farms in Zimbabwe that you say had been illegally seized. But let me put the picture in perspective. Part of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s visit to the UK included a very important investment conference which was chaired jointly by Lord Branson of Virgin and the Foreign Secretary. To that conference was invited potential and actual investors in Zimbabwe to allow the Prime Minister to set out his view of why he thought Zimbabwe could again be a reasonable and attractive investment destination and for investors to put to him their concerns about protection for private property and the judicial system and respect for the rule of law. This is evidence of a mutual wish to help the Zimbabwean economy. Now clearly there’s got to be sensible conditions on the ground before investors will commit money but it is strong and active evidence of a genuine wish on both sides to move this process forward.
So far from looking at sanctions, which as I say economically have never existed, we are looking at ways in which we can incentivise reform in Zimbabwe and indeed reward it. So the debate about sanctions, certainly from the Zimbabwean end, has always been misleading and an attempt to defer, deflect blame for domestic policy. It is an old-fashioned debate, we really need to move on from it for the sake of Zimbabwe’s recovery.
Gonda: Why was the Mines Minister, Obert Mpofu denied a visa to attend these investment conferences in the UK with the Prime Minister?
Pocock: Because he is on our banned list and the person that the investment conference really wanted to hear from was the Prime Minister which they did. He made the keynote speech and that is the way I think probably was best outcome to this. So it was as simple as that. As you know, we had granted visas to the Foreign Minister and the Minister of Tourism so I don’t think there can be an accusation that somehow the United Kingdom wasn’t being flexible but we didn’t think that on the mining issue it was appropriate to issue a visa.
Gonda: The Herald newspaper this week claims that the decline in food production in Zimbabwe was due to global warming. What do you think about this?
Pocock: I think the decline in food production in Zimbabwe is due to farm seizures and a catastrophic economic and agricultural policy. Global warming may have a marginal impact but what you are really saying is this is the old excuse about drought. Well Zimbabwe has had some very major droughts in its recent history in the 80s and 90s which didn’t affect by and large its ability to produce food, indeed to export agricultural produce. What has affected that is the disruption of commercial agriculture, the decline of inputs, the loss of asset value, the general implosion of the economy and the scattering of skills and capital which has been freely distributed to other countries in Southern Africa but also elsewhere. So Zimbabwe’s ironically, its greatest value added export in the last decade has been its skilled people. That is the reason for food production decline.
Gonda: And of course, sticking with the Herald, there was an outcry when the paper published a story saying that sanctions hit local British pensioners and that the UK had started to airlift its citizens from Zimbabwe to the UK. What is the position of your government on this?
Pocock: Well the Herald is a great reservoir of fantasy. First of all, there are no economic sanctions, as I say what has destroyed pensioners’ ability to sustain their livelihoods here has been the policies of the previous regime, not sanctions. What the United Kingdom is doing is not airlifting our people, what we recognized was that the elderly and vulnerable here have found it increasingly difficult, indeed as have everybody else, but those categories particularly, to sustain life. And so as a responsible government we offered our citizens, on a wholly voluntary basis, the opportunity to apply for repatriation to the United Kingdom if they met certain criteria and those criteria are to do with vulnerability and with the inability to sustain themselves economically and medically in Zimbabwe. So far from it being an airlift, there is still a substantial residual British population in Zimbabwe, it is a wholly humanitarian programme on a voluntary basis aimed at a particular category of British nationals. No more and no less.
Gonda: And the paper went on to say that the repatriation showed shocking double standards as it showed that London was acknowledging the ruinous nature of the sanctions yet it was keen to maintain them against black Zimbabweans.
Pocock: Well Violet you simply mustn’t believe everything you read in the Herald, and of course they would say that, wouldn’t they? They base their premise on the wholly erroneous proposition that Zimbabwe’s economy has been ruined by sanctions. As I have said repeatedly, it hasn’t. That was domestic policy driven. And secondly, it’s not as if we are ignoring black Zimbabweans, the United Kingdom is now going to put $100 million of assistance into Zimbabwe this year. When you combine it with the money that we have put in at least since 2000, we’ve probably put in almost half a billion dollars in humanitarian and now transitional support assistance for Zimbabwe. That is to tackle everything from food insecurity created again by domestic policy, to HIV, to orphans and vulnerable children. We’re now moving on to a range of infrastructural areas including education.
If we and our international partners had not done that then I fear a great many more Zimbabweans would either have died or left this country than the three or four million who have already done so. So the Herald is full ofagitprop but none of it makes sense and no responsible adult believes it.
Gonda: So do you feel that the diplomatic community in Harare has been effective during the last eight years of the crisis?
Pocock: Well broadly I think yes. There are obviously many areas in which we haven’t been able to be particularly helpful. One of them is in combating the kind of stories you’ve just mentioned and continue to be produced but overall we have managed to maintain humanitarian assistance and in March this year we were feeding seven million people. We’ve helped with the areas I’ve mentioned – HIV and orphans and vulnerable children, we’ve supported human rights defenders and indeed we’ve kept Zimbabwe a global issue and I think it was important that we did these things because without them, there was a risk that Zimbabwe’s plight would have slipped beneath the radar. It hasn’t and the world has stayed remarkably focussed on what has been happening here and I think that is a good thing.
Gonda: And of course you have concluded your term. What do you think you have achieved and do you have any regrets?
Pocock: Well diplomacy is a trade where there’s very seldom an easily quantifiable outcome but I think while I’ve been here I have seen a movement from desperate times – 2008 last year was the worst year in Zimbabwe’s independent history – to the beginnings of change. We have a new government, we have a start to re-engagement with the international community, we have over 700 million dollars a year of donor inputs coming in with much greater flexibility on how it is spent in response to Zimbabwean priorities and I think it’s not too strong to say that we have had the rebirth of an element of hope here and the beginning of the end of Zimbabwe’s self-imposed isolation.
And I’ve also been lucky here to meet many very brave and patriotic Zimbabweans who are dedicated to the revival of their country and to have worked with friends and colleagues including, may I say, a very dedicated and professional British Embassy team. So I’ve not contributed to any of it in a particular way but I’m very happy to have been associated with it and oh by the way, we’ve just, the British Embassy moved to a new building which is a symbol of long term commitment here. So I’ve been glad to have been associated with that.
But regrets as the song says, I’ve had a few. I’ve regretted the unnecessary suffering of so many and the treatment of human rights defenders and frankly the impoverishment of a nation. None of that has been pretty. I’m not sure if there was a great deal we could realistically have done about that other than supporting the people in the way I’ve described but I leave here with a degree of optimism and looking forward I hope to a new Zimbabwe.
Gonda: Has you replacement been named yet?
Pocock: Yes, his name is Mark Canning, he is coming from Rangoon and he arrives on the 2nd of July.
Gonda: He’s coming from Burma.
Pocock: He is.
Gonda: Quite interesting…
Pocock: Very interesting.
Gonda: And a final word Ambassador.
Pocock: Well it has been a pleasure talking to you and going over these issues. I think that the winds of change are stirring in Zimbabwe, it’s important that they be given all the help they can and the point I would make just to end is the international community is helping. We hear a great deal of criticism about conditionalities and about waiting and seeing. Of course there will be some conditionalities, we would be unreasonable to expect there to be none but we are already as an international group, putting as I say $700 million a year into Zimbabwe.
We are taking risks, we are trying to be innovative, we’re trying to support change and fundamental reform. So we are not sitting on our haunches, we are not letting the reforming elements of the new government twist in the wind, we’re doing the opposite. The reason that we haven’t sailed straightforwardly to success is because things still are very difficult and there are many impediments and 30 years of under-investment and political difficulty are not solved overnight but we’re addressing it and we’re on the case.
Gonda: And where are you going from here?
Pocock: Back to London, to serve my time for my sins I think.
Gonda: Well Ambassador Andrew Pocock, we wish you well and thank you very much for talking to us.
Pocock: Violet, a great pleasure, thank you.
Feedback can be sent to violet@swradioafrica.com
Leading questions to answers that are sweet to her ears.
There are some sharp questions she should have asked, only if she wasnt a political activist masquerading as a journalist.
For example, one could easily ask why Andrew Pocock feels the Black Zimbabwean tax payer should compensate white farmers for stealing his land? Why would anyone pay for being colonized, having your land stolen and being dumped at gunpoint in malarial, tsetse infested, hot, dry, infertile 'reserves'? Under normal circumstances its actually the white farmer who would pay compensation for the loss blacks incurred. No?
Greed and low self esteem always corrupts our people. Violet Gonda is a prize idiot.
Interview: UK's Andrew Pocock
by: Violet Gonda
Britain's outgoing ambassador to Zimbabwe Andrew Pocock was a guest on SW Radio Africa's Hotseat programme. In his final interview as Britain's top diplomat to Harare, he categorically says his country has no moral or legal obligation to compensate Zimbabwe's displaced white farmers. Host Violet Gonda asked the questions:
Broadcast: June 26, 2009
Violet Gonda: My guest on the Hot Seat programme this week is Andrew Pocock, the outgoing UK Ambassador to Zimbabwe. Hallo Ambassador Pocock.
Andrew Pocock: Violet, how are you?
Gonda: I’m OK. How are things going there in Zimbabwe?
Pocock: Well, we are in an interesting position. There are winds of change but there’s still quite a long way to go.
Gonda: Right, has there been a significant shift though in the political situation in Zimbabwe?
Pocock: Yes I think there has. The new government itself has changed the politics of Zimbabwe and I think indeed the formation of that government reflects the political dead end that Zimbabwe had reached last year when the then regime had no ideas or solutions for the crisis they had themselves created. So this new government and its emergence is a shift and is significant but I think perhaps not quite yet decisive because there is a great deal more work to be done.
Gonda: Can you tell us a bit more about that – what progress have you seen so far and what have been the failures of the coalition government?
Pocock: Progress and failure – I think they’re two big issues. There has been progress to start with that on the micro-economic side, on micro-economic reforms, I think including the trimming of powers from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe which as you know was once virtually a parallel government. Ironically it was the Reserve Bank governor’s printing to extinction of the Zimbabwe dollar that helped a bit, it killed hyper-inflation at a stroke, it allowed dollarisation and the use of real money and that has allowed some small economic recovery and the ability to buy and sell and save. And in the public sector a move to cash budgeting and better revenue rating that’s helped with the budget and again new measures – the abolition of price controls for instance that’s helped the private sector – so there’s some good news here. The other element of good news is the beginnings of reconnection with the international financial institutions. That’s very important and Zimbabwe’s friends, including the UK, are helping with this.
But I think it is perhaps a little bit too early for full rejoicing – there’s a very long way to go on restoring trust and confidence. There’s still too much about the systems here that are not transparent or accountable and that leads us to areas where there hasn’t been I think yet success or enough success and that’s the politics. In almost all the areas that are traditional here – human rights, the justice system, the media, land invasions, corruption – there’s still a great deal of work to be done. I think the new government is trying to address this but it is heavy sledding.
Gonda: What about in terms of the leadership itself – do you think Robert Mugabe has relinquished sufficient powers?
Pocock: I don’t think he has. I think the issue of the power balance in the new government is still very much a work in progress. The fact is that Zanu-PF has run this state for 29 years and it still controls the hard levers of power. I mean the army, the police, the courts, the official media and key elements of the civil service. They have no intention in the short term of relinquishing this. It’s a question of the MDC slowly inserting itself into the processes of the state and I think they’re making progress on that but again there’s work to do.
Gonda: What about some of the accusations that Robert Mugabe has made against western countries especially Britain where he believes that Britain is responsible for the crisis in Zimbabwe. What are your thoughts on this, do you think Mugabe really believes that Britain is responsible for the crisis or is it a matter of convenience to blame the old colonial master?
Pocock: Well I think it is certainly a convenient thing to say. It’s hard to know whether Zanu-PF really believe that the United Kingdom is responsible for the crisis or whether as you say it is a matter of convenience. It’s probably a combination. If one repeats something long enough, enough people begin to believe it including oneself. The truth is, as we see it, that the crisis is as a direct consequence of very bad policy choices, of the unrestrained exercise of executive power and a pretty complete disregard for the impact of all this on Zimbabwe’s people and economy. I’m being direct about it because I think it needs to be said. So what we do need to see is a change of mindset. I’m quite happy to accept that it needs to be on more than one side, but a change of mindset is needed.
Gonda: On the issue of a change of mindset do you think that western countries are ever going to be able to trust a party like Zanu-PF?
Pocock: Well I think frankly there will have to be some evolution, some change in the way that Zanu-PF see the world, a change in their policies and a change in the way of doing business. I want to be clear about this Violet, this is not the UK dictating terms to Zanu-PF or anyone else, what I’m saying is simply as we see it, a matter of reality. Certain forms of behaviour in the modern world have certain consequences. Zanu-PF need to look very carefully at how they approach the outside world and what they do then is up to them but it’s worth just making clear that people, including I think crucially Zimbabweans will then make their own judgement on how that process works and whether trust and confidence is fully possible.
Gonda: I was going to ask that for the sake of progress should Zimbabwe and western countries forget the past.
Pocock: No I don’t think we should forget the past. I mean forgetting the past usually condemns us to repeat it. I think we must learn from the past and try jointly to move on. Learning from the past means a genuine recognition on all sides of mistakes; mistakes in policy, mistakes in analysis, mistakes in implementation. And to begin the process of moving on I think we need a genuine dialogue and that hasn’t fully started yet and of course there are elements of the inclusive government we talk to very freely. There are other elements we don’t yet do but that process is beginning and the joint visit to London last week, which included the Zimbabwean Foreign Minister I think is a potentially important first step in sitting down and looking very carefully at the balance of accounts. But this is not a question of forgetting the past as I say, it’s a question of learning from it.
Gonda: What do you think should be done to people who are guilty of human rights violations?
Pocock: I think that’s a question very much for Zimbabweans themselves to decide. There’s no question that the charge sheet in Zimbabwe is long and grim but there are many models in Southern Africa for dealing with this, for national healing and there are Ministers in Zimbabwe now for precisely that, to truth and justice commissions on to a full judicial process. But I think very much, and so does the British government, that this is a matter for Zimbabweans to decide for themselves.
Gonda: But as an observer? You wouldn’t have any views on this?
Pocock: Well I think it’s very difficult for the nation to move on without some accounting for what has happened and it goes back to the 1980s in Matabeleland as well, not just recent history, so there does need to be an accounting. How that’s done, what mechanisms are chosen, what process is used is as I say very much for Zimbabweans, it is not something that either the United Kingdom or indeed Zimbabwe’s western friends would wish to insert themselves into. That’s for people here to decide.
Gonda: Right. Let’s talk a bit about the land issue. You mentioned earlier on that that the invasions are carrying on, but just a bit of background, Mugabe has always accused the British of reneging on provisions of the Lancaster House agreement - on the issue of compensating white commercial farmers. Is this accurate in your view?
Pocock: I think when I go to my grave Violet, Lancaster House will be found tattooed on my liver, but let me just say very plainly, and I’m glad you asked the question – accusations of Britain reneging on Lancaster House are simply not accurate. It’s one of the convenient myths that have unfortunately dogged our relationship. We fulfilled all our Lancaster House obligations. And let me say by the way in passing, that Lancaster House was a treaty that worked. It ended a civil war, it transferred sovereignty to the new Zimbabwean government, it helped unite warring factions into a single security force and it still, ironically, provides Zimbabwe with its only working constitution 29 years after it was framed.
But we did meet our obligations. During the period of the 1980s the UK spent 44 million pounds on land reform which was a substantial sum at the time. We did it on a willing seller, willing buyer basis as had been agreed and we only stopped funds for land when it was clear that land was not being passed to the poor and the landless. That is not reneging, that is simply pointing to the evidence and it’s also resisting the proposition that has crept in that the UK somehow has unlimited liability forever and a day to fund land reform in Zimbabwe.
The Lancaster House never said anything like that. What Lancaster House said and what we undertook then was (a) to do everything we could to help with land reform (b) to contribute substantially ourselves and (c) to seek support from others in the international community. Now we did all that so this is really again another urban or rural myth that we need at some early stage to lay to rest.
Gonda: But I understand that (former) Minister Claire Short actually wrote a letter and I think it was in 1997 saying that Britain no longer has any obligation. Now do you think that letter could have, to some extent, influenced the events which resulted in the land invasions?
Pocock: I think what was unfortunate was that it was a two page letter which the government here seems to have read only the first half. It made comments about how Britain looked at its obligations under land reform and Lancaster House but what it then very clearly stated at length and in terms was that Britain had no intention of ceasing its development relationship with Zimbabwe but what it wished to do was to find a different way of doing it. To move from where we were to a relationship that dealt more with helping the poor, relieving poverty and on the basis of that, what was asked of the Zimbabwean government was a dialogue on the best means of moving that forward. Sadly that dialogue never emerged. What happened was a powerful reaction from Harare that accused us of reneging on treaty obligations when that was never stated in the letter nor was it intended or implied. What was being sought was a different kind of development relationship.
So one of the misunderstandings to put it no more strongly of the past, one which we’ve tried to revisit on occasions and not had the political contacts in which to do it. So again, something that needs to be looked at in its proper context and moved on from.
Gonda: Is this something that the two governments have started working on?
Pocock: Yes it is. Not solely on issues of land, they’re important but they’re not the only issue on the agenda - but in terms of looking at how we might begin reconstructing a relationship. Zimbabwe’s important to the UK and vice versa. So although we’re at a very early stage we have begun that process and that is a good thing.
Gonda: Now the white commercial farmers want compensation and they’re demanding US$5 billion from the Zimbabwean government. What are your thoughts on that?
Pocock: Well I think their requirement for compensation from the Zimbabwean government is probably the right legal process. Whether it has any practical impact is another matter. Compensation is a very tangled issue. In the fairly recent past, the Zimbabwean government has said that compensation rests with the United Kingdom. Well it does not – either legally or morally. In Lancaster House, sovereignty was transferred to the new Zimbabwean government.
The disruption on the farms was not caused by anything to do with the United Kingdom, it was driven by Zimbabwean government policy therefore we have no legal obligation for compensation. We’ve never accepted that and we won’t. But people have been, as the SADC tribunal has recently reiterated, unlawfully and unconstitutionally displaced from their personal property.
And I think and I hope as we move into the future, as we reach a situation where the restoration of commercial agriculture is possible, it won’t be on the old paternalistic basis, it will be on some new foundation but when we reach that point, as part of the natural justice, as part of building confidence for future investors, some element of compensation for people unconstitutionally displaced might be considered. I think we haven't got anywhere near the mechanisms and we certainly haven't decided who would pay for that compensation or indeed how much it would be but I think in natural justice, some form of address to this should be considered and I hope in due course will.
Gonda: That’s what I was going to ask – is it possible to ever see the United Kingdom actually providing compensation directly to the white commercial farmers for land that had been taken by the Zimbabwe government - so it’s not completely or totally off the table, it is possible that the UK could provide compensation directly to the white farmers?
Pocock: No I don’t think in the way you suggest Violet, not at all. What I’m trying to say is that if we get to the issue of compensation it will be in the context of some broad land commission or other institutional assessment of what might be done to re-revive commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe. That’s a very broad issue. Compensation is one part of it. If we do reach closure on the broader issue and compensation can be addressed, I’m sure the United Kingdom would wish to be part of that but it is not something that we will take on singly and solely, it is not something we feel we have legal or moral obligations to. But we do recognise there is a case in natural justice to compensate people illegally deprived of their property. So it is a rather more, rather broader context than you’re suggesting. It is not a bilateral obligation, this is something that we think needs to be addressed in a much wider context.
Gonda: And of course the Prime Minister is denying the severity of farm invasions, but the commercial farmers say the invasions are continuing. Now is it of concern to the diplomatic community when they hear Mr Tsvangirai saying the reports of farm invasions have been overblown?
Pocock: Well I’ve said that farm invasions certainly are continuing. They accelerated indeed and I think not without coincidence from the actual formation of the inclusive government in February. And farm invasions include by the way, pressure on the last remaining wildlife conservancies in the south of Zimbabwe which are not only a biological asset but could and should be a trigger to improve, resume tourism to this country. So that’s worrying in itself - but I think this programme is intended to put pressure on the Prime Minister and on the MDC, but it is also extremely damaging to Zimbabwe’s image, to its economy and to its potential for recovery. It discourages investment and it hurts people so I think it does remain a major issue that will have to be grappled with. Frankly there is no avoiding this.
Gonda: But does it concern the diplomatic community that it’s the Prime Minister who’s also saying the situation is not as bad as it sounds and there are no fresh farm invasions that are happening right now?
Pocock: Well what I would say is we’re continuing to talk to the Prime Minister and his office and the MDC generally about our concerns in this. Not may I add from the hysterical, stereotypical point of a background of a British ambassador complaining constantly about land, this is a very broad concern within the international community for the reasons I’ve mentioned – it damages the economy and the country’s image but we are in constant contact with the Prime Minister and his office on this.
Gonda: And what is his response?
Pocock: Well his response is concern. I think what he’s said in public that his response is concern as it should be so this is an issue that we will continue to discuss
Gonda: What is the UK’s position on lifting restrictive measures that have an economic impact?
Pocock: Well let me first say there are no restrictive measures that have an economic impact. This is again one of these myths that has been convenient in the past. Let me put on record for the umpteenth time – there are no economic sanctions from the European Union or the United Kingdom which is a part of the EU and there never have been. The only restrictive measures are a visa ban, an asset freeze on 243 individuals and an arms embargo - full stop. There is no other measure so the alleged economic impact I think is another effort to lay off blame for domestic policy failure.
And in the international financial institutions for instance where there’s recently been publicity that the UK has raised its ban on IFI lending – well we never had a ban so we couldn’t raise it. The reason why there is no lending from the international financial institutions is because of Zimbabwe’s arrears. If a country fails to pay its debts to the international financial institutions they stop lending and I’m afraid Zimbabwe owes 1.2 billion dollars or thereabouts, mostly in arrears.
So there is no block, it is simply a question of Zimbabwean debt which is a complicated one. But let me say the UK and indeed our international friends are helping Zimbabwe and the new financial minister to re-engage with the IFIs which is a lengthy process but a crucial one.
The IFIs are responding. They are sending teams, the IMF has sent Article Four mission, the World Bank has a mission here at the moment and they are also contributing technical assistance. But there will be no new resource until the debt issue is addressed but continued engagement will continue even though that is subject to sustained policy change. But as I said earlier, we’re seeing policy change on the micro economic side so there is some progress here.
Gonda: Has the UK been trading with Zimbabwe in the last few years?
Pocock: The UK has never ceased trading with Zimbabwe. In fact until fairly recently until the virtual complete collapse of the Zimbabwe economy in 2007, Zimbabwe actually had a trade surplus with the United Kingdom. We bought minerals and other things from Zimbabwe and exported very little because Zimbabwe couldn’t pay for it. So the idea that we never traded with Zimbabwe is again not true. There is no economic impediment to that and we have done so, we continue to do so and we hope, if we move in the right direction, that trade can resume again.
Gonda: But there have been reports saying that the British government has been putting pressure on UK companies, for example those that buy produce from farms that were taken over from white farmers. Is this the policy of the British government?
Pocock: My impression was it was very much a policy of supermarkets and other people who felt they had a responsibility to trade fairly and who didn’t therefore wish to be taking produce from farms in Zimbabwe that you say had been illegally seized. But let me put the picture in perspective. Part of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s visit to the UK included a very important investment conference which was chaired jointly by Lord Branson of Virgin and the Foreign Secretary. To that conference was invited potential and actual investors in Zimbabwe to allow the Prime Minister to set out his view of why he thought Zimbabwe could again be a reasonable and attractive investment destination and for investors to put to him their concerns about protection for private property and the judicial system and respect for the rule of law. This is evidence of a mutual wish to help the Zimbabwean economy. Now clearly there’s got to be sensible conditions on the ground before investors will commit money but it is strong and active evidence of a genuine wish on both sides to move this process forward.
So far from looking at sanctions, which as I say economically have never existed, we are looking at ways in which we can incentivise reform in Zimbabwe and indeed reward it. So the debate about sanctions, certainly from the Zimbabwean end, has always been misleading and an attempt to defer, deflect blame for domestic policy. It is an old-fashioned debate, we really need to move on from it for the sake of Zimbabwe’s recovery.
Gonda: Why was the Mines Minister, Obert Mpofu denied a visa to attend these investment conferences in the UK with the Prime Minister?
Pocock: Because he is on our banned list and the person that the investment conference really wanted to hear from was the Prime Minister which they did. He made the keynote speech and that is the way I think probably was best outcome to this. So it was as simple as that. As you know, we had granted visas to the Foreign Minister and the Minister of Tourism so I don’t think there can be an accusation that somehow the United Kingdom wasn’t being flexible but we didn’t think that on the mining issue it was appropriate to issue a visa.
Gonda: The Herald newspaper this week claims that the decline in food production in Zimbabwe was due to global warming. What do you think about this?
Pocock: I think the decline in food production in Zimbabwe is due to farm seizures and a catastrophic economic and agricultural policy. Global warming may have a marginal impact but what you are really saying is this is the old excuse about drought. Well Zimbabwe has had some very major droughts in its recent history in the 80s and 90s which didn’t affect by and large its ability to produce food, indeed to export agricultural produce. What has affected that is the disruption of commercial agriculture, the decline of inputs, the loss of asset value, the general implosion of the economy and the scattering of skills and capital which has been freely distributed to other countries in Southern Africa but also elsewhere. So Zimbabwe’s ironically, its greatest value added export in the last decade has been its skilled people. That is the reason for food production decline.
Gonda: And of course, sticking with the Herald, there was an outcry when the paper published a story saying that sanctions hit local British pensioners and that the UK had started to airlift its citizens from Zimbabwe to the UK. What is the position of your government on this?
Pocock: Well the Herald is a great reservoir of fantasy. First of all, there are no economic sanctions, as I say what has destroyed pensioners’ ability to sustain their livelihoods here has been the policies of the previous regime, not sanctions. What the United Kingdom is doing is not airlifting our people, what we recognized was that the elderly and vulnerable here have found it increasingly difficult, indeed as have everybody else, but those categories particularly, to sustain life. And so as a responsible government we offered our citizens, on a wholly voluntary basis, the opportunity to apply for repatriation to the United Kingdom if they met certain criteria and those criteria are to do with vulnerability and with the inability to sustain themselves economically and medically in Zimbabwe. So far from it being an airlift, there is still a substantial residual British population in Zimbabwe, it is a wholly humanitarian programme on a voluntary basis aimed at a particular category of British nationals. No more and no less.
Gonda: And the paper went on to say that the repatriation showed shocking double standards as it showed that London was acknowledging the ruinous nature of the sanctions yet it was keen to maintain them against black Zimbabweans.
Pocock: Well Violet you simply mustn’t believe everything you read in the Herald, and of course they would say that, wouldn’t they? They base their premise on the wholly erroneous proposition that Zimbabwe’s economy has been ruined by sanctions. As I have said repeatedly, it hasn’t. That was domestic policy driven. And secondly, it’s not as if we are ignoring black Zimbabweans, the United Kingdom is now going to put $100 million of assistance into Zimbabwe this year. When you combine it with the money that we have put in at least since 2000, we’ve probably put in almost half a billion dollars in humanitarian and now transitional support assistance for Zimbabwe. That is to tackle everything from food insecurity created again by domestic policy, to HIV, to orphans and vulnerable children. We’re now moving on to a range of infrastructural areas including education.
If we and our international partners had not done that then I fear a great many more Zimbabweans would either have died or left this country than the three or four million who have already done so. So the Herald is full ofagitprop but none of it makes sense and no responsible adult believes it.
Gonda: So do you feel that the diplomatic community in Harare has been effective during the last eight years of the crisis?
Pocock: Well broadly I think yes. There are obviously many areas in which we haven’t been able to be particularly helpful. One of them is in combating the kind of stories you’ve just mentioned and continue to be produced but overall we have managed to maintain humanitarian assistance and in March this year we were feeding seven million people. We’ve helped with the areas I’ve mentioned – HIV and orphans and vulnerable children, we’ve supported human rights defenders and indeed we’ve kept Zimbabwe a global issue and I think it was important that we did these things because without them, there was a risk that Zimbabwe’s plight would have slipped beneath the radar. It hasn’t and the world has stayed remarkably focussed on what has been happening here and I think that is a good thing.
Gonda: And of course you have concluded your term. What do you think you have achieved and do you have any regrets?
Pocock: Well diplomacy is a trade where there’s very seldom an easily quantifiable outcome but I think while I’ve been here I have seen a movement from desperate times – 2008 last year was the worst year in Zimbabwe’s independent history – to the beginnings of change. We have a new government, we have a start to re-engagement with the international community, we have over 700 million dollars a year of donor inputs coming in with much greater flexibility on how it is spent in response to Zimbabwean priorities and I think it’s not too strong to say that we have had the rebirth of an element of hope here and the beginning of the end of Zimbabwe’s self-imposed isolation.
And I’ve also been lucky here to meet many very brave and patriotic Zimbabweans who are dedicated to the revival of their country and to have worked with friends and colleagues including, may I say, a very dedicated and professional British Embassy team. So I’ve not contributed to any of it in a particular way but I’m very happy to have been associated with it and oh by the way, we’ve just, the British Embassy moved to a new building which is a symbol of long term commitment here. So I’ve been glad to have been associated with that.
But regrets as the song says, I’ve had a few. I’ve regretted the unnecessary suffering of so many and the treatment of human rights defenders and frankly the impoverishment of a nation. None of that has been pretty. I’m not sure if there was a great deal we could realistically have done about that other than supporting the people in the way I’ve described but I leave here with a degree of optimism and looking forward I hope to a new Zimbabwe.
Gonda: Has you replacement been named yet?
Pocock: Yes, his name is Mark Canning, he is coming from Rangoon and he arrives on the 2nd of July.
Gonda: He’s coming from Burma.
Pocock: He is.
Gonda: Quite interesting…
Pocock: Very interesting.
Gonda: And a final word Ambassador.
Pocock: Well it has been a pleasure talking to you and going over these issues. I think that the winds of change are stirring in Zimbabwe, it’s important that they be given all the help they can and the point I would make just to end is the international community is helping. We hear a great deal of criticism about conditionalities and about waiting and seeing. Of course there will be some conditionalities, we would be unreasonable to expect there to be none but we are already as an international group, putting as I say $700 million a year into Zimbabwe.
We are taking risks, we are trying to be innovative, we’re trying to support change and fundamental reform. So we are not sitting on our haunches, we are not letting the reforming elements of the new government twist in the wind, we’re doing the opposite. The reason that we haven’t sailed straightforwardly to success is because things still are very difficult and there are many impediments and 30 years of under-investment and political difficulty are not solved overnight but we’re addressing it and we’re on the case.
Gonda: And where are you going from here?
Pocock: Back to London, to serve my time for my sins I think.
Gonda: Well Ambassador Andrew Pocock, we wish you well and thank you very much for talking to us.
Pocock: Violet, a great pleasure, thank you.
Feedback can be sent to violet@swradioafrica.com
China offers Zim $950m credit lines
ZIMBABWE has secured US$950 million in credit lines from China to help rebuild the country's economy, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said on Tuesday.
Zimbabwe has appealed to the world for a "financial stimulus package" for its devastated economy, saying lack of foreign support put a recovery plan drawn up by the unity government in peril.
The MDC is now at the forefront showcasing Chinese credit lines, the same China the MDC spent a decade deriding for her support of Zimbabwe.
The MDC would show off its 'wealthy friends' (meaning Britain and America) at every rally they held. Not only that, their rallies were also pregnant with anti-china rhetoric.
Its interesting though that since the formation of the ZANU-MDC government of national unity (GNU), nothing significant has come from the MDC's so called 'wealthy friends'. If anything Tsvangirai's trip helped reinforce his inferior status as western leader after leader gave teacher-like comments to Tsvangirai. Even going to the extent of commanding him to change Zimbabwe's constitution and re-establishing British settler colonial monopolies on Zimbabwe's land before any crumbs can be thrown at Zimbabwe.
Reality is dawning at last. So far, real meaningful financial deals have come from the MDC-T's traditional enemies, Africa and China. We hope Tsvangirai's learning curve is a steep one this time. Parading himself like a slave in front of 'all important' and patronizing western leaders has only embarrassed Tsvangirai. His begging has largely went unanswered as the West hanker for restoration of neocolonial access to Zimbabwe's land.
Is this the aha moment for Tsvangirai and his followers? Only time will tell.
Monday, 8 June 2009
Zimbabwe: Sanctions a Damaging Reality
Tichaona Zindoga
ON May 4, Finance Minister Tendai Biti spoke of "billions and billions" of World Bank money that Zimbabwe was being barred from accessing by the illegal sanctions imposed on the country by America.
Hearing this, one could be forgiven for hoping that the era of political sophism, or its no-less-evil relation called intellectual dishonesty, had thankfully ended.
The historical, chronological and intellectual contexts of his revelation, which is rather a belated admission, offer a significant basis for the review of Zimbabwe's eco-politics for the last decade in general, and the first 100 days of the inclusive government in particular.
Minister Biti's acknowledgement that US-imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe scuttled government efforts to meaningfully discharge its mandate came on the 81st day of the "inclusive government" formed out of the country's three main political parties -- Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations.
He had come from the Spring Meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions, held in America, where he also met personalities he described as "mothers and those who gave paternity to ZDERA (Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act)", America's sanctions law on Zimbabwe signed by George W. Bush in December 2001.
At the behest of America, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have denied Zimbabwe access to critical developmental aid, credit lines and technical assistance.
Coming as it did on the twilight zone of the first 100 days of the inclusive government of Zimbabwe, Minister Biti's admission gave an important innuendo.
Minister Biti suggested that first 100 days (the much vaunted and oft-unrealistic yardstick which has somewhat been taken for a fact since 1933), which also saw him compiling the Short-Term Emergency Recovery Programme document, were never the coup it was hoped to be because of the illegal embargo.
This admission should have marked a turning point from the plausible but largely false arguments that Zimbabwe's decade-old economic distress has been a result of the "mismanagement" of Zanu-PF, and that sanctions imposed by the US and her allies were simply "targeted" at Zanu-PF officials and their families.
The sanctions, in fact, were a calculated measure of bullying the Zanu-PF government into reversing black empowerment initiatives such as land reform and indigenisation programmes, which not only upset historical capitalist injustices but raises the spectre of socialism which the West lives in mortal fear of.
Such programmes, the West also feared, set a "bad" precedent to other Third World countries whose vast natural resources remain in the hands of a minority of Western colonial stock.
But Minister Biti's rare honesty has largely gone unshared in the circles that might well have been inspired to finally come to grips with the real impediment of Zimbabwe's success.
In fact, the world has been treated to a cacophony of sophistic arguments which have not only sought to explain away the damaging centrality of the illegal sanctions, but the fact that the new players in government have not been a magic wand in and of themselves as to bring a dramatic turnaround of the economy.
The twilight zone of the first 100 days of the inclusive government, when Minister Biti noted the adverse effects of the sanctions also saw the escalation of the talk about "the outstanding issues of the GPA (Global Political Agreement)".
The GPA is the broad-based agreement signed on September 15 last year that led to the formation of the inclusive government.
The "outstanding issues", are chiefly the alleged "unilateral" appointment by President Mugabe of Reserve Bank Governor Dr Gideon Gono and Attorney General Mr Johannes Tomana.
These "key appointments", we have been made to understand, are one reason why the government has failed, for example, to go beyond measures which were mooted before its inception, like awarding its civil service the very modest US$100 allowances.
Neither can the government be able to speak with one voice against the illegal sanctions imposed on the country, which the parties undertook to do in the letter and spirit of the agreement, one could assume.
The two appointments were undertaken in terms of the law and President Mugabe has maintained that the two will not leave, in spite of the political pressure.
However, MDC-T has said it is taking up the matter with the guarantors of the GPA, with party president, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai saying recently he was only a "worker of the party" and needed to do the bidding of his charges.
This is despite his stated belief that there was no deadlock and that 95 per cent of the issues in the agreement had been resolved.
The second reason, which has been attributed to the new government's modest showing, is that there have not been "genuine reforms" since the new government took over and that is why donors have not been too generous with their funds hence.
(Donor countries, in all honesty, have been too hard hit by the current global financial crisis to open their purses easily.)
But the countries have been made to appear like some kind of "hard-hearted partners" -- like the picture of MDC-T badgering Prime Minister Tsvangirai out of his conscience -- as to demand seismic changes without which there cannot be any meaningful progress.
US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, was trying to assume this mould of the "hard-hearted partner", when she told a television station recently that "it was in the best interest of everyone" for President Mugabe to leave office.
She divined that in the "the last years" President Mugabe he has visited misery on "his children and the children of his children".
What she did not say was that she is, in Minister Biti's words, one of the "mothers" of the same misery, being one of the sponsors of ZDERA along with other persons such as Jesse Helms.
It is to be assumed that the former first lady and once-presidential aspirant was, riding a moral high horse, telling the world that her country cared so much for the Zimbabwean populace which her country has illegally sanctioned. But she missed the point, just as could be pictured of MDC-T pressuring its leader out of his convictions, that Prime Minister Tsvangirai had just recently told off any pressure on President Mugabe to leave office, saying he was part of the solution to Zimbabwe's American-created problems.
Yet still others, like that perennial "people-driven constitution" campaigner Lovemore Madhuku believe that the implementation of "neo-liberal" values are the basis of, and yardstick for a successful government.
For some reason, Minister Biti himself for all his knowledge of how "the mothers and those who gave paternity" to the misery of Zimbabwe in the name of ZDERA, has not been immune to this.
Some analysts have expressed reservations for such apparent preoccupation with endearing the country to such institutions as the World Bank through "neo-liberal" partiality, while systematically ignoring how the same neo-liberalism has been used as a smokescreen in the aggression on Zimbabwe's interests.
Sunday Mail columnist Dr Tafataona Mahoso, in a recent article, expresses dismay with the use of "neo-liberal human rights propaganda" as well as "the fanatical insistence on parity" (which is part of the "outstanding issues" drive).
He said, "what people expect is competency and speed in de-mining the gulf of Anglo-Saxon sanctions dividing our people".
In essence, he believes the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe are not only the single most devastating manifestation of undue external interference, but have set an agenda that deflects nationally-beneficial discourse through entrenching a lot of political sophism.
And that is enough to say all the shadowy "Zim Eyes" might still make a living out of neo-liberal baloney and seeing Zimbabwe's eco-polity at a parallax, and enjoy themselves immensely out of the other side of the coins that have brought suffering to the generality of Zimbabweans.
ON May 4, Finance Minister Tendai Biti spoke of "billions and billions" of World Bank money that Zimbabwe was being barred from accessing by the illegal sanctions imposed on the country by America.
Hearing this, one could be forgiven for hoping that the era of political sophism, or its no-less-evil relation called intellectual dishonesty, had thankfully ended.
The historical, chronological and intellectual contexts of his revelation, which is rather a belated admission, offer a significant basis for the review of Zimbabwe's eco-politics for the last decade in general, and the first 100 days of the inclusive government in particular.
Minister Biti's acknowledgement that US-imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe scuttled government efforts to meaningfully discharge its mandate came on the 81st day of the "inclusive government" formed out of the country's three main political parties -- Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations.
He had come from the Spring Meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions, held in America, where he also met personalities he described as "mothers and those who gave paternity to ZDERA (Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act)", America's sanctions law on Zimbabwe signed by George W. Bush in December 2001.
At the behest of America, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have denied Zimbabwe access to critical developmental aid, credit lines and technical assistance.
Coming as it did on the twilight zone of the first 100 days of the inclusive government of Zimbabwe, Minister Biti's admission gave an important innuendo.
Minister Biti suggested that first 100 days (the much vaunted and oft-unrealistic yardstick which has somewhat been taken for a fact since 1933), which also saw him compiling the Short-Term Emergency Recovery Programme document, were never the coup it was hoped to be because of the illegal embargo.
This admission should have marked a turning point from the plausible but largely false arguments that Zimbabwe's decade-old economic distress has been a result of the "mismanagement" of Zanu-PF, and that sanctions imposed by the US and her allies were simply "targeted" at Zanu-PF officials and their families.
The sanctions, in fact, were a calculated measure of bullying the Zanu-PF government into reversing black empowerment initiatives such as land reform and indigenisation programmes, which not only upset historical capitalist injustices but raises the spectre of socialism which the West lives in mortal fear of.
Such programmes, the West also feared, set a "bad" precedent to other Third World countries whose vast natural resources remain in the hands of a minority of Western colonial stock.
But Minister Biti's rare honesty has largely gone unshared in the circles that might well have been inspired to finally come to grips with the real impediment of Zimbabwe's success.
In fact, the world has been treated to a cacophony of sophistic arguments which have not only sought to explain away the damaging centrality of the illegal sanctions, but the fact that the new players in government have not been a magic wand in and of themselves as to bring a dramatic turnaround of the economy.
The twilight zone of the first 100 days of the inclusive government, when Minister Biti noted the adverse effects of the sanctions also saw the escalation of the talk about "the outstanding issues of the GPA (Global Political Agreement)".
The GPA is the broad-based agreement signed on September 15 last year that led to the formation of the inclusive government.
The "outstanding issues", are chiefly the alleged "unilateral" appointment by President Mugabe of Reserve Bank Governor Dr Gideon Gono and Attorney General Mr Johannes Tomana.
These "key appointments", we have been made to understand, are one reason why the government has failed, for example, to go beyond measures which were mooted before its inception, like awarding its civil service the very modest US$100 allowances.
Neither can the government be able to speak with one voice against the illegal sanctions imposed on the country, which the parties undertook to do in the letter and spirit of the agreement, one could assume.
The two appointments were undertaken in terms of the law and President Mugabe has maintained that the two will not leave, in spite of the political pressure.
However, MDC-T has said it is taking up the matter with the guarantors of the GPA, with party president, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai saying recently he was only a "worker of the party" and needed to do the bidding of his charges.
This is despite his stated belief that there was no deadlock and that 95 per cent of the issues in the agreement had been resolved.
The second reason, which has been attributed to the new government's modest showing, is that there have not been "genuine reforms" since the new government took over and that is why donors have not been too generous with their funds hence.
(Donor countries, in all honesty, have been too hard hit by the current global financial crisis to open their purses easily.)
But the countries have been made to appear like some kind of "hard-hearted partners" -- like the picture of MDC-T badgering Prime Minister Tsvangirai out of his conscience -- as to demand seismic changes without which there cannot be any meaningful progress.
US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, was trying to assume this mould of the "hard-hearted partner", when she told a television station recently that "it was in the best interest of everyone" for President Mugabe to leave office.
She divined that in the "the last years" President Mugabe he has visited misery on "his children and the children of his children".
What she did not say was that she is, in Minister Biti's words, one of the "mothers" of the same misery, being one of the sponsors of ZDERA along with other persons such as Jesse Helms.
It is to be assumed that the former first lady and once-presidential aspirant was, riding a moral high horse, telling the world that her country cared so much for the Zimbabwean populace which her country has illegally sanctioned. But she missed the point, just as could be pictured of MDC-T pressuring its leader out of his convictions, that Prime Minister Tsvangirai had just recently told off any pressure on President Mugabe to leave office, saying he was part of the solution to Zimbabwe's American-created problems.
Yet still others, like that perennial "people-driven constitution" campaigner Lovemore Madhuku believe that the implementation of "neo-liberal" values are the basis of, and yardstick for a successful government.
For some reason, Minister Biti himself for all his knowledge of how "the mothers and those who gave paternity" to the misery of Zimbabwe in the name of ZDERA, has not been immune to this.
Some analysts have expressed reservations for such apparent preoccupation with endearing the country to such institutions as the World Bank through "neo-liberal" partiality, while systematically ignoring how the same neo-liberalism has been used as a smokescreen in the aggression on Zimbabwe's interests.
Sunday Mail columnist Dr Tafataona Mahoso, in a recent article, expresses dismay with the use of "neo-liberal human rights propaganda" as well as "the fanatical insistence on parity" (which is part of the "outstanding issues" drive).
He said, "what people expect is competency and speed in de-mining the gulf of Anglo-Saxon sanctions dividing our people".
In essence, he believes the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe are not only the single most devastating manifestation of undue external interference, but have set an agenda that deflects nationally-beneficial discourse through entrenching a lot of political sophism.
And that is enough to say all the shadowy "Zim Eyes" might still make a living out of neo-liberal baloney and seeing Zimbabwe's eco-polity at a parallax, and enjoy themselves immensely out of the other side of the coins that have brought suffering to the generality of Zimbabweans.
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Gono against the sanctions begging western puppet Tendayi Biti.
The Rt. Hon. Prime Minister of the
Republic of Zimbabwe
Mr. M. R. Tsvangirai
Munhumutapa Building
Samora Machel Avenue
HARARE
Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, Sir,
RE: COMPLAINT AGAINST PERSONAL VICTIMIZATION AND
VILIFICATION BY HON. MINISTER OF FINANCE T. L. BITI.
1. As you may be aware Hon. Prime Minister, the strained relations between the Hon. Minister of Finance and myself are a matter of public knowledge and, need I say, concern.
2. For more than a year now, the Minister has uttered, publicly and privately, words and statements that are not only criminally defamatory but also, seriously insulting to my person, family and indeed, to the institution that I work for, its Board, management and staff. His misleading statements are also career limiting in my field of Finance and economics.
3. Professional disagreements in public offices are a matter of daily life for public personalities but constant and malicious misrepresentations, unrestrained utterances, incitement of violence against the person of the Governor, outright lies and victimization against persons doing their normal duties are traits normally unheard of especially coming from “Offices that are supposed to know and act better”
4. Examples may drive home the point:
(a) At a campaign rally in Masvingo last year, Hon. Minister called me names and accused me of “being at the epicenter of ZANU (PF) terror machine”; “an economic saboteur, terrorist and number one Al-Qaeda who deserves to be shot by a firing squad”
These utterances were widely circulated both in the print and electronic media and today form the basis of the hate-mail that I receive and the hatred many MDC-T supporters display against the Governor. Indeed the international community has also been poisoned to believe that I am a member of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda. These threats to my life and family are very unsettling and may one day be carried out by an over-zealous MDC-T Party Member or just criminals hiding behind the Minister’s publicly declared wishes of getting me killed.
(b) On several occasions, the distinguished Minister has accused me of “killing this economy through printing money”. This is despite the overwhelming evidence that the country was and remains under the yoke of debilitating sanctions and other constraints such as droughts/floods and political differences all of which are/were militating against international support in the area of Lines of Credit among other needs. The Hon. Minister only came to acknowledge on Monday 4 May, 2009 when he returned from the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings held in Washington DC. USA that SANCTIONS are “real” and that they need to be removed if we are to turn around this economy. This admission was despite previous denials.
5. Now if indeed the Hon. Minister, after only 3 months in office is now realizing that this economy cannot be stabilized let alone turned-around without the repeal of ZIDERA and other pieces of “restrictive” actions by some economic powers in the West, and that without such a repeal of these toxic pieces of legislation and actions against Zimbabwe, the country cannot access the much needed lines of credit, how did or does the Hon. Minister expect me to successfully turn-around this economy in the presence of ZIDERA which some have accused him of having participated in its “birth” and “sustenance” over the years?
6. After my three (3) children were unceremoniously expelled out of Australia before your visit to that Country, Sir in 2006 they suffered a two year roll-back in their university education, and when they found new universities to go to, they found themselves being called upon to explain how their father is allegedly associated with the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization with the threat of further expulsion from their new university if the allegations were/are not refuted. Who among us parents can stomach such misfortune if directed at their own children?
7. It is a known fact that Leadership is not about expecting others to perform miracles where the leader himself cannot perform same. What is difficult to achieve for the Hon. Minister today (raising lines of credit) is a fraction of what my team and I were expected to achieve in an environment of not only ZIDERA but serious political and social in-fighting between Zimbabweans prior to the Inclusive Government.
8. A lot more “kiya-kiyering” was and had to be done to sustain the economy, sustain life and everything else this Inclusive Government found in place. Without such gymnastics including the so-called printing of money or “quantitative easing” as they are now calling it in Europe and elsewhere, this country could have easily degenerated into unprecedented chaos with no opportunity ever for anyone in the Inclusive Government to be in the comfortable positions from where they are now calling the “shots” today.
9. I have suffered and continue to suffer abuse and ridicule at a time when you as Prime Minister have been telling the Nation that bye-gones are bye-gones and that we need to move forward but this message doesn’t seem to have found root in some quarters.
10. You know very well Rt. Hon. Prime Minister that people are being highly dishonest when they allege that it is/was the Governor of the Reserve Bank who “killed” this economy for I do have on file, letters from Ministers of Finance and other stakeholders including Labour and Business dealing with requests for funding and/or authorizations to move in a given direction.
11. I believe that it needs to be appreciated, Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, that the last ten years have been a period of both political and economic madness in this country and that the work of sanctions-busting, the world-over, is not a walk in the garden park or a straight-forward text-book lesson and practice from an Apprenticeship Economic textbook.
12. Sanctions are a form of war-fare against the sanctioned country or people and my job was to try and defeat them, not physically but through “out-of-the-box” type of thinking strategies all of which had the blessings of my Head of State and President Cde. R. G Mugabe whom you are free to check and verify with, as well as the entire Cabinet of the day.
13. It is heartening to note though that Hon. Minister Biti is following the same path, going to the same African Banks and friends who stood by us during the said period of madness and only last week, the Hon Minister happily and proudly ran with and announced to the world facilities that my team and I had negotiated and secured namely the US$300 million Country Program from Afrieximbank which was approved in Mauritius on 12 December 2008 and the PTA Bank facility, again which we had negotiated last year and was awaiting activation.
14. These two institutions, together with Al-Shams linked to Mr. Jayesh Shar, are the three main sources of funding who helped us during difficult times. Today it is an open secret that Hon. Minister Biti is going to all of them for support and all three are supporting the Inclusive Government at a critical time when noone else, including the so-called donor community is giving us funds due to understandable economic difficulties in their own backyards.
15. The point here Rt. Hon. Prime Minister is that nothing my team and I did is not being followed by the new Minister of Finance and I can point out that 99% of our recommendations for the turn-around of this economy have been included in STERP (see attached analysis and evaluation document).
16. This is not to take away anything/credit from the Hon. Minister’s well received STERP but to draw attention to the need for “modesty in pronouncements made and credit taken while standing at the pulpit” so to speak when the Minister is addressing stakeholders.
17. It is against this background that charges to the effect that this Governor and his team “murdered” or committed atrocities in this economy are hereby vehemently denied.
A LOT SAID, DONE AND MISREPRESENTED…
18. A lot has been said by the distinguished Hon. Minister, done and misrepresented all in an effort to destroy the Governor, to remove me from the post (as if I re-appointed myself!).
WHERE IS ALL THIS HATRED COMING FROM?
19. In trying to examine the possible angles from where such personal hatred, venom and attacks have been coming, it has dawned on my team and I, that all this noise about “Governor must Go song” especially as it rings loudest from the powerful Secretary General of MDC-T and Minister of Finance may have its background in self-interest and protection. The background to it is as summarized in the attached write-up involving the Hon. Minister’s Legal Firm, Honey and Blanckenberg.
20. The background involves the Bank’s investigation into alleged rampant externalization of foreign currency resources and money laundering activities discovered at the Minister’s legal firm Honey & Blanckenberg where he is (or was) a partner.
21. After getting a tip-off on the case in which the Law Firm was allegedly prejudicing the country of the much needed foreign currency and possibly tax-revenues due to Government through such Exchange Control Violations, my team investigated the Firm’s Records (those which had not yet been deleted by then) and came up with a “can of worms” suggesting that the Firm could have been involved in these forex scams from before 2003.
22. As the attached summary will show you, in the few months that the investigating team considered, it uncovered a total of over US$1 million which was allegedly kept outside the country in violation of Section 9, 10(1)C and 11 of the 1996 Exchange Control Regulations.
YEAR
AMOUNT
October 2005
US$102 210.00
November 2005
174 179.00
December 2005
110 664.00
January 2006
139 758.00
February 2006
145 939.66
March 2006
168 047.11
April 2006
153 281.00
May 2006
31 864.50
TOTAL US$1 025 943,53
Records for other months were allegedly deleted before the investigating team could lay their hands on them.
23. Intimidatory tactics are said to have been encountered during these investigations leading to various forms of delays in the completion of this assignment/case.
24. Ultimately as the attached report shows, one of the whistle-blowers who was employed by the Law Firm had to leave the Firm due to alleged victimization, the same that I am suffering from today.
25. Of course legal explanations, arguments and justifications were proffered by the Law Firm, as would be expected, but these were found to hold no substance as it was proven that the Honey and Blanckenberg as a Law Firm were banking their money into Barclays Bank PLC, Barclays House, Victoria Street, Douglas, Isle of Man via UK, account details being:
Swift Code: BARCGB22
Account No. 68949366,
Sort Code : 20-26-74.
IBAN : GB95BARC20267468949366.
26. The case and its facts were analysed by the Bank’s legal personnel in the normal way that the Bank does with all other cases before deciding to go ahead with prosecution and as we speak, the matter is yet to come to actual trial although it is at the courts.
27. With Advocate Eric Matinenga the one set to be Accused Firm’s defence lawyer, (as of January 2009), my team members, seeing what victimization is being meted against the Governor, is now expressing reluctance to go and stand in court to testify against the Minister of Finance’s legal Firm.
GOVERNOR’S VICTIMISATION…
28. The issue now at stake is, how come the Governor continues to be victimized for doing his job while the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, who is supposed to be in the picture of all this “through ministerial declarations of interest or conflict(s) with institutions or persons that the Ministers deal with under their Ministries?
29. It is not difficult to conclude that threats of investigating the Governor “left right and centre” as well as putting the Governor on the GPA list of persons who must go has all along been motivated by the desire to intimidate the Governor and his team or at best to scandalize and remove me from the scene so that a pliable Governor is put in my place and certain matters then get buried under the carpet in the process.
30. This also explains the “personal hatred” nature of the Minister’s zeal, enthusiasm and speed with which he seeks to remove the present Governor from the Chairmanship of the RBZ Board in conflict with best practices in SADC, IMF, World Bank, China, Russia, UK and the world over. The pre-occupation is total and no stone has been left unturned todate to try and achieve this.
31. Is this the policy or policies of the Inclusive Government to victimize its officials or that of MDC-T to disguise personal wars and camouflage them as national matters of incompetence?
32. There have also been various misrepresentations made to Cabinet and Cabinet Committees by the Hon. Minister relating to false allegations of “borrowing US$1 billion without authority” which proved embarrassing to the Minister when refuted with evidence.
33. Are the Parties (MDC-T) aware that they are being enjoined in a personal war far removed from national issues but financial at personal levels? Are SADC Heads of State or the Facilitator, the IMF/World Bank and others in the picture of this scandal?
34. There is more that I could say and have come up with to prove a case of victimization against me but it is not necessary to deal with those issues now.
PROPOSED WAY FORWARD
35. Rt. Honourable Prime Minister, herewith my proposals for the way forward:
(a). That this letter be discussed between yourself and the Minister and if you see it fit, failing which I propose that it be brought for discussion in Cabinet or Parliament or JOMIC and, that, I be called upon to testify if need be.
(b). That RBZ be granted autonomy in the current legislative amendments to report to Parliament as recommended by SADC in its Model Central Bank Legislation – copies of which were sent to the Rt. Hon. Prime Ministers Office and not the current Minister of Finance until the Hon. Minister renounces his vindictive mission against me.
(c). That the Hon. Minister and myself be invited for discussion with the Rt. Honourable Prime Minister to iron out the issues I have raised and to normalize and our relationship.
(d). That the Governor and team be given/granted immunity/protection at law against victimization by the Ministers, some of whom may have been involved in nefarious/regrettable activities before. Otherwise all RBZ Governors will continue to face the same fate that I am facing and experiencing, disguised as national desire to do good yet the reality is that deep down there are personal interests at stake in need of protection.
(e). That a public apology be made to the Governor by the Minister of Finance and both MDC-T and MDC-M Parties and their followers be informed that the Governor did not “kill” this economy and that he is not a member of Al-Qaeda nor does he deserve to be shot by the “firing squad”. In addition a smart way has to be found to advise the International Community of the true facts so that it gives a correct and informed judgment on the Governor.
CONCLUSION
36. It is not unusual for two or more people to fail to work together and if I am to leave RBZ at some stage, as I will in future, the current approach and strategy is definitely not the correct one.
37. There are better, more mature, effective, cordial and amicable ways of people partying ways but not in the manner of the “PURSUER” and the “PURSUED”, the “Victor” and the Vanquished”. That approach does not work in the area of economics and finance.
38. I await direction(s) from the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister.
Yours Sincerely
G. GONO
GOVERNOR
Enclosures
1. The Evidence relating to Honey & Blanckenberg Forex Externalization Investigations – Basis for Victimization by Minister of Finance Hon. T. L. Biti.
2. Evidence to show that the African Export-Import Bank (Afrieximbank and PTA Facilities recently announced were successfully negotiated by Governor prior to INCLUSIVE GOVERNMENT.
3. Comparative Analysis of STERP with the Governor’s Economic Advices over the Last 5 Years. So much about the Governor being incompetent when in fact the same STERP is 99% a product of my Advice.
Republic of Zimbabwe
Mr. M. R. Tsvangirai
Munhumutapa Building
Samora Machel Avenue
HARARE
Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, Sir,
RE: COMPLAINT AGAINST PERSONAL VICTIMIZATION AND
VILIFICATION BY HON. MINISTER OF FINANCE T. L. BITI.
1. As you may be aware Hon. Prime Minister, the strained relations between the Hon. Minister of Finance and myself are a matter of public knowledge and, need I say, concern.
2. For more than a year now, the Minister has uttered, publicly and privately, words and statements that are not only criminally defamatory but also, seriously insulting to my person, family and indeed, to the institution that I work for, its Board, management and staff. His misleading statements are also career limiting in my field of Finance and economics.
3. Professional disagreements in public offices are a matter of daily life for public personalities but constant and malicious misrepresentations, unrestrained utterances, incitement of violence against the person of the Governor, outright lies and victimization against persons doing their normal duties are traits normally unheard of especially coming from “Offices that are supposed to know and act better”
4. Examples may drive home the point:
(a) At a campaign rally in Masvingo last year, Hon. Minister called me names and accused me of “being at the epicenter of ZANU (PF) terror machine”; “an economic saboteur, terrorist and number one Al-Qaeda who deserves to be shot by a firing squad”
These utterances were widely circulated both in the print and electronic media and today form the basis of the hate-mail that I receive and the hatred many MDC-T supporters display against the Governor. Indeed the international community has also been poisoned to believe that I am a member of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda. These threats to my life and family are very unsettling and may one day be carried out by an over-zealous MDC-T Party Member or just criminals hiding behind the Minister’s publicly declared wishes of getting me killed.
(b) On several occasions, the distinguished Minister has accused me of “killing this economy through printing money”. This is despite the overwhelming evidence that the country was and remains under the yoke of debilitating sanctions and other constraints such as droughts/floods and political differences all of which are/were militating against international support in the area of Lines of Credit among other needs. The Hon. Minister only came to acknowledge on Monday 4 May, 2009 when he returned from the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings held in Washington DC. USA that SANCTIONS are “real” and that they need to be removed if we are to turn around this economy. This admission was despite previous denials.
5. Now if indeed the Hon. Minister, after only 3 months in office is now realizing that this economy cannot be stabilized let alone turned-around without the repeal of ZIDERA and other pieces of “restrictive” actions by some economic powers in the West, and that without such a repeal of these toxic pieces of legislation and actions against Zimbabwe, the country cannot access the much needed lines of credit, how did or does the Hon. Minister expect me to successfully turn-around this economy in the presence of ZIDERA which some have accused him of having participated in its “birth” and “sustenance” over the years?
6. After my three (3) children were unceremoniously expelled out of Australia before your visit to that Country, Sir in 2006 they suffered a two year roll-back in their university education, and when they found new universities to go to, they found themselves being called upon to explain how their father is allegedly associated with the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization with the threat of further expulsion from their new university if the allegations were/are not refuted. Who among us parents can stomach such misfortune if directed at their own children?
7. It is a known fact that Leadership is not about expecting others to perform miracles where the leader himself cannot perform same. What is difficult to achieve for the Hon. Minister today (raising lines of credit) is a fraction of what my team and I were expected to achieve in an environment of not only ZIDERA but serious political and social in-fighting between Zimbabweans prior to the Inclusive Government.
8. A lot more “kiya-kiyering” was and had to be done to sustain the economy, sustain life and everything else this Inclusive Government found in place. Without such gymnastics including the so-called printing of money or “quantitative easing” as they are now calling it in Europe and elsewhere, this country could have easily degenerated into unprecedented chaos with no opportunity ever for anyone in the Inclusive Government to be in the comfortable positions from where they are now calling the “shots” today.
9. I have suffered and continue to suffer abuse and ridicule at a time when you as Prime Minister have been telling the Nation that bye-gones are bye-gones and that we need to move forward but this message doesn’t seem to have found root in some quarters.
10. You know very well Rt. Hon. Prime Minister that people are being highly dishonest when they allege that it is/was the Governor of the Reserve Bank who “killed” this economy for I do have on file, letters from Ministers of Finance and other stakeholders including Labour and Business dealing with requests for funding and/or authorizations to move in a given direction.
11. I believe that it needs to be appreciated, Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, that the last ten years have been a period of both political and economic madness in this country and that the work of sanctions-busting, the world-over, is not a walk in the garden park or a straight-forward text-book lesson and practice from an Apprenticeship Economic textbook.
12. Sanctions are a form of war-fare against the sanctioned country or people and my job was to try and defeat them, not physically but through “out-of-the-box” type of thinking strategies all of which had the blessings of my Head of State and President Cde. R. G Mugabe whom you are free to check and verify with, as well as the entire Cabinet of the day.
13. It is heartening to note though that Hon. Minister Biti is following the same path, going to the same African Banks and friends who stood by us during the said period of madness and only last week, the Hon Minister happily and proudly ran with and announced to the world facilities that my team and I had negotiated and secured namely the US$300 million Country Program from Afrieximbank which was approved in Mauritius on 12 December 2008 and the PTA Bank facility, again which we had negotiated last year and was awaiting activation.
14. These two institutions, together with Al-Shams linked to Mr. Jayesh Shar, are the three main sources of funding who helped us during difficult times. Today it is an open secret that Hon. Minister Biti is going to all of them for support and all three are supporting the Inclusive Government at a critical time when noone else, including the so-called donor community is giving us funds due to understandable economic difficulties in their own backyards.
15. The point here Rt. Hon. Prime Minister is that nothing my team and I did is not being followed by the new Minister of Finance and I can point out that 99% of our recommendations for the turn-around of this economy have been included in STERP (see attached analysis and evaluation document).
16. This is not to take away anything/credit from the Hon. Minister’s well received STERP but to draw attention to the need for “modesty in pronouncements made and credit taken while standing at the pulpit” so to speak when the Minister is addressing stakeholders.
17. It is against this background that charges to the effect that this Governor and his team “murdered” or committed atrocities in this economy are hereby vehemently denied.
A LOT SAID, DONE AND MISREPRESENTED…
18. A lot has been said by the distinguished Hon. Minister, done and misrepresented all in an effort to destroy the Governor, to remove me from the post (as if I re-appointed myself!).
WHERE IS ALL THIS HATRED COMING FROM?
19. In trying to examine the possible angles from where such personal hatred, venom and attacks have been coming, it has dawned on my team and I, that all this noise about “Governor must Go song” especially as it rings loudest from the powerful Secretary General of MDC-T and Minister of Finance may have its background in self-interest and protection. The background to it is as summarized in the attached write-up involving the Hon. Minister’s Legal Firm, Honey and Blanckenberg.
20. The background involves the Bank’s investigation into alleged rampant externalization of foreign currency resources and money laundering activities discovered at the Minister’s legal firm Honey & Blanckenberg where he is (or was) a partner.
21. After getting a tip-off on the case in which the Law Firm was allegedly prejudicing the country of the much needed foreign currency and possibly tax-revenues due to Government through such Exchange Control Violations, my team investigated the Firm’s Records (those which had not yet been deleted by then) and came up with a “can of worms” suggesting that the Firm could have been involved in these forex scams from before 2003.
22. As the attached summary will show you, in the few months that the investigating team considered, it uncovered a total of over US$1 million which was allegedly kept outside the country in violation of Section 9, 10(1)C and 11 of the 1996 Exchange Control Regulations.
YEAR
AMOUNT
October 2005
US$102 210.00
November 2005
174 179.00
December 2005
110 664.00
January 2006
139 758.00
February 2006
145 939.66
March 2006
168 047.11
April 2006
153 281.00
May 2006
31 864.50
TOTAL US$1 025 943,53
Records for other months were allegedly deleted before the investigating team could lay their hands on them.
23. Intimidatory tactics are said to have been encountered during these investigations leading to various forms of delays in the completion of this assignment/case.
24. Ultimately as the attached report shows, one of the whistle-blowers who was employed by the Law Firm had to leave the Firm due to alleged victimization, the same that I am suffering from today.
25. Of course legal explanations, arguments and justifications were proffered by the Law Firm, as would be expected, but these were found to hold no substance as it was proven that the Honey and Blanckenberg as a Law Firm were banking their money into Barclays Bank PLC, Barclays House, Victoria Street, Douglas, Isle of Man via UK, account details being:
Swift Code: BARCGB22
Account No. 68949366,
Sort Code : 20-26-74.
IBAN : GB95BARC20267468949366.
26. The case and its facts were analysed by the Bank’s legal personnel in the normal way that the Bank does with all other cases before deciding to go ahead with prosecution and as we speak, the matter is yet to come to actual trial although it is at the courts.
27. With Advocate Eric Matinenga the one set to be Accused Firm’s defence lawyer, (as of January 2009), my team members, seeing what victimization is being meted against the Governor, is now expressing reluctance to go and stand in court to testify against the Minister of Finance’s legal Firm.
GOVERNOR’S VICTIMISATION…
28. The issue now at stake is, how come the Governor continues to be victimized for doing his job while the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, who is supposed to be in the picture of all this “through ministerial declarations of interest or conflict(s) with institutions or persons that the Ministers deal with under their Ministries?
29. It is not difficult to conclude that threats of investigating the Governor “left right and centre” as well as putting the Governor on the GPA list of persons who must go has all along been motivated by the desire to intimidate the Governor and his team or at best to scandalize and remove me from the scene so that a pliable Governor is put in my place and certain matters then get buried under the carpet in the process.
30. This also explains the “personal hatred” nature of the Minister’s zeal, enthusiasm and speed with which he seeks to remove the present Governor from the Chairmanship of the RBZ Board in conflict with best practices in SADC, IMF, World Bank, China, Russia, UK and the world over. The pre-occupation is total and no stone has been left unturned todate to try and achieve this.
31. Is this the policy or policies of the Inclusive Government to victimize its officials or that of MDC-T to disguise personal wars and camouflage them as national matters of incompetence?
32. There have also been various misrepresentations made to Cabinet and Cabinet Committees by the Hon. Minister relating to false allegations of “borrowing US$1 billion without authority” which proved embarrassing to the Minister when refuted with evidence.
33. Are the Parties (MDC-T) aware that they are being enjoined in a personal war far removed from national issues but financial at personal levels? Are SADC Heads of State or the Facilitator, the IMF/World Bank and others in the picture of this scandal?
34. There is more that I could say and have come up with to prove a case of victimization against me but it is not necessary to deal with those issues now.
PROPOSED WAY FORWARD
35. Rt. Honourable Prime Minister, herewith my proposals for the way forward:
(a). That this letter be discussed between yourself and the Minister and if you see it fit, failing which I propose that it be brought for discussion in Cabinet or Parliament or JOMIC and, that, I be called upon to testify if need be.
(b). That RBZ be granted autonomy in the current legislative amendments to report to Parliament as recommended by SADC in its Model Central Bank Legislation – copies of which were sent to the Rt. Hon. Prime Ministers Office and not the current Minister of Finance until the Hon. Minister renounces his vindictive mission against me.
(c). That the Hon. Minister and myself be invited for discussion with the Rt. Honourable Prime Minister to iron out the issues I have raised and to normalize and our relationship.
(d). That the Governor and team be given/granted immunity/protection at law against victimization by the Ministers, some of whom may have been involved in nefarious/regrettable activities before. Otherwise all RBZ Governors will continue to face the same fate that I am facing and experiencing, disguised as national desire to do good yet the reality is that deep down there are personal interests at stake in need of protection.
(e). That a public apology be made to the Governor by the Minister of Finance and both MDC-T and MDC-M Parties and their followers be informed that the Governor did not “kill” this economy and that he is not a member of Al-Qaeda nor does he deserve to be shot by the “firing squad”. In addition a smart way has to be found to advise the International Community of the true facts so that it gives a correct and informed judgment on the Governor.
CONCLUSION
36. It is not unusual for two or more people to fail to work together and if I am to leave RBZ at some stage, as I will in future, the current approach and strategy is definitely not the correct one.
37. There are better, more mature, effective, cordial and amicable ways of people partying ways but not in the manner of the “PURSUER” and the “PURSUED”, the “Victor” and the Vanquished”. That approach does not work in the area of economics and finance.
38. I await direction(s) from the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister.
Yours Sincerely
G. GONO
GOVERNOR
Enclosures
1. The Evidence relating to Honey & Blanckenberg Forex Externalization Investigations – Basis for Victimization by Minister of Finance Hon. T. L. Biti.
2. Evidence to show that the African Export-Import Bank (Afrieximbank and PTA Facilities recently announced were successfully negotiated by Governor prior to INCLUSIVE GOVERNMENT.
3. Comparative Analysis of STERP with the Governor’s Economic Advices over the Last 5 Years. So much about the Governor being incompetent when in fact the same STERP is 99% a product of my Advice.
Thursday, 14 May 2009
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY on ZDERA.
SPEECH OF HON.
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY OF GEORGIA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Tuesday, December 4, 2001
* Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, at the international Relations Committee meeting of November 28, 2001, which considered the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001, I asked a question of my colleagues who were vociferously supporting this misdirected piece of legislation: ``Can anyone explain how the people in question who now have the land in question in Zimbabwe got title to the land?''
* My query was met with a deafening silence. Those who knew did not want to admit the truth and those who didn't know should have known--that the land was stolen from its indigenous peoples through the British South Africa Company and any ``titles'' to it were illegal and invalid. Whatever the reason for their silence, the answer to this question is the unspoken but real reason for why the United States Congress is now concentrating its time and resources on squeezing an economically-devastated African state under the hypocritical guise of providing a ``transition to democracy.''
* Zimbabwe is Africa's second-longest stable democracy. It is multi-party. It had elections last year where the opposition, Movement for Democratic Change, won over 50 seats in the parliament. It has an opposition press which vigorously criticizes the government and governing party. It has an independent judiciary which issues decisions contrary to the wishes of the governing party. Zimbabwe is not without troubles, but neither is the United States. I have not heard anyone proposing a United States Democracy Act following last year's Presidential electoral debacle. And if a foreign country were to pass legislation calling for a United States Democracy Act which provided funding for United States opposition parties under the fig leaf of ``Voter Education,'' this body and this country would not stand for it.
* There are many de jure and de facto one-party states in the world which are the recipients of support of the United States government. They are not the subject of Congressional legislative sanctions. To any honest observer, Zimbabwe's sin is that it has taken the position to right a wrong, whose resolution has been too long overdue--to return its land to its people. The Zimbabwean government has said that a situation where 2 percent of the population owns 85 percent of the best land is untenable. Those who presently own more than one farm will no longer be able to do so.
* When we get right down to it, this legislation is nothing more than a formal declaration of United States complicity in a program to maintain white-skin privilege. We can call it an ``incentives'' bill, but that does not change its essential ``sanctions'' nature. It is racist and against the interests of the masses of Zimbabweans. In the long-run the Zimbabwe Democracy Act will work against the United States having a mutually beneficial relationship with Africa.
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY OF GEORGIA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Tuesday, December 4, 2001
* Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, at the international Relations Committee meeting of November 28, 2001, which considered the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001, I asked a question of my colleagues who were vociferously supporting this misdirected piece of legislation: ``Can anyone explain how the people in question who now have the land in question in Zimbabwe got title to the land?''
* My query was met with a deafening silence. Those who knew did not want to admit the truth and those who didn't know should have known--that the land was stolen from its indigenous peoples through the British South Africa Company and any ``titles'' to it were illegal and invalid. Whatever the reason for their silence, the answer to this question is the unspoken but real reason for why the United States Congress is now concentrating its time and resources on squeezing an economically-devastated African state under the hypocritical guise of providing a ``transition to democracy.''
* Zimbabwe is Africa's second-longest stable democracy. It is multi-party. It had elections last year where the opposition, Movement for Democratic Change, won over 50 seats in the parliament. It has an opposition press which vigorously criticizes the government and governing party. It has an independent judiciary which issues decisions contrary to the wishes of the governing party. Zimbabwe is not without troubles, but neither is the United States. I have not heard anyone proposing a United States Democracy Act following last year's Presidential electoral debacle. And if a foreign country were to pass legislation calling for a United States Democracy Act which provided funding for United States opposition parties under the fig leaf of ``Voter Education,'' this body and this country would not stand for it.
* There are many de jure and de facto one-party states in the world which are the recipients of support of the United States government. They are not the subject of Congressional legislative sanctions. To any honest observer, Zimbabwe's sin is that it has taken the position to right a wrong, whose resolution has been too long overdue--to return its land to its people. The Zimbabwean government has said that a situation where 2 percent of the population owns 85 percent of the best land is untenable. Those who presently own more than one farm will no longer be able to do so.
* When we get right down to it, this legislation is nothing more than a formal declaration of United States complicity in a program to maintain white-skin privilege. We can call it an ``incentives'' bill, but that does not change its essential ``sanctions'' nature. It is racist and against the interests of the masses of Zimbabweans. In the long-run the Zimbabwe Democracy Act will work against the United States having a mutually beneficial relationship with Africa.
Sunday, 15 February 2009
Zimbabwe: Back to halcyon days!
Zimbabwe: Back to halcyon days!
WHILE I agree with JOMIC’s call for some forbearance in respect of the newly inaugurated inclusive government, I hotly oppose any attempt to privilege this new arrangement.
Or to turn JOMIC into some kind of "policeman" over the media.
And JOMIC’s meeting with journalists did not do much to dispel this apprehension. For a start, there was no one from the Information Ministry, as if to suggest a new, supra-governmental regulatory layer was being inaugurated.
Secondly, the remarks from the speakers were pretty hackneyed and even intimidatory, in fact reminiscent of Zimbabwe in the early eighties.
The whole event would have been more useful if JOMIC had sought to achieve greater media understanding through a very detailed, off-the-record brief on the whole political process and its prospects.
Much worse, the format of getting representatives of political parties to speak rotationally, in equal measure, suggested exactly the opposite of what the speakers were asserting and sought to project.
Mis-governance by consensus?
But there are more substantive reasons for keeping media regulation off JOMIC’s limits. Politically, after the inauguration of the inclusive government Zimbabwe will not have an official opposition.
It will be governed by consensual politics worked out by the hitherto warring parties.
This raises the spectre of consensual mis-governance to which we have to find institutional cures by way of countervailing alternative power points.
Needless to say the media is one such. JOMIC was set up specifically to review or audit the political agreement of the three parties.
That does not quite give it a blank cheque over larger societal institutions.
While the media, alongside other countervailing institutions normal in a democracy, have to defer to the new kid on the block, they do not have to doff to it.
Whatever adjective comes before it, the new creature to emerge out of the September 15 Agreement is still a government whose work or lack of it impacts variously on citizens.
As it makes decisions, implements them, it will draw reactions — some happy, some quite unhappy — from various interest groups who will seek ventilation through the media.
Bringing views of citizens into the public domain is the reason for existence of the media which profits power by communicating feedback to it.
The bicker from within
More practically, politicians themselves will be the first ones to scald the inclusive government.
Not the media.
We are already beginning to get a foretaste of this: by way of larger pronouncements and visions purveyed before the new creature launches its inaugural meeting by way of cabinet.
There is impulsiveness.
There is perfect confusion regarding party agendas and governmental policies and programmes.
What is worse, one sees an uncanny attempt to answer to outside interests before the views of Zimbabweans — themselves the owners of this thing — are consulted.
Noticing this propensity, outsiders have not wasted time in setting parameters and benchmarks for the new government.
The British have done so, in the process exhibiting their disavowal of this settlement. The Americans are being made to have said so, much as I know better.
The European Union is still keeping a façade of unanimity to placate Britain, much as I know that a good number of member countries are already putting feelers on how best to break out of the straitjacket of British government hatred of Mugabe, which daily pretends to pass for "a policy".
It is a pity that a country that seeks to "mother" another, shows such spiteful fixation with mere individuals, while the "child" shows such remarkable precocity.
Surely a whole big country whose roots in international relations span over centuries cannot obsess over Mugabe, Tsvangirai, Gono, etc, etc?
It suggests a certain infantile outlook which strikes one as backward.
And of course as politicians in the inclusive government jockey and bicker, they will seek the support of different sections of the media, in the process entrenching the polarisation which already exists.
Usurpation of power?
What is more, the Zimbabwe Media Commission, itself a constitutional body, is set for launching.
All the parties agreed to its formation, and even set clear parameters for its operations. Is it not better suited for the kind of role JOMIC sought to do last week?
Does it not have a better claim to leadership in the media industry?
And when members of JOMIC go to serve in different ministries of the inclusive government, can they make demands on the media without appearing to want to put themselves above scrutiny as performers in the inclusive government? I think the idea of creating a media subcommittee under JOMIC is ill-advised.
It must be shelved before a situation of conflict pitting it against the parent Ministry and the proposed Zimbabwe Media Commission.
Media impertinences
I said I agree with JOMIC in so far as the new experiment needs to be nurtured. Or rather in so far as the media need to understand the new political arrangement.
Already, there is abundant evidence that the media have not understood the moment.
For instance, does it make sense to describe the new Prime Minister as taking "charge"?
Taking charge of what?
And this said before the full cabinet is in place?
And this said before the first Cabinet meeting? This said before the Prime Minister has even got staff?
You can see an outdated media working in old mould, in pre-inclusivity mode.
Does it make sense to put the new prime minister under pressure in respect of accused persons already under the charge of courts?
Why instigate the prime minister to undermine the courts on the very first day of taking office? Does it make sense to ask him what he will do on the economy?
What he will do for workers?
What the new Finance Minister will do with the Zimbabwe Dollar; will do with the Governor of the Reserve Bank?
And this from journalists who have copies of the budget on their desks?
And this from journalists who are supposed to know how the cabinet system works; who are supposed to know the place and status of the RBZ and its Governor in terms of the law of the land?
Who appoints the Governor of the Reserve Bank?
Clearly there are sections of the media who are seeking conflict, indeed seeking to upset and ruin the spirit of inclusivity.
By so doing, they are bringing into the home logs infested with ants.
They should not cry when "JOMIC" or some such creature pays them a visit.
Well before they have educated Zimbabweans on what this new creature is all about, they are already seeking a throwback to the days of conflict.
Which way Zimbabwe?
What then is the way forward?
Last week I challenged the inclusive government by asking it to tell us under whose colours it is marching.
That challenge still stands, and will, in my view, determine what amount of harmony there will be in the new structure.
For external western powers, the issue has been whether or not Mugabe will yield to Tsvangirai.
The challenge of recovering the economy has been presented as that of Tsvangirai alone.
I hope we have got to the bottom of this whole argument.
It is an argument about the vision of the new government, specifically a demand to know how nationalistic the new arrangement will be. Or the obverse: how neo-colonial the new arrangement will be.
If it remains nationalistic, the western world has made it clear it will not move in with any assistance, whatever that means.
For any structure with a nationalistic fervour will suggest Mugabe has not given way, something quite in conflict with what I know inclusivity to mean.
If it becomes neo-colonial, aid will come flowing, whatever that aid means.
It will mean Mugabe will have given way. This is exactly what Milliband and Brown meant when they said they will judge the new government in terms of how far it provides a window for Mugabe’s departure.
A window for regime change, in other words, to the extent that Mugabe personifies the liberation government.
Disregarding coy West
Now, how do those in the new government view things? For me that is what is fundamental.
Zimbabwe has had its days of glory in the recent past. In fact until ESAP and sanctions, Zimbabwe was a vibrant, going concern.
It has, in other words, a glorious past to draw from. Zimbabwe has her own resources and a vibrant private sector tradition for exploiting those resources.
It is a rich country full of ingenuity.
While the former is God-given, the latter was achieved through a set of policies deliberately pursued at Independence.
The men and women who designed those policies are still in Government, this time renewed by a change agent called MDC.
In fact those in the MDC cannot dispute this point without negating themselves.
Almost to the man and woman, they are products of post-independence enterprise in Government, an enterprise that got fatigued somewhere, somewhat.
To be pro-people while being pro-private initiative is probably what is needed.
Zimbabwe now has more partners outside of the West. The resource world has more nations, more possibilities.
The present coyness of the West need not be a major hurdle, for as long as we know our strengths and our actual and potential allies. Western assistance may not be what begins; it could very well be what follows after we have made the first tentative steps, alone.
The West cannot afford to ignore Zimbabwe much longer, in a world of resource hungry powers always on the prowl.
Nor should we worry about Mr Brown. If we should worry at all, we should worry about a country called Britain, a people called the British. On it, in them we should dock our foreign relations politics respectively.
Not in Mr Brown. After all, it will not be long before the British people do us a favour by handling Mr Brown for us. What is critical is what we can do with what, who, follows him.
The ambiguities of South African capital
Sadc made a commitment to assist. Already, we have seen a bit of that assistance coming in by way of agricultural inputs.
Another layer of intervention is at the level of currency, specifically the co-circulation of the rand in our economy. It is a very emotive issue, made worse by the fact that the South African economy remains predominantly white and multinational.
That country’s interface with sister republics in the region has not been that edifying. Zambia’s experience with South African capital has been especially sobering.
Had it not been for Chinese mining capital, Zambia would have been reduced to a giant supermarket of South Africa, the way many countries in the rand zone are presently. South African capital only creates real wealth in respect of extractive, non-renewable sectors. Rarely does it beneficiate. Even with the best intentions, the South African Government cannot check the predatory nature of capital in South Africa, particularly its propensity to de-industrialise its hinterland. Which is why we need a properly formulated response that is deeper than Minister Biti’s frenetic, knee-jerk views proffered through Al Jazeera.
Illustratively, after the South African President said it was possible to have Zimbabwe use the rand, the matter quickly became an issue for boardrooms, away from the Government House. It tells us who our partners will be, should we decide on that course of action.
Congratulations and welcome Sirs, Madame!
Whichever way we go, one thing is certain to me. No one man, no one party, will bring Zimbabwe back to her days of glory. It will not be Robert Mugabe. It will not be Morgan Tsvangirai or Arthur Mutambara.
It will be Zimbabweans united by the three men working together. That, for me, is what inclusivity is all about: getting Zimbabweans to refocus and work. In the meantime, congratulations and welcome Mr Prime Minister, Mr Deputy Prime Minister and Madame Deputy Prime Minister. I give my peace; I give my respect and earned support. Icho!
l nathaniel manheru@zimpapers.co.zw.
WHILE I agree with JOMIC’s call for some forbearance in respect of the newly inaugurated inclusive government, I hotly oppose any attempt to privilege this new arrangement.
Or to turn JOMIC into some kind of "policeman" over the media.
And JOMIC’s meeting with journalists did not do much to dispel this apprehension. For a start, there was no one from the Information Ministry, as if to suggest a new, supra-governmental regulatory layer was being inaugurated.
Secondly, the remarks from the speakers were pretty hackneyed and even intimidatory, in fact reminiscent of Zimbabwe in the early eighties.
The whole event would have been more useful if JOMIC had sought to achieve greater media understanding through a very detailed, off-the-record brief on the whole political process and its prospects.
Much worse, the format of getting representatives of political parties to speak rotationally, in equal measure, suggested exactly the opposite of what the speakers were asserting and sought to project.
Mis-governance by consensus?
But there are more substantive reasons for keeping media regulation off JOMIC’s limits. Politically, after the inauguration of the inclusive government Zimbabwe will not have an official opposition.
It will be governed by consensual politics worked out by the hitherto warring parties.
This raises the spectre of consensual mis-governance to which we have to find institutional cures by way of countervailing alternative power points.
Needless to say the media is one such. JOMIC was set up specifically to review or audit the political agreement of the three parties.
That does not quite give it a blank cheque over larger societal institutions.
While the media, alongside other countervailing institutions normal in a democracy, have to defer to the new kid on the block, they do not have to doff to it.
Whatever adjective comes before it, the new creature to emerge out of the September 15 Agreement is still a government whose work or lack of it impacts variously on citizens.
As it makes decisions, implements them, it will draw reactions — some happy, some quite unhappy — from various interest groups who will seek ventilation through the media.
Bringing views of citizens into the public domain is the reason for existence of the media which profits power by communicating feedback to it.
The bicker from within
More practically, politicians themselves will be the first ones to scald the inclusive government.
Not the media.
We are already beginning to get a foretaste of this: by way of larger pronouncements and visions purveyed before the new creature launches its inaugural meeting by way of cabinet.
There is impulsiveness.
There is perfect confusion regarding party agendas and governmental policies and programmes.
What is worse, one sees an uncanny attempt to answer to outside interests before the views of Zimbabweans — themselves the owners of this thing — are consulted.
Noticing this propensity, outsiders have not wasted time in setting parameters and benchmarks for the new government.
The British have done so, in the process exhibiting their disavowal of this settlement. The Americans are being made to have said so, much as I know better.
The European Union is still keeping a façade of unanimity to placate Britain, much as I know that a good number of member countries are already putting feelers on how best to break out of the straitjacket of British government hatred of Mugabe, which daily pretends to pass for "a policy".
It is a pity that a country that seeks to "mother" another, shows such spiteful fixation with mere individuals, while the "child" shows such remarkable precocity.
Surely a whole big country whose roots in international relations span over centuries cannot obsess over Mugabe, Tsvangirai, Gono, etc, etc?
It suggests a certain infantile outlook which strikes one as backward.
And of course as politicians in the inclusive government jockey and bicker, they will seek the support of different sections of the media, in the process entrenching the polarisation which already exists.
Usurpation of power?
What is more, the Zimbabwe Media Commission, itself a constitutional body, is set for launching.
All the parties agreed to its formation, and even set clear parameters for its operations. Is it not better suited for the kind of role JOMIC sought to do last week?
Does it not have a better claim to leadership in the media industry?
And when members of JOMIC go to serve in different ministries of the inclusive government, can they make demands on the media without appearing to want to put themselves above scrutiny as performers in the inclusive government? I think the idea of creating a media subcommittee under JOMIC is ill-advised.
It must be shelved before a situation of conflict pitting it against the parent Ministry and the proposed Zimbabwe Media Commission.
Media impertinences
I said I agree with JOMIC in so far as the new experiment needs to be nurtured. Or rather in so far as the media need to understand the new political arrangement.
Already, there is abundant evidence that the media have not understood the moment.
For instance, does it make sense to describe the new Prime Minister as taking "charge"?
Taking charge of what?
And this said before the full cabinet is in place?
And this said before the first Cabinet meeting? This said before the Prime Minister has even got staff?
You can see an outdated media working in old mould, in pre-inclusivity mode.
Does it make sense to put the new prime minister under pressure in respect of accused persons already under the charge of courts?
Why instigate the prime minister to undermine the courts on the very first day of taking office? Does it make sense to ask him what he will do on the economy?
What he will do for workers?
What the new Finance Minister will do with the Zimbabwe Dollar; will do with the Governor of the Reserve Bank?
And this from journalists who have copies of the budget on their desks?
And this from journalists who are supposed to know how the cabinet system works; who are supposed to know the place and status of the RBZ and its Governor in terms of the law of the land?
Who appoints the Governor of the Reserve Bank?
Clearly there are sections of the media who are seeking conflict, indeed seeking to upset and ruin the spirit of inclusivity.
By so doing, they are bringing into the home logs infested with ants.
They should not cry when "JOMIC" or some such creature pays them a visit.
Well before they have educated Zimbabweans on what this new creature is all about, they are already seeking a throwback to the days of conflict.
Which way Zimbabwe?
What then is the way forward?
Last week I challenged the inclusive government by asking it to tell us under whose colours it is marching.
That challenge still stands, and will, in my view, determine what amount of harmony there will be in the new structure.
For external western powers, the issue has been whether or not Mugabe will yield to Tsvangirai.
The challenge of recovering the economy has been presented as that of Tsvangirai alone.
I hope we have got to the bottom of this whole argument.
It is an argument about the vision of the new government, specifically a demand to know how nationalistic the new arrangement will be. Or the obverse: how neo-colonial the new arrangement will be.
If it remains nationalistic, the western world has made it clear it will not move in with any assistance, whatever that means.
For any structure with a nationalistic fervour will suggest Mugabe has not given way, something quite in conflict with what I know inclusivity to mean.
If it becomes neo-colonial, aid will come flowing, whatever that aid means.
It will mean Mugabe will have given way. This is exactly what Milliband and Brown meant when they said they will judge the new government in terms of how far it provides a window for Mugabe’s departure.
A window for regime change, in other words, to the extent that Mugabe personifies the liberation government.
Disregarding coy West
Now, how do those in the new government view things? For me that is what is fundamental.
Zimbabwe has had its days of glory in the recent past. In fact until ESAP and sanctions, Zimbabwe was a vibrant, going concern.
It has, in other words, a glorious past to draw from. Zimbabwe has her own resources and a vibrant private sector tradition for exploiting those resources.
It is a rich country full of ingenuity.
While the former is God-given, the latter was achieved through a set of policies deliberately pursued at Independence.
The men and women who designed those policies are still in Government, this time renewed by a change agent called MDC.
In fact those in the MDC cannot dispute this point without negating themselves.
Almost to the man and woman, they are products of post-independence enterprise in Government, an enterprise that got fatigued somewhere, somewhat.
To be pro-people while being pro-private initiative is probably what is needed.
Zimbabwe now has more partners outside of the West. The resource world has more nations, more possibilities.
The present coyness of the West need not be a major hurdle, for as long as we know our strengths and our actual and potential allies. Western assistance may not be what begins; it could very well be what follows after we have made the first tentative steps, alone.
The West cannot afford to ignore Zimbabwe much longer, in a world of resource hungry powers always on the prowl.
Nor should we worry about Mr Brown. If we should worry at all, we should worry about a country called Britain, a people called the British. On it, in them we should dock our foreign relations politics respectively.
Not in Mr Brown. After all, it will not be long before the British people do us a favour by handling Mr Brown for us. What is critical is what we can do with what, who, follows him.
The ambiguities of South African capital
Sadc made a commitment to assist. Already, we have seen a bit of that assistance coming in by way of agricultural inputs.
Another layer of intervention is at the level of currency, specifically the co-circulation of the rand in our economy. It is a very emotive issue, made worse by the fact that the South African economy remains predominantly white and multinational.
That country’s interface with sister republics in the region has not been that edifying. Zambia’s experience with South African capital has been especially sobering.
Had it not been for Chinese mining capital, Zambia would have been reduced to a giant supermarket of South Africa, the way many countries in the rand zone are presently. South African capital only creates real wealth in respect of extractive, non-renewable sectors. Rarely does it beneficiate. Even with the best intentions, the South African Government cannot check the predatory nature of capital in South Africa, particularly its propensity to de-industrialise its hinterland. Which is why we need a properly formulated response that is deeper than Minister Biti’s frenetic, knee-jerk views proffered through Al Jazeera.
Illustratively, after the South African President said it was possible to have Zimbabwe use the rand, the matter quickly became an issue for boardrooms, away from the Government House. It tells us who our partners will be, should we decide on that course of action.
Congratulations and welcome Sirs, Madame!
Whichever way we go, one thing is certain to me. No one man, no one party, will bring Zimbabwe back to her days of glory. It will not be Robert Mugabe. It will not be Morgan Tsvangirai or Arthur Mutambara.
It will be Zimbabweans united by the three men working together. That, for me, is what inclusivity is all about: getting Zimbabweans to refocus and work. In the meantime, congratulations and welcome Mr Prime Minister, Mr Deputy Prime Minister and Madame Deputy Prime Minister. I give my peace; I give my respect and earned support. Icho!
l nathaniel manheru@zimpapers.co.zw.
Zimbabwe: Mamdani, Moyo And 'Deep Thinkers'
In response to the reaction of 33 scholars to the publishing of Mahmood Mamdani's 'Lessons of Zimbabwe', David Johnson casts doubt on their critique of an article that is ultimately informed by body of African expertise on Zimbabwe. While these scholars, along with Horace Campbell, seek to ignore or discredit the considerable research of Sam Moyo on the land question, Johnson stresses that 'deep thinking' requires an actual engagement with the scholarship of informed individuals in place of mere dismissals and allegations of Mugabe 'cronyism'.
Following his intervention in the stultifying 'debate' on Zimbabwe (Mahmood Mamdani, 'Lessons of Zimbabwe'), a squad of 33 scholars, mainly from the US and Europe, placed Mamdani and his main accomplice on the land question, Sam Moyo, in the firing line (Timothy Scarnecchia and Jocelyn Alexander et al, 'Lessons of Zimbabwe', London Review of Books, 2009-01-01). However, the executioners showed up with little but blanks and hubris, leaving this reader to ask more questions about their methods than their targets.
Scarnecchia and Alexander et al begin their response by chiding Mamdani for a simplistic take on Zimbabwe, leading one to anticipate the long awaited complexity of analysis on the Zimbabwe crisis. But their misrepresentation of Mamdani's argument on ethnicity as a portrayal of 'stark ethnic dichotomies' in the opening paragraph gave early indication of more polarised polemics on Zimbabwe and an inability to deliver. By the second paragraph promises to enrich the debate had been abandoned for hand wringing over their difficulty in persuading non-Zimbabwe specialists like Mamdani to think as 'deeply' on the crisis as they do. One major obstacle they have encountered in this quest to produce deep thinkers on Zimbabwe like themselves, is the virus of anti-imperialist rhetoric unleashed by the cunning Mugabe, who has 'fooled' Mamdani, but, thankfully, not our alert experts. As a humanitarian gesture, our scholars, most of whom don't see contemporary imperialism as a category for analysis in their scholarship, offer to help inoculate Mamdani from the dangerous anti-imperialist virus, noting that he is already showing symptoms of 'fantasy' from contact with it.
Relying on personal insults (Mamdani is 'dishonest') and attempts to link Mamdani's arguments to Mugabe and ZANU-PF narratives (what better or simpler way to dismiss an idea on Zimbabwe than associating it with the demonised Mugabe), the Africanists implore Mamdani to abandon the scholarship of Sam Moyo and company for that of their 'more informed scholarship' if he wants to be healed. No explanation is offered as to why Moyo, who has spent the past 25 years in Zimbabwe researching and writing on the land question - publishing four books and over twenty-five articles on the subject - is a less informed source of information and analysis than Scarnecchia and Alexander et al and contributors to the special bulletin on Zimbabwe by the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS). The reader, one assumes, must simply trust in the wisdom of our self-declared deep thinkers, who, after all, are from the US and Europe, where true expertise on Africa resides. A reading of the literature recommended by the learned doctors as an antidote to the dangerous anti-imperialist virus and Moyo's scholarship revealed more documentation on the repressive state acknowledged by Mamdani, and a complete avoidance of the issues raised in the scholarship of Moyo and company.
These more informed deep thinking Africanists are not alone in urging Mamdani to detach himself from Moyo's work and see the light in their recommended sources. Emerging some distance to their left, Horace Campbell, a committed pan-Africanist and activist-scholar, also avoids an engagement with Moyo's work as employed by Mamdani, while dismissing its relevance, in the most curious manner. He faults Mamdani for 'merely recycling' the work of Moyo, even though he himself depended on Moyo's scholarship for his analysis of the land question in his book, Reclaiming Zimbabwe. It seems Moyo's data and analysis can no longer serve Campbell's polemics on the Zimbabwe crisis, but he offers no explanations of its shortcomings. He resorts instead to the diversionary tactics that have become stock in trade for many factions in the 'debate' on Zimbabwe, from the diaspora nationalists who can see no wrong in Mugabe and ZANU-PF to the human rights activists who must see all wrong.
He protests that the African Institute of Agrarian Studies (AIAS), which Moyo founded and directs in Harare, 'claim[s] that [the] horrors of Operation Murambatsvina (the operation to round up hundreds of thousands of citizens) were exaggerated by the western media', which Campbell seemingly presents as an abomination disqualifying their scholarship from critical engagement. How bizarre! I haven't seen the claim from the AIAS authors as there was no reference for the source, but since when did Campbell begin to see criticism of the Western media as a disqualification for being taken seriously on Zimbabwe? Of course they exaggerated the horrors of Operation Murambatsvina, as they did and do on so much else relating to Zimbabwe. Recently I heard folks on the BBC equating the current violence in Zimbabwe to the genocide in Rwanda. Is Campbell in agreement with them on this? Does he, like other scholars, think of admitting to the Western media's exaggeration while exposing the horrors of the repressive state in Zimbabwe as mutually exclusive projects? There might be a tension in these simultaneous pursuits of human rights and opposition activists, whose raison d'être in so many Zimbabwe instances centres on magnifying the horrors of the regime, but aren't scholars and intellectuals supposed to subscribe to another mode of analysis, another relationship with difficult truths?
A scholar who has expended as much energy and intellect as Sam Moyo in attempting to understand the land question in Zimbabwe deserves better treatment from his detractors. At the minimum, they could engage his scholarship and identify the fault lines. Relying on breast-beating about being more informed scholars or attempting to represent him as a Mugabe crony is a retreat from 'deep thinking'. Among other things, the scholarship of Moyo and the AIAS disrupts the dominant narrative around the war veterans as nothing but instruments of a violent state hell bent on maintaining power. It allows intellectuals like Mamdani to argue that outcomes in Zimbabwe cannot be seen only and simply as the 'machinations of those in power.' It also challenges those who insist that land reform resulted in all the land seized from settlers being transferred to the ruling elite by documenting a much wider distribution in the aftermath of land reform. Moyo and the AISA may be wrong on all counts, but it would take more than noisy polemics to prove it.
* David Johnson teaches history at The City College, City University of New York.
Following his intervention in the stultifying 'debate' on Zimbabwe (Mahmood Mamdani, 'Lessons of Zimbabwe'), a squad of 33 scholars, mainly from the US and Europe, placed Mamdani and his main accomplice on the land question, Sam Moyo, in the firing line (Timothy Scarnecchia and Jocelyn Alexander et al, 'Lessons of Zimbabwe', London Review of Books, 2009-01-01). However, the executioners showed up with little but blanks and hubris, leaving this reader to ask more questions about their methods than their targets.
Scarnecchia and Alexander et al begin their response by chiding Mamdani for a simplistic take on Zimbabwe, leading one to anticipate the long awaited complexity of analysis on the Zimbabwe crisis. But their misrepresentation of Mamdani's argument on ethnicity as a portrayal of 'stark ethnic dichotomies' in the opening paragraph gave early indication of more polarised polemics on Zimbabwe and an inability to deliver. By the second paragraph promises to enrich the debate had been abandoned for hand wringing over their difficulty in persuading non-Zimbabwe specialists like Mamdani to think as 'deeply' on the crisis as they do. One major obstacle they have encountered in this quest to produce deep thinkers on Zimbabwe like themselves, is the virus of anti-imperialist rhetoric unleashed by the cunning Mugabe, who has 'fooled' Mamdani, but, thankfully, not our alert experts. As a humanitarian gesture, our scholars, most of whom don't see contemporary imperialism as a category for analysis in their scholarship, offer to help inoculate Mamdani from the dangerous anti-imperialist virus, noting that he is already showing symptoms of 'fantasy' from contact with it.
Relying on personal insults (Mamdani is 'dishonest') and attempts to link Mamdani's arguments to Mugabe and ZANU-PF narratives (what better or simpler way to dismiss an idea on Zimbabwe than associating it with the demonised Mugabe), the Africanists implore Mamdani to abandon the scholarship of Sam Moyo and company for that of their 'more informed scholarship' if he wants to be healed. No explanation is offered as to why Moyo, who has spent the past 25 years in Zimbabwe researching and writing on the land question - publishing four books and over twenty-five articles on the subject - is a less informed source of information and analysis than Scarnecchia and Alexander et al and contributors to the special bulletin on Zimbabwe by the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS). The reader, one assumes, must simply trust in the wisdom of our self-declared deep thinkers, who, after all, are from the US and Europe, where true expertise on Africa resides. A reading of the literature recommended by the learned doctors as an antidote to the dangerous anti-imperialist virus and Moyo's scholarship revealed more documentation on the repressive state acknowledged by Mamdani, and a complete avoidance of the issues raised in the scholarship of Moyo and company.
These more informed deep thinking Africanists are not alone in urging Mamdani to detach himself from Moyo's work and see the light in their recommended sources. Emerging some distance to their left, Horace Campbell, a committed pan-Africanist and activist-scholar, also avoids an engagement with Moyo's work as employed by Mamdani, while dismissing its relevance, in the most curious manner. He faults Mamdani for 'merely recycling' the work of Moyo, even though he himself depended on Moyo's scholarship for his analysis of the land question in his book, Reclaiming Zimbabwe. It seems Moyo's data and analysis can no longer serve Campbell's polemics on the Zimbabwe crisis, but he offers no explanations of its shortcomings. He resorts instead to the diversionary tactics that have become stock in trade for many factions in the 'debate' on Zimbabwe, from the diaspora nationalists who can see no wrong in Mugabe and ZANU-PF to the human rights activists who must see all wrong.
He protests that the African Institute of Agrarian Studies (AIAS), which Moyo founded and directs in Harare, 'claim[s] that [the] horrors of Operation Murambatsvina (the operation to round up hundreds of thousands of citizens) were exaggerated by the western media', which Campbell seemingly presents as an abomination disqualifying their scholarship from critical engagement. How bizarre! I haven't seen the claim from the AIAS authors as there was no reference for the source, but since when did Campbell begin to see criticism of the Western media as a disqualification for being taken seriously on Zimbabwe? Of course they exaggerated the horrors of Operation Murambatsvina, as they did and do on so much else relating to Zimbabwe. Recently I heard folks on the BBC equating the current violence in Zimbabwe to the genocide in Rwanda. Is Campbell in agreement with them on this? Does he, like other scholars, think of admitting to the Western media's exaggeration while exposing the horrors of the repressive state in Zimbabwe as mutually exclusive projects? There might be a tension in these simultaneous pursuits of human rights and opposition activists, whose raison d'être in so many Zimbabwe instances centres on magnifying the horrors of the regime, but aren't scholars and intellectuals supposed to subscribe to another mode of analysis, another relationship with difficult truths?
A scholar who has expended as much energy and intellect as Sam Moyo in attempting to understand the land question in Zimbabwe deserves better treatment from his detractors. At the minimum, they could engage his scholarship and identify the fault lines. Relying on breast-beating about being more informed scholars or attempting to represent him as a Mugabe crony is a retreat from 'deep thinking'. Among other things, the scholarship of Moyo and the AIAS disrupts the dominant narrative around the war veterans as nothing but instruments of a violent state hell bent on maintaining power. It allows intellectuals like Mamdani to argue that outcomes in Zimbabwe cannot be seen only and simply as the 'machinations of those in power.' It also challenges those who insist that land reform resulted in all the land seized from settlers being transferred to the ruling elite by documenting a much wider distribution in the aftermath of land reform. Moyo and the AISA may be wrong on all counts, but it would take more than noisy polemics to prove it.
* David Johnson teaches history at The City College, City University of New York.
Friday, 6 February 2009
Inclusive Govt: Under whose colours do you march?
Inclusive Govt: Under whose colours do you march?
nathaniel.manheru
NEARLY a decade ago, a white business figure shared with select business executives what he considers vital piece of intelligence.
A new party was just about to be formed, one which could turn out much worse than Zanu-PF, unless urgent steps were taken "to infiltrate and influence it" in another direction.
The year was 1999, the setting a Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries meeting. The speaker was Eddie Cross.
A little later, the MDC was launched with great fanfare.
It had a good load of white sponsors, white supporters and white office holders, something which gave it a lasting image problem in a country in which race connotes quite heavily.
To this day, the image the acronym MDC evokes in the mind of an average Zimbabwean is that of a burly white farmer clad in khaki shirt and short, set against an all-white audience backdrop, somewhere in Banket, justifying why supporting the new party was "a good investment", before making a cheque donation to the cause.
Lost in that throng and evidently discomfited is a Morgan Tsvangirai, supported by a few aides, worried about the camera that roved, eternalising the moment.
The Banket that will not die
Historically Banket was a preserve for the Rhodesian pedigree, a setting for undisturbed agricultural pursuits for scions of Rhodesia’s offshore royalty, loosely defined as descendants of the Pioneer Column, or those who had distinguished themselves in defending the Rhodesian laager.
That Tsvangirai went to Banket for the inaugural fund raising for his party, was of lasting significance to the politics of this country.
Indeed for many years to come, MDC used strongholds of white plantation settlement — principally Banket and Marondera — as springboards for its launch and spread.
To this add Clause 57 in the rejected 2000 draft constitution, which focused on land, as well as the role of the black plantation workers vote in both the referendum and subsequent elections, including the March 2008 one, then you catch the full significance of what I am getting at.
Indeed so confident were whites of an outright MDC victory this last March that they actually released a document under JAG, detailing the computation of the black plantation worker vote in local electoral outcomes.
Rhodesian angst
Today Eddie Cross is an MDC Member of Parliament.
He is in charge of the party’s economic affairs desk. He may or may not play a direct role in the inclusive Government.
His worries then, arguably his worries now — worries which were widely shared by his white peers in industry and commerce — was the rise of a radical worker party under a trade unionist.
This would upset industrial relations, in the process trimming returns on white investments.
After all Rhodesia’s industrial base, while remarkably ingenious, remained notoriously inefficient well into Independence, which is why super-profits and stability to the country’s comparative advantage — commercial tobacco agriculture — was key to white settler prosperity.
This was about to be threatened. After all, the 1998 riots had vividly demonstrated how unpredictably threatening to capital MDC’s support base could be.
After all, for all the rheum against Zanu-PF, the nearly two decades of Zanu-PF rule had clearly shown the need to own or at the very least influence the post-colonial state as a bulwark against restive labour practices against tenuous profit margins.
These were both worries and aspirations of Rhodesian capital. These are both worries and aspirations of Rhodesian capital.
MDC strange staccato
But it is capital that comes as a package; that comes with an ethos.
Definitionally, an ethos is hard to pin down, harder to notice its approach. Always diffuse and hard to notice, yet inexorable, the Rhodesian ethos has been slowly but inexorably rebuilding, as a harmonious accompaniment to MDC’s perceived ascendancy.
The remarks by Eddie Cross a few weeks back, remarks that contained his wish for Zimbabwe "to crash and burn", while staggering, was hardly surprising. My worry is that it has not been well understood and appreciated.
Beyond its obvious meaning, the phrase suggested the destruction of an order and all its instruments of self-preservation, to be replaced by a "new" one.
But what is that order; what is that "new one" captured by the phrase "and pick up the pieces"? And the public relations flurry, which followed those utterances, largely mounted by the MDC at the highest level, meant what?
In case you may have, gentle reader, missed it, Eddie Cross was given the chance to cleanse himself by announcing that MDC would join the inclusive Government, and this after two days of utter confusion in the media.
What did that rescue effort suggest and portent regarding MDC obligation to Rhodesian politics?
Subtleties of Rhodesiana
Curiously, my "good friend" Heathen, sorry, Iden Wetherell, decided this week this time to take charge to make a case for a free media which his employers — all of them functionaries of UDI — never granted anyone else, least of all the church Press which was the only other meaningful alternative to the dominant Rhodesian ethos.
He went much further.
He made the case for the return of all "banned journalists", by which I understood him to refer to the likes of Andrew Meldrum and David Blair. Read closely, the piece suggested deep white angst, which is what made its headline — "Do join us" — quite redolent.
Join who? To do what? Maybe Zhangazha can tell us. But that is superficial.
The piece passes a far-reaching and surprisingly indiscriminate judgment on a certain type of politics: "What we need is a robust and independent media, free of the depredations of a post-liberation aristocracy that resents an outspoken Press for exposing its extractive career."
He goes much further, taking on the tone of a biblical Moses, Rhodesian Moses if you ask me: "Freedom of expression is our lifeblood.
Further, we want to see the return of the rule law, an independent judiciary, and people not afraid to speak their minds on the issues of the day."
And those "political prisoners currently held in reportedly appalling conditions redolent of the Stalinist era" must be freed, forthwith.
The other Iden….
Just across the page, Iden speaks as another voice, possibly another person. Some character called "Muckraker" (no doubt no relation of Iden!) expresses envy that Jestina Mukoko and Gandhi Mudzingwa are the only "political prisoners" getting attention. John Naested, Angus Thompson and Brian Baxter are still held at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison while the state tries to find a case against them," says Muckraker helpfully adding: "The Herald has tried to be helpful by branding them Selous Scouts. In fact Naested was in the RLI.
The others were no more than reservists, we gather." Muckraker matronly adds that "at least the International Bar Association is watching the situation in Zimbabwe carefully." And the person watching is Justice Richard Goldstone, a person whose claim to a place in post-apartheid is his self-vaunted liberal spirit — in all ways and habits.
Marking new territory
Iden rails at "depredations of a post-liberation aristocracy" which appear on close examination to be the depredations of UDI only paste or fastened on post-liberation politics.
Why did he not deplore them under Rhodesia? Why does he not recall Rhodesian depredations for the education of post-liberation Zimbabwe?
And what does the condemnatory benchmarking of "post-liberation" imply about the preceding UDI white aristocracy?
That it was impeccable, flawless and diametrically different from the post-liberation which Iden gladly indicts?
And what is the time frame of "post-liberation" politics denigrated as "aristocracy"? Does it begin and end with Mugabe, or does it begin and end with African self-rule?
Clearly, this is an attitude against post-colonial Zimbabwe, against post-colonial Africa, itself an inverted yearn for the return of Rhodesia, of colonial governance.
And you notice the condemned epoch is post-liberation, not post-colonial. Not even a mere reference to colonialism is permitted under Rhodesiaspeak.
The trouble is that Iden’s sweeping "post-liberation aristocracy" etches a very wide epochal continuum, one that smothers Tsvangirai as an incoming but one such player in an interminable series. Is he epochally condemned?
Are the organic intellectuals of white Rhodesia marking territory and boundaries against the newly reconstituted power matrix of "a post-liberation aristocracy"?
Would that suggest white Rhodesian angst with the inclusive Government, which means more white sponsored agitation? Is that what we are being invited to join?
And what passes for "a return to the rule of law" and an "independent judiciary"? What is returning: the rule of law for "post-liberation" or a law for white property rule?
The kind Rhodesia Light Infantry!
Muckraker, who uses journalistic license to say those things Iden cannot openly say, makes a case for the "liberation" of three whites facing very serious charges.
The Herald gets pilloried for suggesting one of the three was a member of the notorious scouts. No, he was a member of the RLI, an acronym we must all know and be familiar with as a household item.
Well, RLI means Rhodesia Light Infantry, a brutal fighting arm of settler Rhodesia.
How does that Herald inaccuracy reverse the point its report made? And the reference to the other two as "no more than reservists" of the Rhodesian army? Mitigatory?
It is a scary euphemism for this Rhodesia’s deadly machinery designed to brutalise Africans, to fight an unjust, racist settler war which Wetherell seeks to whitewash through a diversionary damnation of post-liberation politics. Is it being suggested the Rhodesia Light Infantry was less murderous?
Is it being suggested that Rhodesian reservists killed more kindly?
Is it not a fact that Rhodesia, which did not have a significant standing army, relied on reservists for its war effort?
And is it not white luxury to be finicky with Rhodesian compartmentalisation of its murderous army.
Did these classifications mean less death to the dying, pre-liberation Africans under a post-settler Rhodesian racist aristocracy Iden so lamely but gladly defends?
And why did Iden decide to emerge from the laager this time in the evolution of the inclusive
Government?
Maybe MDC may have made the unforgivable error of obliging an inclusive Government.
Is Iden venting British frustration with the turn of events here?
Bennett for Finance!
A little more. As the MDC national Executive Council met last week, a fugitive from justice was amongst them, one Roy Bennett. The following day the Herald gave us an image of him, widely grinning.
He had flown into the country for the meeting guaranteed from arrest by the MDC. Another rescue package?
And you watch events, the MDC hopes to appease the Rhodesian lobby by nominating him minister of finance! And his resume will show his skills at interfacing with donors, a skill that kept the MDC campaign well oiled.
Except they have to reckon with the fact that Bennett was largely drawing from the Rhodesian lobby worldwide, a Rhodesian cause which galvanised this scattered tribe, a little hopeful for a second "little England", supported by the real, big England.
I grant them that one such Rhodesian --- Mark Malloch Brown --- is a real link between little England and real England. Yet it must be reckoned that a Finance Minister in the Government of Zimbabwe cannot be about post-settler racist Rhodesian depredations.
Will that fly?
When the mosaic crumbles
Which takes me to my point, a relational point. Far more critical for the stability of the inclusive government will be the way the MDC leadership in Government relates to its disparate formations, many of which are already creating a rumpus. What yesterday gave the MDC a mobilisation edge over Zanu-PF, namely creating and replicating interest groups and organisations seemingly independent of it, today return to haunt it as it slouches into Government. Illustratively, the NCA is not going to fizzle out merely because the MDC is now in Government. Over the years, it has acquired a personality of its own, a leadership which has existed and agitated outside of the MDC, albeit with some coordination and mutuality. It has run its own budget, acquired its own donors and yes, developed its own taste and appetite. More importantly, it has staked a claim in the present outcome. All these will not go away. The same is true of ZCTU. But I make special mention of JAG and its women’s league, WOZA. Through it, white Rhodesia’s landed interests projected their politics and organised for their furtherance. What is the MDC-in-government’s attitude towards this whole advocacy? The ZCTU. Already unhappy, already sidelined, but with a serious suitor, the ZCTU will want to see how the anxiety of Rhodesian capital, which dominates the economy, will mean in terms of labour policy or stance. The 2009 budget appears to have set a stage where MDC will --- sooner than later --- have to take a position. After all, the Finance minister will have to find the money for wages. And as Tsvangirai walks to Munhumutapa, he leaves behind men and women who are only too happy to stir the pot against him. I hope he is following what is happening to Makoni. Having been made mbato by elements within the ruling party, that same connection is now being used to damn and evict him politically. Will someone cry "MDC: the revolution which lost its way", a few months down the inclusive government? We shall see.
Which way Manheru?
I saw a rather naughty letter in the Financial Gazette wondering what will become of my pen, now that Tsvangirai is coming into Government. The letter went much further. It visualised a role for the police in my destruction, taking as proof the alleged cheer from "the police" as Tsvangirai addressed his supporters. Let us grant that such a cheer came, much as I know it did not. What is the writer’s understanding of the inclusive government? One in which Tsvangirai and his MDC hold sway, un-sharing? One in which the police are used against writers, un-caring? That is the inclusive government and democratic change he had been waiting for? Well, I will try and be polite. The Nathaniel Manheru column has been anti-Rhodesian, robustly so. It has busied itself with Tsvangirai and his MDC to the extent that both agreed to be white Rhodesia’s Trojan horses. Born differently, bred differently, this column would not care a hoot what they do in, with, their ambitions. But Rhodesia must die and for as long as it is not dead, Nathaniel Manheru will expose, attack and hopefully bury. The return of Rhodesia, under any guise, is what the struggle is all about. Apart from becoming itself, Zimbabwe must never regress to white rule and white dominance. The white millennium is dead and gone. It must never come back.
Raking Biti’s muck
The editor of the Herald must have had a chuckle after reading Muckraker. Correctly, the columnist attacked Biti’s squeamish recourse to the law against normal journalistic questions that dog all politicians. Biti renounces ambition, denounces any imputations to strategies for political self-elevation. One wonders why he is in politics if he does not have or do all those things. I suppose he is hoping for a second Zvobgo suit. But that is to wander off the point. As with all seeming praises from enemies, Muckraker does not take long to bite the Herald. "The Herald, whatever its manifest shortcomings, especially when it comes to inventing stories, is perfectly entitled to speculate about supposed plots within MDC-Tsvangirai. That is the stuff of politics. It just looks a bit daft when the story remains exclusive to the Herald’s political desk." Whaooo! Until one reads page two of the Independent where its own Constantine Chimakure writes about the same "daft stuff". Or those South African papers through which its news editor, Dumisani Muleya, moonlights, but without declaring those earnings for tax purposes. Now we know the spread and reach of the Herald political desk.
Icho!
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
nathaniel.manheru
NEARLY a decade ago, a white business figure shared with select business executives what he considers vital piece of intelligence.
A new party was just about to be formed, one which could turn out much worse than Zanu-PF, unless urgent steps were taken "to infiltrate and influence it" in another direction.
The year was 1999, the setting a Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries meeting. The speaker was Eddie Cross.
A little later, the MDC was launched with great fanfare.
It had a good load of white sponsors, white supporters and white office holders, something which gave it a lasting image problem in a country in which race connotes quite heavily.
To this day, the image the acronym MDC evokes in the mind of an average Zimbabwean is that of a burly white farmer clad in khaki shirt and short, set against an all-white audience backdrop, somewhere in Banket, justifying why supporting the new party was "a good investment", before making a cheque donation to the cause.
Lost in that throng and evidently discomfited is a Morgan Tsvangirai, supported by a few aides, worried about the camera that roved, eternalising the moment.
The Banket that will not die
Historically Banket was a preserve for the Rhodesian pedigree, a setting for undisturbed agricultural pursuits for scions of Rhodesia’s offshore royalty, loosely defined as descendants of the Pioneer Column, or those who had distinguished themselves in defending the Rhodesian laager.
That Tsvangirai went to Banket for the inaugural fund raising for his party, was of lasting significance to the politics of this country.
Indeed for many years to come, MDC used strongholds of white plantation settlement — principally Banket and Marondera — as springboards for its launch and spread.
To this add Clause 57 in the rejected 2000 draft constitution, which focused on land, as well as the role of the black plantation workers vote in both the referendum and subsequent elections, including the March 2008 one, then you catch the full significance of what I am getting at.
Indeed so confident were whites of an outright MDC victory this last March that they actually released a document under JAG, detailing the computation of the black plantation worker vote in local electoral outcomes.
Rhodesian angst
Today Eddie Cross is an MDC Member of Parliament.
He is in charge of the party’s economic affairs desk. He may or may not play a direct role in the inclusive Government.
His worries then, arguably his worries now — worries which were widely shared by his white peers in industry and commerce — was the rise of a radical worker party under a trade unionist.
This would upset industrial relations, in the process trimming returns on white investments.
After all Rhodesia’s industrial base, while remarkably ingenious, remained notoriously inefficient well into Independence, which is why super-profits and stability to the country’s comparative advantage — commercial tobacco agriculture — was key to white settler prosperity.
This was about to be threatened. After all, the 1998 riots had vividly demonstrated how unpredictably threatening to capital MDC’s support base could be.
After all, for all the rheum against Zanu-PF, the nearly two decades of Zanu-PF rule had clearly shown the need to own or at the very least influence the post-colonial state as a bulwark against restive labour practices against tenuous profit margins.
These were both worries and aspirations of Rhodesian capital. These are both worries and aspirations of Rhodesian capital.
MDC strange staccato
But it is capital that comes as a package; that comes with an ethos.
Definitionally, an ethos is hard to pin down, harder to notice its approach. Always diffuse and hard to notice, yet inexorable, the Rhodesian ethos has been slowly but inexorably rebuilding, as a harmonious accompaniment to MDC’s perceived ascendancy.
The remarks by Eddie Cross a few weeks back, remarks that contained his wish for Zimbabwe "to crash and burn", while staggering, was hardly surprising. My worry is that it has not been well understood and appreciated.
Beyond its obvious meaning, the phrase suggested the destruction of an order and all its instruments of self-preservation, to be replaced by a "new" one.
But what is that order; what is that "new one" captured by the phrase "and pick up the pieces"? And the public relations flurry, which followed those utterances, largely mounted by the MDC at the highest level, meant what?
In case you may have, gentle reader, missed it, Eddie Cross was given the chance to cleanse himself by announcing that MDC would join the inclusive Government, and this after two days of utter confusion in the media.
What did that rescue effort suggest and portent regarding MDC obligation to Rhodesian politics?
Subtleties of Rhodesiana
Curiously, my "good friend" Heathen, sorry, Iden Wetherell, decided this week this time to take charge to make a case for a free media which his employers — all of them functionaries of UDI — never granted anyone else, least of all the church Press which was the only other meaningful alternative to the dominant Rhodesian ethos.
He went much further.
He made the case for the return of all "banned journalists", by which I understood him to refer to the likes of Andrew Meldrum and David Blair. Read closely, the piece suggested deep white angst, which is what made its headline — "Do join us" — quite redolent.
Join who? To do what? Maybe Zhangazha can tell us. But that is superficial.
The piece passes a far-reaching and surprisingly indiscriminate judgment on a certain type of politics: "What we need is a robust and independent media, free of the depredations of a post-liberation aristocracy that resents an outspoken Press for exposing its extractive career."
He goes much further, taking on the tone of a biblical Moses, Rhodesian Moses if you ask me: "Freedom of expression is our lifeblood.
Further, we want to see the return of the rule law, an independent judiciary, and people not afraid to speak their minds on the issues of the day."
And those "political prisoners currently held in reportedly appalling conditions redolent of the Stalinist era" must be freed, forthwith.
The other Iden….
Just across the page, Iden speaks as another voice, possibly another person. Some character called "Muckraker" (no doubt no relation of Iden!) expresses envy that Jestina Mukoko and Gandhi Mudzingwa are the only "political prisoners" getting attention. John Naested, Angus Thompson and Brian Baxter are still held at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison while the state tries to find a case against them," says Muckraker helpfully adding: "The Herald has tried to be helpful by branding them Selous Scouts. In fact Naested was in the RLI.
The others were no more than reservists, we gather." Muckraker matronly adds that "at least the International Bar Association is watching the situation in Zimbabwe carefully." And the person watching is Justice Richard Goldstone, a person whose claim to a place in post-apartheid is his self-vaunted liberal spirit — in all ways and habits.
Marking new territory
Iden rails at "depredations of a post-liberation aristocracy" which appear on close examination to be the depredations of UDI only paste or fastened on post-liberation politics.
Why did he not deplore them under Rhodesia? Why does he not recall Rhodesian depredations for the education of post-liberation Zimbabwe?
And what does the condemnatory benchmarking of "post-liberation" imply about the preceding UDI white aristocracy?
That it was impeccable, flawless and diametrically different from the post-liberation which Iden gladly indicts?
And what is the time frame of "post-liberation" politics denigrated as "aristocracy"? Does it begin and end with Mugabe, or does it begin and end with African self-rule?
Clearly, this is an attitude against post-colonial Zimbabwe, against post-colonial Africa, itself an inverted yearn for the return of Rhodesia, of colonial governance.
And you notice the condemned epoch is post-liberation, not post-colonial. Not even a mere reference to colonialism is permitted under Rhodesiaspeak.
The trouble is that Iden’s sweeping "post-liberation aristocracy" etches a very wide epochal continuum, one that smothers Tsvangirai as an incoming but one such player in an interminable series. Is he epochally condemned?
Are the organic intellectuals of white Rhodesia marking territory and boundaries against the newly reconstituted power matrix of "a post-liberation aristocracy"?
Would that suggest white Rhodesian angst with the inclusive Government, which means more white sponsored agitation? Is that what we are being invited to join?
And what passes for "a return to the rule of law" and an "independent judiciary"? What is returning: the rule of law for "post-liberation" or a law for white property rule?
The kind Rhodesia Light Infantry!
Muckraker, who uses journalistic license to say those things Iden cannot openly say, makes a case for the "liberation" of three whites facing very serious charges.
The Herald gets pilloried for suggesting one of the three was a member of the notorious scouts. No, he was a member of the RLI, an acronym we must all know and be familiar with as a household item.
Well, RLI means Rhodesia Light Infantry, a brutal fighting arm of settler Rhodesia.
How does that Herald inaccuracy reverse the point its report made? And the reference to the other two as "no more than reservists" of the Rhodesian army? Mitigatory?
It is a scary euphemism for this Rhodesia’s deadly machinery designed to brutalise Africans, to fight an unjust, racist settler war which Wetherell seeks to whitewash through a diversionary damnation of post-liberation politics. Is it being suggested the Rhodesia Light Infantry was less murderous?
Is it being suggested that Rhodesian reservists killed more kindly?
Is it not a fact that Rhodesia, which did not have a significant standing army, relied on reservists for its war effort?
And is it not white luxury to be finicky with Rhodesian compartmentalisation of its murderous army.
Did these classifications mean less death to the dying, pre-liberation Africans under a post-settler Rhodesian racist aristocracy Iden so lamely but gladly defends?
And why did Iden decide to emerge from the laager this time in the evolution of the inclusive
Government?
Maybe MDC may have made the unforgivable error of obliging an inclusive Government.
Is Iden venting British frustration with the turn of events here?
Bennett for Finance!
A little more. As the MDC national Executive Council met last week, a fugitive from justice was amongst them, one Roy Bennett. The following day the Herald gave us an image of him, widely grinning.
He had flown into the country for the meeting guaranteed from arrest by the MDC. Another rescue package?
And you watch events, the MDC hopes to appease the Rhodesian lobby by nominating him minister of finance! And his resume will show his skills at interfacing with donors, a skill that kept the MDC campaign well oiled.
Except they have to reckon with the fact that Bennett was largely drawing from the Rhodesian lobby worldwide, a Rhodesian cause which galvanised this scattered tribe, a little hopeful for a second "little England", supported by the real, big England.
I grant them that one such Rhodesian --- Mark Malloch Brown --- is a real link between little England and real England. Yet it must be reckoned that a Finance Minister in the Government of Zimbabwe cannot be about post-settler racist Rhodesian depredations.
Will that fly?
When the mosaic crumbles
Which takes me to my point, a relational point. Far more critical for the stability of the inclusive government will be the way the MDC leadership in Government relates to its disparate formations, many of which are already creating a rumpus. What yesterday gave the MDC a mobilisation edge over Zanu-PF, namely creating and replicating interest groups and organisations seemingly independent of it, today return to haunt it as it slouches into Government. Illustratively, the NCA is not going to fizzle out merely because the MDC is now in Government. Over the years, it has acquired a personality of its own, a leadership which has existed and agitated outside of the MDC, albeit with some coordination and mutuality. It has run its own budget, acquired its own donors and yes, developed its own taste and appetite. More importantly, it has staked a claim in the present outcome. All these will not go away. The same is true of ZCTU. But I make special mention of JAG and its women’s league, WOZA. Through it, white Rhodesia’s landed interests projected their politics and organised for their furtherance. What is the MDC-in-government’s attitude towards this whole advocacy? The ZCTU. Already unhappy, already sidelined, but with a serious suitor, the ZCTU will want to see how the anxiety of Rhodesian capital, which dominates the economy, will mean in terms of labour policy or stance. The 2009 budget appears to have set a stage where MDC will --- sooner than later --- have to take a position. After all, the Finance minister will have to find the money for wages. And as Tsvangirai walks to Munhumutapa, he leaves behind men and women who are only too happy to stir the pot against him. I hope he is following what is happening to Makoni. Having been made mbato by elements within the ruling party, that same connection is now being used to damn and evict him politically. Will someone cry "MDC: the revolution which lost its way", a few months down the inclusive government? We shall see.
Which way Manheru?
I saw a rather naughty letter in the Financial Gazette wondering what will become of my pen, now that Tsvangirai is coming into Government. The letter went much further. It visualised a role for the police in my destruction, taking as proof the alleged cheer from "the police" as Tsvangirai addressed his supporters. Let us grant that such a cheer came, much as I know it did not. What is the writer’s understanding of the inclusive government? One in which Tsvangirai and his MDC hold sway, un-sharing? One in which the police are used against writers, un-caring? That is the inclusive government and democratic change he had been waiting for? Well, I will try and be polite. The Nathaniel Manheru column has been anti-Rhodesian, robustly so. It has busied itself with Tsvangirai and his MDC to the extent that both agreed to be white Rhodesia’s Trojan horses. Born differently, bred differently, this column would not care a hoot what they do in, with, their ambitions. But Rhodesia must die and for as long as it is not dead, Nathaniel Manheru will expose, attack and hopefully bury. The return of Rhodesia, under any guise, is what the struggle is all about. Apart from becoming itself, Zimbabwe must never regress to white rule and white dominance. The white millennium is dead and gone. It must never come back.
Raking Biti’s muck
The editor of the Herald must have had a chuckle after reading Muckraker. Correctly, the columnist attacked Biti’s squeamish recourse to the law against normal journalistic questions that dog all politicians. Biti renounces ambition, denounces any imputations to strategies for political self-elevation. One wonders why he is in politics if he does not have or do all those things. I suppose he is hoping for a second Zvobgo suit. But that is to wander off the point. As with all seeming praises from enemies, Muckraker does not take long to bite the Herald. "The Herald, whatever its manifest shortcomings, especially when it comes to inventing stories, is perfectly entitled to speculate about supposed plots within MDC-Tsvangirai. That is the stuff of politics. It just looks a bit daft when the story remains exclusive to the Herald’s political desk." Whaooo! Until one reads page two of the Independent where its own Constantine Chimakure writes about the same "daft stuff". Or those South African papers through which its news editor, Dumisani Muleya, moonlights, but without declaring those earnings for tax purposes. Now we know the spread and reach of the Herald political desk.
Icho!
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
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