IMF: When fetid stench groups fishmongers

WE have heard it before. We have seen it before. We have suffered it before. Zimbabwe is going through another round of Dell-commissioned and managed rumours from his Anglo-Saxony world. And the local instruments for his propaganda are full at work, led by select websites through which the enemy mind is glimpsed. As always, destabilising scenarios are built, with unwanted persons "eliminated" through such scenarios.

President Mugabe, Anglo-America’s Number One enemy has been disposed of times without count. After him, we are told, Zimbabweans will inhabit a sugar-candy realm, well and ceaselessly supplied by the West’s horn of plenty! Prior to our collective transportation to this sweet milieu, we undergo a crucible-test on the mill of rumours, all shades of rumours ranging from predictions of our complete meltdown from our ductile stem, wars, coups, right through to great personal afflictions suffered by all the "evil men" on whose fontanel the Western god has spit a terrible curse.

Death to those accursed persons is predicted as a precondition for the great resurrections and rebirth of our country Zimbabwe, presented all along as palsied by poor governance and venal autocracy. And in this about-to-happen great resurrection, Dell and Pocock play the biblical Maria naMarita who cry for dead Lazaro!

Imperialism’s soothsayers

I am sure all this must be quite bewildering to those who cannot take, let alone digest, huge doses of propaganda such as we are collectively subjected to presently. If you are the-one-propaganda-capsule-per-day type, it may be well nigh impossible to understand the broader drift, the wider project slowly unfolding. It helps to remember that disinformation, especially rumour-running, is integral to imperialism's design on smaller states. This is why imperialism always sires soothsayers, otherwise known as right-wing journalists in common parlance.

Last week I reported the demise of one such, a Kenyan called Jeff Koinange. Cubans, themselves inveterate targets of sustained US propaganda assault, will readily tell you that a society marked for imperial aggression is kept on its edge. The clearest and most effective way of doing that is to sponsor rumours that build and stoke anxiety and incertitude within its citizenry, so it subsists in an environment which is brooding and foreboding, one replete with terrible auguries, one repeatedly shaken by occasional panic and hysteria.

It is a post-propaganda traumatic stress, much akin to its cousin after a major conflict. The idea is to create a milieu where anything bad seems possible and inevitable, not least the elimination of a people’s leadership. The Cubans faced it again recently when Fidel Castro was reported as twitching his last. Ironically, he lives to this day, and seems set to live long enough to see the last twitches of bald American propaganda against him and his people.

Losing reins

Once inserted into such a psychological milieu, the citizenry develops a short view of life where a single day is more than an impossible chunk to bite, let alone chew. Better still if the economy is convulsed. Behaviours become short-term, seemingly validating such a milieu of a severely shortened view of life. Notions of sovereignty become reckless luxuries, a diversion from the drudgery of survival. It can be quite consuming, really smothering with every one connected to each and all through illicit deals and cash nexus.

Remember the idea is to get a people to let go of the reins than enable them to take charge and shape their environment. The dominant text is to project everything as Hobbesian, as in permanent tumult and rebellion ever to come under tow. Everything is projected as running away, well beyond native leash. All local initiatives are dismissed with deep cynicism, dismissed as effete and unhelpful, in fact part of the problem.

Those who lead in the search for solutions, or simply lead such societies, are demonized and dismissed as venal and incompetent villains. They are made archetypally unfit to govern. In them, a people are condemned, a race discounted as having the capacity to self-govern. The idea is to make the proposition for colonial re-occupation and re-governance not just possible but actually urgent and needlessly delayed or obstructed.

Treachery at WEF

The role of imperialism, no matter how overt, is well hidden. We have gone through such a cycle here, indeed a probably going through another presently. We have seen a mutation of the local national political question away from what Zimbabweans can do and achieve with their freedom, to a beggarly one where Zimbabweans have driven themselves into deep self-doubt, self-deprecation.

The national question has falsely redrawn, in fact reduced to how best Zimbabwe can win Western donors and donations, reduced to who best leads us towards the attainment of such a goal. This is why invitation to and addressing forums sponsored by the West, such as the World Economic Forum, come at a premium. And once thrust at such forums, those who aspire to govern us outdo one another to distance themselves from politics of liberation.

We saw that last week in Cape Town. To espouse the cause of national liberation is the snub modernity, indeed to pander to old man’s archaic rhetoric of liberation which Dell so eloquently lashed out against in Bulawayo recently. I call it a degradation of national politics, much of it owing to neo-colonial liberalism which seems to be taking hold.

What makes such politics quite dangerous as was shown last week, is the fact that they have enlisted soothsayers from within the ruling Zanu (PF), in the process suggesting they are a natural development of, and offshoot from the block of the national liberation project. They are not. In fact these new politics espoused by the so-called "reformists" or "technocratic politicians", are sinister and should be resisted with resoluteness, and carted right to the edge of the maize field as we do with a noxious weed. At heart, they are no different from those of Muzorewa and his Zimbabwe-Rhodesia crew.

The day gold rust

Helpfully, Christopher Dell has made it clear that his country and that of his cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, are fighting politics of liberation movements which must now make way to new politics, new politicians. This holds true for all post-liberation struggle societies of Southern Africa.

The ANC government which for a while thought it could be spared, saw itself under a severe labour-led attack in the few weeks which have gone by. As with Zimbabwe, these new, evolving politics are much more complex than the Manichean Zanu (PF)-MDC divide, the ANC-IFP/DA dichotomy. In the case of Zimbabwe, we are seeing a new trend where the so-called young politicians from both camps not just share platforms, but actually share prognoses on Zimbabwe’s future.

It often gets worse, is indeed happened last week and this week. We witnessed with horror a young and well-placed ruling party politician not just wishing the back of his party president, but actually articulating a prognosis of Zanu (PF) demise which Dell was to echo in a matter of a few days later. Was this coincidence or causality? Was this a case shared beliefs, actions and outcomes? Who is the consumer of such soothsaying? How is all that supposed to help and move forward the consolidation of the liberation tradition? What sort of loyalty is it when men who should bring the plaster to embattled Zanu (PF), end up doing remarkably well to bring and administer salt to bleeding wounds of battle? Indeed, if gold rusts, what does iron do?

Allowing Dell some purgation

Dear reader, you correctly notice I do no more than make incidental references to Christopher Dell, US’ outgoing man here. He is set to leave our beautiful country in a matter of days. He goes away a bitter and failed man, one whose credentials simply crumbled to undignified rantings in the uncaring deep. He goes away in a highly destructive mode. He is, after all, an outsider from whom little should be expected, to whom no song is due. His duty here has been simply to march for the colours of America and in all fairness, he did it rather with immaculate abrasiveness.

He lashes at the Zimbabwean government and its leadership daily, conveniently drawing consoling from a belief that gratuitous anger against Zanu (PF) must be right. I personally think we must indulge him. After all his repeated, bitter attacks are enough proof we kept him very busy here, too busy for any material mischief.

His repeated hellfire prognosis confirms his won deep doubt about such a likelihood. Let us allow the man an outlet, a purgation. After all given where he is going, that is, war-torn Afghanistan, these may be his last remarks on this earth before the Talibans catch up with him, cut his ears before retiring him from this earth.

Dark lips for white mind

Far from focusing on him, focus should fall on his successor whom I hear wears my colour and complexion. Uncle Sam has decided to deploy one of our own here, to make sure the condemnation comes from the lips of an African-African American, the same way Blair sought the same by deploying dark Boateng to South Africa. No big deal here. We do not read lips from the skin; we read lips from the colour of the mind, and of course the colour of the hand that controls it. Going by Dell's successor's record elsewhere on the continent, itake-take chaiyo!

The bait of Fishmongers

The West is dropping abundant sweetners and incentives for our enslavement. Which is where the IMF and Fishmongers Group (group of western donors led by Britain and the US) come in. On the advice of the IMF, the group promises US$3billion over a five-year period to finance "a post-Mugabe" Zimbabwe in all the areas, including of course "agrarian reforms", a shorthand for a reversal of land reforms. To the simple-minded, this is a tantalizing offer, one which promises post-Mugabe Zimbabwe "a kind big bang" which will waft everyone to a sugary era!

But as Zimbabweans, we must feel jealousy, very jealousy. Post-Taliban Afghanistan was promised more billions by the same fishmongers than they have granted us! Iraq was promised even more, in fact everything under the sun, except of course their freedom and life! How dare the fishmongers promise us a mere US$3 billion? Don’t they know we are revolutionary Zimbabweans! Hark, who asks? What have the Afghans since got? What has Iraq got? A lot by way of dolour, hardly anything by way of dollar!

In fact both societies have since discovereda pledge from fishmongers is an indication of how much they wish to get from you! As the fishmongers’ soldiers were busy buffeting and hacking Afghans and Iraqis with extraordinary firepower, the fishmongers themselves are busy catching fish, wringing resources both nations dry.

Such is the simple moral of the Fishmongers' offer, one hardly new in the history of imperial pillage. In our case, the same offer was unveiled by the British intelligence soon after MDC’s abortive March 11 coup.

Well before that, the Americans had used their academic soothsayers at John F. Kennedy Graduate School to flaunt a similar package, with Tony Hawkins as its designated salesman. Which takes me to a major point: whose Zimbabwe is the post-Mugabe era going to be? It can't be a matter of fate especially in this era where fate equals American imperialism. It has to be a matter of struggle and victory against imperialism. Iwe neni tichine basa!

Real insult to injury

In case anyone still has doubts about the ownership of the so-called governance NGOs, let them read the latest joint propaganda offer from the so-called Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, and the all-white Justice for Agriculture (JAG).

Titled "Insult to Injury", this latest piece of bald propaganda is an exquisite exercise in ventriloquism. The whole report quotes from itself, and yet pretends to break new ground on the vexed question on land. Of course the idea behind its compilation, is to compose a charge sheet for Robert Mugabe whom both organizations would want to see arraigned at the ICC. But the hasty report makes fundamental concessions. It admits that the vote which won the MDC the "No" vote on the constitutional referendum, largely came from quarters least conversant or preoccupied with constitutional issues, namely farm labourers on white-owned farms. How revealing!

The hope was to do the same in subsequent plebiscites, in the process securing an MDC win. It also admits to violence visited on white farmers by farm labourers during the Third Chimurenga. The import is clear: the historically abused farm labourers felt emancipated by the Third Chimurenga and abused their newfound freedom to mete out vengeance on their white tormentors. Is that not the story Mr. Editor of the Financial Gazette?

The report admits that while white farmers lost a vast array of assets, farm labourers only lost wages or livelihoods! Why so if it is true that JAG members were true guardians of farm labourers? Of course JAG and the Forum cannot go so far as to acknowledge that the erstwhile labourers have since gained a primary asset called land, all along a preserve of their white masters. It also admits to the fact that white farmers used the courts "extravagantly" to vex and confound all efforts at peaceful land reforms. And yet it still concludes that land reforms could have proceeded smoothly without any conflict!

Pity the pets!

But the report is not without humour. In attempting to define the most heinous human rights abuses visited on hapless white farmers, it identifies attack on their spoilt and overfed pets as one most singular act of savagery. The abused pets come well before the farm labourers, which is why a strong case for pets is made before a sequel study on farm labourers! Rhodesians never die! The point to emphasise is that we are seeing the divesting of all pretences as the cognateness of white farmers, the MDC and the whole industry of governance NGOs which number more than 2000, becomes apparent. That is what happens when you push the opponent to the limit!

We will lose elections, MDC

I notice the MDCs’ negotiating team has had to revise its churlish position paper on the Mbeki-mediated talks. But the new effort is no better and clearly shows that there is nothing to negotiate with, only much to lament in such a deficient opposition. It should be relatively easy for Goche and Chinamasa, more so when both members of the MDC openly admit to the irreversibility of land reforms, and to the fact that illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe are now being pushed by interests they cannot govern.

But hark, what is this suggestion about changing Zimbabwe’s provinces from 10 to 5, namely Matabeleland, Midlands, Masvingo, Mashonaland and Manicaland, each under an elective governor with a full cabinet? I see even Muleya was too embarrassed to share such a puerile idea with his diminishing readers! Was that meant to placate and prepossess the South Africans by appearing to be admiring that great country’s provincial premier system of local government? Or was that meant to placate and won over the feeling of irredentism held by a measly minority in Bulawayo?

Do these guys know what issues to negotiate with Zanu (PF), and what issues to put before the electorate in polls? And did anyone read through the two MDC's parody of the Unity Accord? It is eminently readable drivel. But there is something that sticks out sore. The two factions are brave enough to tell their constituency they are not sure that they will win! They even spell out a post-defeat scenario and how the two factions will coexist. That assumes they will subsist after the march 2008 defeat! Incidentally, I went to Bak Storage and boy, did I not see numberless MDC MPs agitating for very basic farming implements such as ox-drawn harrows. Vorime zhara, Dumbu ragare parombe! Icho! — nathaniel.manheru@zimpaperes.