Zimbabwe's opposition rooted in imperialism

Zim opposition rooted in imperialism

By Stephen Gowans

ZIMBABWE’S Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa last Friday denounced the United States and Britain for their interference in Zimbabwe's elections.

At the same time, he decried the Morgan Tsvangirai faction of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T), and its civil society partner, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, as being part of a US and British programme to reverse the gains of Zimbabwe’s national liberation struggle.

"It is no secret that the US and the British have poured in large sums of money behind the MDC-T’s sustained demonisation campaign," Chinamasa said. "Sanctions against Zimbabwe (were intensified) just before the elections," while "large sums of money" were poured into Zimbabwe "by the British and Americans to bribe people to vote against President Mugabe."

The goal, Chinamasa continued, is to "render the country ungovernable in order to justify external intervention to reverse the gains of the land reform programme".

The minister went on to describe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T "for what they are — an Anglo-American project designed to defeat and reverse the gains of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, to undermine the will of the Zimbabwean electorate and to return the nation to the dark days of white domination".

The minister also described the ZESN as "an American-sponsored civil society appendage of the MDC-T".

Were they reported in the West, it would be fashionable to sneer at Chinamasa’s accusations as lies told to justify a crackdown on the opposition.

But, predictably, they haven’t been. For anyone who is following closely, however, the minister’s charges hardly ring false. The ZESN is funded by the US Congress and US State Department though the National Endowment for Democracy and United States Agency for International Development. Its board is comprised of a phalanx of US and British-backed fifth columnists.

Board member Reginald Matchaba Hove won the NED democracy award in 2006. Described by its first director as doing overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, the NED — and by extension the NGOs it funds — are not politically neutral organisations. They have an agenda, and it is to promote US interests under the guise of promoting democratisation. Hove is also director of the Southern Africa division of billionaire financier George Soros’ Open Society Institute, which has been involved in funding overthrow movements in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Soros also has an agenda: to open societies to Western profit making. Indeed, the board members of the ZESN comprise an A-list of overthrow activists, with multiple interlocking connections to imperialist governments and corporate foundations.

It doesn’t take long to connect Hove to left scholar Patrick Bond (of Her Majesty’s NGOs) and his Centre for Civil Society. The Centre is a programme partner with the Southern Africa Trust, one of whose trustees is ZESN board member Reginald Matchaba Hove. The Centre for Policy Studies, whose mission is to prepare civil society in Zimbabwe for political change (that is, to prepare it to overthrow the Zanu-PF Government) is funded by the Southern Africa Trust, a partner of Bond’s Centre for Civil Society. Other sponsors include the Soros, Ford, Mott, Heinrich Boll (German Green party), and Friedrich Ebert (German Social Democrats) foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers, the NED, South African Breweries and a fund established by the chairman of mining and natural resources company, Anglo American.

Significantly, Zimbabwe is rich in minerals. Zanu-PF’s programme is to put control of the country’s mineral resources, as well as its land, in the hands of the black majority, depriving transnational mining companies, like Anglo American, of control and profits. Everjoice Win, the former spokesperson for the ZESN, is on the advisory board of Bond’s centre. The Centre supports the Freedom of Expression Institute, which is funded by George Soros and the British government’s Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

The FEI is a partner of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (also funded by the British government), whose director Rashweat Mukundu is a board member of the ZESN. Bond co-authored a report with Tapera Kapuya, a fellow of ZESN sponsor, the NED. He also contributed to a report titled Zimbabwe’s Turmoil, along with John Makumbe and Brian Kagoro.

The report was sponsored by the Institute for Security Studies, which is financed by the governments of the US, Britain, France and Canada, the Rockefeller Brothers, and, of course, the ubiquitous George Soros and Ford foundations. Makumbe has published in the NED’s Journal of Democracy, and is a former director of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (funded, not surprisingly, by the NED). The Coalition, like the Centre for Policy Studies, is devoted to ousting the Mugabe Government under the guise of promoting democracy, but in reality promotes the profits of firms like Anglo American and the interests of US and British investors. Kagoro is a former co-ordinator of the Coalition. Significantly, the Coalition is a partner of the ZESN.

Add to this Bond’s celebrating the Western-trained and financed underground movements Zvakwana and Sokwanele as an "independent left" and his co-authoring a Z-Net article on Zimbabwe with MDC founding member Grace Kwinjeh (MDC leader Tsvangirai admitted in a February 2002 SBS Dateline programme that his party is financed by European governments and corporations), and it’s clear that Bond links up with the spider web of American and British-sponsored civil society appendages of the MDC-T.

Chinamasa’s clarification of the connections between the US and Britain and Zimbabwe’s civil society and opposition fifth columnists is a welcome relief from Western newspapers’ attempts to cover them up. The ZESN, despite being generously funded by the US through Congress and the State Department, is described by the Western media as "independent" while ZESN partner, the National Democratic Institute, is called "an international pro-democracy organisation" and "a Washington-based group". What it really is, is the foreign arm of the Democratic Party. The NDI receives funding from the US Congress (as well as from USAID and corporate foundations), which it then doles out to fifth columnists in US-designated "outposts of tyranny".

Only in the service of propaganda would the Democratic Party be called "a Washington-based group". One wonders how Americans would have reacted to the British monarchy parading about post-revolutionary Washington as a "London-based" group — an "international good governance" organisation bankrolling an American NGO to monitor US elections? Would anyone be surprised if the leaders of the British-financed NGO were dragged off to jail, especially were its backers openly working to oust the government in Washington to restore the rule of the British monarchy?

In Zimbabwe, the only surprise is that the Zanu-PF Government hasn’t reacted with as much force as the Americans would have done under the same circumstances. That Zimbabwe’s Government has tried to preserve space for the exercise of political and civil liberties in the face of massive hostile foreign interference is to be commended. Washington is quite open in its intentions to overthrow the Mugabe Government. Under the 2001 US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act "the President is authorised to provide assistance" to "support an independent and free Press and electronic media in Zimbabwe" and "provide for democracy and governance programmes in Zimbabwe". This translates into the president financing anti-Zanu-PF radio stations and newspapers and bankrolling groups opposed to Zimbabwe’s national liberation movement to inveigle Zimbabweans to vote against President Mugabe.

"The United States government has said 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 organisations to bring about a change of administration."

Last year, the US State Department acknowledged once again that it supports "the efforts of the political opposition, the media and civil society" in Zimbabwe through training, assistance and financing. And the 2006 US National Security Strategy declares that "it is the policy of the US to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation . . . with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus and Zimbabwe".

The goal of the overthrow agenda is to reverse the land reform and economic indigenisation policies of the Zanu-PF Government — policies that are against the interests of the ruling class foundations that fund the fifth columnists’ activities. The chairman of Anglo American finances Zimbabwe’s anti-Mugabe civil society because bringing Tsvangirai’s MDC-T to power is good for Anglo American’s bottom line. Likewise, the numerous Southern African corporations that Lord Renwick of Clifton sits on the boards of stand to profit from the MDC unseating Zimbabwe’s national liberation agenda.

Lord Renwick is head of an outfit called the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, also part of the interlocked community of imperialist governments, wealthy individuals, corporate foundations, and NGOs working to reverse Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. The ZDT is a major backer of the MDC. Police raids on the offices of the ZESN and Harvest House, the headquarters of the MDC-T, seem deplorable to those in the West who are accustomed to elections in which the contestants all pretty much agree on major policies, with only trivial differences among them. But in Zimbabwe, the differences are acute — a choice between losing much of what the 14-year-long national liberation war was fought for and settling for nominal independence (that is crying uncle, so the West will relieve the pressure of its economic warfare) or moving forward to bring the programme of national liberation to its logical conclusion: Ownership of the country’s land, resources and enterprises, not just its flag, by the black majority.

In this, there is an unavoidable conflict between "a government which is spearheaded by a revolutionary party, which spearheaded the armed struggle against British imperialism" and "a party that was the creation of the imperialists themselves (that) has been financed by the imperialists themselves". It’s impossible to achieve independence from foreign control and domination without turmoil, disruption and fighting — not when the opposition and civil society are directed from abroad to serve foreign interests. Can Zimbabwe’s elections honestly be described as free and fair when the economy has been sabotaged by the West’s denying Harare credit and debt relief and where respite from the attendant miseries is promised in the election of the opposition?

Are elections legitimate when media are controlled by outside forces, and civil society and the opposition have been controlled by foreign powers?

Chinamasa’s complaints, far from being demagoguery, are real and justified. Zanu-PF’s decision to fight, rather than capitulate, ought to be applauded, not condemned. Imperialism cannot be opposed without opposing the MDC and its civil society partners, for they too are imperialism.

l Stephen Gowans is a Canadian writer and political activist based in Ottawa. This article first appeared on gowans.wordpress.com