tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50389488423528842372024-03-19T14:11:52.519-07:00Zimbabwe ImageO lift high the banner, the flag of Zimbabwe. The symbol of freedom proclaiming victory; We praise our heros' sacrifice, And vow to keep our land from foes; And may the Almighty protect and bless our land. O lovely Zimbabwe, so wondrously adorned; With mountains, and rivers cascading, flowing free; And may the Almighty protect and bless our land. O God, we beseech Thee to bless our native land; The land of our fathers bestowed upon us all.Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.comBlogger293125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-59826690903879317682012-04-25T05:39:00.000-07:002012-04-25T05:39:06.218-07:00Zimbabwe and the greedy West: It's the minerals and land, stupid!by: Nathaniel Manheru I Herald
I HAVE just been reading C G Tracey’s “All for Nothing?”, itself a weeping autobiography by one of Rhodesia’s leading farmers and, especially after UDI, one of Rhodesia’s leading sanctions-busters.
The book is tearful about the loss of Tracey’s Mount Shannon, aka Mount Lothian farm, apparently in the course of our land reforms. But the book gives one the sense that this land loss triggers a long introspection in Tracey, much of it coinciding with major turns and shifts in the life of Southern Rhodesia both before and after UDI.
But that is a story for another day. My interest is one forthright sentence Tracey uses to introduce a chapter of the book. The forthright sentence reads: “Gold mining was the reason that Rhodesia was opened up in the first place, and agricultural development took place around that thrust.”
Land to Niggers
I was struck by the sheer clarity, the remarkably unadorned forthrightness of this simple statement which profoundly summarises my fate and that of my people and country, Zimbabwe. And of course one can choose to treat gold as a singular, specific mineral, or as a metaphor depicting the overriding mining interests that were at the heart of Zimbabwe’s invasion and occupation, at the heart of its long colonialism. And as Tracey’s matter-of-fact statement attests, the mining interests were bolstered by land interests.
My mind then wonders back to the days of Cecil John Rhodes, the man credited with founding us, we who already inhabited the hills and valleys which his rag-tag army only reached for the first time in 1890.
A white historian, one Patrick Keatley, quotes Rhodes as saying in a moment of candour: “I prefer land to niggers,” again another pithy, straightforwardly cold statement of fact and unambiguous white interest. The accent is on resources, land-based resources of my country, of my people.
Highly Mineralised Country
I wonder on, in the process stumbling upon the Rudd Concession whose wording in part reads: “I, Lobengula, King of Matabeleland and Mashonaland and other adjoining territories, with the consent of my Council of Indunas, do hereby grant and assign... complete and exclusive charge over all metals and minerals situated and contained in my kingdoms."
I cast aside the duplicity involved in that whole document, a document so well couched in the language of English Law, yet purporting to carry the mind of an African Ndebele King, my king, my forbear. That, too, is a matter for another day.
My real focus is on “all metals and minerals” which amount to the centre of this fudged, fraudulent agreement involving a monarch still to build a defending literacy such as we now have, or should have. To all these statements add Ian Smith’s pregnant but often overlooked statement of fact: “Rhodesia is one of the most mineralised countries on the African continent.”
A clear, emphatic thread runs through: across time, across persons, across preoccupations, indeed across temperaments. And in all these utterances, you are struck by the simplicity of white mission, sheer clarity of mission and purpose.
Contrast this matter-of-factness, this clarity with our own muddled thinking as Africans, muddled thinking in characterising the colonial rain that beat us, and by implication the sunshine that must dry us up in post-independence.
We talk colonialism as if Rhodes and his variegated bunch of thugs and urchins invaded this country solely to misgovern us. They did not. To think and believe so would then imply the dialectic between us and colonialism is over governance issues, over structures of political power.
Such a reading gives us a completely different national purpose. But it also misreads history, misreads it disastrously. History records that the so-called pioneers were disbanded soon after the September hoisting of the Union Jack at Cecil Square, now Africa Unity Square. Disbanded to prospect for mines and minerals. Disbanded to identify and take possession of the best land.
Mines, minerals flowed from the myth of the Orphir — the legendary site of King Solomon. And the old workings done by our forbears gave these itinerant ruffians much clue, which is why most of the big mines of Southern Rhodesia developed from sites worked by Africans in their great trade with potentates of Asia, Middle East, Persia and, much later, the Portuguese.
Producers of incredible rice
History records that Mashona contacts with the rest of the developed world centred around trade in minerals and metals. We traded in minerals with older civilisations of Persia, Asia and the Middle East, trade that could have predated AD1200.
The English do not exist at all when we enter this trade; they don’t even exist as a people, let alone as a nation. They only become a factor close to the occupation of Zimbabwe, even then following far behind the Portuguese and the Germans, the latter represented by Karl Mauch.
In his record of travels, Mauch makes the following entry: “The high-veld of the watershed consists of a grassy plain with trees that can be easily counted. Towards the north-east, the Mashona tribe, which is partly subject to Mosilikatse, produces an incredible amount of rice which served us as an unexpected addition to our everlasting dry meat-fare.” Clearly the land was in use, very productive use for surplus.
Native miner, native beneficiation
In July 1867, the German geologist made an even more dramatic entry which I shall quote in extenso: “... Hartley brought me the news that, when following a wounded elephant, he passed several pits dug into quartz, and that he suspected that the former inhabitants of the country had dug for metal there, but what kind of metal he had not been able to discover.
“Following Hartley’s description, I should be able to reach this site from our camp in one day. And so I started the following day, armed with a hammer, to search in the indicated direction. I passed a small river at a distance of about 4,5 English miles, the rubble and sand of which stemmed from ‘talk’ gneiss stone.
“On the other riverbank, I came to a bare patch of brackish soil on which, at a distance of 1,5 miles, a distinct white line across the burnt black ground could be made out. On my approach this proved to be a quartz vein which protruded in places to a height of up to 4 feet. I soon came to this line, and a few paces alongside it, I came to a site which I recognised as a smelting place. This was about 10 feet in diameter and contained slag, quartzstone, pieces of clay pipes, ash and coal. There were some pits 4 to 5 feet deep at a distance of about 50 paces, placed in openings of the quartz vein. Yet further on there was one pit 10 feet deep, but, this was filled with two feet of water, which probably prevented any further digging by the natives.
“On examining some of the recovered stones, I found ‘Bleiganz’ which was extraordinarily shiny, and had a small silver content, and GOLD. I looked at the extension of the vein and made speculations which, later on, proved to be correct. Highly pleased, I put my hammer into my belt, shouldered my rifle and ran, rather walked, back to camp to impart this good news.”
So was found the Tati goldfields, themselves the focus of Rhodes’ pioneers soon after hoisting the Union Jack. The natives in question are ourselves, already engaged in mining and minerals processing well before Rhodesia.
What followed this Western discovery was what historians have termed the “shovel and sieve” age, with gold-seekers working extensively on both alluvial deposits, and on deposits more deeply embedded in the hard African stone which make the backbone to our country. Dear Zimbo, mining did not happen after us. It began with us, making us masters of rock, masters of metal. Always bear this in mind when you interact with the world.
Challenging heresies of colonial history
And of course the occupation of Zimbabwe followed well behind a wave of gold-seekers and treasure hunters who invaded and ransacked the country well before Rhodes dreamt of colouring us pink, British pink.
I restate, we were invaded and occupied for our minerals, with colonial misgovernance attaching to the whole mining enterprise as a concomitant, an incidental, necessary, bothersome evil needed to stabilise matters for quieter, more profitable mining and much, much later, more profitable, monopoly farming. Serious farming only takes place after the First World War, with colonial reports clearly indicating the settler community lived off the produce of industrious African farmers.
We are people of the land, sons and daughters of the soil. Let no one deceive us; let no one propagate the heresy that we learnt about the soil from the white man, the heresy that this land was empty, unused until the white man came. Simply, it wasn’t.
Small but significant quarrel
Today, we talk and think as if the firstlings of settler colonialism in Zimbabwe was governance. That is very flawed thinking, so monumentally flawed as to spawn a train of other lethal mischaracterisations, including and principally an existential one. Do we know why we exist, given our historical circumstances?
We have just celebrated 32 years of Independence, a quarrelsome lot. And what was the quarrel over? It was over the theme for the commemorations. The committee responsible for State occasions recommended “Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment for Social and Economic Transformation” as the theme for this year. The recommendation went up to Cabinet for adoption. It was adopted virtually uneventfully, with a small but telling suggestion coming from MDC-T.
The small but significant suggestion was to trim the theme to “Social and Economic Transformation”. What is now being recorded as MDC-T objection to the theme was a belated protest, an obligatory afterthought that only came well after a decision had been made by Government. Still, that does not lessen its importance and what it portents for the politics of this country.
Old culture of expropriation
The MDC-T objections are quite telling: “We are not opposed to the day, but we are strongly opposed to the message of indigenisation and to use a national day to launch a Zanu PF theme; that is what we are opposed to.”
Morgan Tsvangirai went further: “We have disagreed in this government because there are others who want to perpetuate the old culture of expropriation, looting and self-aggrandisement clad in new and misleading nomenclature such as indigenisation.”
The scope and line of attack is clear; it encompasses land reform as “the old culture of expropriation”, attacks the indigenisation of the mining sector as a new name for an old vice. It is an attack which, as should be clear from the foregoing, is rooted in the history and politics of this country, specifically rooted in composite white colonial interests as they relate to the land which they viewed as better valued than niggers, indeed as they relate to metals and minerals which they gave better regard clean, honest international relations with the Ndebele state.
The only difference is that while in the foregoing I was, of necessity, restricted to culling quotes from white players, this time around I find there is a black mouth, black tongue articulating the selfsame white interests.
Our independence, your sacrifice
And there is an implied mission in Tsvangirai’s frustration with the theme: that MDC-T was put into the inclusive equation to empty the national day of any radical, national message, to give the national day a new, innocuous meaning. Otherwise how does one embrace the day and oppose the message? After all is the day itself not the message?
But one is also hit by the man’s lack of irony. He proceeds: “It is regrettable that Independence Day has been monopolised and personalised by one political party. This is a national day that is greater than Zanu PF, the MDC, Mavambo or any other political formation. Independence Day is a day greater than Morgan Tsvangirai, Robert Mugabe, Welshman Ncube, Arthur Mutambara or Simba Makoni . . . To adorn Independence Day in a Zanu PF robe is to rob it of its national character and its universal appeal to the diverse people of Zimbabwe who are all too aware of its mammoth significance to the story of this land.”
Maybe we have been too polite for too long. The struggle, with all its horrendous toll, was monopolised by one party, united Zanu PF. No one worried then, including Tsvangirai who was not only old enough to go to war, but as near to the border with Mozambique as Mutare. He bravely chose to stay inside the country, leaving the reckless Zanu PF to monopolise the fight. He worried more about the education of his siblings, he tells one of his white biographers.
Today political colonialism has fallen and hey, our man bravely thrusts himself into the frontline, ready to be mowed down by deadly bullets of post-liberation peace, post-liberation premiership! Well, let him get it today: only the united Zanu PF is the source of Zimbabwe’s Independence. It fought for that Independence; it sacrificed for it, mobilised for it and, what is more, continues to defend it to this day. Let that be pressed home.
Neither time nor memory will ever redistribute this historic achievement by Zanu PF, all to benefit little, latter-day parties, least of all those speaking for, and defending white interests. Never! Those that stayed home, those that betrayed the struggle even, please demand with humility. This our-glory-together-in-independence, your-sacrifice-alone-struggle, shall not wash. To each according to their contribution, that is the mantra.
Biti lipsticks the status quo
But I am running too far ahead. The MDC-T has said more. Tendai Biti, its secretary general, thinks Indigenisation law is “absurd”. “It wasn’t well thought. Due process not being followed, we need to go back to the drawing board and say how we can empower our people. The best way to empower our people at this present moment in time is to expand our economy to create as many sectors as possible.”
And then his real point: “The transfer is for value, which is good, but in a situation where the majority are poor, you are just transferring shares from a few rich white people to a few rich black people.” Significantly, Biti was addressing a Washington think-tank and policy group called Atlantic Council.
Enter Ibbo Mandaza, enmeshed in bitterness
Gentle reader, I advert your attention to another opinion on the same matter, that of Dr Ibbotson Mandaza, who signs off as “a member of the Zimbabwe National Liberation Movement from the 1970s to Independence and later a senior civil servant before he was forced into early retirement”.
Writing in the Zimbabwe Independent (April 20-26, 2012), Dr Mandaza guiltily locates our current problems in two main factors. The first factor relates to the “colonial legacy and the political economy it bequeathed”. The second factor was resultant, and Dr Mandaza sums it up as “the neo-colonial framework” which rendered the post-colonial state neither a nation-state nor a nation, but ‘simply a state’” moored to interests of the former colonial and other metropolitan powers.
Discounting the self-serving last two paragraphs of his article, paragraphs which can easily be understood as triggered by the bitterness implied in the man’s self-introduction, Mandaza raises from the first weakness an argument which seems to respond to Biti’s founding postulate against Indigenisation: the persistent extractive, white-bourgeois-led colonial state in post-colonial circumstances “stymied” the indigenous people from “developing a national bourgeoisie that would be the anchor class for the post-independence enterprise of nation-state-in-the-making”.
Mandaza emphasises the colonial binary of a political “and perhaps even more so, an economic agenda”. And this aborted anchoring national bourgeoisie is what Biti decries as “a few rich black people”.
For Mandaza, this class is a national deficit of post-colonial politics, for Biti it is the reason Indigenisation is flawed, gets flawed. This is the muddled national thinking I am talking about, one so remarkably contrasted by the pithy clarity of white Rhodesia.
Slurring the tall men of history
Let’s take off the gloves and knuckle in a few hard ones for the thinking side of the MDC formations. Independence is not a day to which you add the adjective "national". It is a people, a nation, a destiny, a legacy, an aspiration. Above all, it is proprietorship, ownership. You cannot be independent when you don't own what your flag proclaims as your own. And many Zimbabweans know that, which is why they have been angry with Zanu PF for breeding and expanding poverty by simply managing and even reinforcing the colonial state in post-independence.
I thought that is Mandaza's gripe, albeit tinged with personal bitterness. And that this is the dominant understanding of Zimbabweans was shown by the massive turnout on Independence Day. The unhappiness of Tsvangirai and his party about the theme was simply cast aside, in fact played tonic to participation. That gave a sinister meaning to Tsvangirai's peroration that Independence is larger than all politicians, himself included.
Clearly his views, his unhappiness, did not matter, shall never matter. And for him to associate his rejection of empowerment with a person like Herbert Chitepo is simply to crave for an associational value resting outside history.
Has he had time to listen to the Herbert Chitepo lecture on land as the essence of class struggles throughout human history? Do his speech writers reflect on his script? How does he seek association with a figure of history whose pronouncements extol what he himself calls "old culture of expropriation"? And does he not, by that very phrase, repudiate Independence and the symbolic day that marks it?
Defending own expropriation
Secondly, historically what is the cut-off point for this "old culture of expropriation"? 2000? 1890? Clearly by his own reckoning, the old culture is a post-independence phenomenon, which means Tsvangirai exonerates colonialism. How does an African whose legacy is shaped by colonial expropriation emerge as a strident defender of that expropriation, indeed emerge as a stout opposer of anything, anyone who challenges such expropriation, who seeks to right it?
And on a day marking the demise of politics that underlay such expropriation, why would an African stick their neck out for colonial forces? Why? And if a people do not own resources, how do they attain, let alone celebrate peace, itself a theme which the MDC-T would have proposed as an alternative? It sounds very much like colonial kitchen-talk, guffaws and mouthfuls in the acceptable.
Neo-liberal illusion
Thirdly, and this one for a Tendai Biti who would know better save for his lost politics, how does stopping value from transferring to a few rich blacks end obscenities of "a few rich whites" holding national wealth against the majority who are poor? When do "absurdities" begin, end? When value transfers from rich white to rich black, or when a status quo of "few rich white" against majority black poor remains? Or both?
Why haven't we seen Biti hacking at the present colonial legal regimen which preserves "few rich whites" as "absurd"? That would have been quite a revolutionary message to give to the American Atlantic Council on Zimbabwe's national day. Surely?
Biti makes a deceptively-wrapped white argument made in the name of the very victims of white economic power. He thinks the alternative to Indigenisation is "to expand our economy to create as many sectors as possible." What is this lawyer saying in real terms? Who can salvage just a single grain for me? Why is he not doing that if that is possible under the status quo? What is he waiting for? And why is Indigenisation and the expansion of the economy to create many sectors mutually exclusive?
Zanu PF will point to the expansion in agriculture, the expansion at Marange as cases in point. What is the case in point - one - from his neo-liberal verbosity? It is an argument of live-in-poverty and let-live-in-white- opulence, status quo argument, indeed a cry of defeat, of the political henpecked. It is not an argument of independence, much as it can be made on Independence Day!
Erring on the side of capital
Fourthly, why does Biti suddenly become such a sharp lawyer in critiquing black empowerment programmes when he is such a supine bulldog in tackling a colonial status quo so badly requiring overthrowing? We are very incisive in showing why we should not be empowered under the present law which all parties and all MPs, Biti included, supported and passed. Was the easy passage a way of blessing a weak law in order to delay or even defeat empowerment through fatal litigation?
We saw this at work in the land saga, with certain elements deliberately inserting fatal clauses in the law to make the whole land reform programme legally vexatious? And why - you a black man - open the flanks against your kind by raising the first legal doubts? Why this legal punctiliousness? Why this reluctance to err on the side of the poor black?
And when we go back to the drawing board, does the white man stop eating our heritage? This is one case where permission for continued exploitation is granted through delay. But it does not work. When Zanu PF gets bogged down in courts of law, it goes to the highest court in the land, the people who are the final arbiters.
When the world moves
As I write, Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner, is about to nationalise that country's oil and gas company, YPF, which belongs to Spain. The Spaniards are furious and are threatening retaliatory action at diplomatic, industrial, and energy fields. But the lady who recently won a re-election by landslide is not for turning. She wants the energy sector to enable greater growth of Argentinian economy which has miraculously recovered on a model which is completely opposite to a neo-liberal one, backed by the Chinese.
The Spaniards, much like our own hoarding so-called investors, have been speculating to the detriment of much needed energy expansion. Besides, Spain is broke, with its limited capital beginning to circumscribe Argentina. This is the growing global ethos. Nationalisation is no longer a dirty word.
Kgalema and his new crusade
As I write and right on the day of our Independence, Deputy President Kgalema Montlanthe of South Africa is pushing for State participation in mining houses.
"Contrary to the view that there must be less State involvement in the economy, the lessons from the recent economic and financial crises are that more State involvement is sought," he told the ninth international mining history congress in Johannesburg.
And of course those for more State participation derive greater joy from the fact that the American government has just recouped handsomely from the bailouts it made at the height of the global financial crisis. What a fillip!
Does the MDC-T read all these developments, more important, read the mood in the country? More importantly, does it notice that its age and health arguments from which it has been hoping for electoral manna are being rubbished by the President's age-defying ability to unleash energy crippling through youthful and aggressive ministers under his fold, something Tsvangirai cannot do?
Indeed as the Prime Minister recently saw, President Mugabe does not need to be in the country for his agenda to press on, unremittingly. We are dealing with an institution, dealing with an ethos, indeed a zeitgeist!
Tribute from one Hawkins
If they doubt that, I refer them to one of their own - Tony Hawkins. This is what he said this week: "The belief in Western capitals is that post-Mugabe Zimbabwe will be a very different country. That is based less on thoughtful analysis of the reality on the ground than on the naive assumption that Zimbabwe can somehow go back to its 1980s and 1990s.
“But the dynamics within Zimbabwe and the region have changed and whoever succeeds Mugabe is not going to reverse his policies on land and Indigenisation. It might be softened at the edges but Zanu PF nationalism runs so deep that even if he wanted to turn the clock back, which is doubtful, Tsvangirai would not be able to do so."
Of course the professor is too white to accept the fact that the coming elections may be Tsvangirai's last to lose. Meanwhile, if only my people could be half as clear that it is land, metals and minerals, not independence parades. Icho!
Nathaniel Manheru is a columnist for the Saturday Herald. E-mail: nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zwZimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-49766714782674834892011-10-25T10:51:00.000-07:002011-10-25T10:54:10.733-07:00The US and Nato's killing of Gaddafi.<span style="font-weight:bold;">By Professor Jonathan Moyo</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Professor Jonathan Moyo is a political scientist and MP for Tsholotsho North (Zimbabwe)</span><br /><br />THE indisputably barbaric killing of Muammar Gaddafi last Thursday by a high-tech US drone controlled by some freaky soldier in Las Vegas aided by a French jet fighter assisted by NATO special forces on the ground has been received in some quarters as a warning to so-called “dictators”.<br /><br />Warning! What warning? To dictators? Which dictators?<br /><br />If anything at all, the macabre killing of Gaddafi in wanton violation of international law and daylight trampling of the very same human rights which his inhuman killers claim to champion is a reminder, not a warning, but a reminder that Western imperialism is by definition barbaric even though the idiom of its lingua franca is always packaged and couched in disingenuous and hypocritical terms of Christianity, civilisation, freedom, democracy, good governance, rule of law and all that crap.<br /><br />Zimbabweans should know better than entertaining the nonsense that Gaddafi’s unlawful killing was justified, allegedly because he was a dictator. The fact of the matter is that democracy and dictatorship are two sides of one and the same coin. There is no single country in the world which has dictatorship without democracy or which has democracy without dictatorship. Not one.<br /><br />Rioters in inner cities inhabited by blacks and other immigrants in Britain recently took to the streets in a big way with allegations that there was dictatorship in that country and that the unemployed and downtrodden are voiceless and thus not listened to.<br /><br />Cameron’s government reacted with an unprecedented iron fist to quell the riots and further silence the already silent voice of the rioters. Night judges were summoned to set up night courts to dispense night justice as innocent blacks and other immigrants were given draconian sentences at the instigation of politicians. Many of those cases are now on appeal but the damage has already been done.<br /><br />Is that not dictatorship? Should Cameron be bombed into hiding in a sewage hole by some US drone supported by a French jet fighter?<br /><br />How about the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations that are currently taking place across the US? Despite all sorts of efforts to use the so-called global media to present the huge and continuing demonstrations as the work of the lunatic fringe, their mainstream message is clearly that the US is a dictatorship run by Wall Street capitalists.<br /><br />The same capitalists control poor Barack Obama who has proven that he does not run America by his breathtaking failure to live up to his plagiarised 2008 pre-election rhetoric whose sources are now becoming as apparent as the fact that he is not going to be re-elected and is set to be abused by racists as an example why black people are not yet to be president in the US.<br /><br />How did British imperialists kill Mbuya Nehanda? Was she a dictator? David Cameron’s ancestors macabrely hanged Mbuya Nehanda in the most barbaric manner of killing a woman as they, along with their African puppets of the time, celebrated every moment of her death in ways that are morally equivalent to what we are witnessing on television, the internet and newspaper editorials as NATO imperialists and their puppets celebrate Gaddafi’s barbaric killing.<br /><br />And how did the same British imperialists kill King Lobengula whom they called a “native despot” in many of their colonial dispatches which are now there for anyone to read in utter disbelief? They shot him in cold blood and went on to lie as they are wont to do that he crossed River Tshangani and disappeared leaving all his people behind! If that colonial tale is not nonsense to cover up the bloody butchering of African leaders, then nothing is.<br /><br />The macabre murder of Mbuya Nehanda and King Lobengula precipitated the First Chimurenga whose mission and purpose find expression during the Second Chimurenga. Who among us has forgotten how children and women were slaughtered in untold numbers inside the country and in refugee camps in Zambia and Mozambique by the supposedly Christian and civilised Rhodesians?<br /><br />Were those victims of macabre killings by British imperialists in refugee camps like Nyadzonia, Nampundwe, Mboroma and Chimoio dictators? When we see images of our fallen victims of napalm bombs, are we supposed to think that we are seeing images of dictators who deserved to be killed?<br /><br />And how about Patrice Lumumba who was killed in a way worse than that of Gaddafi by the same imperialist forces? Was Lumumba a dictator who deserved to be killed by imperialists in the name of our freedom and democracy? Why do Western imperialists think Africans have short memories? Is it because, as racistly claimed by French President Sarkozy not too long ago, Westerners think Africans have no history?<br /><br />There’s the case of Kwame Nkrumah. Was he killed in cold blood by the Westerners who last Thursday murdered Muammar Gaddafi because he was a dictator? Is that what Ghanaians today think?<br /><br />Last week, our region was commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of Samora Machel who was killed by the same imperialists. Was he a dictator who deserved to be killed?<br /><br />The list of African leaders and African heroes butchered in cold blood by Western imperialists in unbelievably barbaric ways is just too long and too recent to forget. Gaddafi’s case is one out of too many. This is not to say Gaddafi was in every way like these other leaders. He was not, especially if you judge him by the last years of his rule when he acquiesced in the disarming of his country and poured billions of dollars in Western economies in what appeared to be misguided attempts to appease and please his enemies. If that was a strategy, it failed badly yet none of that should take away the fact that Gaddafi supported the African liberation movement.<br /><br />It is also true that Gaddafi’s vision of a United Africa was good in principle but flawed in detail. The Gaddafi of latter years was clearly not the same as the Gaddafi of former years but that change or difference did not make him lesser of a brother or a comrade. No. He was a brother and comrade to his death at the hands of imperialists using their superior technology and puppets who foolishly and falsely call themselves revolutionaries.<br /><br />In the circumstances, there’s an inevitable question: For how long shall we let them get away with this trail of atrocities against our leaders while many among us cheer? For how long?<br /><br />It is too much for Western propagandists to expect the world to accept the hollow proposition that Gaddafi was a dictator and therefore deserved to be bombed by an American drone and French jet which critically wounded him and which thus enabled his easy capture by NATO ground special forces from France and Britain, before being handed over on a silver platter to alleged NTC fighters who safely and conveniently lay waiting by a predetermined sewage drain to finish him off in a choreographed barbaric drama whose stupid narrative of a holed up Gaddafi will be believed only by idiots.<br /><br />Ask any revolutionary, or check out the biography of real and true revolutionaries in history, you will find that without any exception to a person, the fear of death has never ever been an incentive or paradigm for revolutionary commitment or behaviour.<br /><br />Revolutionaries know that like taxation, death is certain for everyone whether they are called dictators, democrats, Western or African, NATO or whatever. The story would be different and even heavenly interesting if the so-called democrats were death-proof. Then everyone would want to be called a democrat.<br /><br />But, alas, everyone is going to die and how that death will happen is ultimately irrelevant because the simple truth is that death is coming. The imperialists who killed Gaddafi are also going to die just like the imperialists who killed Lumumba and Nkrumah are now dead meat. End of the story.<br /><br />If anybody truly and honestly wants to know why imperialists have throughout history killed our leaders in a willy-nilly fashion, the explanation was candidly given by the French defence minister, Gerard Longuet, whose country is claiming the trophy of Gaddafi’s head delivered last Thursday.<br /><br />On Friday Longuet was widely quoted by the media as having said that France “will strive to play the role of principal partner in the country (Libya after Gaddafi) where the leaders know they owe us a lot”.<br /><br />This needs to be repeated in case you have missed the point: The French defence minister asserted that the new NTC leaders in Libya “owe” France “a lot”. Longuet went on to say: “Our (French) involvement was not belated, mediocre or uncertain. And we have nothing to be ashamed of.”<br /><br />So there you have it. If you thought it was about freedom and democracy in Libya, you are dead wrong. It was about resources. French imperialists think Libyans owe them a lot for using the jet fighter to kill Gaddafi and they are now lining up to demand a lot from Libya. British and American imperialists also feel the same as the French and they believe that Libya owes them a lot for its alleged freedom after the barbaric killing of Gaddafi.<br /><br />If any African thinks that what is happening in Libya is an African revolution, then they are mad, pure and simple. It is a Western counter-revolution against the African interest.<br /><br />What makes this bad situation worse is that the United Nations is nowhere to be seen where things matter the most. While the United Nations Commission for Human Rights has, along with Amnesty International, predictably if not perfunctorily called for an investigation into how Gaddafi was actually killed, the world body’s treacherous Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has gone on record celebrating Gaddafi’s extra-judicial killing by claiming that it “… marks an historic transition for Libya”.<br /><br />With this background, Gaddafi’s killing is not a warning to anybody about any dictator but a reminder that the fact that Western imperialists have killed our leaders with the collaboration of our own sell-outs and puppets before since they butchered King Lobengula and Mbuya Nehanda under the false covers of Christianity and civilisation means they will do it again today under the new but still false covers of human rights, democracy and rule of law.<br /><br />In this vein, the urgent question before the African community at home and in the Diaspora is very simple: what are we going to do about it? Well, time will tell. But our starting point as Africans has been terrible. It was very wrong and most unfortunate that South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon abused their status as African representatives on the UN Security Council by voting for the treacherous UN Resolution 1973 which was abused by NATO countries to effect regime change in Libya in a barbaric way reminiscent of their brutal colonial legacy.<br /><br />The excuse used by South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon that they voted for Resolution 1973 to protect civilians has been exposed for the rubbish that it is by the fact that more civilians were killed after the resolution was passed than before.<br /><br />And to make the whole mess worse, regime change which was specifically prohibited in terms of the resolution has been effected.<br />While this might be too hard for some fake nationalists to stomach, the inevitable and therefore unavoidable truth is that, with all due but perhaps undeserved respect, South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon quite clearly have Gaddafi’s blood on their hands.<br /><br />Even more seriously, they have on their hands the blood of an untold number of innocent Libyans indiscriminately killed by NATO bombs since their approval of the treacherous UN Resolution 1973.<br /><br />These countries failed Africa in Libya. They had an historic opportunity to express and defend the African voice at the United Nations but they squandered that opportunity as they opted for their narrow and wrong national interests at the expense of the continental interest as they sold out in broad daylight in their strange and unfortunate quest to outbid each other in a mindless competition for imperialist attention and approval.<br /><br />That is very sad for Africa. Gaddafi is dead. And Africa is dying for continental leadership on the international scene and those on offer are sadly not making the grade and the Lumumba and Nkrumah days of the cold-blooded killing of our leaders in the false names of freedom and democracy are back again.<br /><br />If like me you think this means the Gods must be crazy, then maybe we are right and that means we have a lot of work to do before us.Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-9906680442894688132011-02-02T22:04:00.000-08:002011-02-02T22:12:52.442-08:00Wikileaks revelations on ZimbabweSo far, the facts are that:<br /><br />1. The USA and her partners has been vigorously pursuing a regime change project in Zimbabwe.<br /><br />2. The USA and its partners have a low perception of the MDC's capacity for governance.<br /><br />3. The USA and its partners intend to hold the MDC-T's hand if it gets into power, and direct the party puppet-style.<br /><br />4. The USA and its partners sought for ways to hide and spin the real shape and effects of sanctions on Zimbabwe.<br /><br />5. Tsvangirai secretly urged the USA and its partners to maintain sanctions while publicly calling for their removal.<br /><br />6. Tsvangirai briefs Western diplomats about government proceedings against the country's official secrecy act.<br /><br />These wikileaks show that the so called ZANU PF propaganda is actually the truth, and America and her partners have been lying with a straight face.Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-5080991026136246752010-11-22T21:35:00.000-08:002010-11-22T21:42:07.485-08:00Gabriel Shumba: The neocolonial prostitute.<span style="font-style:italic;">Zimbabwe's Chiadzwa diamonds are the latest front where neocolonial interests and the Black man's attempts to own his resources are locking horns. As in any imperialist or colonial process, you find some timid, psychologically damaged uncle Tom singing for empire. <br /><br />Ladies and gentleman, Uncle Tom Gabriel Shumba for you!!</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page292523?oid=517638&sn=2009+Detail&pid=287226">400kg a month of smuggled stones remains a big problem - but not for SA's champion.</a><br /><br />JOHANNESBURG - The Chiadzwa diamond deposit in Zimbabwe, featured on M-Net's Carte Blanche TV programme as a source of illicit diamonds last night, is no cause for alarm at De Beers.<br /><br />The TV show claimed that the diamond mine in the Chimanimani mountains of eastern Zimbabwe is world scale. Just one mine - Canadile - it said, produced 2 000 carats or 400kg a month.<br /><br />Virtually all of its production is smuggled via the Mozambican town of Manica on to the black market, circumventing the Kimberley Process, the global initiative to approve legally mined stones and to isolate conflict diamonds.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The TV show quoted Gabriel Shumba of the blood diamonds campaign as saying : "A lot of people have died and crimes against humanity are being committed. Instead of being a blessing, the diamonds are a curse to Zimbabwe."<br /><br />Shumba alleged that Zanu PF controls the fields through government security forces. He had heard a rumour that Mrs Mugabe claimed 51% ownership of the mine. He said children as young as seven were being forced to scratch with their hands looking for diamonds. He claimed that 400 people have been shot, 200 from "helicopter gunships".</span><br /><br />Carte Blanche said the diamonds coming out of Chiadzwa were not strictly speaking conflict or blood diamonds because they do not support a rebel group but (probably) individual members of the Zim government.<br /><br />Bill McKechnie, for years one of De Beers top geologists and today a consultant with Snowden, said: "It is a fairly-limited-geography secondary deposit. The diamonds are coarse. They are quite large but they have to be cut to get at the better quality inside. They are mainly green and brown. The average value is low - less than $50/ct."<br /><br />McKechnie said the situation at the Zimbabwean mine was not unlike the chaos and bloodshed in Angola and Sierra Leone in the 1980s.<br /><br />We were at De Beers coincidentally on Monday for the launch of a new book on the diamond industry: "The Extraordinary World of Diamonds" by geologist Nick Norman.<br /><br />It is a comprehensive account of the industry - from its beginnings in India through the discoveries on several different continents. His enthusiasm for the subject - diamonds as beautiful evidence of the planet's history - is infectious. The location of many diamond fields on the various continents presents strong evidence for the tectonic plate theory.<br /><br />His account of the discoveries in Namibia are particularly galvanising, especially if one has been to Kolmanskop, Luderitz and driven through the dunes north of Luderitz. Stauch, discoverer of the Kolmanskop deposit, and his partner found handfuls of diamonds in a few hours at Marchental (Fairy Tale Valley). That evening "little eyes blinked" at their lanterns - diamonds by the thousand.<br /><br />Norman chronicles advances in technology which brought massive new finds, the rise and decline of De Beers and the CSO as world monopolist up to the present situation. He has new insights into dealings between De Beers and the Soviets in the depths of the Cold War.<br /><br />Norman records that Russia's Alrosa has overtaken De Beers as the world's biggest producer. The main reason is that De Beers puts mines on care and maintenance during periods of low demand but, because of labour considerations, Alrosa cannot also do so.<br /><br />The book is no PR stunt for De Beers. It goes into blood diamonds and the illicit diamond trade that has always been and will always be - because of the value and small size of stones that makes them great transportable assets.<br /><br />Write to David Carte: davidcarte@moneyweb.co.zaZimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-87762070355260418442010-10-08T00:23:00.000-07:002010-10-08T00:49:46.941-07:00Tsvangirai: The powerless sanctions begging puppet<span style="font-weight:bold;">Tsvangirai is annoying not because he is intrinsically a bad person, but because of his low IQ that renders him a willing tool for those who want to further their own interests on Zimbabwe at the expense of Zimbabweans.<br /><br />In the article below, Tsvangirai categorically denies there are sanctions against Zimbabwe, because by and large, his speech is aimed at his masters in the west, who have historically refereed to sanctions on Zimbabwe as restrictive measures. <br /><br />Tsvangirai is being stupid though because even the owners of those sanctions no longer spin them as restrictive measures: Here is what the then British Foreign secretary David Miliband had to say about what Tsvangirai stupidly wants to spin as restrictive measures:</span><br /><br /><blockquote>“In respect of sanctions, we have made it clear that they can be lifted only in a calibrated way, as progress is made. I do not think that it is right to say that the choice is between lifting all sanctions and lifting none at all.<br /><br />“We have to calibrate our response to the progress on the ground, and, above all, to be guided by what the MDC says to us about the conditions under which it is working and leading the country,” Miliband said.</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />His own ministers have also voiced concern over these sanctions before:</span><br /><br /><br /> <blockquote><br />In a new attack on western sanctions on Zimbabwe, Biti said: “The West is being unscientific and ahistorical.”<br /> <br />Two banks targeted by the United States for sanctions are set to have them lifted, Biti said in an interview with a South African newspaper.<br /> <br />“Senator Richard Luga (Indianapolis) wrote asking about sanctions on the two banks (Zimbank and Agri Bank), and I said lift them as a matter of urgency."<br /> <br />The two banks serve communal and small-scale farmers in particular, Biti said.</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">So where is this semi-literate fat ugly puppet Morgan Tsvangirai coming from trying to say there are only restrictive measures on Zimbabwe?<br /></span><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">_____________________________________________________________________</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">We have a constitutional crisis<br /><br />by: Morgan Tsvangirai<br /><br />Statement by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on the state of Zimbabwe's coalition government issued in Harare on October 7, 2010:<br /><br />LADIES and Gentlemen, it is with some sadness that I have to make a statement today about the state of this transitional Government. It relates to the Constitution and Sovereignty of Zimbabwe, and the principles of democracy for which my Party and I stand for. The MDC utterly rejects the notion of one-party or one-man rule. The MDC utterly rejects any suggestion that power is an entitlement through historical legacy, or that power is a God-given right of an individual or individuals.<br /><br />The MDC firmly believes that political leaders should only serve and act on the basis of a mandate of the people. Lest we forget, the MDC was given that mandate on March 29, 2008, when the people of Zimbabwe clearly rejected the notion of one-party and one-man rule. That mandate was to govern on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe.<br /><br />Nevertheless, in September 2008, I signed an agreement, allowing for the formation of a joint transitional government with those Parties which the people had rejected. I did so for several reasons that I outlined at the time. Not least, I did so to try to help end the needless suffering of the people of Zimbabwe which had been inflicted on them by the failed and corrupt policies and abuses of the previous regime.<br /><br />I signed this agreement when the whole world was sceptical about the wisdom of working with Mr Mugabe. The world questioned his sincerity. They questioned his integrity and his ability to respect an agreement with anyone. They pointed to the abuses of power over a great many years. They pointed to the fact that he had reappointed himself President, in breach of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, and in defiance of the will of the Zimbabwean people.<br /><br />I shared their concerns but as a leader and for the sake of this country and the security and welfare of our citizens, I took a leap of faith and I signed the agreement.<br /><br />I was prepared to work with Mr Mugabe to allow him to address the mistakes of the past, and to help him to rebuild his legacy. This is why, despite the challenges that I have faced in working with him, I have repeatedly said that whilst our relationship was not perfect, it was workable. This was meant to encourage Mr Mugabe to right the wrongs of the past.<br /><br />However, the events of the past few months have left me sorely disappointed in Mr Mugabe, and in his betrayal of the confidence that I and many Zimbabweans have personally invested in him.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen,<br /><br />When the MDC formed this government with others, we did so on the basis of clear and public assurances that Mr Mugabe and his party would now respect and abide by the principles of democracy; that they would now respect the freedoms of the individual; that they now understood that politicians should govern for the people and not for themselves; that they now accepted that the mandate to govern comes from a free expression of democratic will, not from a God-given right or from a campaign of violence and intimidation. I was prepared for the sake of our country to sit alongside my yesteryear’s enemies and tormentors to rebuild a stable and democratic country.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen,<br /><br />On Monday, I met Mr Mugabe and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara to discuss the implications of the resolutions of the SADC Windhoek summit. The Troika’s report to the summit stressed the importance of the freedom to express political views, and of free and fair elections. It stressed that there was no place for violence in any democratic process in any democratic country … and least of all state-condoned or state-orchestrated violence.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen,<br /><br />In this respect, Zanu PF has sorely disappointed us all in the conduct of the constitutional outreach meetings. The activities of rogue elements of the security agencies alongside state actors directed by Zanu PF was clearly designed to deny citizens their right to have their views heard. As we have seen so many times, Zanu PF is determined to tell citizens what they should think, and to intimidate, bully and beat up any who disagree. This goes against the fundamental principles of democracy, and is utterly abhorrent to me.<br /><br />I advised Mr Mugabe of this on Monday. As you are aware, we have also had a dispute over the appointment of governors, along with a number of other unilateral and illegal appointments which the President has made following the signature of the GPA. The dispute over the former provincial governors effectively timed out when their terms of office expired in July. The country needed to appoint new governors according to the law and the constitution. The constitution clearly says that such appointments must be done in consultation with the Prime Minister.<br /><br />To my utter surprise, and shall I say disgust, Mr Mugabe advised me on Monday that he had Nicodemusly reappointed the former governors in the same manner in which he appointed the previous governors on a Sunday when most of us were at church. I say “Nicodemusly” because those who are supposed to be served by these governors – the citizens of Zimbabwe – knew nothing about it.<br /><br />They were hoping for governors to be appointed who would serve in the interests of the people of Zimbabwe, not in the interests of the President and his party, as has been the case until now. The Prime Minister, who has to consent to their appointments, knew nothing about it.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen,<br /><br />Mr Mugabe publicly stated to African leaders in Windhoek as recently as August this year that he “has never and will never violate the Constitution of Zimbabwe”. Sadly, he has done so not once, but time and time again.<br /><br />In March 2010, he appointed the Police Service Commission when the Constitution clearly says that all Service Commissions must be appointed in consultation with the Prime Minister.<br /><br />On 20 May 2010 , he unilaterally swore-in five new judges to the Supreme and High Courts without consultation.<br /><br />On 24 July 2010, he unilaterally appointed six ambassadors without consultation.<br /><br />On 24 September 2009, whilst in New York on CNN, Mr Mugabe stated publicly and unequivocally that he would swear in Deputy Minister Roy Bennett if Roy if he was acquitted of the absurd charges brought against him. He said categorically: “Yes, yes, yes, if he's acquitted, he will be appointed.”<br /><br />Roy was acquitted on 10 May, 2010, but again, Mr Mugabe has gone back on his word. He confirmed to me and DPM Mutambara on Monday that he has no intention of ever swearing in Roy. The matter of Roy Bennett has now become a personal vendetta and part of a racist agenda.<br /><br />And these are simply the most obvious and most high-profile breaches of the constitution and laws of Zimbabwe. They demonstrate that Mr Mugabe believes that the offices of the government of Zimbabwe are there to serve him, not the people, which is what the constitution seeks to ensure. We are all well-aware of the other breaches which occur all too regularly. Every extra-judicial arrest of citizens is a clear breach of the constitution.<br /><br />Every act of intimidation or violence by state or Zanu PF actors is a clear breach of the constitution. In this respect, we urge South Africa to release the Report of the Retired Army Generals who investigated state sponsored violence and its implications on the electoral process and results in 2008. Every act of censoring or curtailing individuals’ or journalists’ freedom of speech is a clear breach of the constitution.<br /><br />Zimbabweans will know that I have desperately tried to avoid a constitutional crisis in Zimbabwe. I have worked tirelessly to try to make this transitional government work, in the interest of all Zimbabweans. I have worked and spoken in support of this government. But neither I, nor the MDC, can stand back any longer and just allow Mr Mugabe and Zanu PF to defy the law, to flaunt the constitution and to act as if they own this country.<br /><br />Mr Mugabe was one of the leaders of the liberation struggle which led to our country’s independence 30 years ago. For those efforts, and for all the sacrifices of those who fell in that struggle, Zimbabweans will forever be grateful. But no actions of the past translate into a right to wield power in the present. That right derives solely from a mandate from the people. And citizens rightly judge their leaders on their record in office.<br /><br />We are all - citizens, politicians, soldiers, policemen, workers, mothers, fathers and children – subject to the constitution and laws of this country. None of us own that Constitution and none of us own this country. None of us, whatever our history, are above the law. We are all but caretakers for future generations.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen,<br /><br />The MDC’s National Executive has today resolved that we must make a stand to protect the constitution of Zimbabwe and to return it to the custodianship of the citizens of Zimbabwe. As a first step, we will refuse to recognise any of the appointments which the President has made illegally and unconstitutionally over the past 18 months.<br /><br />That includes:<br /> * the Governor of the Central Bank, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 26 November 2008<br /><br /> * the Attorney-General, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 17 December 2008<br /><br /> * the five judges, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 20 May 2010<br /><br /> * the six Ambassadors, appointed unilaterally by Mr Mugabe on 24 July 2010<br /><br /> * The Police Service Commission<br /><br /> * the 10 Governors, appointed unilaterally and furtively by Mr Mugabe last week<br /><br />As Executive Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe, I will today be advising the countries to whom these Ambassadors have been posted that these appointments are illegal and therefore null and void. I will be advising the Chief Justice of the improper appointment of the judges concerned, and that they are therefore null and void. I will be advising the President of the Senate of the improper appointment of Governors, and that they should therefore not be considered members of the Senate, which is therefore now unconstitutional. I will be advising the joint Ministers of Home Affairs and the National Security Council of the illegal appointment of the Police Service Commission..<br /><br />We now similarly call on the people of Zimbabwe, at whose pleasure we serve, not to recognise these individuals as the legitimate holders of the posts to which they have been unconstitutionally and illegally appointed. In doing so you must all remain peaceful. I now call upon Mr Mugabe to return the country to constitutional rule by correcting the unlawful appointments.<br /><br />I invite SADC to join me in calling on Mr Mugabe to respect the SADC resolutions, the SADC Charter and Protocols, the AU Charter, and the principles of democracy. I invite SADC to deploy observers before the constitutional referendum to help protect the rights of Zimbabweans to express their views freely and without violence or intimidation. And I invite SADC to urgently intervene to restore constitutionality in Zimbabwe.<br /><br />Mr Mugabe has tried to link many of these issues, including the appointment of the governors of this sovereign country, to the lifting of restrictive measures on him and his political cohorts by other sovereign, independent countries. This is rank madness, and utterly nonsensical. It is tantamount to surrendering the sovereignty of this country. It is an insult to all those who fought, and all those who lost their lives, in the struggle for the independence of Zimbabwe.<br /><br />All Zimbabweans know that Mr Mugabe and his colleagues brought the restrictive measures on themselves through the flagrant abuses of human rights and the economic disaster which they inflicted on this country. All Zimbabweans know that these restrictive measures are the result, not the cause, of that economic disaster. They know that these restrictive measures affect the individuals concerned, not the country as a whole, as the economic turnaround since my party joined the government has shown.<br /><br />Nevertheless, I undertook to work with Zanu PF towards the lifting of restrictive measures, and I have abided by that promise. At every turn, I have reminded Mr Mugabe and his colleagues that my commitment to do so is part of my commitment to abide by and to implement the Global Political Agreement (GPA) of September 15, 2008.<br /><br />Sadly, they have demonstrated so far that they have no similar commitment either to abide by the GPA and to a host of other undertakings which they have made. In these circumstances, it makes my job of arguing for the lifting or even the suspension of the measures extremely difficult. But because I believe in the GPA, and I believe in sticking to my word, I will continue to work for the implementation of the GPA in its totality, including the lifting of restrictive measures.<br /><br />Mr Mugabe and his colleagues know that the keys to them achieving this are already in their hands. All they need to do is to abide by their promises, to abide by the laws and Constitution of this country, to respect the rights and freedoms of Zimbabweans, and to accept that Zimbabwe belongs not to them but to the people of Zimbabwe and the restrictive measures will go.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not want to understate the nature or extent of the current crisis. It is nothing short of a constitutional crisis, which is why I have urged SADC to intervene as a matter of urgency. But we cannot allow this crisis to derail our efforts to change Zimbabwe but as I said when I signed the agreement to join this Government two years ago, my Party and I remain committed:<br /> * To serve you, so long as that is your will<br /><br /> * To ensure that your children can go to school and learn<br /><br /> * To ensure that you have access to medical care<br /><br /> * To protect and promote your rights to free speech, movement and political assembly<br /><br /> * To empower each and every citizen, economically, socially and politically<br /><br /> * To end privilege, patronage, abuse and corruption<br /><br /> * To turn Zimbabwe into a country ruled by the law, not by decree.<br /><br />When it comes to pursuing these principles and these goals, no amount of dishonesty, insincerity, intimidation, or abuse will move me.<br /> * You can count on me to ensure that you will be able to participate in a free and fair election to choose who should lead your country.<br /><br /> * You can count on me to ensure that you will write your own, new, pluralistic constitution.<br /><br /> * You can count on me to stand up for your rights at each and every turn.<br /><br /> * You can count on me to work for the empowerment of each and every citizen and not an elite few.<br /><br />I will not win every fight in the short-term, but I assure you that I am as committed as you are to winning the war and win we shall.<br /><br />This is a war which we must continue to fight bravely together: a war which pits all Zimbabweans who believe in the principles of freedom and democracy against those who seek to maintain and abuse privilege. I appeal to all Zimbabweans, our loyal civil servants, our loyal police, and our loyal armed forces, to work with us in this new struggle for freedom.<br /><br />To ensure that Zimbabwe becomes a Zimbabwe for everyone, not just the self-annointed and chosen few who seek to exploit this country – as did their colonial predecessors – for their wealth and their own ends.<br /><br />I therefore urge my team at every level of government and every level of society to rededicate yourself to serving the people of Zimbabwe. The road ahead is not going to be easy, but our collective future will be better than our present challenge. I will not rest until I fulfil my mandate from the people of Zimbabwe to build a new Zimbabwe to which I, alongside so many of you, have committed our lives.<br />This is my promise to you for real change.<br /> <br />I thank you!</span>Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-40868609594727465362010-10-05T22:29:00.000-07:002010-10-05T22:34:38.662-07:00Constitutional outreach process exposes the MDC-TThey couldnt say they support homosexuality, without angering Zimbabweans.<br />They couldnt say they oppose homosexuality, without angering their gay masters.<br /><br />They couldnt say they oppose the land reform, without angering Zimbabweans.<br />They couldnt say they support the land reform, without angering their masters.<br /><br />They couldnt say they oppose indigenization, without angering Zimbabweans.<br />They couldnt say they support the approx 50% indegenization law, without angering their masters.<br /><br />What exactly are MDC policies, other than removing Mugabe? <br /><br />A party for idiots, fools, and lunatics, under the control of racists.<br /><br />They agitated for a people-driven constitution without thinking about what they will offer, against what the Zimbabwean people want, against what their racist masters want. Now they are in a vice. People's wants resonate well with ZANU idealogy.<br /><br />And as usual they now threaten a boycott. A boycott because out of thousands of meeting, only 2 meetings in Hre resulted in violence? What about the thousands that went on well, that have MDC signatures on them.<br /><br />ZANU PF: The people's voice. <br />The people have spoken, the MDC-T should do the honourable thing and accept that Zimbabwes:<br /><br />1. dont like homosexuals<br />2. want to own their resources.Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-39093666727660552582010-07-23T17:10:00.000-07:002010-07-23T17:11:13.343-07:00Diamonds: The glow-fly that challenged a full moonDiamonds: The glow-fly that challenged a full moon<br /><br /><br /><br />DEAR reader, this piece is going to be a heavy read and I propose a light-hearted entry to allow for some release.<br /><br />Let us get right in. Following the President’s walk past the River Jordan (in arid Marange!), NewsDay expectedly ran a cartoon of the President overflowing in the white robes of the Johane Marange Apostolic Church. The cartoonist made sure the President wielded the legendary staff, itself part of the sect’s religious paraphernalia. By the President’s holy side was Mutumwa Noah, the High Priest of this sprawling church whose reaches encompasses the four corners of our Sadc region.<br />Feuding Angels?<br />But far from companionship, the cartoonist presents the relationship between the two as strained.<br />Mutumwa Noah is apparently unhappy about the bright stones of Marange, and the way the President’s Government is handling the matter. He is thus made to ask the President: “Madzibaba Gabriel, when can we expect a share of diamond proceeds from Marange?” The President “looks” aghast, presumably shocked that this celestial man dares dabble in matters falling under the province of earthly Caesar, indeed neglects the celestial star beckoning him to the promised land to rake the bright muck of Mammon! Of course, this is not the cartoonist’s intended message. It is mine, as I try to turn the sting against its owner, relying of course on the poetic licence which both he as cartoonist, and I as the reader borrow: he from society, I from his text!<br />When among high priests of capital . . .<br />But beneath my levity lurks a serious point. I recall the President paying a visit to the Ngezi Platinum Mine, sometime last year just a few months into the inclusive Government. I also recall The Herald giving us an image of a President clad in a miner’s dustcoat and also well helmeted for the hard hat area. He was all-white, head to toe, miner-white and at the site of a great resource for this country, platinum. The resource is in foreign hands, firmly so. If I also recall well, there was a whole retinue of traditional leaders of the areas, including Chief Murambwa and Chief Ngezi between whose territories lies this great mine, restless. For how can it rest anymore with all these foreign vermin crawling all over it, injecting incendiaries for massive blasts that only gladden human greed?<br />Good for the goose . . . ?<br />But I do not recall a cartoon on this visit in any of our Press, whether soon, or long, after. Why? Here was a whole President clad like a miner, well away from the sartorial standards of his mighty Office. In place of his usual dark, well-trimmed suit, he wore a rude white dustcoat. In place of his usually shining and well kempt head, he donned an incongruous helmet, a headgear for sweatshops. Surely, here was matter and material for cartoonists, definitionally inspired by the incongruous? What is more, the cartoonist had, in the person of the chiefs, a figure through which to raise with the President the fundamental question of community rights in respect of platinum, much the same way Mutumwa Noah does in Marange. Yet not. Why? Chiefs Ngezi and Murambwa could have been made, through poetic licence, to confront the President on when their communities can expect platinum proceeds from Ngezi.<br />Judgment for the holy, plaudits for the sinful<br />Which is what takes me to my main question: How do newspapers read humour in various situations? How do they define, distribute and deploy humour in our society of little laughter? Which class figures and interests are routine butts of media humour? How are incongruities read and transformed into humour? Randomly? Evenly? Across interests? Clearly there are categories of humans whose actions, no matter how serious, will always be turned to purposeful sarcastic humour, all in order to defeat any seriousness in their activities. Secondly, there will always be persons, whose association with presidency is regarded as unseemly, as incongruous and thus perfect material for mordant, disparaging humour. With these lowly creatures, leaders of nations should never be associated. I mean I find it strange that a President who is before a 150 000-strong congregation seems out of place relative to a President who is before a handful of foreign miners whose company has been found guilty by a reputable international auditing company of evading taxes and externalising Zimbabwe’s resources, indeed a group of miners who are still to give back to the community beyond wages and a road incidental to the host community but core to the operations of the mining house. So much about Press freedom and claims to speaking for the voiceless! The Press will always be on the side of capital.<br />When diamonds begin to shine<br />This far, our diamonds have given us lots of food for thoughts. Thankfully, we now have been certified to dispose of them within the framework of the Kimberley Process. We now expect them to begin to give us food for the stomach. After all, when one looks at the so-called conditionalities given us by the KPCS, one finds them as onerous and ponderous as a mighty piece of toilet paper swirling towards the vortex of an angry harmattan. The human face of those conditionalities is none other than Abbey Chikane, the same monitor who authored the report which has got us here. He cannot crucify us so late in the selling equation. Equally, the response from the diamond industry soon after the KPCS meetings clearly shows that beyond politics of public perception management, countries finally act on the basis of enlightened self-interests, not on the basis of some miasmic, good-Lord-above moral precept. After all, governments are not religious animals, which is why they ceased a long time ago to visit the synagogue every Sunday. Again ask the British whose history illustrates the travails of running a theocracy. As I write, America is worried about getting a piece of the diamond auction action — ahead of the Chinese and Russians — than about Maguwu, whoever he is. Israel is worried that diamonds from Zimbabwe do not end up in Lebanon, which to them amounts to allowing these diamonds to flow towards Hamas. Beyond the pretended fury we saw in Israel and Russia, self-interest and national fears have restored sanity, tempered furious idealisms. We can now move on, not as civilised master nations pitted against noble savages, but as needy diamond sellers and buyers.<br />Beyond jingoism<br />But the real challenge is here, at home. When the West tried non-tariff barriers against our diamonds, using the pretext of the KPCS and its elastic, ensnaring notion of blood diamonds (as if the diamond industry right from the days of Cecil Rhodes at Kimberley have ever been clean!), a royal battle had been declared and every self-respecting Zimbabwean — Job Sikhala excluded — had to jump into the fray. And we did, hind and fore, ready to chew to smithereens anyone who stood in the way. It was a time of jingoism and indeed, diamonds united us, yoked the dissimilar into a tight mating season for a greater national goal and good. That jingoism secured the intended outcome and common sense bids that you don’t keep yelling against a dead lion. You allow the village to rest in sleep.<br />The instant coffee?<br />We can now sell our diamonds. What does that mean? A time for a new war? A time to unchain venality and sheer avarice as only a few capture the brightness of this stone against the rest of us? A time for eating chiefs? Or is this the dawn of a Zimbabwe century? We have built euphoria around the wonders diamonds will bring to our Nation, only a short day after the first sale. Diamonds have become an “instant coffee”, bright and lifting, an instant alchemy to begriming poverty that has haunted us. And like the good air we breathe, the benefits are sure to flow to all of us, reaching each according to the circumference of their trachea (windpipe)!<br />The new lotus eaters<br />With diamonds, sanctions will vanish. With them, IMF will get a good boot in its dirty hind. With them growth will once again touch the body and soul of this chosen Nation, carrying it limb and spirit to sugar-candy mountain, atop which everything looks rich, green and serene, lotus green! With them industry will boom, creating jobs that cure instantly the social malaise that has gnawed us since the white man decided we are no good. With them pantries will grow fat and we shall all eat. Eat, eat, eat and eat until sleep is only a bother for the thinking head, all other orifices staying awake: eating or yielding smelly burps of the well-fed, the new affluent. All those infrastructural headaches we have had shall vanish in an instant, thanks to arid Marange’s five loaves and two fish that are set to feed the hungry five thousand. Oh Diamonds, thou art glorious!<br />Beneath the swelling balloon<br />That way the balloon of flatulent expectations from a Nation for so long underfed, for so long thirsty, has been swelling, swelling, and swelling, rising, rising and rising. Our brains have gone to sleep, in this mass drunkenness. We are all on an enchanted island. No one thinks, all are punch-drunk by visions of bright abundance. Overnight, Zimbabwe has become a horn of plenty. But what is the reality below this balloon rising on the helium of fitful farts of a poor Lazarus transported into a castle by a sweet dream? What is in Bob Nyabinde’s hozi and its marauding gonzo, both of which are sure to rudely break into the present ecstasy of this never-never land of dreams and illusory abundance?<br />The outsider who knows our bedroom<br />In this giant seizure of senseless national delight, we have forgotten that it is the outsider — not us — who knows what is in our bedroom. The revelation that we command 25 percent of world diamond supply, and upward of 35 percent when all about us is known, came from an outsider, not from we Zimbabweans, the so-called owners of this and other such resources. We are owners who do not know, owners whose hopes and sanguineness resides not in what we know to have but in what we are told we have. We do not know our neighbourhood, we proud, believing owners. Our euphoria arises from the sores of poverty we have endured over centuries, never from the sight of riches we have, riches we have discovered and judiciously inventoried. Whence then comes our euphoria? Are we any cleverer than the foolish man who bought the Eiffel Flats, apparently from Paris’ waif?<br />Illusion of greatness<br />Secondly, the intensity of our euphoria beats that of a man or woman wielding a 100 percent share certificate. Do we own our diamond deposits, we the happy and salivating, we the expectant? What is our claim in Mimosa? What is our claim in River Ranch? What is our claim in the known diamond shard of Marange? What shall be our claim on other deposits still to be either known or exploited? Or are we emulating our proud South African black brothers from Soweto who beat their chest yelling, “Oh, see how developed we are”, confident forefinger pointing at Sanlam? Can someone tell us how we who could not produce our own geologists sighted enough to see for us our diamonds, have suddenly found lawyers well-sighted enough to secure our stake in interests that are mining our diamonds? How does our little stake in Mbada or Canadile translate into a full, munching mouth for all of us, great and small?<br />False pregnancies of the past<br />I hear we have a 50-50 percent stake in the Marange interests. I hear at Murowa there are Zimbabweans who claim to have about 20 percent of the shareholding on our behalf. I do not know about River Ranch. Yet I am sensible enough to know that this country has mounds and mounds of mining rabble, mounds and mounds of different sizes and shapes akin to ill-gotten pregnancy, but all leaving us with hard-to-notice wombs deflated by sharp hunger, we people of fat, swelling hopes. The fat ones live elsewhere, in faraway lands where our black kind need visas and permits to merit to find work there, work in quarters where they confine their infirm and raving lunatics.<br />Riches from the tattered philanthropist<br />The morphology of the shareholding which shall determine the flow of the diamond lustre does not seem to support the euphoria we have been stoking. Our 50 percent stake is owned through ZMDC, the encumbered ZMDC. As a company which has been sued and can never sue, it reserves the right to decide on what dividend to give to Government, itself the surrogate of this nebulous thing called “the people”. Given the history, obligations and state of ZMDC, how much can we expect? Recognising this planning shortfall, Biti tried to make proposals in the budget. At the end of the day, what comes to the fiscus? But what is the nature of the agreement between ZMDC and its partners? Is it foolproof? Have its partners met their own side of the bargain? Are<br />we not likely to be paid by our own diamond coin? Let the media explore this for us. The President has complained about the integrity-deficit of some individuals associated with ZMDC partners, right from the extraction start. What insurance do we now have?<br />The elephant in the house<br />I said we did not know that we had diamonds, which is how De Beers carted out our diamonds to South Africa for so long, with impunity. I am sure our borders were just as manned, our officers worrying more about petty smugglers of mbanje than about those who shipped out our rich diamond ore. Are we any better today, any wiser? The Kimberley Process dealt with known diamond sites. It never dealt with our leaking borders. Where is our Zim-berley Process, to secure our borders which have been so porous that even elephants have been smuggled out screaming, yet unseen, unheard?<br />Do we know the diamond?<br />But this is only knowledge as sight. More challenging is knowledge as skills. Do we know the diamond? Or we only know that one rumoured by the storekeeper when he wants to extract small pennies from your marriage vows, by way of that stupid ring we think will keep our love, will protect our affection, keeping it hard and bright like the diamond we think is somewhere in the base metal? What is to know diamonds in an industry where money is made through apt classification of your diamonds? Beyond the rough and rudimentary divide of gem-quality and industrial diamonds, of rough and cut and polished diamonds, what else do we know about this highly mobile and mutable industry? What skills stock do we have, so near to the day of the much awaited sale? How does a man who has no fishing line, who does not know the way to the fish market, dream about a bowl-full of hack fillet?<br />Not Hammer and Tongues!<br />I hear gem-quality diamonds come in various classes, hundreds if not thousands of them, on the basis of which classification and parcels are created for auctions. I hear auctions are done per customer per day so customers are afforded time to scrutinise each parcel. We think we will understand this complex industry by going to watch what goes on at Hammer and Tongues? Or at Boka Tobacco Sales Floor? How are we going to protect and enforce value, our value when we do not know how diamonds are assigned values in the market place? Surely, we know there is no goodwill for us, no guardian angels in this industry of venality? If they sought to mug us in broad daylight, why will they not swindle us even more in the thick darkness of our righteous ignorance? The hammer is sure to fall, only against us.<br />And the complicating politics<br />Zimbabwe got its diamonds in the dispensation of the inclusive Government. We have different interests yoked together through this makeshift political arrangement. A cursory reading of Biti’s budget, and the debate preceding it, clearly betrays the deep fears and suspicions held by these so-called partners in Government. In this climate of inclusive partnership, a resource, which comes our way, triggers deep suspicions. We saw it with the SDRs. We saw it in successive budgets and the way allocations were interpreted. The ethos in the inclusive Government is more party self-positioning than sound development planning and finance. This is why Biti raised the issue of US$30 million rumoured to have come from earlier diamond sales. This is why the same Biti invites experts to work with Zimra in monitoring diamond sales, indeed why his budget proposes a raft of legislation, all aimed at ensuring the flow is towards the fiscus, which he is in charge of. One may also be tempted to read the same in the fight between him and the RBZ. At the centre of it all is a core question of ensuring transparency and accountability in the utilisation of this bright gold which can easily turn into a curse for our nation.<br />Remaining at the flea market<br />All these broad environmentals, not helped by the fact that the diamond industry itself is wistful about what this find from Zimbabwe means in terms of prices on the world market. There are also sobering facts about the whole industry. Uncut diamonds amount to an estimated US$8 billion market. Significantly, this primary market sires a US$30 billion secondary jewellery market, clearly showing where the money of this market is. Those that eat are not those that mine, or those who wash and dust rough diamonds for the flea market of uncut diamonds. It is those that beneficiate. Our hopes and euphoria rest on Zimbabwe’s doubtful status as a diamond trading nation, never as a source of diamond manufacturers, a status that requires more tertiary skills. We have a challenge, a huge challenge which the present euphoria masks.<br />Enduring enclaves<br />It is a challenge of national economic development planning and policy, a very delicate science ordinarily, certainly much more complicated in our circumstances of inclusivity and sanctions. Both inclusivity and sanctions have distorted the national planning template, in the process creating false objectives and goals, false gods and prophets. You have Marange or Shurugwi, both historically enclaves of unremitting poverty, suddenly finding themselves leading mining enclaves closer to centres of the world diamond trade than to Dotito or Gutu. The poverty that divided Marange from the rest of us has given way to a value which still does exactly the same. We are an economy so badly truncated, so badly disarticulated and without internal mechanisms for transmitting growth spurts from whatever source. That is why mounds of past mining still left us dormant.<br />A rich nation with mind of a slave<br />In our excitement, we have treated diamonds as a trade issue only. It is not even a mining issue, which is why the development of our mining policy is well enclaved from Marange and our fight with KPCS. Through litigation with ACR, we have just woken up to the fact that diamonds beg an investment policy. The KPCS bother has implied a technology and infrastructure policy we do not have. More fundamentally, our flatulent hopes for all to eat from Marange, has raised a development policy issue, the same way that proceeds from Marange and how they shall impact on the whole economy, has raised issues of national savings, national linkages and national investment decisions, all of which imply a coherent set of policies. This is not to talk about national debt policy and an adverse sanctions fighting strategy. One day Biti will come back telling us we must use proceeds from Marange for debt settlement. Or to build our reserves so we improve our appeal to the IMF, we the rich children of Marange! How to lift our thinking bar beyond qualifying as borrowers and groveling recipients of aid, that is the challenge.<br />The rude glow-fly that cursed the moon<br />How to address all these concerns I have raised coherently in a policy framework to feed the children, send them to school; to employ adults, allow them disposal incomes big enough to meet basic needs, while allowing them to postpone consumption (to save); to create national savings through public sector, which turn into sensible investments propositions for national wealth creation: all these and much more is what punctures this floating balloon, is what moors extravagant expectations we all seem to be sliding into. In the meantime one hopes we will not all drop the hoe, roast all seed and hey, perform the ultimate act of self-flagellation: that of allowing our cracking feet to take us to the harsh asphalt of cities, all in the hope of plenty. They did so not so far away from us, and are still settling this debt of national folly. We have found diamonds. We still need to find national prosperity. A glow-fly, however bright, should never curse a bright moon.<br />Icho!<br />nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zwZimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-55635804975787034912010-07-10T03:39:00.000-07:002010-07-10T03:40:30.158-07:00Alpha Media: The Sounding Bells of Un-FreedomAlpha Media: The Sounding Bells of Un-Freedom<br /><br /><br /><br />"Certainly my conscience will serve me to run from this Jew my master. The fiend is at mine elbow and tempts me saying to me ‘Gobbo, Launcelot Gobbo, good Launcelot’, or ‘good Gobbo’, or ‘good Launcelot Gobbo, use your legs, take the start, run away’. My conscience says ‘No; take heed, honest Launcelot; take heed, honest Gobbo', or, as aforesaid, ‘honest Launcelot Gobbo; do not run; scorn running with thy heels’."<br /><br />Much more constraining to human freedom than actual shackles is a righteous acceptance of continued enslavement. This paradox explains why a horse, long freed from a tether, continues to go round and round a tree, obeying the enchanted perimeter of long-time bondage.<br /><br />It will not bolt to freedom, no. It has to be whipped hard to escape this enchanted enslavement.<br /><br />Even then, from its perspective the real danger is the whiplash; it is never the confinement to which it had grown so habituated.<br /><br />It fears the whip in hand; it hankers after the rider’s gentle but enslaving stroke on its obeisant brow, a stroke celebrated by its mane but so lethal to its inner sense of freedom.<br /><br />Lessons from Shylock<br /><br />William Shakespeare knew about and explored this overbearing ambiguity and paradox in the human condition. Those in most need of freedom are the least wanting it.<br /><br />They hardly recognise it.<br /><br />This week I open my piece with a quote from the bard’s well-known play, The Merchant of Venice, written between 1596 and 1598.<br /><br />The character behind the above words is one Launcelot Gobbo, himself a menial servant in the employ of a rich, usurious Jew, Shylock.<br /><br />Predictably, he is an unhappy servant, under- or not paid at all, overworked and habitually threatened by his master who keeps a tight leash on him.<br /><br />It is to Launcelot’s great credit that in spite of years of engulfing and begriming oppression, he still has a good glimpse of freedom, manifesting itself as an urge to run away from "this Jew my master".<br /><br />This Jew my master<br /><br />The phrase "this Jew my master" does summarise his principal dilemma: a sharp moral tag between revulsion and resentment of oppression personified in "this Jew" on the one hand, and a continuing and consuming sense of subdued obedience to "my master", again symbolised by the invisible indenturing contract tying him to Shylock, on the other.<br /><br />In this fascinating scene, obedience clashes with rebelliousness as the play retreats from physical, inter-character action, to the interiority of a divided mind.<br /><br />This split personality is dramatised as the fiend or devil representing Launcelot’s urge to run away, to run to freedom, and Launcelot’s conscience imaged as Divinity which urge him to remain loyal to Shylock, to continue in his harsh employ.<br /><br />Between divinity and freedom<br /><br />Therein lies the political import and meaning of the play: the urge for human freedom or the urge against bondage is presented as devilish, while the acceptance and kow-towing to oppression is presented as divine.<br /><br />Not quite surprising given the Elizabethan world picture where figures of authority, starting with feudal kings, were regarded as God’s deputies.<br /><br />And for a drawn-out moment, Launcelot Gobbo stands transfixed, unclear whether to obey the devil’s freedom beckon or to accept Divinity through a meek acceptance of structures and motions of oppression.<br /><br />Generational bondage<br /><br />Significantly both impulses content with equal and balanced power and compulsion, leaving Launcelot utterly divided, unable to resolve the dilemma, or even move forward.<br /><br />It is a perplexity anomatopoetically captured by his surname Gobbo, itself a phonetic conundrum!<br /><br />In the midst of that dilemma, his father – Old Gobbo – happens by, and the tone of the whole play turns from an agonising drama within, to a comical exchange between a jesting son and an old, blind father.<br /><br />Significantly, Old Gobbo is also looking for "the way to master Jew’s", a clear dramatisation of generational oppression against which any search for any way out ends in a blind alley.<br /><br />The expectation of the audience is that the arrival of the father should see the son helped out of the vexations of oppression. Yet the father is also looking for the way to that oppression and, what is more, seeks assistance from his son in mapping the way towards it.<br /><br />Clearly there is no escape, except by way of a cathartic wringing of comical delight in that condition.<br /><br />Coping through humour<br /><br />Humour becomes a coping mechanism, through which characters, and through them the playwright, ducks resolution to a core issue.<br /><br />So, instead of giving his father clear and straightforward direction to "the master Jew’s", Launcelot tells his half-blind father: "Turn up to your right at the next turning, but at the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Jew’s house."<br /><br />Old Gobbo is very confused and admits that with such a direction and guide, "it will be a hard way to hit", itself an apt summary of the cul-de-sac towards which father and son are headed.<br /><br />There is no escape from bondage, Shakespeare seems to say.<br /><br />Cabinet Committees do exist after all<br /><br />It is quite difficult to grasp where Alpha Media Holdings or ZimInd (what are they?) are headed for.<br /><br />When they attack those on whom falls the burden of ensuring the public gets truthful information on the state of play of things in Government, you would think as a standard (no pun intended), they have no desire to search for truth.<br /><br />But see what sets them alight!<br /><br />Their hard-sell weekly was all over Minister Mpofu, accusing him of misleading the nation on a Cabinet decision on the future of Chiadzwa diamonds.<br /><br />Needless to say ZimInd does not sit in Cabinet, never will.<br /><br />Yet it speaks so authoritatively on what transpired in Cabinet; and this on the strength of "high-level sources", a reference to breaching MDC-T ministers, themselves the ailing Alpha Media’s political guardians and benefactors.<br /><br />"Cabinet did not approve the sale of Marange diamonds," declares ZimInd, quoting "a senior Government minister".<br /><br />A senior Government minister from a lot that is a mere 16 halting months in Government?<br /><br />Does one have to grovel so obscenely for such filthy lucre by way of funding and political advertisements, all out of fear of the Daily News which is so gnawed by its own troubles to come soon or threaten anyone?<br /><br />What is good for the goose . . .<br /><br />And consistent with its amateurish sources, a Government which in fact sent a whole delegation to Tel Aviv to fight for the right to sell its diamonds, is said to still not have a position, having referred the matter to a Committee of Cabinet.<br /><br />The matter, we are told, is still "under consideration".<br /><br />My goodness!<br /><br />And all of a sudden ZimInd and its sister non-paper, NewsDay, now accept that Cabinet has committees, and that any matters under such committees are still "under consideration", and not concluded to become Government positions.<br /><br />Or is this only so in respect of matters falling under portfolios of Zanu-PF ministers?<br /><br />Why was a similar observation made in relation to the Prime Minister and his escapade in South Korea so sinister, an observation founded on hard facts, and not lies such as we are getting from ZimInd in respect of Chiadzwa diamonds?<br /><br />What is worse, the same stable would tell us day in day out that Chiadzwa diamonds were being looted by Zanu-PF and securocrats, well away from the untainted and untaintable MDC component of Government.<br /><br />So there is a Cabinet Committee on the matter? Who is in it? Ministers from both formations of the MDC and from Zanu-PF?<br /><br />All operating at the behest of looting Zanu-PF and its Securocrats?<br /><br />If so then we do have an Included Party, never an Inclusive Government, do we not?<br /><br />We lie so openly, so inconsistently? And we dare put on some VMCZ jacket (or junket) to dignify our lies?<br /><br />Diamonds will be sold<br /><br />The truth, dear reader, is straightforwardly that Government accepted Minister Mpofu’s report and recommendations for the sale of diamonds.<br /><br />Diamonds shall be sold.<br /><br />Even the Kimberley Process expects it and knows full-well that by the time St Petersburg comes, most probably it will be addressing a different issue regarding Chiadzwa diamonds. But Government wants the sale conducted in a transparent and KPCS-compliant manner.<br /><br />Not because Tel Aviv demanded so, but because the KPCS methodology of disposing of diamonds is well thought out. Zimbabwe subscribes to this methodology and will domesticate and enforce it during all sales.<br /><br />It also ensures best returns on our diamonds.<br /><br />This is where the reactivation of the Cabinet Committee on the matter comes in.<br /><br />It is a reactivation on implementation of the diamond sale, Mr ZimInd Sir, if man you are!<br /><br />It is not about deciding whether or not to sell diamonds.<br /><br />We will sell them. That is the story.<br /><br />Minister Mpofu gave the media indeed the correct position which the public media proceeded to publish.<br /><br />Falling short on smalls<br /><br />And by the way, at no point did Zimbabwe risk non-certification.<br /><br />It only fell short on the smalls of the certification requirements, which is why Chikane made an undertaking to come back a mere week or so after his initial inspection.<br /><br />Major shortfalls could not have been righted within a week, surely?<br /><br />He says so in his report.<br /><br />He repeated the same point in Israel, much to the chagrin of dominion nations.<br /><br />By the way, the Canadians who now bark on the matter with mustard venom, accepted the second Chikane report and its recommendations well before Israel.<br /><br />This was during a video conference soon after the report was finished.<br /><br />They know it.<br /><br />Canada and bloody minerals of DRC<br /><br />They know it the same way they know that Canadian companies are not only looting precious minerals in Eastern DRC; they are also funding banditry in the same region to ensure they continue to ship out bloody minerals from Eastern Congo without paying a dime by way of royalties.<br /><br />I challenge the Canadian envoy here to deny that.<br /><br />How dare they stand on a decorated rostrum to preach righteousness with that greedy mouth, with those bloody hands?<br /><br />They want Monuc to outlive its legitimate stay.<br /><br />They want the DR Congo denied aid and debt relief simply because the DRC has asked them to stop this bloody theft of Africa’s resources.<br /><br />Need we wonder that their NGOs, taking after their mother government, seek to mug us of proceeds from our diamonds?<br /><br />Or that Maguwu, a mere suspect in a serious crime involving playing customer to HIS — Hostile Intelligence Service — is turned into a cheap bargaining chip in such a venal enterprise?<br /><br />Where does he get a foreign account?<br /><br />Where does he get the protection of mighty foreign states as if he is a captured emissary from Ontario or Massachusetts?<br /><br />What puts him above due process?<br /><br />What licenses his lawyer — appropriately surnamed Bere — to publish on Internet a fake diary on the trial?<br /><br />Is it about defence, justice, truth, or it’s about propaganda and publicity?<br /><br />Ask the British<br /><br />And what happens to the rights of all those in the employ of Mbada and Canadile, employees who have soldiered on for months unpaid, uncertain while KPCS, on the instigation of greedy monsters, tergiversates?<br /><br />What happens to Zimbabweans who must benefit from this God-given endowment?<br /><br />What happens to members of the KPCS who passed a verdict of compliance in favour of Zimbabwe and her world-class diamond operations?<br /><br />All that counts for nothing, all for the edification of a mere three countries which think they own and rule the world?<br /><br />Diamonds will be sold and one hopes the Cabinet Committee will meet this coming Monday to clear the way for a speedy implementation of the decision of Government.<br /><br />ZimInd will write about it, albeit with utter shame and discredit.<br /><br />Biti badly needs the money and I see him bearing down heavily on the rest of the Committee members for a quick outcome.<br /><br />Much more than mere diamonds, this matter has now become an issue of national honour and pride.<br /><br />We have no history of losing on such matters.<br /><br />Ask the British.<br /><br />Banking crisis?<br /><br />It has been outrage after outrage from Trevor Ncube’s boys.<br /><br />The same paper that has been cheering Biti on in his mindless lynching of Gono and the RBZ, today bemoans the real possibility of a crisis in the banking sector.<br /><br />On whose doorstep will blame now be put, tell us ZimInd?<br /><br />When you threaten to place a Central Bank under receivership, what are you saying about the economy you say you seek to revive?<br /><br />What are you doing to the Bank’s status and ability to supervise banks?<br /><br />But that is not my main point.<br /><br />Unhappy burdens of puppetry<br /><br />ZimInd’s man of muck delights attacks the Mangoma-led Zimbabwe anti-sanctions team, headed for Brussels. "Mangoma and Priscilla Misihairambwi-Mushonga, who is also a member of the reengagement committee," writes Muckraker, "are serving no useful purpose by going to Brussels empty-handed.<br /><br />"And why do they think lifting sanctions is a compelling national issue?<br /><br />"Do you ever hear people on the streets going around saying sanctions must be lifted because they are hurting the country?"<br /><br />That is Muckraker.<br /><br />But there is another voice, or more accurately, a variant to the same voice, in the same paper.<br /><br />ZimInd editor (may his sores rest in internal piece!), Constantine Chimakure, bemoans the futility of the re-engagement team, counseling: "Unless there is the will to address our democratic deficits, it will be foolhardy for anyone to yearn for the EU, Australia and the United States to lift the embargoes."<br /><br />He knowingly adds: "For the sanctions to be lifted the EU set various benchmarks we were supposed to meet, among them the full implementation of the GPA — a product of our own negotiations that gave birth to the inclusive Government in February 2009."<br /><br />He conclusively declares: "We need to robustly address our democratic and human rights deficits if the sanctions are to go."<br /><br />Nothing in between ears<br /><br />Are these writers – one of them a whole editor – literate? Parties negotiated an agreement we now call the Global Political Agreement, GPA for short.<br /><br />Among other things, the GPA calls for the lifting of sanctions, calling for a multiparty effort in that direction.<br /><br />It acknowledges that sanctions are not just hurtful; they are wrong and an attack on the sovereignty of this country.<br /><br />This is how the re-engagement committee comes about, namely to fulfill an outstanding matter under the GPA, a matter called illegal sanctions from the West.<br /><br />Now how does a sane person to whom the title<br /><br />l To Page 6<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />of "editor" is ascribed, argue that taking measures to resolve an outstanding issue of GPA will not succeed until the GPA "is implemented to the full"?<br /><br />Does such a head have something a bit more solid than mere water that takes the shape of the trough carrying it?<br /><br />How is GPA implemented to the full unless sanctions are removed?<br /><br />Or is it the European and American GPA which is selective?<br /><br />And yes, the GPA is ours, indeed "a product of our negotiations".<br /><br />That is precisely why it cannot be a precondition for lifting sanctions.<br /><br />Only a requirement for their lifting.<br /><br />Unless you are very sick upstairs, you cannot raise a decent argument by claiming that sanctions of 2001 were imposed to ensure full implementation of the GPA of September 2008.<br /><br />It can only be the reasoning of a mindless sycophant. Surely ZimInd handlers expect a bit of clever defence?<br /><br />Men from Mars<br /><br />Are these writers — one of them an editor — Zimbabweans?<br /><br />Do you hear people on the streets going around saying sanctions must be lifted because they are hurting the country, they ask.<br /><br />Really?<br /><br />So the same GPA which must be implemented in full is foolish to identify them as inimical to democracy and well-being of Zimbabwe?<br /><br />So America put in place sanctions to make sure they are so innocuous as not to be a national issue?<br /><br />And if they are not so hurtful as to become a national issue, why use them to threaten this Government towards fulfilling GPA?<br /><br />Surely innocuous measures cannot be any leverage against a standing Government?<br /><br />A whole editor does not realise that the immunisation programme, which hit 80 percent coverage under a Zanu-PF Government before 2000, has now shrunk to 50 percent under an inclusive Government operating in conditions of sanctions?<br /><br />A whole editor who cannot rid his main story of banks and their liquidity crunch in relation to his own absurd denial of sanctions that exist?<br /><br />Are these Zanu-PF banks?<br /><br />A whole editor who cannot understand that the excellent education he got from a Zanu-PF Government can no longer be extended to his own child (if one he has) because of these sanctions?<br /><br />A whole editor who cannot understand that his own salary comes from donors who sprang up amidst the ravages of sanctions and the associated regime-change agenda?<br /><br />Is ZimInd not a cog in this big wheel of infamy, indeed an unconditional supporter of anything, everything the West says and does against Zimbabwe, all for conditional funding?<br /><br />Including denying sanctions which create the very lines of credit that keep AMH afloat, that make AMH editors reflexively wedded to the lies of sanctions-imposing countries no matter how absurd?<br /><br />Hurting own interests<br /><br />Are these writers – one of them an editor – capable of remembering anything at all?<br /><br />Posa went through negotiators who passed it. So did AIPPA and many other pieces of legislation.<br /><br />The legislative agenda of the inclusive Government has been given these people.<br /><br />They know it.<br /><br />Do those at ZimInd ever hear people on the streets going around saying NewsDay must be licensed because its absence is hurting the country?<br /><br />Does anyone eat NewsDay?<br /><br />And if people want NewsDay as its owners tell us, why will they not need the removal of that which kills their children, kills welfare, kills jobs and denies them access to credit lines they deserve by dint of membership to international bodies?<br /><br />And you have a whole editorial comment delighting in how Australia’s nationalist government of Rudd has caved in to exploiting multinationals who will not want to share profits deriving from the exploitation of that country’s natural resources with the Australian citizenry?<br /><br />This from a newspaper which claims an underdog ownership?<br /><br />Puppetry is an unhappy condition.<br /><br />Sanctions everywhere<br /><br />Which takes me to Launcelot Gobbo and his bondage conundrum.<br /><br />Here we are: a black African people groaning under illegal white sanctions founded not on a selfless democratic quest for the other, but on very narrow, selfish and racist self-interest.<br /><br />Our children cannot eat, go to school, get medication, play and grow normal lives of children elsewhere in the world.<br /><br />We are hurt, visibly hurt, with the devastating effects of those sanctions abundantly there for all to see.<br /><br />Even those imposing them do actually tell us that indeed they have imposed real, hurtful sanctions against us.<br /><br />What is more, those from our own side who asked and got those debilitating sanctions do actually acknowledge their hurtful nature and are trying, to varying degrees, to have them lifted: immediately, some demand, in a graduated fashion, others demand.<br /><br />They were even told those sanctions cannot be removed until the foreign policy goals of countries responsible for imposing them have been met.<br /><br />Donor applecart<br /><br />Studies are commissioned, opinion polls taken.<br /><br />Results do show that over 60 percent of Zimbabweans think sanctions are responsible for undermining public weal.<br /><br />All these overbearing facts, although registering as scars of bondage on our African Launcelot Gobbo, remain unacknowledged, unspoken, unwritten, for fear of upsetting the donor applecart.<br /><br />The fiend tells Gobbo to run away from this European master, this Western slaver.<br /><br />But Gobbo’s divine conscience obstinately counsels otherwise: "Budge not, Launcelot, do not run Gobbo! There are no sanctions! Sing Launcelot. Sing Gobbo."<br /><br />And so it goes on and on, back and forth, all at the speed and motion of a gyroscope.<br /><br />Unfreedom, thy name is the Zimbabwe Independent.<br /><br />Icho!Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-31171216666117190062010-06-18T15:19:00.000-07:002010-06-18T15:20:42.089-07:00Hillary Clinton: When the enemy deserves no truthHillary Clinton: When the enemy deserves no truth<br /><br /><br /><br />ZIMBABWE is a very difficult challenge to us and to our policy. It is a country that has been woefully governed and misruled for a number of years now. Congressman Donald Payne … is probably, in the Congress, the most knowledgeable, strongest advocate for African interests. And when he tried to go to Zimbabwe a few months ago — right, Donald? The Government of Zimbabwe would not let him in because they don’t want somebody who has his expertise and experience actually seeing for himself all of the difficulties that are now apparent in Zimbabwe. And it’s very sad. It’s a tragedy. And we are working hard with South Africa, with the African Union, with other countries to try to assist the people of Zimbabwe. We’re doing primarily humanitarian assistance. There is a great need for food like corn or corn meal or cooking oil, just the basics that have been destroyed in a country that used to be able to not only feed itself but export food…."<br /><br />God’s sculpting hand<br /><br />Just the other day I drove past Gweru, on my way back to Harare. A few minutes after Connemara, you hit a point along the highway, which has been made artificially high by a rail fly-over. There, you have a commanding view. To your left, westwards, all is a gentle, expansive stretch of green musasa treetops, only finally broken by a range of hills running parallel to the highway. I am told the hills mark the backbone of this land, better known as the Great Dyke, or Sungamusana yenyika yeDzimbabwe. Correctly, this great backbone traverses the country, mathematically snaking its way towards the edges of Gweru, the country’s centre-point. Look to the right, eastwards, and you see even and gentle nature in its full, verdurous green, stretching lazily and endlessly out and beyond, as if to touch the hemp of the skies, apparently in a never-to-be-fulfilled mating embrace. You see settled-ness, an earthen rooted-ness and stubborn refusal to be pushed around.<br /><br />Even the usually raging and furious Munyati River makes a last detour, mopping its brow, massaging its feet from miles of a wet meander. As it catches a breath, it drops bright and precious stones that stoke and spur human avarice. That particular highpoint, I am told, separates a huge, sprawling deposit of nickel, which Bindura Nickel is yet to mine, after several politically motivated false starts. But that is a subject for another day. What detained me there for a while was the sheer overawing beauty of this stretch of nature which must have taken a careful, sculpting hand of Divinity, the careful hand of an Aesthete God. Took a kind and generous God who gave all to our forbears. Took the sheer cheek and boldness of Mugabe and his Zanu (PF) to liberate, restore and in true God’s Will, to return. Ah, but your land is beautiful, blessed Zimbabwean!<br /><br />From the harsh notes of vuvuzelas<br /><br />Clearly a drowning man has no time for the beautiful lily; elders are quick to tell you. Nathaniel Manheru is still standing, as Mungoshi would say, completely unmoved after last week’s instalment that triggered bee-like political vuvuzelas. Gentle reader, rest assured it is all din for absolutely no sin committed. The requiem is very far, its sad notes hardly composed. That means we continue — you and me — cloned by facts, truth and the love of country.<br /><br />Hillary’s pain for Payne<br /><br />The above quote comes from some powerful lady called Hillary Clinton. Yes, the United States of America Foreign Affairs minister, better known as Secretary of State in America’s strange political parlance. She is describing you beautiful Zimbabwe which from the information fed her, had the cheek to deny one Donald Payne, a US Congressman Hillary opted to describe as "strongest advocate of African interests", from visiting. I hope he is that, to all Africans, whether on the continent or in America.<br /><br />Let us lay the facts. Donald Payne is an African-African American Congressman who was part and parcel of the congressional team, which worked with the MDC to draft and push for sanctions against this country. Hillary Clinton, then a Senator, was part of that thrust, her feelings having been hurt once by President Mugabe. The President had, in Hillary’s reckoning, the un-civility to pair her up with his wife, First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe, when she paid a visit to this country as wife of William Clinton, then the sitting President of the United States of America. She had rather the President had received and attended to her personally, whatever that meant. The President had to treat her with the decorum and ceremony of a Head of State, not as a Head of State’s wife. She will not forgive that impudence. She carried that "grievance" to the State Department, it now seems.<br /><br />Never barred, never…<br /><br />Sorry, the subject is Donald Payne. Donald Payne has been here repeatedly from last year to this year. I can count at least four times, with the first round of his visit being fairly secretive. On all but one occasion — the last occasion being early this year — he met with the country’s leadership, including President Robert Mugabe. In fact, he played harbinger to a Congressional delegation, which visited the country on at least two occasions thereafter. His last visit was not graced with Presidential attention precisely because he himself was in a hurry and could not wait for an encounter with the President at the latter’s convenience. But he met with the Prime Minister and was too haughty to meet with Deputy Prime Minister Mutambara towards whom he showed obvious contempt. The man was never barred from entering the country. Never, never, ever for all the insuperable damage he and his team inflicted on this country. This whole so-called revised ZDERA, itself a mere variant monstrosity from the so-called "advocate of African interests", emerges from this unlimited access and his clever strategy of using such access to legitimise more damage to this country, seemingly with the consent of the damaged. So, the man has been here, unhindered, and hey, see what good turn we have deserved from him!<br /><br />The enemy deserves no truth<br /><br />Now, America has an ambassador here. A full ambassador, who writes and communicates plain, good English. America has a mission here. A fully-staffed, vast mission which is spacious enough to accommodate all its mischief against gracious hosts. Its spooks are here, apparently in industrial quantity. We protect this mission 24 hours, protected it so well a few years back when Al Qaeda had planned to hit Dar, Nairobi and Harare simultaneously. In all the visits of Pain — sorry, Payne, the Mission, the Ambassador, was involved. And I am talking about visits by corporeal bodies, not visitations by apparitions. Ambassador Ray and his staff were there in body, hopefully in American spirit. Now, why would a whole American Secretary of State whose Office is fully represented here get it all so wrong, working herself into a self-righteous frenzy on so wrong a premise? Why? And why would Payne painfully remain silent to so bold a lie? Why? And this lie uttered on 14th June, 2010, remains uncorrected to this day, a good five days before your reading of this column? Does truth really matter to America and her Government? Do African interests matter at all? Does Zimbabwe matter at all? Does this American Ambassador value honest dealings between the two countries? What else about Zimbabwe is America righteously wrong, buoyed by unchallenged falsehoods?<br /><br />Wonderful food, wonderful sanctions.<br /><br />In that same pre-staged globally televised calumny against Zimbabwe, Hillary Clinton pharisaically presents in the same breath the "wonderful" food America is giving "starving" Zimbabweans, and the equally "wonderful" sanctions America has granted the sanctions-loving Mugabe regime and its commercial entities! She proceeded: "So on the one hand, we’re trying to help the people of Zimbabwe get through a very difficult time. On the other hand, we’re trying to keep pressure on the leadership. We rely heavily on the civil society to deliver programs that can get the aid in fairly and apolitically so that our aid is not, basically, hijacked by the government and people connected to the government. I’ve had two meetings with Prime Minister Tsvangirai in the last year to try to send a message that we support reform in Zimbabwe, that we support elections that will actually be followed because there’s no doubt in most of our minds that Mugabe’s party did not win that first round of elections a year-plus ago."<br /><br />Incomprehensible America<br /><br />How is one to comprehend America? The sanctions are for "the Mugabe regime" which has, apparently, a Prime Minister who is not part of that condemnation and stricture. Aid which divides the country into Zanu (PF) and MDC-T, divides Government into the President and the Prime Minister, divides the leadership into Mugabe and Tsvangirai, all to be delivered by political NGOs, still remains "fair and apolitical"! Above all, sanctions against a government, sanctions against all commercial entities associated with that Government, somehow translate to targeted sanctions that "help the people of Zimbabwe get through a very difficult time"! Amazing paradoxes from a superpower. I hope the gentle reader notices that the script and language of Collin Powell way back in 2001 is exactly the script and language of Hillary Clinton. This is how far Obama has morphed into a Bush, how black has become white, indeed how an African has become an American. It is a great colour puzzle.<br /><br />"Britain has to act first".<br /><br />Not so with Greg Mills and Terence McNamee, themselves by-now doubting proponents of sanctions as a viable vehicle for regime change. For all that the new British foreign Secretary, William Hague, is saying, these two South African-based Eurocentric scholars are beginning to see the light: "The removal of the Labour Party from power in the United Kingdom last month has opened the best opportunity in a decade to repair Britain’s relationship with Zimbabwe. But Britain has to act first . . . The most constructive role Britain, the former colonial power, could play would be to encourage other major donors to Zimbabwe — namely the US, Canada, and leading European countries — to help lift sanctions against the country. Such a step would go a long way to repairing the icy relationship between Zimbabwe and Britain." Noting that these<br /><br />sanctions "have become more of a helpful tool for Mugabe and his Zanu (PF) party than a hindrance", the two scholars admit that latest polls indicate that "some 60 percent of Zimbabweans… believe that sanctions are damaging their economy." Does Hillary read such stuff too? Or her man here? Or the fishmongers?<br /><br />Friends Against Zimbabwe<br /><br />Talking about the Fishmongers – a reference to the unholy alliance of US, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the European Commission — do representatives of these countries realise that their choice of a seemingly less smelly appellation of Friends of Zimbabwe (FOZ), does place them firmly and fully into the Rhodesian ethos, which we know them to belong anyway? UDI Rhodesia stood and fought for white colonial settler rights here. It got its succour from the United States of America, which continued to support the regime both overtly and covertly. The US administration continued to buy minerals from this country, including chrome, thereby keeping Rhodesia’s revenues healthy for repression and suppression here. American arms shot and blew us up here, as did her mercenaries. Her congressmen too, helped Rhodesia, including one Feingold who was later to play an instrumental role in crafting ZDERA. He supported Ian Smith and Muzorewa’s Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Germany supplied one machine gun notoriously called the Bren Gun, which mowed countless natives in that long war of Independence. France was here, doing roaring business, fighting alongside Rhodesians. For Britain, it is plain, obvious and manifold.<br /><br />Remember Friends of Rhodesia?<br /><br />Once the United Nations sanctions were in place — and Europe and America observed these more in breach than in compliance — the Rhodesians kneaded a sanctions-busting strategy based on Rhodesia’s natural attractions and wildlife resource. They mounted a world-wide campaign of enlisting people-to-Rhodesia support, through which they kept tourism flowing both for revenue and also as a façade for sanctions busting. This world-wide campaign for racist fellowship on a seemingly apolitical tourism platform, they called Friends of Rhodesia, FOR for short. Rhodesian tobacco barons and sanctions-busting heroes, like C.G. Tracey, were at the helm of this highly successful white thing, which kept white opinions on hard, racist Rhodesia remarkably warmer, softer and supportive like cotton wool. We Africans bled and no amount of human rights outrage was condemnable. Journalists like Clive Wilson — yes, Trevor Ncube’s Clive Wilson — pounded keyboards for "Africa Calls from Rhodesia", FOR’s prime soft propaganda vehicle. Today, FOR has transfigured to FOZ, all to stress that the gamekeeper has become the poacher. The better term for the fishmongers is FAZ, Friends Against Zimbabwe.<br /><br />One lucky Tendai, Frank Tagarira<br /><br />Talking about Friends of Zimbabwe, did anyone see a piece on someone called Tendai Frank Tagarira, 26, who seems luckier than his country Zimbabwe. This unknown quantity is introduced as a Zimbabwean writer who has fled "persecution in his homeland", all the way to the warm arms of kindly Danes. Frank is set to live long and large, thanks to what the Danes call an "all-expenses-paid-for-two-year-refuge-for-foreign-artists"! This Danish largesse translates to a cool US$1 660,00 tax-free monthly grant, as well as having rent covered by the City Council. All told, Frank will cost Denmark US$106 100,00 as payment for authoring "several critical books dealing with the effects of the Robert Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe." At 26, it means blessed Frank was 16 in 2000 when Mugabe traumatised his otherwise free people by giving them back their stolen land! Roughly that puts him in form three then. And if he was able enough to finish form four, he would have done so at 17. Add another three years of University and you have a 22-year old. Between then and now, he has written "several critical books" on Mugabe’s dictatorship! And where are the books? "Tagarira says no publisher will release his books in his native country for fear of reprisals," runs the report on this great Zimbabwean, so famous abroad, so unknown at home. Frank, I have warm advice for you brother: eat, eat and eat their money until your cheeks begin to tremble with the slightest shift of your by-then-obese-frame. Once full, drop stout stool on foolish Denmark’s fontanel and nimbly run out of their little country! It is cold and unliveable anyway. But make sure you run very fast. They are the Barbarians of old history!<br /><br />When malice outstrips sense<br /><br />I was reading a lengthy and boring report from some Canadian intelligence front called Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) on our diamonds. I will have occasion to sink my teeth into it next week. For now, just a bit of nzwisa. The Canadians want to nail Zimbabwe as a source of conflict diamonds, as defined by the Kimberly Process. To their frustration, they discover the Kimberly process defines conflict diamonds as "rough diamonds used by rebel movements to finance wars against legitimate governments." It is a definition that squats obscenely atop the first accused, Zimbabwe. And the first accused must, at any rate, be convicted. With remarkable Canadian semantic deftness wearing the colour of rich malice, PAC writes: "But that interpretation fails to recognise the current political realities of Zimbabwe, or consider how, and to what ends, political elites within Zanu (PF) are using diamonds to both jockey for power in a post-Mugabe era and destabilise the Government of National Unity, created in February 2009 with the inclusion of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). These political elites are intimately tied to Zimbabwe’s military establishment, the Joint Operations Command, and as such constitute a "rebel movement" opposed to the democratic governance of Zimbabwe." Uuhh, profound thoughts indeed. How low can one sink, how bold can white malice ever become?<br /><br />Will malicious Canada pay?<br /><br />In the meantime, the same week of this outrage, Canada’s New Dawn acquires 89 percent interest in the London-listed Central Africa Gold (CAG), meaning that over and above Turk and Angelus Golf mines close to Bulawayo, New Dawn is set to control the Kadoma-based Dalny and Venice, Golden Quarry located south-east of Gweru, as well as Camperdown and Old Nic mines. The Canadians are set to ship out 50 to 60 000 ounces of gold in the next 18 months, peaking at 250 000 ounces within five years. Amazing, angelic Zimbabwe, so abused yet so generous. Kuchazove riiniko isu vaNyai tichitambura?<br /><br />Icho!<br /><br />l nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zwZimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-90283896713449282142010-06-13T05:20:00.000-07:002010-06-13T05:21:11.253-07:00Tsvangirai: From east without wisdom.Prime Minister: From East without wisdom<br /><br /><br /><br />I AM happy that News Day is out, the latest new kid on the street (I never said street kid!).<br /><br />We welcome the new child to the family of ideas.<br /><br />Let her thrive as per her worth. And I welcome this new baby from Trevor in the true spirit of a plural press. I mean plural press which I repeatedly tell people cannot be a matter of numbers, a numerical magnitude.<br /><br />Plural press is a matter of perspective or distinct points of view in competition. Picture a choir obviously with many choristers. They sing the same song, to the same conductor. They cannot be plural, surely. They are many throats striving to produce one melody, or many breaths uniformly belched, fouling the air in one direction.<br /><br />The lyrics are one, the notes the same, tones and pitches admittedly different, but all modulated to blend to one melodic outcome.<br /><br />Propaganda choristers<br /><br />From a Third Worlder, CNN, BBC, France 24 and the rest are mere tones in one propaganda melody from the imperial West. They blend; they harmonise, all following one trajectory, to one end: subjugation of the other. Same stories, same weather, same footage, same clock and same perspective: imperious. These have given us more channels, but never more media, more ideas, more voices. It is Goebbels perfected, Goebbels on a planetary scale. And of course in the kindergarten are little broadcasters such as SABC Africa, with its ventriloqual dullness. But pit all this against Russia’s Russia Today (RT). Or against China’s CCTV9. Iran’s Press TV, then you begin to have plurality. In Iran’s Press TV, Russia’s RT and China’s CCTV9, the world’s dissidents, the world’s nonconformists, have regained a voice, a platform.<br /><br />Suckling from a poisonous adder<br /><br />We have in this country, publishers who have suckled from the politician’s poisonous adder.<br /><br />They think to have a plural media is not to have The Herald at all. They think to have a plural media is not to have ZBC at all. Both must drown and only then is a media Canaan reached. The one must come; the other must drown, disappear. We have publishers who think to be independent is to be hostile to Zanu (PF), hostile to Government. Publishers who think to fornicate with MDC, fall madly in love with the never-never government MDC will put together someday nowhere, is the acme of independence. Yet to hate Zanu (PF), and to love MDC-T, is to obey the same impulse.<br /><br />It is to be in the arms of the same forces who contest power, lose it, win it, or even share it, as has happened now. It is not to found an independent media; it is not to build a plural media. Rather, it is to be shaped by the first estate into its perfect appendage; a mere footnote of power, a lace on power’s soiled petticoat.<br /><br />Judith and her crew<br /><br />And the auguries are not very good for our publishers. The meeting, which took place a little over a week ago upon the Prime Minister’s return from Korea, is worrisome. Set in Pretoria, organised by Judith Todd and Rylander, attended by the Prime Minister and the likes of Basildon Peta, the gathering celebrated the registration of five new titles, not as genuflection to values of press freedom, but as an expression of relief that MDC-T had made yet another difficult step towards laying infrastructure for the next elections. Mari takaruka, came the refrain as politicians and minions alike, paid tribute to Sweden, America, Germany and Holland for availing money for MDC-T’s media projects, ahead of elections. There is lots of money to throw about and publishers, beware!<br /><br />A fight on waves<br /><br />We will see lots of media-related projects for the MDC-T, as that party’s programme of using governmental processes to further its campaign goals pans out. To this party, all the Commissions are a transfer of its implementing machinery from Harvest House to Government. They must come under it and hence frantic efforts to subdue them. The next polls will be fought on the waves, which is why Econet, and its card-carrying owner, Strive Masiyiwa, are so critical to the MDC-T. We wait for a new propaganda service, which MDC-T seeks to unveil on June 14, using Masiyiwa’s network, through a toll-free facility. Thank God cellular licenses are up for renewal and Government has to deal with all manner of mischief.<br /><br />A spate so public<br /><br />This week saw a loud conflict between the Prime Minister and President Mugabe’s spokesman, George Charamba. The conflict is over the Prime Minister’s recent trip to South Korea, during which he claimed to have signed a BIPPA with the host country. The spokesperson says no, nothing of that sort happened. The Prime Minister says no, the spokesperson is undermining his Office, in the process threatening disciplinary action. Charamba will not retract, and dares the Prime Minister.<br /><br />What BIPPA?<br /><br />Let us lay the facts.<br /><br />BIPPAS are about relations between two countries intent on an investment relationship. They bind two governments, two peoples really. They are internationally enforced, which is what makes them serious documents. They have to be ratified by Parliament. Governments take BIPPAS very seriously. In our case, they are an inter-ministerial affair, with Economic Planning taking the lead. The idea is to make sure the country is not prejudiced.<br /><br />The lead Ministry is expected to draw up broad principles which are discussed by a Committee of Cabinet on Legislation called CCL. These principles subsequently guide the Attorney General as he prepares a draft BIPPA document, working closely with the lead ministry. The draft goes back to CCL for another scrutiny and possible changes. It is only when the CCL is satisfied that the matter is booked with the Chief Secretary for tabling in Cabinet.<br /><br />Borrowed powers, borrowed robes<br /><br />Cabinet will in turn look at the draft which is presented by chairman of CCL, Justice Minister Chinamasa. More changes, or even rejection, until Cabinet is satisfied. Only then does the President feel empowered to grant signing powers to the lead Minister, in this case Minister Mangoma. I have simplified complex process, but this helps give a feel of the general drift of things. The responsible Minister will only get signing powers from the President who wields them by dint of the Constitution. No minister wields such powers inherently. They devolve from the President who remains solely responsible for their use. In terms of our laws, the Prime Minister has no such powers.<br /><br />The tortoise that shat on a flying bird<br /><br />Relating all this to the matter on hand, Cabinet should have affirmed a draft document from CCL on a probable BIPPA with South Korea, on the strength of which the President would then have delegated signing powers to Minister Mangoma. And delegated authority cannot be further delegated by the immediate beneficiary to another. You cannot parcel out powers you do not own. It is that simple. Equally, you cannot delegate power upwards. A tortoise cannot drop dung on an eagle in flight. Minister Mangoma could not delegate delegated powers to another Minister – ordinary or prime. These are not his powers in the first place, and Minister Gorden Moyo — the Prime Minister’s killer-man — appears to be having difficulties in comprehending that elementary rule.<br /><br />Flowing against gravity<br /><br />And since the Prime Minister is the one who took the ill-fated decision to proceed with the signing ceremony, apparently against advice from Foreign Affairs through Ambassador Stuart Comberbach, it means Minister Mangoma is assumed to have delegated the President’s powers upwards, to his senior, who in turn poured down those same borrowed powers to another Minister, Professor Dzinotyiwei. I am surprised that after such giddy flight, there was still enough power left for him to finish writing his long surname! In theory the good professor would have used profoundly attenuated powers, powers badly fatigued by the long, tortuous road to him. Such powers have no spark, only trouble for the haver! Surely if the President knew about this assignment, he would have released Minister Mangoma to go and do the job, or alternatively, given powers of attorney to Minister Dzinotyiwei as a Minister of Government?<br /><br />Where is the document?<br /><br />But all this is to take matters to far, in fact to be too generous with a process so fraught, so drunk. Cabinet does not have before it any draft BIPPA document with South Korea. It may, some day, but presently there is no such document put before it by the Chief Secretary. That it is there at CCL level can only be a rumour to the President and Prime Minister, both of whom are not members of that Committee. Matters must come before them to exist. They haven’t. I fail to see Minister Moyo’s point when he asserts that the document came before CCL. It could have, for all we know. But so what? That does not make it a document of Government.<br /><br />It makes it a document in Government. And there are many documents generated every single day in Government. In any case and quite logically, a committee of Cabinet is not Cabinet itself. Surely Honourable Moyo is profound enough to know that? If not, God help us!<br /><br />What everybody knew<br /><br />I repeat: the damn thing is not before Cabinet. Ask Honourable Chinamasa as has done I, Nhataniyere, the truly begotten son of dark Night! The Prime Minister knows that. Gorden Moyo knows that. Foreign Affairs dutifully reminded the Prime Minister about that. And at some point the Prime Minister appeared to have understood that.<br /><br />Until a great happening took over and he chose — last minute — to go ahead with the mock signing ceremony, regardless. The Koreans knew that, as did our Honorary Consular General who did the dutiful. Their ambassador here knows that there is no documentation for a BIPPA between his country and my Zimbabwe. Still the Prime Minister went ahead, adding "zvimwe zvese tichazonozvigadzirisa kumusha." He knew perfectly well his actions we fraught with legal and procedural deficits. But like the proverbial fly, he chose to follow the corpse into the grave. See where he is now!<br /><br />Renegotiating GPA by misdeeds<br /><br />Yet his actions sought to bind this country and the Government he is a part of. The agreement touches on our strategic minerals, something South Korea wants. Yet the Prime Minister’s actions undermined the very Constitution he swore to uphold. He undermined the authority of the President, usurped his powers in fact. Apart from pretending to devolve powers he does not have, he called himself "head of Government", which he is not. His actions in South Korea amount to the first material step towards turning this self-adulatory appellation his obliging minions wrongly shower him with, into concrete, executive action at the expense of the President and the Constitution. It is an attempt to renegotiate the GPA and a new constitution by precedent-setting misdeeds! Actions calculated to place the man above Cabinet, to embolden him in intercepting documents still in the mill, documents well not before him.<br /><br />Repairing life after burial<br /><br />Let us situate this misbehaviour. Frankly, the problem is larger its portents too serious to be ignored. Firstly, this is the conduct of a man within striking distance of power, yet exhibiting such glib deference to the law and processes. He does not seem to know that this thing called government is a bundle of sensitive rules and procedures, the violation of which draws a line between democracy and dictatorship. Laws and procedures check power, while legitimising its exercise. And power is no toy. When a man proceeds to do the unlawful, the un-procedural, on the proviso that tichazvigadzira pasure, what stops him from condemning life in the hope of repairing it after burial?<br /><br />Set roles, willy-nilly<br /><br />Secondly, for quite some time and on a number of trips, the Prime Minister has donned the garb of Government, drawn resources of the State, only to chase matters that have nothing to do with the interests of the State. He did so twice in America; did so in Europe and has now done so again in South Korea. Don’t get me wrong.<br /><br />The Prime Minister can chase any matter of interest to him, in line with the bundle of roles that make up his public personality.<br /><br />He leads a party; he is a prime minister; he is a father, a lover and all. But each role comes with its own identity, resources and mandate. He is free to do anything as leader of his Party, his actions only drawing the concern of his Party members. But as a Government functionary, he is not free to do anything he pleases, his way and in his style.<br /><br />He plays preordained roles, to rules that have to be obeyed, willy-nilly.<br /><br />Dismissed at will, recalled at whim<br /><br />As Prime Minister of this country, you do not draw Government resources, wear the authority of the State, only to undermine that same State you serve. The Prime Minister is in this shabby habit of summarily dismissing ambassadors of Zimbabwe from meetings with foreigners, meetings in which he purports to be pursuing interests of the State. He did that in Washington, in Europe and lately in South Korea. Our ambassadors are dismissed at will, recalled at whim, to serve a Prime Minister who does not seem to know when to be Prime Minister, when to be a leader of a political party and when to be a private citizen. And all these whimsical decisions are done in front of foreigners to whom these ambassadors present credentials, with whom these ambassadors transact inter-state business.<br /><br />Now, tell me which State respects an ambassador who is sacked, reinstated, sacked, sacked, reinstated in one day by his Principals? A Prime Minister of this country humiliates his own ambassador until his host asks the whereabouts of that ambassador? A Prime Minister who commits his entire programme to some white American woman unknown to his Government? Can that be Government business? Why should it not be known by the envoy of Zimbabwe? Who follows up when the Prime Minister has gone back? And I am not talking of junior ambassadors at all. I am talking of men and women who are synonymous with diplomacy as we have known it since Independence. I challenge the Prime Minister to give this nation the value of his travels abroad.<br /><br />The day Trudy ran the President<br /><br />Not so with the President. Recently, he went to Senegal where MDC-M’s Trudy Stevenson is Zimbabwe’s ambassador. She not only shaped the President’s programme; she dictated where the President went, and with whom; determined what he ate, including eating in her home, from her pots. Why does the Prime Minister humiliate senior career diplomats, substituting them with foreigners or those small, inexperienced boys in his Office when he purports to be doing Government work? Is that not undermining Government, taking advantage of it in fact? Are principals going to meet over that? Is it any surprise that Carson can afford to abuse our Mapuranga on the day we mark Africa and her futures?<br /><br />Angering MDC-T leader,<br /><br />protecting office of PM<br /><br />The Prime Minister is free to walk the world, sourcing funding for his cause. But he goes on such errands as the president of MDC-T, never as the Prime Minister of this country. He should never levy prime ministerial deference from us for errands that cut him out as a leader of a political party. We may not belong to his party, may not believe in his cause which has spawned so much suffering for the Zimbabwean people. It is only when he fulfils his role as Prime Minister of this country that we doff and defer to him. Not this. Not this, this his bad habit of seeking to augment his mandate, of seeking to renegotiate the GPA, of seeking to rewrite the Constitution through calculated misdeeds.<br /><br />Unwise from the East<br /><br />Frankly, the conduct of the Prime Minister in South Korea makes one wonder whether at all he went there on Government business.<br /><br />The honorary degree he got from his Korean counterpart’s former university is his to have, his to enjoy. It does not relieve pressure from a struggling family living in Mbare. The one-student-per-year scholarship he got from the Koreans will, quite predictably, go to his party activists. It is not like the Presidential Programme that has educated thousands, including one of the Prime Minister’s own. The money he got there is going to his own party. It feeds not a single victim of the sanctions he asked for and got.<br /><br />The strategy of using third nations to channel resources to his party is an American one. It is not Zimbabwean. Equally his role in checkmating China in Zimbabwe, in defeating Zimbabwe’s Look East policy using South Korea as a springboard, satisfies America and her ignoble global calculations. Zimbabwe profits nothing from it. And his search for a greater symbolism for his person helps his party, not Zimbabwe. Mister Prime Minister, those from the East usually came back wiser.<br /><br />Icho!<br /><br />l nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zwZimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-44938916581327439192009-08-15T03:13:00.000-07:002009-08-15T03:14:23.806-07:00MDC puppets can NEVER be Zimbabwe's heroes.MDC, liberation heroes it can’t<br /><br /><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />I say so because disturbing things, very disturbing things have been happening in the corridors of power since February 13.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.’’<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />* * * *<br /><br />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.<br /><br />* * * *<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />* * * *<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />* * * *<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Such is the nature of recasting history, at times it bids those doing it to carve headlines about sunrise on a dry savanna day.<br /><br />caesar.zvayi@zimpapers.co.zwZimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-11910455582581157002009-08-14T09:48:00.001-07:002009-08-14T09:49:33.480-07:00The propaganda about Zimbabwe cloaks an imperial mindsetThe propaganda about Zimbabwe cloaks an imperial mindset <br /><br /><br />By Jordan Pearson<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Zimbabwe, and the apparently rigged elections that saw Robert Mugabe win his 6th <br />consecutive term as President, is a story that’s all over the news at the <br />moment, and it’s a story that’s presented with unprecedented singularity; Mugabe <br />cast, in nearly every story, as an evil dictator who has ruined the country and <br />needs to go. This unanimity of opinion got me wondering: is Mugabe really that <br />rare, Hitleresque figure of ultimate evil? Maybe even more evil than Skullitor? <br />A little wider reading, particularly from African sources, presents a different <br />picture. That Zimbabwe is in a very bad way is indisputable; one of the worst <br />cases of hyperinflation in recorded history, people starving in what was once a <br />rich farming land, but while the reason for this is always attributed to <br />Mugabe’s inept and brutal leadership, the actual reasons are infinitely more <br />complex. <br />Missing from nearly all coverage of the issue is any consideration of its <br />historical context, and, more importantly, its global political-economic context <br />– that is, the international pervasiveness of Western economic dominance (why <br />it’s called “globalization,” I guess) and the impossibility of resisting it. <br />Zimbabwe’s dire situation seems to be less about a brutal dictator and more <br />about the government’s revolutionary resistance to Western economic <br />exploitation, or neo-colonialism. Everything is framed through the familiar <br />perspective that Mugabe is an “evil man”. The fact that he is an African makes <br />this a lot easier for Western audiences to accept, so too does the fact that <br />there’s probably a lot of truth to it, but before accepting this too easily ask <br />yourself, “Why?” Remember: “Evil Mugabe” was once “Sir Robert Mugabe,” and it <br />was only this month that Nelson Mandela was removed from the United States <br />terrorist watch list. <br />It’s not my intention in this to be an apologist for President Mugabe – he seems <br />like a real brute – but to point out some of the hypocrisies and <br />double-standards operating in this story, and to see why, of all the “brutal <br />dictators” in the world, this brutal dictator is being singled-out.<br />The spectacular hypocrisy with which our Western media operate is always <br />exaggerated when discussing black people, especially Africans. The absurdity of <br />the same countries that colonized (that is, invaded and destroyed) Africa now <br />telling African nations how to run themselves goes unnoticed by most. So does <br />the ridiculousness of stories calling for Western “humanitarian intervention” in <br />Zimbabwe (that is, the pretext to invade and destroy) in the world section of <br />newspapers next to stories about our humiliating defeats in Iraq and <br />Afghanistan. Do people really want to repeat the procedure of invading another <br />country on falsified humanitarian pretenses, attempting to exploit its resources <br />or geographical position, and having our asses handed back to us by the local <br />population? <br />And who the hell is George Bush to cast dispersions on a rigged election? <br />Zimbabwe first started getting this intense media attention in 2000, when <br />Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party started re-expropriating land back to black Africans by <br />confiscating it from white farmers (land which, of course, had originally been <br />stolen by the British). According to the media narrative, this is where the <br />country fell into decline. The subtext is, of course, that African’s don’t know <br />anything and will mess everything up in the absence of white guidance. This <br />completely ignores that most black Zimbabweans are either descendants of Bantu <br />civilizations that existed for literally 1000’s of years or Ndebele people, both <br />of whom prospered on the land long before Europeans set foot on it.<br />I remember once being told by someone that the answer to Africa’s problems was <br />not aid, but guidance: “If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day,” she <br />said, “but if we teach them how to fish, we’ll feed him and his family forever”. <br />At this, I had to point out that, “Sweetie, these people were fishing and eating <br />a long time before white people got there and messed everything up, and if you <br />teach a man to fish and then steal everything he catches, this guy and his <br />family are still gonna starve!” <br />These sorts of ideas are unthinkable in mainstream Western discussion of “third <br />world” problems. Completely uncovered in the news is the colonial legacy of <br />Britain in Zimbabwe, and its continued responsibility for Zimbabwe’s economic <br />cataclysm, in collusion with the United States and major international financial <br />institutions, who are punishing the country for failing to open itself up to be <br />robbed and pillaged. We are reminded on a daily basis that Mugabe is a <br />super-villian, while equally or much more oppressive dictatorships enjoy the <br />full support of the West and go unnoticed in the news, because their <br />governments’ make the country open for exploitation; governments like those of <br />neighboring Uganda and Rwanda, for example. Mugabe dares defy the dictates of <br />the United States, and so, like many other similar leaders before him, and <br />today, he has to go. <br />According to Stephen Gowans: <br />“The charge that the West is supporting civil society groups in Zimbabwe to <br />bring down the government isn’t paranoid speculation or the demagogic raving <br />of a government trying to cling to power by mobilizing anti-imperialist <br />sentiment. It’s a matter of public record. The US government has admitted that <br />“it wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is <br />working with the Zimbabwean opposition…trade unions, pro-democracy groups and <br />human rights organizations…to bring about a change of administration.”<br />Robert Mugabe is part of a group of people that fought a long, hard struggle <br />against Britain who ruled the country for ninety years in a way that makes the <br />current government look like Care Bears. Mugabe’s part in this struggle is one <br />of the things that gives him his wide support base in Zimbabwe and greater <br />Africa. While Zimbabwe rid itself of foreign political control in 1980 through <br />this struggle, the battle for economic independence continues. Says, Jabulani <br />Sibanda, the leader of the association of former guerrillas who won against <br />Britain: <br />“Our country was taken away in 1890. We fought a protracted struggle to <br />recover it and the process is still on. We gained political independence in <br />1980, got our land after 2000, but we have not yet reclaimed our minerals and <br />natural resources. The fight for freedom is still on until everything is <br />recovered for the people.” <br />This is exactly what President Mugabe is trying to achieve, the protection of <br />the revenues from Zimbabwe’s extensive natural resources and other industries <br />for the Zimbabwean people. This is his great crime as far as Western powers are <br />concerned, powers who demand open-door access to all African and third world <br />countries. This is also the great crime of Hugo Chavez, singled-out and vilified <br />for similar reasons.<br />Another great crime of Mugabe’s, a crime he also shares with Hugo Chavez, was to <br />turn his country away from the IMF after seeing the economically disastrous <br />consequences of implementing IMF structural adjustment conditions, which <br />Zimbabwe did from 1991-1995. The IMF declared Zimbabwe ineligible to use IMF <br />resources in 2001, which meant Zimbabwe could not pick up any credit from <br />markets without paying very high interest rates, and could not sell using <br />international banking. This is the true cause of the collapse of their currency. <br />This was, of course, done to punish Zimbabwe because the government had the <br />audacity to return the country’s land to its original owners. <br />We can see here how the former colonial owners still exercise great control over <br />the country, where, according to Mugabe, the British and their allies (including <br />my country, NZ) <br />“… influence other countries to cut their economic ties with us…the soft <br />loans, grants and investments that were coming our way, started decreasing and <br />in some cases practically petering out. Then the signals to the rest of the <br />world that Zimbabwe is under sanctions, that rings bells and countries that <br />would want to invest in Zimbabwe are being very cautious. And we are being <br />dragged through the mud every day on CNN, BBC, Sky News, and they are saying <br />to these potential investors ‘your investments will not be safe in Zimbabwe, <br />the British farmers have lost their land, and your investments will go the <br />same way.”<br />This brings us back to the fundamental point about the totality of Western <br />economic dominance: powerful nations like the UK and U.S. have almost total <br />control over developing nations – including the power to shut a country down, <br />and to unanimously condemn in the media any leader they dislike.<br />A significant clue, however, that the “worldwide” condemnation of Mugabe, as is <br />most often implied, may not be so utterly unanimous, is that much of the world <br />refuses to condemn him. China and Russia have repeatedly vetoed attempts by the <br />States and Britain at the UN Security Council to place heavier sanctions on the <br />country, and both these countries represent alternative sources of trade and <br />investment for Zimbabwe. F. William Engdahl contends that “Mugabe’s Biggest Sin” <br />is that he “has quietly been doing business, a lot of it, with one country which <br />has virtually unlimited need of strategic raw materials Zimbabwe can provide – <br />China” putting Zimbabwe (along with Sudan) “on the central stage of the new war <br />over control of strategic minerals in Africa between Washington and Beijing”. <br />[http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9707] Indeed, Zimbabwe is <br />a country with a lot of mineral wealth to which Western businesses want <br />exclusive access, for both their real and symbolic wealth: Zimbabwe serves as a <br />potential example to other countries wishing to protect their own resources, and <br />so must be made an example of. Closer ties with China may or may not necessarily <br />be a positive thing for the people of Zimbabwe; for example, China ships <br />significant amounts of weapons to the country. Strong criticism of China from <br />the U.S. for this however is yet another example of the spectacular hypocrisy <br />that goes unnoticed, when throughout this century and the last, the U.S. been <br />constantly arming the most brutal governments and terrorist organizations it <br />can. Zimbabwe, of course, has every right to develop trade with any country it <br />chooses, but is being brazenly punished by the West for pursuing new investment <br />not from the old imperialist powers.<br />Zimbabwe’s resistance to imperialism has meant the country has been singled-out, <br />cut-off, and gradually strangled. Gowans chronicles the process: <br />“In March 2002, Canada withdrew all direct funding to the government of <br />Zimbabwe. In 2005, the IT department at Zimbabwe’s Africa University <br />discovered that Microsoft had been instructed by the US Treasury Department to <br />refrain from doing business with the university. Western companies refuse to <br />supply spare parts to Zimbabwe’s national railway company, even though there <br />are no official trade sanctions in place.… Pressure will also be applied on <br />countries surrounding Zimbabwe to mount an economic blockade. The point of <br />sanctions is to starve the people of Zimbabwe into revolting against the <br />government to clear the way for the rise of the MDC and control, by proxy, <br />from London and Washington. Apply enough pressure and eventually the people <br />will cry uncle (or so goes the theory.).”<br />(A theory that worked so perfectly with Saddam Hussein, didn’t it? Only killing <br />an estimated 1,500,000 Iraqis before failing and being abandoned in favour of an <br />invasion that killed hundreds of thousands more.) So Zimbabwe is faced with a <br />shitty choice: maintain and have the country’s economy totally destroyed, or <br />give-up and submit to an economic ass-raping. Such is the totality of Western <br />economic dominance: sovereign nations don’t have choices, and sovereignty itself <br />doesn’t exist.<br />The political alternative, the MDC, or Movement for Democratic Change, lead by <br />Morgan Tsvangirai, who reportedly won the recent elections, is presented in the <br />news as Zimbabwe’s only hope for democracy and receives overwhelming media <br />support. Never once mentioned is that the MDC is primarily a representative of <br />Britain, the U.S. and their economic interests, and almost entirely funded by <br />foreign groups, with the expressed aim of opening Zimbabwe up for investment, or <br />in other words, exploitation. The party was formed in 1999, immediately after <br />the Zanu-PF government announced its land confiscation program. According to the <br />Gowans article, “The party was initially bankrolled by the British government’s <br />Westminster Foundation for Democracy and other European governments, including <br />Germany” and “acknowledged in February 2002 that [it] was financed by European <br />governments and corporations, which funnelled money through British political <br />consultants, BSMG”. The MDC receives this overwhelming media support, because it <br />operates as a front for Western business interests and in the event of being <br />elected would allow these interests to do as they please, transforming Zimbabwe <br />from a rebellious dictatorship to a well-behaved dictatorship, and thus not a <br />problem. With regards to policies that advance the interests of Zimbabwean <br />people, like returning land back to black African owners for example, Tsvangirai <br />has said it’s not acceptable as it “scares away investors, domestic and <br />international“. Investors are usually scared of justice.<br />The position that Mugabe and Zanu-PF hold onto power through violence and <br />intimidation alone, as advocated by all mainstream news, doesn’t seem to quite <br />add up either. While it seems that violence and intimidation undoubtedly occur, <br />Munyaradzi Gwisai, strong opponent of the Mugabe government as leader of the <br />International Socialist Organization in Zimbabwe, puts things in a different <br />perspective: <br />“There is no doubt about it – the regime is rooted among the population with a <br />solid social base. Despite the catastrophic economic collapse, Zanu-PF still <br />won more popular votes in parliament than the MDC in the March 29 <br />parliamentary elections. Mugabe might have lost on the streets, but if you <br />count the actual votes, his party won more than the MDC in elections to the <br />House of Assembly and Senate. Zanu-PF won an absolute majority of votes in <br />five of the country’s 10 provinces, plus a simple majority in another <br />province. By contrast, the MDC won two provinces with an absolute majority and <br />two with a simple majority. But because we use first past the post, not <br />proportional representation, Zanu-PF’s votes were not translated into a <br />majority in parliament. It was only Mugabe himself, in the presidential <br />election, who did worse in terms of the popular vote.” <br />Mugabe’s support in Africa in general is also seemingly contradictory to the <br />story as we are told it. He’s often greeted with a heroes welcome when he <br />travels in Africa and African leaders have continually refused to outright <br />condemn him. This is usually explained away as being a case of Africans sticking <br />together, refusing to condemn “one of their own” no matter how deplorable their <br />leadership may be, because they don’t want to be seen as sell-outs or traitors <br />to the West. While this is bullshit, if it were true that Africans were prepared <br />to accept despotic rule by other Africans as preferable to agreement with us, <br />would this not indicate that our presence and opinions were not really wanted <br />there? <br />Our Western governments continued pontificating and intervention on the excuse <br />of human rights and democracy, even if they were genuine, demonstrate, as the <br />worst human rights violators on the planet, an incredible arrogance and <br />hypocrisy. In 2004, Mugabe was voted #3 in New Africa magazine’s issue of “100 <br />Greatest Africans”. While Mugabe was outright condemned at the recent G8 summit <br />in Japan, there was no similar condemnation at the most recent AU summit. <br />Headlines covering the summit were generally phrased with implicit assumptions <br />that explicitly reveal the news’ sheer ridiculousness and partiality, even Al <br />Jazeera saying “African leaders fail to condemn Mugabe” . Fail to condemn <br />Mugabe?! Fail to? As if they were supposed to and didn’t? Here, you can clearly <br />see that nowadays media impartiality isn’t even a consideration – especially <br />when considering black people, and especially when considering Africa: at worst, <br />a continent incapable of managing itself, at best, just sticking together out of <br />racial solidarity.<br />The “Perils of Racial Solidarity” (if you’re not white) are evident anywhere, <br />like the current U.S. elections for example, where Obama had to disown his own <br />church (because his minister had the audacity to speak truthfully about 9/11), <br />and has had to generally cater to white people’s fears. Says, Kevin Alexander <br />Gray: <br />“Give a listen to the corporate media, and it’s pretty clear what tune black <br />voices are supposed to be singing. Obama is constantly called on to swear <br />allegiance to America – to prove he isn’t swearing allegiance to blacks. The <br />other way to say that is he’s supposed to swear allegiance to white, not <br />black, America. Meanwhile, the back end of that deal is that black Americans <br />are required to substitute Obama for real structural racial progress. As in, <br />‘You got your nominee. See, we’re not so racist or bad after all. Now shut <br />up!’”<br />Ultimately, all this shit is best summed-up by Africa’s Hitler himself, the <br />current President of Zimbabwe and former Sir Robert Mugabe, who, at his address <br />to the UN in October last year had this to say:<br />“The West still negates our sovereignties by way of control of our resources, <br />in the process making us mere chattels in out own lands, mere minders of its <br />trans-national interests. In my own country and other sister states in <br />Southern Africa, the most visible form of this control has been over land <br />despoiled from us at the onset of British colonialism.<br />That control largely persists, although it stands firmly challenged in <br />Zimbabwe, thereby triggering the current stand-off between us and Britain, <br />supported by her cousin states, most notably the United States and Australia. <br />Mr Bush, Mr. Blair and now Mr Brown’s sense of human rights precludes our <br />people’s right to their God-given resources, which in their view must be <br />controlled by their kith and kin. I am termed dictator because I have rejected <br />this supremacist view and frustrated the neo-colonialists.<br />Mr President,<br />Clearly the history of the struggle for out own national and people’s rights <br />is unknown to the president of the United States of America. He thinks the <br />Declaration of Human Rights starts with his last term in office! He thinks she <br />can introduce to us, who bore the brunt of fighting for the freedoms of our <br />peoples, the virtues of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What rank <br />hypocrisy!<br />Mr President,<br />I lost eleven precious years of my life in the jail of a white man whose <br />freedom and well- being I have assured from the first day of Zimbabwe’s <br />Independence. I lost a further fifteen years fighting white injustice in my <br />country.<br />Ian Smith is responsible for the death of well over 50 000 of my people. I <br />bear scars of his tyranny which Britain and America condoned. I meet his <br />victims everyday. Yet he walks free. He farms free. He talks freely, <br />associates freely under a black Government. We taught him democracy. We gave <br />him back his humanity.<br />He would have faced a different fate here and in Europe if the 50 000 he <br />killed were Europeans. Africa has not called for a Nuremberg trial against the <br />white world which committed heinous crimes against its own humanity. It has <br />not hunted perpetrators of this genocide, many of whom live to this day, nor <br />has it got reparations from those who offended against it. Instead it is <br />Africa which is in the dock, facing trial from the same world that persecuted <br />it for centuries.<br />Let Mr. Bush read history correctly. Let him realize that both personally and <br />in his representative capacity as the current President of the United States, <br />he stands for this “civilization” which occupied, which colonised, which <br />incarcerated, which killed. He has much to atone for and very little to <br />lecture us on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”<br />Mugabe’s message to George Bush is one all of us in the West could do with <br />paying attention to. You don’t have to stray far from the mainstream media to <br />get a much clearer perspective on Zimbabwe; perspectives, especially African, <br />that go a long way to answering the important questions around the issue. <br />Questions like: Why does Zimbabwe receive so much attention as a dictatorship, <br />when other dictatorships do not? What makes Zimbabwe special? Why was Mugabe <br />once a Knight and is now a villain? Why do countries like China and Russia’s <br />position on Zimbabwe differ so much from the U.S. and UK? Why won’t most other <br />African leaders condemn Mugabe? While the man may very well be a “dictator” or <br />“tyrant” or any of the other names he is called, he is clearly trying to protect <br />his country from exploitation, and so his country suffers for this. <br />He may be a dictator, but just like with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, we in the West <br />are applying one standard to Mugabe, another standard to all the other <br />dictators, and – from our position as the worst human rights abusers on Earth – <br />yet another standard to ourselves. Zimbabwe has been singled-out in the media <br />and Mugabe so thoroughly vilified because they have chosen to exercise the <br />country’s sovereignty, as opposed to being told what to do, and yet our news <br />preaches of bringing Zimbabwe democracy – just like we did in Iraq, eh? In the <br />words of evil-incarnate himself again: “Democracy… means self-rule, not rule by <br />outsiders.”Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-43217577488601320742009-08-13T09:28:00.001-07:002009-08-13T09:30:52.263-07:00A war veteran's memo.By Mafira Kureva<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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).<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />But is this true?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />This was the most frightening thing to the ruling elite and the opposition alike.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />What would this mean for the emancipation of the marginalised people?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />The new revolution towards Africa’s emancipation in the post-colonial era will have triumphed!Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-38939168900950584662009-08-13T08:49:00.001-07:002009-08-13T08:49:39.244-07:00Sadc Tribunal does not exist - 10 August 2009Sadc Tribunal does not exist - 10 August 2009 <br /><br />By Mabasa Sasa<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"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."<br /><br />Only Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius and Namibia have ratified the protocol, meaning that the Tribunal remains in existence as a proposal only.<br /><br />Seventy-nine Zimbabwean white commercial farmers applied to the Sadc Tribunal to reverse the acquisition of their farms by Government for purposes of resettlement.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />However, Government has said it will not recognise these orders because the Tribunal does not yet exist.<br /><br />Regional justice ministers deferred their discussions and will meet on the sidelines of the Sadc Summit in the DRC in September.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"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.<br /><br />"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.<br /><br />"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.<br /><br />"It is quite an embarrassing situation because both the Tribunal and the Sadc Secretariat have egg on their faces."<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"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.<br /><br />"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."<br /><br />Zimbabwe's Supreme Court, sitting as a Constitutional Court, ruled against the 79 farmers and upheld the constitutionality of the land reform programme.<br /><br />They successfully appealed to the Tribunal but the judgments cannot be enforced.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br />Source: Herald (Zimbabwe Government)Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-49848373428507293692009-08-13T08:25:00.000-07:002009-08-13T08:26:38.045-07:00Mugabe is the last man standing.Baffour's Beefs by Baffour Ankomah - August/Sept 2009 <br /><br />When one sinner repents…<br /><br /><br />Cameron Duodu puts it more aptly in our cover story: “If [President <br />Obama] is to do anything meaningful to address the hopes [invested <br />in him by Africa], he will have to unlearn a lot about Africa <br />himself, and educate his fellow G8 leaders too”. For a brother who <br />has sat in the US Senate since November 2004 to pretend not to know <br />the shenanigans that went on when the two houses of Congress rushed <br />through, in a mere 30 minutes, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic <br />Recovery Act in December 2001, an Act which in one fell swoop <br />imposed stringent economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, to come to Accra <br />and tell the whole world in a major policy speech to Africa, that <br />“the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwe <br />economy over the last decade”, well, he is a brother and Beefs is <br />prepared to give him time to unlearn… It is too early to knock him. <br />But could somebody please tell him not to go around the world making <br />such irascible statements! <br /><br />Anyway, those of you who haven’t read the Bible before, please come <br />with me to Luke chapter 15 verse 10. There you find this quote: <br />“There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner <br />that repents.” Imagine one sinner causing a stoppage in Heaven – for <br />the angels know how to have a good time, you know. Rejoicing is big <br />business up there, and they don’t joke about it. So just imagine <br />what happened there in early July 2009 when Michael Holman, <br />ex-Zimbabwean and ex-Africa editor of the British business daily, <br />Financial Times, repented (see p. 32 of this issue). What joy we <br />must all have to welcome him and his ilk back into reality. Until he <br />recanted, Holman, a white Zimbabwean, born and bred in Zimbabwe, who <br />like others before him such as Lord Malloch Brown found fame outside <br />the land of their birth, had been one of the chief drivers of the <br />bandwagon that campaigned ceaselessly, for the past 10 years, for <br />Mugabe’s head. You can therefore imagine the joy in Heaven when this <br />sinner repented, and wrote in early July exhorting his kith and kin <br />in the West that it is “Time to do business with Mugabe”. <br /><br />Holman can be theatrical when it suits him: “It is time for Western <br />governments to admit defeat, swallow their pride, re-engage in <br />Zimbabwe, and do business with Robert Mugabe,” he thunders in his <br />opening paragraph. “Far from being driven by ethical concerns about <br />dealing with a dictator,” he goes on, “the West in general, and <br />Britain in particular, is motivated by pique, seeking revenge on the <br />man who has outwitted them, rather than acting in the long-term <br />interests of Zimbabwe… “The first step [of the re-engagement <br />process],” Holman continues, “is to acknowledge an uncomfortable <br />truth: Mr Mugabe has won the battle for Zimbabwe. True, the price <br />has been high … but his victory is more than Pyrrhic… He has <br />presided over a fundamental change of an African economy. His <br />popularity in much of Africa is undeniable, and the landless of <br />Kenya, South Africa and Namibia look on his work with admiration… <br /><br />Whatever Mr Tsvangirai might say in public, it would be political <br />suicide to attempt to return white farms to their former owners. <br />Never again will a 5,000-strong minority own much of the country’s <br />best farmland; and though it has cost Zimbabwe dear, Mugabe has <br />created a lasting legacy, having radically changed the racially <br />distorted land tenure structure he inherited at independence in <br />1980.” Hallelujah! Angels know how to rejoice when a sinner repents! <br />If I, Baffour Ankomah, son of a Ghanaian farmer who had no help from <br />his government for all his life (he died in 1988), had written what <br />Michael Holman has just written, it would not have seen the light of <br />day, not even in New African, the magazine I have worked for, for 21 <br />solid years, 10 of which have seen me in the editor’s chair! For I <br />did write on the same lines in January 2009, for this very column, <br />Baffour’s Beefs, and our Group Publisher, a man of strong liberal <br />tradition and open-mindedness, who loves Africa to bits, wanted a <br />change from the constant focus on Zimbabwe. And so my column did not <br />appear – in New African! I would have beaten Holman to it by six <br />long months! <br /><br />Now that Holman has opened the floodgates, surely not even “a <br />surfeit of Zimbabwe coverage” is going to stop me from quoting a wee <br />bit from my spiked January column. Commenting on Obama’s electoral <br />victory and stretching it to cover another victory in Southern <br />Africa (at least to discerning Africans), I wrote: “I know I will be <br />damned for saying this, but I will still say it because it is the <br />truth – here we have the success of the first leader in both pre- <br />and post-independence African history to be still standing after <br />having been assailed for 10 long years by the combined might of the <br />nations of European stock: President Mugabe of Zimbabwe.<br /><br />“Looking back into history, from the first encounter of Europeans <br />with Africans on our shores, we can’t find one single example of an <br />African – leader, community or nation – that was assailed by the <br />nations of European stock and survived! The Asantes held the British <br />at bay over seven debilitating wars but finally succumbed in 1900. <br />Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was cut down in five years of assault by the <br />nations of European stock; his economy then overwhelmingly dependent <br />on cocoa exports, collapsed dramatically when an artificial credit <br />crunch was induced in Ghana by the West via the deliberate <br />manipulation of the world cocoa price which fell calamitously from a <br />high of £480 a ton in the early 1960s to an incredible £60 a ton by <br />1965. In 1999, 33 years after Nkrumah’s overthrow, the British <br />daily, The Times, admitted in a leader comment that ‘Nkrumah was <br />brought low by the cocoa price’. “Patrice Lumumba fared even worse <br />in Congo; he was gone within seven months of independence, his <br />Belgian killers cutting up his body as a butcher does beef, and <br />dousing it in a barrel of acid to obliterate the evidence. <br /><br />Today, the descendants of the same people come to us as preachers of <br />human rights, democracy and good governance. May the Good Lord help <br />them to see beyond their feeding spoons! Yes, just look around you, <br />in Africa’s pre- and post-independence history, every one of our <br />leaders who was disliked by the nations of European stock was cut <br />down and overthrown… And behaving to type, for the past 10 years … <br />President Mugabe has been under a continuous assault by the nations <br />of European stock. And as they did to Nkrumah’s Ghana, they have <br />deliberately engineered an artificial credit crunch in Zimbabwe, <br />cutting the country off from the international financial system for <br />8 years now, and thereby inducing an economic implosion and an <br />inflation rate the likes of which have never been seen since the bad <br />days of Germany between 1914 and 1923. <br /><br />“And yet, at issue in Zimbabwe is a just cause – the land issue. I <br />have gone back to my scrapbook to find this entry for Charles <br />Powell, Mrs Thatcher’s long-time foreign policy advisor who, while <br />at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1979, was instrumental in <br />the Zimbabwe independence negotiations at Lancaster House. Talking <br />about Zimbabwe’s land issue in an interview with David Dimbleby for <br />a BBC1 documentary broadcast on 24 June 2000, Powell said on camera: <br />‘We tackled it really from the point of view of the Rhodesian <br />regime, not the future of Zimbabwe. The real concern at the <br />beginning was to offer guarantees, assurances, protection, to the <br />white farmers.’ “All told, with high inflation, an economy on its <br />knees, and an electorate justifiably voting with their stomachs or <br />‘stoning the leadership’ as the late Robin Cook had warned would <br />happen, Mugabe was a ripe candidate for a big fall. But what do we <br />see – the man is still standing! Though wounded somewhat <br />politically, he has nonetheless become the very first black African <br />leader to be undefeated after 10 years of brutal assault by the <br />nations of European stock. Is it the beginning of the turning of the <br />tables?”<br /><br />Holman ahoy<br />Michael Holman has the answer: “It is time for Western governments <br />to admit defeat, swallow their pride, re-engage in Zimbabwe, and do <br />business with Robert Mugabe… [It is time] to acknowledge an <br />uncomfortable truth: Mr Mugabe has won the battle for Zimbabwe.” <br />Well, it calls for celebration, Mr Obama. The West is responsible <br />for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade! <br />If not, Holman could not implore the West “to admit defeat” – for <br />what? Lying in bed? No, Mr Obama, Mugabe could “not have won the <br />battle for Zimbabwe” without having been engaged on the battlefield <br />by the West. That war for regime change destroyed the Zimbabwean <br />economy!<br /><br />Today, Morgan Tsvangirai (Zimbabwe’s new prime minister), has been <br />telling anybody with ears to hear that inflation has been brought <br />down from a stultifying 500 billion per cent to 3 per cent in four <br />months. Let’s ask ourselves: How does one reduce inflation from 500 <br />billion per cent to 3 per cent in four months? This can only be done <br />by the son of God, and for all we know Tsvangirai & Co are no sons <br />of God. Whatever they say, the truth (which some of us have been <br />writing about for the past 8 years) is that much of what has <br />happened in Zimbabwe since 2000 has been artificial and once you <br />remove that artificiality, everything comes back to normal – just <br />like that! It is not magic. It is common sense. Just imagine Gordon <br />Brown’s government in the UK, which has borrowed to its eyelids, <br />being barred from borrowing any more money, Britain would go to pot. <br />Imagine what the same policy will do to an African country dependent <br />on foreign assistance. <br /><br />On 7 July, Prof Welshman Ncube (a former opposition stalwart and now <br />Zimbabwe’s trade and commerce minister) admitted at a conference in <br />London that “the sanctions regime” in Zimbabwe goes beyond the <br />“travel bans and assets freeze” fed to the world by Western <br />governments and their media. “The “Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic <br />Recovery Act [passed by the US] is not about travel bans… Economic <br />sanctions were imposed even on industries some of which are under my <br />ministry,” Ncube said. One day, Mugabe, like Nkrumah, will be <br />rehabilitated and those of us who stood with him in the fight for <br />African ownership, dignity and pride will share in the honour of his <br />magnificent victory so theatrically pronounced by Michael Holman. I <br />may be lying in my grave by then, but take it from me, nobody will <br />be able to take the honour away from the man who “has won the battle <br />for Zimbabwe” in the teeth of stiff opposition from the West.Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-67401568409038262902009-08-12T07:44:00.000-07:002009-08-12T08:01:56.133-07:00Gabriel 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.<br /><br />However the Uncle Tom is <a href="http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/2009081223575/human-rights/zim-blood-diamond-campaign-endorses-call-for-zimbabwe-suspension.html">at his antics again</a>. 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.<br /><br />What a slave.Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-10056224597517116372009-08-12T02:40:00.000-07:002009-08-12T02:58:41.820-07:00Violet 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.<br /><br />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.Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-88460641385342022202009-08-06T16:49:00.000-07:002009-08-06T16:50:05.899-07:00A Handsome Investment Opportunity: Washington’s Plan for a Post-Mugabe ZimbabweA Handsome Investment Opportunity: Washington’s Plan for a Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe<br />Posted in Imperialism, Zimbabwe by gowans on July 21, 2009<br /><br />By Stephen Gowans<br /><br />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.<br /><br /> What is the Council on Foreign Relations? <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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,<br /><br /> “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]<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gavin’s Analysis<br /><br />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.” <br /><br />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,<br /><br /> “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]<br /><br />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]<br /><br />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]<br /><br />Two other aspects of Gavin’s comments on Zimbabwe’s economy must be addressed.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br /> “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.<br /><br /> “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.<br /><br /> “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]<br /><br />Zimbabwe: A handsome investment opportunity<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />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.<br /><br /> “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]<br /><br />Meanwhile, in the former Serb province of Kosovo, the<br /><br /> “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]<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Restoring private property rights<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />“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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /> “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]<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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<br /><br /> “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]<br /><br />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. <br /><br />Conclusion<br /><br />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. <br /><br />To guard against the United States realizing its plan to plunder their wealth, Zimbabweans should recognize that:<br /><br /> * 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.<br /> * 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.<br /> * 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.<br /> * 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.<br /> * 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.<br /><br />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<br />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<br />3. G. William Domhoff, “Who Rules America? Power and Politics, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Fourth Edition, 2002.<br />4. The Herald (Zimbabwe) May 5, 2009.<br />5. TalkZimbabwe.com, July 16, 2008.<br />6. The New York Times, July 26, 2008; The Washington Post, July 26, 2008; The Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe), July 27, 2008.<br />7. Gregory Elich, Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit, Llumina Press, 2006.<br />8. Elise Hugus, “Eight Years After NATO’s ‘Humanitarian War’: Serbia’s new ‘third way’”, Z Magazine, April 2007, Volume 20, Number 4.<br />9. Ibid.<br />10. Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, State University of New York Press, 2003.<br />11. Remarks by the President to the NAACP Centennial Convention, New York, July 17, 2009.<br />12. Ibid.<br />13. Albert J. Szymanski and Ted George Goertzel, Sociology: Class, Consciousness, and Contradictions, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1979.Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-17704476357312198662009-07-14T04:54:00.000-07:002009-07-14T04:56:08.190-07:00Violet Gonda at it again: Blow jobbing white farmers<blockquote><span style="font-weight:bold;">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?<br /><br />This sister is a fool. </span></blockquote><br /><br />Broadcast: July 10, 2009<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />VG: On the issue of your status, I am presuming that you have dual citizenship, an American citizenship and a Zimbabwean citizenship?<br /><br />AC: Well when I put in the initial application I was still a permanent resident in the US, I have subsequently become a citizen.<br />VG: But in Zimbabwe, dual citizenship is not allowed.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />VG: John, what are your thoughts on this?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br />VG: John do you agree that land redistribution was long overdue?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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%.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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…<br /><br />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?<br /><br />AC: No to be honest with you like I said I did not expect an allocation of a farm that was functioning…<br /><br />VG: But that’s how it’s been like.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-74759136293949116542009-07-06T04:26:00.001-07:002009-07-06T04:26:53.639-07:00Benn slams UK hypocrisy on ZimbabweBenn slams UK hypocrisy on Zim<br />by: <br /><br />BRITAIN has no right to lecture Zimbabwe on democracy because of a shameful colonial legacy, veteran Labour Party politician Tony Benn has said.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />He said: “I learnt to fly in what’s now Zimbabwe. When I was there, there was no democracy at all.<br /><br />“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!”<br /><br />Benn said his heroes were “great model leaders” Mandela, Ghandi and Tutu, “none of them European and none of them white”.<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.”<br />Story from : NEWZIMBABWE.COM NEWS:<br />Published On: Monday, July 06, 2009 11:00 AM GMT<br />http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news/news.aspx?newsID=564<br />© New Zimbabwe NewsZimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-60606727968423822412009-07-05T03:22:00.000-07:002009-07-05T03:23:41.780-07:00UK Policy on Zimbabwe (2002 document)Page 1<br />1<br />UK POLICY ON ZIMBABWE<br />1. Introduction<br />Since coming to power in 1997, the UK Government under Anthony Blair has<br />pursued the following policy objectives in its relations with Zimbabwe and the<br />ZANU (PF) Government under President Robert Gabriel Mugabe:<br />• to destabilize and derail the Government’s land reform programme to give<br />white farmers extended monopoly over Zimbabwe’s most fertile arable land;<br />• to perpetuate the marginalisation of the black African majority in rural areas to<br />form a huge reserve for cheap agricultural labour;<br />• to remove ZANU (PF) and President Mugabe from power and replace them<br />with the more pliant and directionless MDC and its president, Morgan<br />Tsvangirai;<br />• to use coercive diplomacy in the EU, the Commonwealth, and the United<br />States to conscript them to impose declared and undeclared sanctions on the<br />Government and people of Zimbabwe;<br />• to manipulate the IMF, the World Bank and other financial institutions to<br />withdraw loans and balance of payment support to Zimbabwe to cripple its<br />economy and generate widespread domestic discontent and disillusionment<br />against the ZANU (PF) Government and President Robert Gabriel Mugabe;<br />• to stunt the growth of genuine democracy, the rule of law and people–<br />empowerment as a means to create a human rights and governance crisis in<br />Zimbabwe and the isolation of the Zimbabwe Government internationally;<br />• to employ its immense print and electronic media out–reach to lie about and<br />demonise Zimbabwe to incite international hostility against the Government;<br />and<br />• to fund non–governmental organisations to arouse and incite internal<br />domestic upheavals to make Zimbabwe ungovernable.<br />Over the same period, the Zimbabwe Government under ZANU (PF) and<br />President Robert Mugabe has pursued the following policy objectives in its<br />relations with the United Kingdom:<br />• to draw to the UK Government’s attention its obligations to fund the land<br />reform programme and to compensate white farmers whose land Government<br />would acquire for redistribution to the landless black Africans, as agreed<br />Page 2<br />2<br />during the Lancaster House Conference on the Independence of Zimbabwe in<br />1979;<br />• to convince the UK Government that the redistribution of land to the landless<br />black Africans was a bilateral agenda between the UK and Zimbabwe and<br />should be undertaken as such, with the international community having to get<br />involved only at the joint invitation by the UK and Zimbabwe governments;<br />• to convince the UK Government that the redistribution of land to the landless<br />black Africans could not be delayed beyond 2000 and that any delay would<br />see the landless peasants taking the law into their own hands through<br />spontaneous land occupations and the eviction of white farmers from the<br />land; and<br />• to convince the UK Government that the Zimbabwe Government is committed<br />to democracy, non–racism and social justice, noting that the struggle for the<br />independence of Zimbabwe sought to establish these values in Zimbabwe.<br />In pursuit of these objectives, the Zimbabwe Government has maintained its<br />appeal to the United Kingdom Government to relate to Zimbabwe more<br />constructively by:<br />• entering into direct bilateral dialogue on all outstanding aspects of the land<br />redistribution process, and especially:<br />(a) the payment of compensation to white farmers whose land has been<br />acquired for resettlement;<br />(b) the rehabilitation of former farm workers rendered jobless and food<br />insecure by the land resettlement programme;<br />(c) the extension of start – up support and provision of continuous back – up<br />support to the new black farmers;<br />(d) the provision of infrastructure, especially roads, clinics, schools and<br />marketing facilities in newly settled areas; and<br />(e) the extension of continuous humanitarian assistance especially to<br />cushion the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.<br />Zimbabwe has repeatedly called upon the UK Government to discontinue its<br />covert and overt actions to cause change of Government in Zimbabwe,<br />especially because both the Parliament and President of Zimbabwe were put into<br />office by the choice of the majority and through sound democratic processes.<br />That the MDC’s president, Morgan Tsvangirai, lost the March 2002 Presidential<br />Elections should be accepted without pique, or vengeance because it was the<br />result of the people’s choice expressed in a free and non-coercive manner<br />Page 3<br />3<br />through a secure ballot. The majority of external governmental and non-<br />governmental election observers judged the Presidential Elections positively, with<br />the exception of those with the pre–meditated mission to find fault with them,<br />especially if Morgan Tsvangirai lost.<br />Contrary to the policy of the Zimbabwe Government to engage the Blair<br />Government, Blair’s policy on Zimbabwe has been openly hostile to the<br />Zimbabwe Government since 1997 when he came to power in the United<br />Kingdom.<br />In addition to disowning British obligations towards the redistribution of land as<br />agreed at Lancaster House in 1979, the Blair Government set upon a determined<br />course of action to cause a change of Government in Zimbabwe. With every<br />effort of the Government of Zimbabwe to remind him of his country’s obligations<br />to Zimbabwe under the Lancaster House Agreement, Prime Minister Blair’s<br />determination to remove President Mugabe became more and more vicious and<br />relentless.<br />We will illustrate the issues raised above in the remainder of this paper.<br />2. Blair and the Land Crisis in Zimbabwe<br />Contrary to the claim by Tony Blair’s government that Zimbabwe’s problems are<br />of its own making, it is very clear that Britain and particularly, Blair’s government,<br />is at the core of Zimbabwe’s economic and political crisis, either as a form of<br />vengeance over loss of colony or as a personal grudge against President Robert<br />Mugabe and his government or simply as a means to satisfy Britain’s desire to<br />have a trouble spot elsewhere in the world as a popularity gimmick to rally the<br />British electorate behind Blair. The Blair government has embarked on a massive<br />international diplomatic and media campaign to deny this allegation and blame<br />the crisis in the country on the Government’s land reform programme. Although it<br />has repeatedly claimed that it is not opposed to land reform in Zimbabwe, an<br />examination of the UK’s actions towards Zimbabwe since 1980 would reveal that<br />it has always been Britain’s policy to delay the land reform programme by<br />pursuing a gradualist approach which would maintain the status quo or take at<br />least 150 years to deliver land to the landless black majority.<br />The seeds of this gradualist approach were sown at the Lancaster House<br />Conference through the inclusion of the following conditions in the agreements<br />which brought about Zimbabwe’s independence:<br />• Land acquisition was to be on a willing–seller/willing-buyer basis during the<br />first ten years of independence. This provision, which was enshrined in the<br />Lancaster House Constitution, severely constrained the Government’s ability<br />to acquire land for resettlement purposes as farmers were either unwilling to<br />sell their land or asked for exorbitant prices.<br />Page 4<br />4<br />• The Government of Zimbabwe was to provide counterpart funds and match<br />British funding dollar for pound. Due to inadequate resources, the new<br />Government could not allocate enough resources from its meagre budget to<br />match British funding, resulting in only £26.5 million out of the £30 million<br />pledged by the British Government for land acquisition on a willing–<br />seller/willing-buyer basis being utilised. The balance of £3.5 was eventually<br />not disbursed after the programme hit a snag.<br />As part of this strategy, the British also sent a number of technical missions to<br />Zimbabwe, whose overt intention was to show British interest in the land reform<br />programme, when, in fact, the strategic objective was to complicate matters to<br />achieve the delay or derailment of the programme. A case in point was the 1988<br />Overseas’ Development Assistance (ODA) sponsored Land Resettlement in<br />Zimbabwe, Evaluation Report by J Cusworth and J Walker of Bradford<br />University in the UK, which concluded that the programme had a high economic<br />rate of return (12.5%) compared to other development programmes on the<br />continent and had benefited the rural poor. However, latching onto the mission’s<br />observation that the first phase of resettlement had “little or no impact on the<br />plight of the communal areas that still suffer from land degradation due to<br />population pressure”, a point the Government of Zimbabwe had also emphasised<br />in seeking additional funds to complete the land reform programme, the then<br />British Overseas Development Minister Lynda Chalker, wrote to the then<br />Zimbabwe Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development, the late Dr<br />Bernard Chidzero, in 1992 outlining her government’s proposals on reforming the<br />land reform programme.<br />A second ODA Land Appraisal Mission, comprising J Cusworth, M Adams, E<br />Cassidy, M Lowcock and F Tempest was dispatched to Zimbabwe in 1996 to<br />carryout further evaluation of the land reform programme. As in 1988, the<br />mission also concluded that the programme had benefited mostly the landless<br />rural poor.<br />A Zimbabwean delegation subsequently went to London in 1996 to present a<br />report on the institutional and other reforms that the Government had put in place<br />to improve the effectiveness of the land reform programme as suggested by<br />Lynda Chalker, but the report was not discussed as the British authorities<br />preferred to concentrate on a review of assistance policy and new<br />conditionalities. Lynda Chalker’s letter marked the end of donor funding for the<br />land reform programme and any funds disbursed afterwards were solely for the<br />purpose of completing on – going projects. Nevertheless, dialogue between the<br />two countries continued, but the Conservative Party was defeated in the 1997<br />general elections before concluding negotiations on new funding for the land<br />reform programme. By that time only 3, 5 million hectares had been acquired for<br />resettlement.<br />Page 5<br />5<br />With the coming into office of Tony Blair’s government following New Labour’s<br />election victory in 1997, the British Government cut off all meaningful dialogue<br />with Zimbabwe as it repudiated Britain’s colonial responsibility to fund land<br />reform in Zimbabwe as agreed at Lancaster House. In what was then described<br />by the Economist magazine as imperial amnesia, the new British Minister for<br />Development, Ms Claire Short, wrote to the then Minister of Lands, Agriculture<br />and Rural Resettlement of Zimbabwe, Honourable Kumbirai Kangai, stating her<br />Government’s policy as follows:<br />“I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special<br />responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a<br />new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former<br />colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were<br />colonised not colonisers.”<br />In its attempt to evade its colonial responsibility, the British Government has<br />sought to rewrite the Lancaster House agreement, declaring boldly in an undated<br />“Memorandum on Zimbabwe”:<br />“The UK Government accepts, and has always accepted, that land reform is<br />essential if Zimbabwe is to develop to the benefit of all its citizens. But it<br />has never accepted that the solution is to hand over large sums of money<br />to the Zimbabwe Government on an unconditional basis. We did not agree<br />this at Lancaster House in 1980 and we will not in future. We made clear<br />that funding for land reform was beyond the capacity of any single donor.”<br />This position was reiterated in a note verbale sent to Diplomatic Missions and<br />International Organisations accredited to Zimbabwe on 23 October 2002 saying:<br />“At the Lancaster House Conference in 1979, the British Government<br />outlined its support for land reform. Lord Carrington, then British Foreign<br />Secretary, drew attention to the fact that any serious land resettlement<br />programme would be beyond the scope of any one donor to fund. But the<br />British Government undertook to support the efforts of the Government of<br />Zimbabwe to obtain international assistance.”<br />British duplicity is best noticed and understood when it is recalled that the country<br />which publicly undertook to mobilize international assistance towards<br />Zimbabwe’s land reform programme is the same country which, at the same<br />time, is leading an international hate-campaign against Zimbabwe and its land<br />reform programme.<br />The Blair Government has been roundly criticised over its “imperial amnesia” not<br />only by the Government of Zimbabwe but also by prominent British politicians<br />such as Lord Owen, Foreign Secretary under the Labour Government of Jim<br />Page 6<br />6<br />Callaghan (1977 – 1999), who, in a newspaper article on 23 April 2000,<br />unequivocally stated:<br />“The last Labour Government in 1977 under Jim Callaghan promised<br />substantial sums: £75 million pounds from Britain and US$520 million from<br />the United States”.<br />Similarly, Lord Peter Carrington, former British Foreign Secretary, who brokered<br />the Lancaster House Agreement, has called on the UK government to meet its<br />promises in helping to pay for land resettlement and agricultural reform.<br />Carrington told SABC news on 29 October 2002 that the programme was started<br />in good faith – but was halted amid suspicions over how the funds were used,<br />adding:<br />“There was a disproportionate amount of good arable land in the hands of<br />the white farmers and what was proposed was that we should help not pay<br />entirely but help out with compensation for those farmers. And the<br />Americans incidentally said they would do the same thing. And this went<br />all right, I mean we did help for some time.”<br />In spite of the suspicions in White Hall that land reform was benefiting “Mugabe’s<br />cronies,” Carrington, a member of the British House of Lords and the Zimbabwe<br />Democracy Trust, an organisation formed in April 2000 to fuel dissent in<br />Zimbabwe, said that the payments should go ahead, but directly to farmers<br />whose land has been acquired for resettlement.<br />“You could help them in some way, and we always envisioned spending<br />the money in this way and it seemed to me sensible to do so. But I got a<br />very wintry answer from the government about this, and I am wondering<br />what else I can do”, he said.<br />Criticism of the British policy of meddling itself in the land reform programme in<br />Zimbabwe has also come from an unlikely quarter, Commercial Farmers Union<br />Director David Hasluck, who recently lashed out at the British government for<br />approaching the land question in Zimbabwe without regard to the country’s<br />history and British commitments made at Lancaster House.<br />For its part, the Government of Zimbabwe was taken aback by the new British<br />position as it repudiated the cornerstone of the Lancaster House Agreement and<br />effectively removed any prospects of resuming co-operation on the basis of that<br />agreement. However, the Government of Zimbabwe accepted this reality and<br />following a meeting in Brussels between His Excellency President Robert<br />Mugabe and the then European Commissioner for Development, Professor Joao<br />de Deus Pinheiro in January 1998, decided to appeal to the international<br />community for assistance through an International Land Donors’ Conference that<br />was held in Harare from 9–11 September 1998. The Donors’ Conference agreed<br />Page 7<br />7<br />on basic principles for international assistance to the land reform programme and<br />set up a task force of major donors to prepare documents for a two-year<br />Inception Phase, which would kick-off Phase II of a donor supported land<br />acquisition and resettlement programme. Although the UK, whose reluctance to<br />join the other donors had been evident throughout the conference, refused to join<br />this task force, it exerted a negative influence on the other donors by proposing<br />that a consulting firm be appointed to do an economic returns analysis of the<br />programme to date and assess how far it alleviated poverty among the chronic<br />poor in Zimbabwe, thus effectively killing the Inception Phase in its tracks. As a<br />result, nothing was achieved, not even the purchase of the 118 farms then on<br />offer.<br />Having failed to secure donor funding for the land reform programme as a result<br />of these British machinations at the Land Donors’ Conference and being keenly<br />aware of the growing impatience and land hunger among the landless black<br />majority, the Parliament of Zimbabwe on 6 April 2000 amended the Constitution<br />of Zimbabwe to empower the Government to compulsorily acquire land for<br />resettlement purposes and absolve it of any responsibility for paying<br />compensation for land acquired for this purpose. The Constitutional amendment<br />placed responsibility for compensating farmers whose land would be acquired for<br />resettlement on the British Government, while the Government of Zimbabwe<br />would only be required to pay for improvements on the land. This prompted the<br />Blair Government, for the first time, to invite Zimbabwe to send a team to London<br />to discuss funding for the land reform programme following a meeting in Cairo<br />between His Excellency President Mugabe and then British Foreign Secretary<br />Robin Cook brokered by President Obasanjo of Nigeria.<br />However, no material progress was achieved at the London meeting as the<br />British Government refused to offer any funds for the land reform programme<br />beyond the £30 million pounds already offered to Zimbabwe in 1999 in the<br />country programme published by DFID, whose stringent conditionalities rendered<br />it totally inaccessible. £5 million already offered but still not distributed to non-<br />governmental organisations and civil societies in Zimbabwe was also thrown in to<br />bring the total to £36 million. The British Government stubbornly refused to move<br />forward and evaded the issue of Britain’s colonial responsibilities. In the end, the<br />Zimbabwean delegation left London with the conviction that the meeting had<br />been a stage-managed media circus designed by the British Government to play<br />to the British public, which had already been primed to expect a tough position.<br />The concluding statement issued on 27 April 2000 at the end of the meeting was<br />illustrative in this respect:<br />“The UK delegation reiterated its commitment to enhanced developmental<br />support for Zimbabwe, as set out in the DFID (Department for International<br />Development) Zimbabwe Country Strategy Paper. This could provide an<br />additional 36 million pounds over the next two years for the UK<br />Page 8<br />8<br />development programme in Zimbabwe provided the conditions are met for<br />moving to the high case scenario”.<br />Similarly, although Britain accepted the conclusion reached at Abuja on 6<br />September 2001 that land was at the core of the crisis in Zimbabwe and<br />undertook to make a significant financial contribution to the land reform<br />programme as well as encourage other donors to do the same, it has not fulfilled<br />this obligation. By contrast, the Government of Zimbabwe has already fulfilled all<br />its obligations arising from the Abuja meeting as evidenced by the lessening of<br />tensions within the country.<br />It is quite clear from the foregoing that it is an abiding objective of all British<br />Governments to delay the land reform programme in Zimbabwe. Delayed access<br />to land by the indigenous African majority would guarantee the continued<br />occupation of Zimbabwean land by Anglo-Saxons in Britain, and elsewhere in the<br />Anglo-Saxon diaspora.<br />It had always been hoped that with increasing population growth in rural areas,<br />more and more Africans would drift into commercial farmland as cheap labour.<br />The so-often repeated success and profitability of Zimbabwean commercial<br />agriculture was principally the result of African cheap labour. Most farm workers<br />were paid in salt, beans and mealie meal, with no cash left for them to send their<br />children to school, nor to clinics and hospitals for treatment.<br />The impoverishment of indigenous Africans became an abiding strategy of all<br />white colonial settler regimes who wanted to exploit African poverty and<br />backwardness to augment their profits and comfort.<br />No wonder agricultural production rose to such a flowery level, turning the<br />country into a bread basket for the entire region. It is therefore, primarily because<br />of profit considerations that the British are bitterly opposed to the land reform<br />programme as it would empower the majority of the people and reduce the<br />supply of cheap labour and by extension, the profits of white farmers.<br />3. Blair’s Pursuit of “Regime Change” in Zimbabwe<br />The coming into office of Tony Blair’s government in 1997 coincided with the<br />Government of Zimbabwe’s twin decisions to legally compulsorily acquire 1800<br />white owned farms for the resettlement of landless peasants and to send troops<br />to the DRC. This provoked the wrath of the British Government which had<br />encouraged Rwanda and Uganda to invade the DRC. The best minds were<br />assigned to come up with an effective strategy to cripple Zimbabwe’s economy<br />as well as bring down its Government. The policy framework of such a strategy<br />was well articulated by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw during a debate in the<br />House of Commons on 8 January 2002 when he said:<br />Page 9<br />9<br />“Our approach has been to internationalise the issue, while taking a firm<br />lead within all the international forums in which we speak. That is why the<br />General Affairs Council – the Foreign Affairs Council – of the European<br />Union is in train to take firm action on this; why I called a meeting of<br />Commonwealth Ministers for 20 December; why I have spelled out to the<br />House that if the situation in Zimbabwe continues to disintegrate we will<br />argue for Zimbabwe’s suspension from the Commonwealth.”<br />The Foreign Secretary added exasperatedly during the same debate:<br />“I repeat that I have been trying to ensure that Zimbabwe, not Britain, is<br />isolated for the terrible actions that President Mugabe and his henchmen<br />are taking. That has received the approbation of many Conservative Back<br />Benchers, as well as Labour Members. --- One of my key aims has been to<br />ensure that the issue ceases to be a bilateral one and is made an issue of<br />shared concern by the international community.”<br />The EU was immediately prevailed upon to commission a study on Zimbabwe in<br />1998 by the Conflict Prevention Network, a network of academic institutions, non-<br />governmental organisations and “independent experts”, which is part of the<br />European Union Analysis and Evaluation Centre. The CPN report entitled<br />“Zimbabwe – A Conflict Study of A Country Without Direction” was duly<br />presented to the EU’s Africa Working Group in December 1998 for use in making<br />recommendations on Zimbabwe. Of note was the EU report’s recommendation<br />that for things to go “right” in Zimbabwe, President Mugabe must go. This could<br />be done through civil society, notably the trade union movement or NGOs,<br />through organised urban uprisings, the implied possibility of discontent in the<br />armed forces, the exploitation of perceived rifts in the ruling ZANU (PF), and the<br />transformation of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions into a political party.<br />The prediction was that President Mugabe would not last till the 2002<br />Presidential Elections. The EU report singled out the land reform programme and<br />Zimbabwe’s involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo for special<br />mention as prime pretexts for their hostility towards Zimbabwe.<br />In the UK itself, the EU report’s recommendation to topple President Mugabe<br />was carried forward at Chatham House during a meeting of the Royal Institute of<br />International Affairs on 24 January 1999, whose theme was “Zimbabwe – Time<br />for Mugabe to Go?.” The meeting considered a number of options for achieving<br />this objective, including masterminding a military coup, upheavals in the streets<br />and manoeuvres within the ruling party, ZANU (PF). The Chatham House<br />meeting identified “confiscating” white – owned land and sending troops to the<br />DRC as underlying excuses for their attacks on the Zimbabwe Government. A<br />similar meeting held at the US State Department on 23 March 1999, obviously at<br />the instigation of the British, also deliberated on ways of removing President<br />Mugabe from power. The US State Department meeting resolved that the best<br />way for achieving this would be to work through NGOs, find ways to divide the<br />Page 10<br />10<br />Shonas and Ndebeles, probe the ruling party for weak spots with a view to<br />subverting it, and generally make Zimbabwe ungovernable. The conveners of the<br />US State Department meeting emphasised Zimbabwe’s presence in the DRC as<br />a problematic issue.<br />Other prominent personalities in the UK and the US with substantial economic<br />interests in Zimbabwe and ties to the Ian Smith’s racist Rhodesian regime,<br />stepped forward to implement these scenarios for “regime change” arising from<br />the recommendations of the EU report. Most notable among them are the<br />members of the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, who include four former British<br />Foreign Secretaries – Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Lord Douglas Hurd, Lord Peter<br />Carrington and Lord Geoffrey Howe as well as a former US Assistant Secretary<br />of State, Dr Chester Crocker. Other members are Sir John Collins, Lord Steel of<br />Aikwood, Lord Taylor of Warwick and Lady Soames. The primary mover in the<br />organisation is reputed to be Sir John Collins, the Zimbabwean Chairman of<br />National Power, the largest British energy company, which also has substantial<br />investments in Zimbabwe. Rifkind is involved with an Australian company which<br />has mining interests in Zimbabwe, while Chester Crocker sits on the Board of<br />Directors of Ashanti Goldfields, which owns gold mines in Zimbabwe. The<br />Zimbabwe Democracy Trust fostered the birth of the opposition MDC under the<br />pretext of promoting democracy and has orchestrated a well-funded advocacy for<br />that party through the private and international media with the intention of<br />demonising ZANU (PF) and undermining land reform in Zimbabwe.<br />For its part, the British government has not disguised its designs in Zimbabwe as<br />demonstrated by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s declaration during a question<br />and answer session in the House of Commons on 25 June 2002 that:<br />“What I would like to happen is very clear. I would like President Mugabe to<br />recognise the error of his ways and the disaster into which he has plunged<br />Zimbabwe. I would like him to leave office, allow elections to take place<br />immediately, stop interfering with humanitarian relief, get the farmers,<br />whether they are white, Indian or black, back on to the land ---- I am asked<br />how that would happen, but that is the point. I say to Opposition Members<br />that the issue for the international community is how we do this. That is the<br />truth of it.”<br />These sentiments were echoed by Tony Cunningham, MP for Workington, who<br />said during the same question and answer session:<br />“I am sure we would all agree that the sooner he (President Mugabe) goes,<br />the better, not just for Zimbabwe, but for the entire region.”<br />In pursuit of this objective therefore, the British government has exerted its<br />immense diplomatic and economic clout as well as control of global media to<br />demonise President Robert Mugabe, isolate Zimbabwe internationally and deny<br />Page 11<br />11<br />the country access to vital international financial support. First to be targeted at<br />the diplomatic level was the European Union, for the obvious reason that<br />members are required to act in concert on foreign policy matters under the<br />provisions of the Maastricht Treaty, the founding charter of the European Union,<br />thus forcing countries such as Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and<br />Spain, which have no quarrel with Zimbabwe, to support the British position.<br />Furthermore, the Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and its<br />former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP), though not yet<br />ratified by the majority of European Union countries, would give the EU<br />considerable leverage over Zimbabwe. The British government has achieved<br />some notable success on the Maastricht Treaty track, as evidenced by the EU’s<br />imposition of so – called “targeted sanctions” on Zimbabwe on 18 February 2002,<br />while its machinations on the Cotonou Agreement track were thwarted by the<br />Southern Africa group, which twice mobilised ACP countries to resist attempts by<br />British members of the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly to sponsor<br />condemnatory resolutions on Zimbabwe in March 2000 (Abuja) and October<br />2000 (Brussels). Most recently, the fifth ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary session,<br />which was scheduled to be held in Brussels on 25 November 2002, was<br />abandoned after ACP countries resisted attempts to prevent Zimbabwean<br />ministers from attending the meeting, despite threats by the head of the EU<br />parliamentary delegation, Glenys Kinnock, to withdraw development aid. This<br />setback on the Cotonou track notwithstanding, Jack Straw could, however,<br />assure the House of Commons during the question and answer session on 25<br />June 2002 that:<br />“The sanctions that I was able to ensure that the European Union imposed<br />in February are stronger and more extensive …”<br />In what was widely perceived as a racist onslaught on a black country by white<br />supremacists, the British government, with support from Australia, Canada and<br />New Zealand, also took its relentless campaign to isolate Zimbabwe to the<br />Commonwealth, with then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook falsely claiming in<br />February 2001 that he had agreed with Commonwealth Secretary General Don<br />McKinnon to place Zimbabwe on the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group’s<br />agenda, even though that body did not have the mandate to discuss the situation<br />in the country. CMAG was eventually prevailed upon to illegally discuss<br />Zimbabwe at its meeting in London on 30 January 2002 but rejected demands by<br />the UK and its allies to have Zimbabwe suspended from the Commonwealth.<br />Having failed to secure a suspension, Tony Blair took his campaign to the<br />Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that was held at Coolum,<br />Australia from 1 – 4 March 2002. But tempers flared at Coolum over attempts by<br />the UK and its allies to prejudge the 9 – 10 March Presidential poll before it was<br />even held, with President Thabo Mbeki declaring that:<br />Page 12<br />12<br />“-- those inspired by notions of white supremacy are free to depart (leave<br />the Commonwealth) if they feel that membership of the association<br />reduces them to a repugnant position imposed by inferior blacks.”<br />He added that the outcry against the Commonwealth decision to set up a troika<br />to decide on how to deal with Zimbabwe after the election:<br />“-- reflected a stubborn and arrogant mindset at all times that the white<br />world must lead.”<br />A livid Tony Blair immediately broke with convention by distancing himself from<br />the customary end–of–summit consensus and attacked the 54–nation<br />organisation for postponing a decision on sanctions, saying he hoped the<br />Commonwealth would eventually:<br />“-- do the right thing. If it does not, its credibility is at issue; if it does not<br />act in circumstances where it is plain that a member country has held an<br />election which has not been fair.”<br />In a final broadside at African countries, which had stood by Zimbabwe, Tony<br />Blair told reporters before his departure from Coolum that:<br />“If there is any sense in which African countries appear to be ambivalent<br />towards good governance – that is the one thing that will undermine the<br />confidence of the western world in helping them. The credibility of my<br />country, investment in my country, doesn’t depend on Zimbabwe. But for<br />Africa it is a major issue, on which their credibility and the possibility of<br />investment flows depend. --- There are no half measures about democracy.<br />It is for Africa that if countries are not behaving democratically --- that we<br />are seen to act.”<br />This theme was picked up by a number of speakers in the House of Lords on 6<br />March 2002 after Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted in an address to the House<br />of Commons on the same day that he had failed to secure Zimbabwe’s<br />suspension at Coolum. Drawing heavily on claims by US Assistant Secretary of<br />State, Walter Kansteiner that:<br />“The road to NEPAD lies through Harare,”<br />several speakers called for strong linkages between support for NEPAD and firm<br />action on Zimbabwe. Most striking in this respect were the remarks by Lord Astor<br />of Hever who said:<br />“We must now make it clear that the kind of aid anticipated by NEPAD is<br />dependent on recipient governments demonstrating a return to good<br />governance and an acceptance of the will of democracy. --- It is imperative<br />Page 13<br />13<br />that we send the strongest possible message to the SADC countries that<br />they should take action against the man who threatens to plunge the entire<br />region into a catastrophic economic and political meltdown. All democratic<br />nations have a responsibility to try and preserve democracy wherever it is<br />threatened.”<br />The message was not lost on the primary sponsors of NEPAD, Presidents Mbeki<br />and Obasanjo, who, in spite of the endorsement of the outcome of the<br />Presidential elections by the official observer missions from their own countries,<br />voted to suspend Zimbabwe from the councils of the Commonwealth for a period<br />of twelve months, paving the way for an ecstatic Jack Straw to declare in the<br />House of Commons on 25 June 2002 that:<br />“One of the many things that we have done is to secure a situation<br />whereby the decision on the suspension of Zimbabwe from the councils of<br />the Commonwealth was taken not by us, not by the Commonwealth<br />Ministerial Action Group, of which the United Kingdom is a member, but by<br />a troika of the current chair of the Commonwealth, Prime Minister Howard<br />of Australia, and two key members – President Obasanjo of Nigeria and<br />President Mbeki of South Africa. It is hugely to their credit that they made<br />the decision that they did once the Commonwealth observers found that<br />the elections were not free and fair.”<br />Having secured the isolation of Zimbabwe in the West, the UK government<br />turned its attention to attacking Zimbabwe’s economy with the intention of<br />creating political instability in the country. To achieve this objective, the UK<br />enlisted the support of the United States, with which it enjoys a “special<br />transatlantic relationship,” in denying Zimbabwe access to international lines of<br />credit. The Bush Administration obliged by signing the Zimbabwe Democracy<br />and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 into law on 21 December 2001, which<br />among other things, instructed American officials in international financial<br />institutions to:<br />“oppose and vote against any extension by the respective institution of any<br />loan, credit, or guarantee to the government of Zimbabwe ---- and to vote<br />against any reduction or cancellation of indebtedness owed by the<br />Government of Zimbabwe.”<br />The Act also authorised President Bush to:<br />“fund an independent and free press and electronic media in Zimbabwe.”<br />US$6 million was subsequently granted for aid to “democracy and governance<br />programmes,” a euphemism for groups seeking to topple the Government of<br />Zimbabwe. Also acting in terms of the same law, the Bush Administration on 22<br />February 2002 imposed “targeted sanctions” on senior government, ZANU (PF),<br />Page 14<br />14<br />business and church leaders following the imposition of similar sanctions by the<br />European Union on 18 February 2002.<br />The impact of the US policy of “opposing any extension of loans, credit or<br />guarantees to Zimbabwe” by international financial institutions was immediately<br />evident as the International Monetary Fund, which on 24 September 2001 had<br />declared Zimbabwe ineligible to use the general resources of the IMF and<br />removed Zimbabwe from the list of countries eligible to borrow resources under<br />the Fund’s Poverty and Growth Facility over non–payment of US$53 million in<br />debt service payments, followed this up with a declaration of non–cooperation<br />and suspension of technical assistance to Zimbabwe on 13 June 2002. The<br />IMF’s declaration of non–cooperation was intended to discourage lending by<br />other financial institutions, putting additional pressure on Zimbabwe’s economy.<br />Due to the decline in foreign trade and the denial of credit, unemployment in<br />Zimbabwe rose to 70 percent, while three fourths of the population were<br />classified as poor.<br />A relentless campaign of negative publicity against Zimbabwe mounted at the<br />same time the British government embarked on its diplomatic campaign to isolate<br />Zimbabwe internationally also created perceptions of instability, which scared<br />away investors and led to capital flight from Zimbabwe. Foreign direct investment<br />in the country slumped from a peak of US$426 million in 1998 to US$5, 4 million<br />in 2001 as investors fled from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. A number of<br />company closures in the last two years are suspected to have been motivated<br />primarily by political considerations, not unfavourable macro economic<br />conditions. Similarly, the many travel advisories issued by western Embassies in<br />Harare warning citizens not to travel to Zimbabwe also served the same purpose<br />of denying Zimbabwe access to foreign currency. This policy is set to continue for<br />the foreseeable future following Jack Straw’s assurances to British<br />parliamentarians on 14 March 2002 that:<br />“But I can tell the House today that we will continue to oppose any access<br />by Zimbabwe to international financial resources until a more<br />representative government is in place.”<br />In the mean time, the crippling foreign currency shortage has made it difficult for<br />Zimbabwe to service loan repayments, leading to the withdrawal of international<br />credit facilities for the importation of fuel, electricity as well as capital and<br />commercial goods. This has led to stunted industrial activity, low exports, high<br />interest rates, high inflation, company closures, massive lay-offs and a crippling<br />brain drain, which are intended to arouse discontent against the Government and<br />political polarisation within Zimbabwe.<br />While the British government likes to blame President Mugabe for the worsening<br />economic situation in the country, it is nevertheless quick to assume credit for<br />creating this situation. For example, in a spirited response to shadow Foreign<br />Page 15<br />15<br />Secretary Michael Ancram’s allegations in the House of Commons on 25 June<br />2002 that sanctions were not working, Jack Straw had this to say:<br />“A year ago, President Mugabe expected to be treated, and was treated in<br />capitals around the world, as a legitimate head of state. Today, he is<br />condemned by the Commonwealth, the European Union and the United<br />States. He is increasingly shunned by other African governments and has<br />been declared by the International Monetary Fund to be in non–cooperation<br />and subject to sanctions and suspensions. That international consensus<br />has come about not least as a result of the painstaking diplomatic activity<br />of the British Government.”<br />Having created the conditions for disaffection and political instability in<br />Zimbabwe, the British government now intervened directly in the internal affairs<br />of the country with the intention of subverting its democratic processes. Working<br />through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, an organisation that<br />receives 95% of its funding from the British government and whose board of<br />governors includes representatives from each of the three major political parties<br />in the UK, the British government clandestinely poured substantial amounts of<br />money into the opposition MDC for use in a combination of violent campaigning,<br />bribery and smear tactics against the legitimate government of Zimbabwe. At the<br />behest of the Blair regime, the Foundation financed sorties into Zimbabwe by<br />operatives, organised seminars and assisted in designing and printing political<br />party cards for the MDC. Some of the Foundation’s “projects”, a euphemism for<br />subversive activities, were brazenly published on its website www.wfd.org. The<br />website was subsequently cleaned up after the Government of Zimbabwe<br />presented the material to the international community as evidence of British<br />interference in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe. However, the following entries<br />remain indelibly etched in the minds of many Zimbabweans:<br />Zimbabwe: DOA Further Assistance to Oversee Election Organisation: £13<br />876.00 to fund the Conservative Party to provide the opposition to Robert<br />Mugabe, in Zimbabwe, with support from like-minded democratic parties in<br />Africa;<br />Zimbabwe: Opposition Visit to UK: £4 460.00 to fund the Conservative Party<br />to provide assistance to the opposition forces in Zimbabwe ahead of<br />presidential and other elections by bringing to the UK leaders of two<br />opposition parties for briefings; £4 980.00 to provide assistance to<br />opposition forces in Zimbabwe ahead of presidential and other elections by<br />bringing to the UK key leaders of the movements for briefings on the<br />promotion of democratic change in Zimbabwe;<br />MDC Party Development: £30 000.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist the<br />MDC to consolidate party structures throughout the country;<br />Page 16<br />16<br />MDC Women Candidates: £5 263.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist the<br />MDC to produce campaign material specifically for women candidates and<br />voters in the run-up to the General Election in June 2000;<br />MDC Purchase of Photocopier: £4 375.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist<br />the MDC in Zimbabwe to purchase a photocopier to produce materials in<br />preparation for the elections in June 2000;<br />MDC Elections Assistance: £8 594.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist the<br />MDC to increase political awareness through the radio, in advance of the<br />elections in June 2000;<br />MDC Production of Leaflets: £18 750.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist<br />the MDC to produce leaflets in preparation for the election in June 2000;<br />MDC Media Communications for Women: £7 018.00 to fund the Labour<br />Party to assist the MDC in targeting women voters through media<br />communications to encourage them to vote in the election due in June<br />2000;<br />Training of MDC Election Monitors: £19 982.00 to fund the Labour Party to<br />assist the MDC to train party representatives on election monitoring<br />techniques for the June 2000 elections;<br />Zimbabwe - Membership Cards for the MDC: £10 000.00 to fund the Labour<br />Party to assist the MDC to produce membership cards before their first<br />national conference in early 2000;<br />Training for MDC Election Monitors: £10 000.00 to fund the Liberal<br />Democrats to assist the MDC to train party representatives on election<br />monitoring techniques for the General Election due in June 2000;<br />Training for MDC Election Monitors: £10 000.00 to fund the Labour Party to<br />provide further assistance to the MDC in a project part-funded with the UK<br />Liberal Democrats to continue to train MDC party representatives in<br />election monitoring techniques for the June 2000 elections;<br />Support for Youth and Women’s Chairpersons of MDC: £12 600.00 to<br />provide salary support through the Liberal Democrats for the Youth and<br />Women’s chairpersons for the MDC in Zimbabwe in 2001;<br />MDC Voter Registration and Women’s Outreach: £12 300.00 to fund the<br />Conservative Party to assist the MDC for voter registration by providing a<br />full-time co-ordinator and also facilitating a women’s outreach programme<br />in advance of the Presidential election;<br />Page 17<br />17<br />MDC Provincial Workshops: £10 625.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist<br />the MDC to organize workshops on election strategy in preparation for the<br />forthcoming Presidential elections starting from July 2001;<br />MDC Elections Assistance: £10 119.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist<br />the MDC to organize a women’s and youth conference in 2001 in the run-up<br />to the Presidential election;<br />MDC Production of Materials: £12 649.00 to fund the Labour Party to assist<br />the MDC to produce materials in preparation for the Presidential election.<br />The Westminster Foundation for Democracy also funded NGOs such as the<br />Foundation for Democracy in Zimbabwe, (FODEZI), which received £3000.00<br />to carry out a range of activities, including voter education, radio and TV<br />programmes, training seminars for young potential political leaders and<br />public meetings, and ZimRights, which received £10 000.00 towards the<br />purchase of offices, and £110 368.00 to support its activities for the period<br />1997-1999.<br />The British government has also masterminded the formation and funding of<br />subversive organisations such as the Amani Trust, and provided financial<br />support, through European Union channels, to numerous other “non –<br />governmental organisations” whose sole purpose appears to be to agitate for the<br />unconstitutional overthrow of President Mugabe through the abuse of<br />humanitarian assistance. These organisations have already sowed discord in<br />communities where they are operating by distributing food aid on the basis of<br />political affiliation, as well as giving aid stocks to the opposition for distribution as<br />part of its campaign.<br />Again through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the British<br />Government sought to use the media to distort the democratic process in<br />Zimbabwe. £9 800.00 was provided to enable “Horizon” magazine (described<br />by WFD as an independent political journal) to gain full benefit from new<br />equipment, and £9 400.00 for the magazine to undertake a six - month<br />marketing campaign to increase its sales and revenue from advertising. A<br />further £13 999.00 was disbursed to purchase office equipment, cover a<br />percentage of overheads and pay the salary for a full-time business<br />manager during 1999.<br />When the premises of The Daily News, a British-funded opposition paper, were<br />bombed by unknown criminals, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy<br />disbursed £20 000.00 to cover the costs of sending two “experts” to Zimbabwe to<br />assess the damage. At that stage, the British High Commissioner openly<br />acknowledged “British interest” in the opposition newspaper.<br />Page 18<br />18<br />A “Media Reform Campaign” was also funded by the WFD to the tune of £5<br />000.00 to enable the Media Institute of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe to<br />produce a range of materials to be used in its media law reform campaign.<br />The materials were distributed in 2000, the year of the parliamentary elections.<br />In spite of this massive array of interventionist measures in support of the MDC,<br />the British government was still not confident about the MDC’s ability to remove<br />President Mugabe from power by legitimate means and sought to achieve that<br />outcome by trying to rig the March 2002 Presidential elections through<br />underhand tactics such as the foiled attempt to suspend Zimbabwe from the<br />Commonwealth at Coolum a few days before the elections; assertions by Tony<br />Blair at Coolum, which were later parroted by Prime Minister Helen Clark of New<br />Zealand, that the elections would only be judged to have been free and fair if the<br />MDC won; and sponsorship of fake opinion polls by the Financial Gazette just<br />before the elections, which predicted a “crushing defeat” for President Mugabe in<br />the elections. Earlier in February 2002, the British government’s media allies at<br />the National Post in Canada, had, in an editorial on 22 February 2002,<br />attempted to incite the Zimbabwean people to overthrow President Mugabe or<br />even kill him, saying:<br />“But Zimbabwe is not a totalitarian state such as North Korea: When it<br />becomes plain to almost all Zimbabweans that Mr Mugabe is at the root of<br />their problems, he will be overthrown or killed. Either outcome would<br />lessen the country’s miseries and open the door for the nation’s diplomatic<br />and economic rehabilitation.”<br />To vent their ire after the people of Zimbabwe resoundingly voted to retain<br />Robert Mugabe as President in a massive show of confidence in his land reform<br />policies, the British Government and its allies refused to recognise the outcome<br />of the elections and vowed to intensify their efforts to topple him from power. This<br />has seen the UK, which broke off diplomatic relations with Libya over the<br />Lockerbie bombing in 1988, making overtures to the Libyan government in order<br />to wreck the friendship between that country and Zimbabwe. The assessment<br />was that Libya would be prepared to dump Zimbabwe in exchange for<br />normalised relations with the West. A message was subsequently put out for the<br />obvious consumption of UK watchers in Tripoli when Jack Straw told the House<br />of Commons on 25 June 2002 that:<br />“Libya’s route back into the international community partly depends on its<br />showing a responsible attitude towards Zimbabwe and in respect of Sierra<br />Leone. We are aware of that, and it is a point that has repeatedly been<br />made to Libya in the dialogue that is taking place.”<br />Furthermore, junior Foreign Minister Mike O’Brien, in an apparent attempt to woo<br />Libya towards Britain’s campaign to dent Zimbabwe’s international image, raised<br />the ante when he told reporters in South Africa on 3 August 2002 that:<br />Page 19<br />19<br />“We have decided that Gaddafi no longer wants to be involved in<br />international terrorism. Gaddafi has condemned al – Qaeda and expressed<br />outrage over the September 11 attacks. We’ve been seeking to engage<br />Libya across a number of issues following a hard headed assessment of<br />Libya’s position. We hope Libya will engage seriously with the West and<br />indeed other countries --- and that will mean a country that has a fairly<br />large degree of influence in the Arab world and Africa will move away from<br />being a pariah state towards helping the international community and<br />preserving peace.”<br />In what is a logical step in the script to complete the international isolation of<br />Zimbabwe as well as consolidate and broaden declared and non–declared<br />sanctions already imposed by the EU, the US and white Commonwealth<br />countries, the British government has now shifted the focus of its attack to the<br />United Nations Security Council, where it recently demanded that Zimbabwe be<br />required to respond to the report of the UN Panel on the Illegal Plunder of DRC<br />Resources, the only country required to do so. The recent appeal by Morgan<br />Tsvangirai to the Security Council for UN intervention to stop “state sponsored<br />violence against the defenceless people of Zimbabwe” was obviously<br />orchestrated, at the instigation of the British government, to create justification for<br />making Zimbabwe a Security Council issue.<br />4. President Mugabe’s response to British hostility to the Land Reform<br />Programme<br />In spite of the intense British hostility to the land reform programme in Zimbabwe,<br />President Mugabe has remained resolute in his efforts to redistribute land to the<br />landless indigenous black majority and has eloquently and courageously told<br />Blair to end his government’s colonial policies on Zimbabwe and to mind his own<br />business and that of his country and keep his “pink nose out of our affairs”. He<br />has also maintained that Britain has a continuing obligation to pay compensation<br />to the white farmers whom successive British governments have encouraged to<br />forcibly occupy Zimbabwean land. In September 2002, he took Zimbabwe’s case<br />to the international community, telling delegates at the World Summit on<br />Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg that landlessness is at the<br />root of the endemic poverty and underdevelopment which black Zimbabweans<br />have endured through the full century of British occupation of their land. Judging<br />by the thunderous applause which punctuated his now famous speech at<br />Johannesburg, President Mugabe spoke for the poor, dispossessed and<br />downtrodden in all parts of the world and struck a resonant code in the hearts of<br />many Heads of State, business leaders and civic society groups attending the<br />WSSD, when he said that:<br />“ --- we in Zimbabwe understand only too well that sustainable<br />development is not possible without agrarian reforms that acknowledge in<br />Page 20<br />20<br />our case, that land comes first before all else, and that all else grows from<br />and off the land. This is the one asset that not only defines the<br />Zimbabwean personality and demarcates sovereignty but also an asset that<br />has a direct bearing on the fortunes of the poor and prospects for their<br />immediate empowerment and sustainable development. Indeed, ours is an<br />agrarian economy, an imperative that renders the issue of access to land<br />paramount. --- But we say this as Zimbabweans, we have fought for our<br />land. We have fought for our sovereignty. Small as we are, we have won<br />our independence and we are prepared to shed our blood in sustenance<br />and maintenance and protection of that independence. ---We don’t mind<br />having and bearing sanctions, banning us from Europe. We are not<br />Europeans. We have not asked for an inch of Europe, any square inch of<br />that territory. So Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe. ”<br />Through the Fast Track Land Reform Programme, President Mugabe and his<br />government have accorded the majority black Zimbabwean people’s grievances<br />the urgency they deserved and exposed the folly and futility of Britain’s gradualist<br />policies towards the eradication of poverty among his landless compatriots. As a<br />result, over 1.6 million people have benefited from the land reform programme<br />between July 2000 and August 2002, ending a century of landlessness and<br />poverty for the Zimbabwean people.<br />Having waged a bitter and protracted armed struggle to bring democracy to<br />Zimbabwe, President Mugabe and his government have relentlessly stuck to the<br />principle of democracy, facing the opposition five times in parliamentary elections<br />and twice in Presidential elections, which he and his party, ZANU (PF), won<br />convincingly. The people of Zimbabwe have hailed these elections as free and<br />fair, while the progressive world, including governments and civil societies, have<br />similarly hailed the elections as free, fair and legitimate and recognised the<br />verdict of the national electorate. At the same time, the international community<br />has applauded the fact that there is not a single political prisoner in Zimbabwe,<br />showing that Zimbabweans enjoy freedoms of speech and association.<br />President Mugabe and his government have also exposed the neo–colonial<br />agenda of the British government and warned the EU, the Commonwealth and<br />the United Nations not to join Britain’s attacks on Zimbabwe. Hence, he won the<br />sympathy and support of many nations, both big and small, when he appealed to<br />the 57<br />th<br />Session of the UN General Assembly to:<br />“ --- convey to Britain and especially to its current Prime Minister, Mr Tony<br />Blair, that Zimbabwe ceased to be a British colony in 1980 after Prince<br />Charles had gracefully lowered the British flag called the Union Jack. He<br />should also please be informed that the people of Zimbabwe waged an<br />armed revolutionary struggle for their independence and stand ready to<br />defend it in the same way. We want to be left in peace to carryout our just<br />reforms and developmental plans as we peacefully interact and cooperate<br />Page 21<br />21<br />with other countries within the region, the African continent and the<br />international community. We refuse to be an extension of Europe.”<br />Although the EU, the UN and white Commonwealth countries are quick to deny<br />that they are pursuing a British agenda in Zimbabwe, it is an undeniable fact that<br />the UK has been on a crusade to entice and conscript the EU and the<br />Commonwealth to take sides in its bilateral differences with Zimbabwe and has<br />succeeded in doing so. In several instances, Britain itself has taken no direct<br />actions on Zimbabwe, but by ruse and stratagem made the EU and the<br />Commonwealth fight it out with Zimbabwe using declared and undeclared<br />economic sanctions.<br />By leading the struggle for economic liberation on the side of black<br />Zimbabweans, President Mugabe has inspired the poor and dispossessed blacks<br />in Africa and the Diaspora to assume their individual and collective dignity and to<br />struggle continuously for economic emancipation, for their land rights and for<br />reparations against slavery and colonial subjugation. His call for just land reforms<br />in Zimbabwe has therefore, been echoed by the landless in Kenya, Namibia,<br />South Africa and among dispossessed indigenous communities in countries such<br />as Australia and Canada.<br />Leading a weakened small country, which refuses to bow down to international<br />pressure in the conviction that right is on its side, President Mugabe has assured<br />the weak nations of the world, especially those of Africa, the Caribbean and the<br />Pacific, that there can be equal sovereignty between big and small nations and<br />that principle, honesty and determination can be the bases of strength for leaders<br />of both small and big nations who respect human rights and human dignity and<br />subject themselves to international laws and conventions. President Mugabe and<br />his government have always and continue to subject themselves to the values,<br />conventions, protocols and resolutions of the United Nations, the African Union<br />and SADC and join them in condemning attempts of some countries to interfere<br />in the internal affairs of others, especially the actions of those who seek to<br />impose their will upon others through military processes.<br />And yet, President Mugabe is the leader and Zimbabwe is the country Mr Blair<br />and Britain want to demonise, and condemn. We urge the progressive<br />international community to see through all this British hypocrisy and duplicity and<br />relate with Zimbabwe in a mutually supportive way, and with respect.<br />MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS<br />12 December 2002Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-49591083715480056202009-07-03T17:29:00.001-07:002009-07-03T17:29:35.604-07:00China: When bullets begin to flowerChina: When bullets begin to flower<br /><br /><br /><br />When goodness triumphs to ring loudest across the veld, even the dead stir back to life.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />His claim that his Secretary-General, now Finance Minister in the Inclusive Government, Tendai Biti, negotiated the deal, rings fatuous and ridiculous.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />If anything, this claim confirms the tremors I refer to.<br /><br />But first things first.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />The trip was decidedly narrow, by composition, host preferences and by outcome.<br /><br />That reality acquits me from any politeness, taking me right into the murky world of party politics.<br /><br />Fate’s pace and parcel.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />For the face of an Inclusive Government which had risen and received embrace as "manna" from the West, all this hardly added up.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Fighting the task and task-man<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Against such a filling propaganda take by Zanu-pf (PF), the MDC leader and his acolytes were quite appropriately galled.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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?<br /><br />You do not want propaganda which coincides with reality, much less one which leaves you rebelliously wondering directionless within its overbearing framework.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />Another second-level tribute to the efficacious Zanu-pf-PF propaganda mandarins.<br /><br />In Zanu-pf-PF’s duodenum<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Tsvangirai went out on an ego-trip, as a Prime Minister of NGOs, cut in the lethally persuasive Jonathan!<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Diminishing leverage, stature<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />He seemed to agree that Zimbabwe had not done much to deserve relief. This was mildly complicit.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />Hau!<br /><br />And precious little was left to imagination.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Beneath inclusivity<br /><br />And during the trip, a new word entered the political vocabulary of Zimbabwe: "incremental".<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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<br /><br />understand the attack of the likes of Gono, Tomana, JOC and lately information leadership, in that context.<br /><br />A different strategy — charm and technicality (land audit) — is being attempted for the land sector.<br /><br />When angry Tapa was set on him<br /><br />The burden on the MDC leader was to convince his Western funders that the strategy was working, was delivering.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />He made the fatal error of honesty in a world accustomed to deceptive politics.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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<br /><br />political position and livid Albion set Tapa and all on him, at Southwalk.<br /><br />Icho!<br /><br />This is the broad context within which to appreciate what China has done to the politics of Zimbabwe.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />Indeed to reassert the place of the new farmer, the nationalist entrepreneur, both of them orphaned by the inclusive Government?<br /><br />Or will it, as before feed the treacherously fawning managerial bourgeoisie that had so quickly abandoned it for a new suitor, a new benefactor?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Charira!<br /><br />nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zwZimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-7741651580021543402009-07-01T04:14:00.000-07:002009-07-01T04:20:29.411-07:00Violet Gonda's 'hot seat' of ice for Andrew Pocock.<span style="font-weight:bold;">After behaving like Pocock is her Sugar Daddy, Violet Gonda then goes on to ask leading questions.<br /><br />Leading questions to answers that are sweet to her ears.<br /><br />There are some sharp questions she should have asked, only if she wasnt a political activist masquerading as a journalist. <br /><br />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? <br /><br />Greed and low self esteem always corrupts our people. Violet Gonda is a prize idiot.<br /></span><br /><br />Interview: UK's Andrew Pocock<br />by: Violet Gonda<br /><br />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:<br /><br />Broadcast: June 26, 2009<br /><br />Violet Gonda: My guest on the Hot Seat programme this week is Andrew Pocock, the outgoing UK Ambassador to Zimbabwe. Hallo Ambassador Pocock.<br />Andrew Pocock: Violet, how are you?<br /><br />Gonda: I’m OK. How are things going there in Zimbabwe?<br /><br />Pocock: Well, we are in an interesting position. There are winds of change but there’s still quite a long way to go.<br /><br />Gonda: Right, has there been a significant shift though in the political situation in Zimbabwe?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: What about in terms of the leadership itself – do you think Robert Mugabe has relinquished sufficient powers?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: I was going to ask that for the sake of progress should Zimbabwe and western countries forget the past.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: What do you think should be done to people who are guilty of human rights violations?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: But as an observer? You wouldn’t have any views on this?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: Is this something that the two governments have started working on?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: And what is his response?<br /><br />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<br /><br />Gonda: What is the UK’s position on lifting restrictive measures that have an economic impact?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br />Gonda: Has the UK been trading with Zimbabwe in the last few years?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: Why was the Mines Minister, Obert Mpofu denied a visa to attend these investment conferences in the UK with the Prime Minister?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: So do you feel that the diplomatic community in Harare has been effective during the last eight years of the crisis?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: And of course you have concluded your term. What do you think you have achieved and do you have any regrets?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: Has you replacement been named yet?<br /><br /><br />Pocock: Yes, his name is Mark Canning, he is coming from Rangoon and he arrives on the 2nd of July.<br />Gonda: He’s coming from Burma.<br /> <br /> <br />Pocock: He is.<br /> <br />Gonda: Quite interesting…<br /> <br />Pocock: Very interesting.<br /><br />Gonda: And a final word Ambassador.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Gonda: And where are you going from here?<br /><br />Pocock: Back to London, to serve my time for my sins I think.<br /><br />Gonda: Well Ambassador Andrew Pocock, we wish you well and thank you very much for talking to us.<br /><br />Pocock: Violet, a great pleasure, thank you.<br />Feedback can be sent to violet@swradioafrica.comZimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-26139699304090496202009-07-01T02:55:00.000-07:002009-07-01T03:06:34.444-07:00China offers Zim $950m credit lines<blockquote>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.<br /><br />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.</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Is this the aha moment for Tsvangirai and his followers? Only time will tell.</span>Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5038948842352884237.post-56585756314293264122009-06-08T05:09:00.001-07:002009-06-08T05:09:53.349-07:00Zimbabwe: Sanctions a Damaging RealityTichaona Zindoga<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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)".<br /><br />The GPA is the broad-based agreement signed on September 15 last year that led to the formation of the inclusive government.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />(Donor countries, in all honesty, have been too hard hit by the current global financial crisis to open their purses easily.)<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />She divined that in the "the last years" President Mugabe he has visited misery on "his children and the children of his children".<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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).<br /><br />He said, "what people expect is competency and speed in de-mining the gulf of Anglo-Saxon sanctions dividing our people".<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Zimbabwe Imagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13050566597769293839noreply@blogger.com0