MDC: Make love, suffer pregnancy’s pangs
I have no difficulties with calls for a new constitution, however, mistaken such calls may be. Neither do the two political parties that are talking through President Mbeki’s mediation. One demands it; the other is prepared to suffer such a demand provided its kept within rational limits.
I have no difficulties with calls for a new constitution, however, mistaken such calls may be. Neither do the two political parties that are talking through President Mbeki’s mediation. One demands it; the other is prepared to suffer such a demand provided its kept within rational limits.
In many ways the main elements which are being proposed in the draft constitution reminds one of the old draft constitution of February 2000.
It will be recalled that the MDC, in typically thoughtless herd mentality, rejected this draft constitution, on the orders of Rhodesia’s white farming leftovers.
That referendum turned out to be such a relished victory for the MDC, so relished that to this day, the MDC and its backers are wont to licking the memories of it, the same way a child keeps licking his fingers and lips dry, longing after the evanescent sweetness of a vanished candy.
No thought is given to the fact that this so-called victory since then, has never had a repeat sale, and thus cannot sustain any political profitability for the MDC.
What is worse, none in that victory-starved formation ever wants to come to grips with the paradox of that February outcome, namely that the much vaunted "defeat" in fact secured Zanu-PF’s future, lending to it an everlasting momentum which carries it to this day. I dare say that had Zanu-PF gone to the polls under that terrible draft constitution, the outcome would have delighted the British, indeed would have forever blighted Zimbabwe as a sovereign nation. And given the interests Zanu-PF had threatened, such an outcome would have turned Zanu-PF into a Sandinista that does not come back. Liberation politics would have gone extinct, all of us hoping for another convulsive re-launch. The draft constitution was a poisoned chalice that guaranteed instant death to the Patriotic Front. It was not a document for a society hungry for social transformation. If it had carried the day on February 2000, the national question today would have been different.
Zanu (PF)’s instrument
Unwittingly, the MDC struck a blow for economic nationalism, but without realising it.
Which takes me to a point MDC people never want to acknowledge, namely that in being allowed to win the referendum with such a lasting cheer, MDC became a good instrument of Zanu-PF’s long-term calculation.
Let’s face it, Zanu-PF could easily have thwarted a vote against the new constitution.
Besides, the margin was so slender that deploying a single rural MP to mobilise, would have evened out things.
Yet Zanu-PF did not. Would not.
It is one spectacular failure of scholarship that our political scientists have not attempted to explain why Zanu-PF gave away the referendum in order to gain all from the MDC.
Zanu-PF won doubly. In the draft constitution, Zanu-PF came through as a party willing to welcome change, but without suffering the risks and consequences of any such changes.
The elaborate dance around the constitution writing, consummating in a referendum convincingly signalled a Zanu-PF that stood change, and that successfully managed it.
The rejection of that change, followed by a Zanu-PF which "humbly" accepted the outcome, suggested a party which did not fear losing, indeed one ready to submit itself to "popular will".
I happen to know that there was so much glee in the loss, never grief as MDC supporters think.
It was a good PR moment for the ruling party, all along depicted as the likely butt of modernising change. In material terms, the ruling party did not have to fight or suffer the so-called "Gorbachev factor" given that its Gorbachev, apart from being a character from without Zanu-PF, had inexplicably chosen to be a Brezhnev, that is, a preserver of the constitutional status quo.
It remains quite baffling to this day why the MDC opposed change, democratic change which had come in such huge doses, when today it hungrily gobbles minimal, and in some respects quite ambiguous change, in the inter-party dialogue.
Clause 57
Secondly, Zanu-PF gave society a safety valve. It appeased the wish for constitutional changes, but without conceding a single clause in the ruling constitution. The only clause to change that year was a clause it needed, a clause which had come straight from State House.
That clause had to do with land, clause 57 in the rejected draft constitution which placed the burden of compensating the market value of land acquired on Britain, the former colonial power. It is a clause which would colour national and international politics for a whole decade, with Zanu-PF perched at the helm, undisturbed. The result was a spectacular paradox.
Clause 57 which had roused farmers to mobilise MDC against the draft constitution, became a direct outcome of that failure. It became the only constitutional change Zanu-PF conceded that year.
Secondly, the very draft constitution which the MDC so successfully campaigned against and rejected, ironically became the opposition party’s hard-to-realise yearn, one still unrealised to this day.
A smaller outcome of that year which still needs to be pointed out relates to the methodology and agency of constitution-making. Compliant with Zanu-PF’s wish, Parliament’s role in making the supreme law was confirmed then, as it stands confirmed now. Parliament remains the route to constitution-making, and judging by recent events around the Mbeki Sadc initiative, MDC appears to have been whipped into accepting it.
When Zanu-PF can afford
So materially, the draft constitution which the two parties have been discussing is a return the February 2000 document, but only now when Zanu-PF can afford it.
It is a return to the February 2000 document only now when both MDCs can’t use or take advantage of it. Of course the MDCs are in denial.
Coltart and Cross are hoping for "the Gorbachev factor" through these changes, which means the ruling party conceding to minimal changes which end up overwhelming it. Of course the two white men would know that the Gorbachev factor they hope for is as real as the living Gorbachev: it is distant, too far away to be recalled, let alone imported into the dry, hard-knuckled politics of the savannah.
What we see instead is the Boetheus factor at work, where failed politics and politicians turn to philosophy for consolation. The two white men do know that MDC badly needs concessions on the constitution more for internal reasons than as a tool usable against Zanu-PF.
The MDCs need such a document to neutralise Madhuku, all along MDC’s "lunatic fringe" until a disenchanted Britain decided to import consequence to the NCA by pouring in resources, in the hope of a repeat of 1998 when the same NCA played precursor to the MDC.
The British want a Third Force in the opposition, which is why the ruling party had better met the two MDCs’ internal requirement for some dummy document they can call a draft constitution. Remember the real conflict is between us and the British. Whoever Britain and her allies adopt as Trojan Horse immediately becomes the enemy and the focus. Britain has to be extirpated from our body-politic by whatever means. Come to think of it, gazetting the document is not such a bad thing for both parties.
Make love, suffer the pangs.
Otherwise the two formations have no legitimate or logical argument to sway public and international opinion in respect of their strange hopes on the draft constitution. They cannot demand a draft constitution as a precondition for participation in elections. No one will hear them.
In fact, Zanu-PF will be ready to declare a deadlock on this one matter which is patently absurd. I mean, how do you proceed to demand an overhaul of a constitution you have agreed to amend? What was the rhyme or reason for Amendment Number 18? To prettify a constitution before discarding it? Nonsense! And the electoral law, the security and media laws? Again to make them handsome before annulling them through a sweeping new constitution? Fie, fie I say! Even Reg Austin would rap Welshman’s knuckles for being such an ignorant professor of law.
If a new constitution was the trophy for the two formations, then they should never have entertained the changes they gave us, and gave us with such a dizzying and ecstatic tango with Zanu-PF. No one hoped the two enemies would mate. Everyone gasped when they locked hands and other limbs in a foisonous embrace. Both were old enough to know that making love creates babies. Why lament the ensuing pregnancy? And we all got the rationale behind a patch-patch, paste-paste approach: it was to ensure a level playing field in time for March 2008. This we were loudly told in Parliament.
Losing a handy shorthand
That the MDCs appended their signatures to all the amendments means they had secured an acceptable threshold in the talks. Their participation in the March elections cannot be a new matter for discussion. It was and is implied in the extensive agreements beatified through the legislative novelty of co-sponsorship which has given us Amendment No. 18, the battery of amendments to four pieces of law, among other things.
Any change from that position would have to be explained by other reasons, never by claims based on any law of any kind or size. And Manheru will be in a hurry to supply the reasons, as indeed I do now. After this week’s last round of amendments, the MDC formations have lost a critical mobilisation shorthand, namely that summed up by its favourite phrase: draconian laws. Today the MDC formations have no option but to own all the laws which shape the electoral regime.
They co-authored those laws, co-sponsored them until they became the laws of the land.
The very laws they co-sponsored cannot be "draconian" against them, unless this is what they wished for themselves. Simply, self-immolation cannot be blamed on a third party. Manheru will simply tell his readers both formations of the MDC fear the people, fear elections.
Manheru will simply tell his readers that both formations of the MDC fear the British, their masters, which is why they hoped to push for a delayed poll. Yes, Manheru will not hesitate to tell his readers the MDCs have unresolved internal political questions to which Zimbabwe is supposed to be held hostage.
By-passing the people
I will not go into the scenarios for constitutional change which the two MDCs have vainly sought to sell to Zanu-PF. It is a waste of time as the matter does not arise in the first place. Except to say these scenarios — five in number — reveal two disturbing things about the two MDCs.
Firstly, the Zimbabwean people do not seem to matter in their vision of constitution-making. The people can be by-passed in a mad rush to promulgate a new constitution as a matter of an enormous bi-partisan conspiracy and coup against the people whose will does not matter.
It is a very strange blueprint, a double coup where the existing constitution is supposed to be ousted by four men: two from either party, and a new one inaugurated by the same gang of four! Movement for democratic change indeed!
Secondly, for the two formations, the constitution, or more accurately their sense of it, is a mere political tool for the day. It is cobbled and wielded for a general poll, a tool for trapping the ruling party to win the polls. I thought constitutions are supposed to aspire to timelessness, indeed to rise above expediency? But the MDCs want a constitution which is a campaign tool, an instrument for entrapment! This is quite disturbing for a party which makes such lofty claims about democracy. I dare the MDC to sell its scenarios to the public.
Misa, Misa on the wall
Talking about legal changes, did anyone care to read Misa’s latest fulminations on the two amendments which were fast tracked by the two political sides?
MDC is called Zanu-PF’s "ally".
Why insult the noble ruling party? But a very revealing insult. Apart from underlining the ever widening rift between the two MDCs and their political NGO allies, one pities Misa for watching so helplessly as its locus standi in Zimbabwe’s media politics simply gives in and collapses.
Without the tenuous legitimacy which the MDC gave it; which ZUJ gave it; which the NGO Forum gave it, who does it speak for? I mean Zanu-PF and the fractious MDCs carry the whole of political Zimbabwe. So if Misa enjoys the support of neither, whose freedom of expression is it agitating for? Zvino uchadeyi nhai Masunda? This is the trouble in being handled from outside. With a media council now a creature of the same law that created MIC, nay a creature of that hated MIC, what becomes of the stillborn and putrefying Media Council which Misa kept on life-support and on its back to duck the label of an arid mule?
Pocock and Sadc’s fecund peacock.
Does Dr Pocock, Britain’s man here read the signs Southern Africa continues to give to his principals? Does he get the message when Zimbabwe, a country which is supposed to be in the throes, un-wraps a brand new bio-diesel plant in partnership with South Korea? Does he read correctly the message in a Portugal which lets go of Cahora Bassa a few days before Lisboa?
Does he read correctly a Zimbabwe and Mozambique which launch a joint oil facility and development plan in Beira, just next to BP? Or an ANC which pledges to push land reforms to the tune of 30percent before 2014? Does he read this mosaic of messages which clearly points to a new Southern Africa which might never have room for haughty colonials who hunker after they days of zero sunset, days never to come back?
I notice while Cameroon was thanking the Chinese in Chongqin for scaling down on investments in "autocratic Zimbabwe", the Chinese were busy securing a controlling stake in Zisco; are busy doing something I am not ready to talk about just yet.
Grains of pollen are being broadcast on rich soils of Southern Africa.
Does Pocock see them? Time will tell. Icho!
l nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
O 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.
Friday, 21 December 2007
Monday, 17 December 2007
Brown, Mugabe And the Lisbon Summit
Brown, Mugabe And the Lisbon Summit
Daily Trust (Abuja)
EDITORIAL
17 December 2007
Posted to the web 17 December 2007
Abuja
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stood out on a limb at the first EU-Africa summit in seven years held in Lisbon, Portugal on December 8-9. His European Union (EU) colleagues were content to leave him stranded, having been swayed by political realism or economic self-interest to ignore his misguided threat to boycott the summit, if Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe were invited to attend it.
He had claimed that President Mugabe's presence in Lisbon "will undermine the summit by diverting attention from the important issues to be discussed." The Zimbabwean president's spokesman was however quick to ridicule the British prime minister for "fearing a handshake."
Pressed by rising competition from China, India and other emerging economies for Africa's immense material resources, the EU was evidently determined to solidify its position at the Lisbon summit as Africa's largest trading partner. Accordingly the Portuguese hosts of the summit, fearing that African leaders might stay away if President Mugabe were excluded, decided to waive an EU visa ban in order to enable the Zimbabwean delegation to travel to Portugal. In spite of Britain's misgivings, no EU member state seriously objected to the Portuguese rotational EU presidency's decision, not even the Czech prime minister who was widely expected to join Gordon Brown's boycott. The prime ministers of Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, who had hitherto been ambivalent about their attendance, were present at the summit. Having previously agreed to send a "clear and tough message" to President Mugabe on human rights at the Lisbon summit, an EU plan to dispatch a special envoy to "study the situation in Zimbabwe" was conveniently postponed until after the summit "to avoid any risk of undermining efforts by South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki to broker a deal between President Mugabe and the Zimbabwean opposition parties on holding free elections in 2008."
Those who might wonder why Britain, the quintessential advocate of contact and dialogue with South Africa's apartheid regime, should be so obsessed with isolating President Mugabe as to wage a relentless and vicious campaign against his government may wish to reflect on the influence of economic interest on foreign policy. Britain had no qualms about the ravenous profits scooped up by British firms from the toils of expropriated and virtually-enslaved Africans under the apartheid regime, but hates the guts of President Mugabe who led Zimbabwe's liberation struggle against British colonialism and has striven to dismantle the power base of British proxies since his country regained its independence. Britain accuses Mugabe of "wrecking the Zimbabwean economy," but the Zimbabwean leader denies that his policy of recovering and redistributing to indigenous Zimbabweans land which was unfairly appropriated by European settlers during the colonial era is the primary cause of his country's economic woes. He blames British-inspired economic pressures for the country's raging hyperinflation and economic meltdown.
It suffices to recall that when US President Richard Nixon learnt of Salvador Allende's election as president of Chile, he famously ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream." Chile was then confronted with a contrived economic collapse to compel a reconsideration of Allende's nationalisations. The US not only blocked loans to Chile, but persuaded many others to do likewise. It also restricted US imports from Chile and starved the country of foreign exchange. The British will deny any involvement in such machinations against Mugabe's Zimbabwe of course, but no one will believe them. With regard to Gordon Brown's "concern" about "widespread human rights violations, election rigging and violent suppression of political opposition" in Zimbabwe, one truly marvels at the hypocrisy and effrontery of Britain's current attitude to Zimbabwe, having opposed the imposition of any sanction against South Africa's apartheid regime until the eleventh hour.
Robert Mugabe certainly has his faults, and Zimbabweans may judge his stewardship as they please. We caution them however to beware lest they become unwittingly entangled in a grandiose project of the British rulers, easily the world's foremost shape-shifters, to reclaim lost terrain by brazen means. Africa's independence is priceless and must be defended at all costs, even in the face of economic collapse. We are satisfied however that when the history of the Lisbon EU-Africa summit is finally written, Gordon Brown's raucous protest about President Mugabe's presence will struggle to be recorded even as a footnote.
Daily Trust (Abuja)
EDITORIAL
17 December 2007
Posted to the web 17 December 2007
Abuja
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stood out on a limb at the first EU-Africa summit in seven years held in Lisbon, Portugal on December 8-9. His European Union (EU) colleagues were content to leave him stranded, having been swayed by political realism or economic self-interest to ignore his misguided threat to boycott the summit, if Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe were invited to attend it.
He had claimed that President Mugabe's presence in Lisbon "will undermine the summit by diverting attention from the important issues to be discussed." The Zimbabwean president's spokesman was however quick to ridicule the British prime minister for "fearing a handshake."
Pressed by rising competition from China, India and other emerging economies for Africa's immense material resources, the EU was evidently determined to solidify its position at the Lisbon summit as Africa's largest trading partner. Accordingly the Portuguese hosts of the summit, fearing that African leaders might stay away if President Mugabe were excluded, decided to waive an EU visa ban in order to enable the Zimbabwean delegation to travel to Portugal. In spite of Britain's misgivings, no EU member state seriously objected to the Portuguese rotational EU presidency's decision, not even the Czech prime minister who was widely expected to join Gordon Brown's boycott. The prime ministers of Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, who had hitherto been ambivalent about their attendance, were present at the summit. Having previously agreed to send a "clear and tough message" to President Mugabe on human rights at the Lisbon summit, an EU plan to dispatch a special envoy to "study the situation in Zimbabwe" was conveniently postponed until after the summit "to avoid any risk of undermining efforts by South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki to broker a deal between President Mugabe and the Zimbabwean opposition parties on holding free elections in 2008."
Those who might wonder why Britain, the quintessential advocate of contact and dialogue with South Africa's apartheid regime, should be so obsessed with isolating President Mugabe as to wage a relentless and vicious campaign against his government may wish to reflect on the influence of economic interest on foreign policy. Britain had no qualms about the ravenous profits scooped up by British firms from the toils of expropriated and virtually-enslaved Africans under the apartheid regime, but hates the guts of President Mugabe who led Zimbabwe's liberation struggle against British colonialism and has striven to dismantle the power base of British proxies since his country regained its independence. Britain accuses Mugabe of "wrecking the Zimbabwean economy," but the Zimbabwean leader denies that his policy of recovering and redistributing to indigenous Zimbabweans land which was unfairly appropriated by European settlers during the colonial era is the primary cause of his country's economic woes. He blames British-inspired economic pressures for the country's raging hyperinflation and economic meltdown.
It suffices to recall that when US President Richard Nixon learnt of Salvador Allende's election as president of Chile, he famously ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream." Chile was then confronted with a contrived economic collapse to compel a reconsideration of Allende's nationalisations. The US not only blocked loans to Chile, but persuaded many others to do likewise. It also restricted US imports from Chile and starved the country of foreign exchange. The British will deny any involvement in such machinations against Mugabe's Zimbabwe of course, but no one will believe them. With regard to Gordon Brown's "concern" about "widespread human rights violations, election rigging and violent suppression of political opposition" in Zimbabwe, one truly marvels at the hypocrisy and effrontery of Britain's current attitude to Zimbabwe, having opposed the imposition of any sanction against South Africa's apartheid regime until the eleventh hour.
Robert Mugabe certainly has his faults, and Zimbabweans may judge his stewardship as they please. We caution them however to beware lest they become unwittingly entangled in a grandiose project of the British rulers, easily the world's foremost shape-shifters, to reclaim lost terrain by brazen means. Africa's independence is priceless and must be defended at all costs, even in the face of economic collapse. We are satisfied however that when the history of the Lisbon EU-Africa summit is finally written, Gordon Brown's raucous protest about President Mugabe's presence will struggle to be recorded even as a footnote.
Friday, 14 December 2007
Polls set for March without fail: Presiden
Polls set for March without fail: President
Features & Political Editor Caesar Zvayi
NEXT year’s harmonised elections will be held in March without fail, and contestants who will not be ready by then will have only themselves to blame, President Mugabe warned yesterday.
In his keynote address during the official opening of Zanu-PF’s Extraordinary Congress in Harare, President Mugabe said Zimbabwe did not have a culture of ambushing the opposition as was done in some Western countries.
‘‘We have four elections to prepare for, that of president, that of senators, that of members of the House of Assembly, and finally that of our councillors in local government.
‘‘We shall hold this combined poll in that month of March without fail, in the month of March without fail. I want to emphasise that because we started announcing that we would have this election in March next year, about six months ago, and our election processes here are never by way of ambush as they do in Europe, no, we announce them well in advance and the people must prepare for them.’’
In apparent reference to the MDC, particularly the Tsvangirai faction that has been calling for the postponement of elections to June claiming there isn’t sufficient time to come up with an environment conducive for a ‘free and fair’ election, the President said: ‘‘If some parties are not ready they have no one to blame, we have given them enough time and there is another three months to go.’’
The President said he was confident of winning as he has the support of the people.
‘‘I have only a small body, I weigh about 75kg, but I have about 14 million people that I lead in the country, and their welfare is my concern. Just calculate their weight on me, babies, ladies fat and thin, all of them I carry them here. I dare not, I dare not abandon them, and every one of them matters to me.
"Must I surrender today in 2007, and allow the British through a neo-colonialist approach to take over? What will those who have suffered and died for the country, those who have gone before me, and especially those I worked with? Ubaba uNkomo, Ubaba uMzenda vazakuuthini? I can’t let them down, No!
‘‘It’s aluta continua, it must be aluta continua for you too. If I show my fist like that, I must know it’s the fist of 14million people, ndoti kamuri kuoona kanonzi kaMugabe ikaka kane 14million people, their welfare is my welfare, their suffering my suffering, but they also have rights, their rights must be respected, their right over land, it’s their land after all, their gold, their platinum, their forests, their elephants, their everything in Zimbabwe. They own Zimbabwe, Mr Blair, Mr Brown, Mr Bush, you do not belong, you are not one of them. So keep out, keep out, keep out!’’
Cde Mugabe said Zimbabwe has a well-established and enviable democratic record, and has never stolen an election contrary to claims by the opposition and its Western overlords.
‘‘There is democracy in the country, we have held our elections timeously, every five years in a very free manner. We have never rigged an election, never ever.’’
The President said even though the Government knows that the MDC is a front for western interests, the democratic tradition had made them engage the opposition leadership in dialogue since they are Zimbabweans.
‘‘We know that the opposition themselves were put together by the British, the three parties — Labour Party, Conservatives and the Liberals — put aside a fund, the Westminster Fund, and on that strength they got the leaders of the trade union here to start a party, and we know it, it has not been denied and it has been published in Britain, and that’s how the MDC was founded.
‘‘But we accept they are Zimbabweans, and are our compatriots and we talk to them. Whatever views and illusions they may have entertained in the past, we try to talk to them and get them to correct their views and correct their stance, and avoid the influences that come from outside, from Europe.’’
The President thanked South African President Thabo Mbeki for mediating between Zanu-PF and the two MDC factions, saying even though he was mandated to do so by Sadc, he was also doing it on behalf of the ANC government. He called on Congress to adopt a resolution thanking the South African leader and Sadc for brokering dialogue.
The President said Zimbabwe does not entertain western interference because there are regional and continental structures to assist, where there is need for assistance.
‘‘But our posture is that they (the West) should not interfere in our internal affairs, they should not interfere in our regional affairs, we’ve parties here, the people here can talk to each other and resolve their differences.
"If we need assistance we have our neighbours, we have our Sadc friends, we have our Comesa friends, we have our African Union friends, those brothers and sisters of ours within the region, within the continent are best suited to give us advice.’’
He said British prime minister, Gordon Brown had proved to be a political midget by trying to isolate Zimbabwe, yet his predecessors, the Conservative government of Mrs Margaret Thatcher never behaved that way even though, at times, it had serious disagreements with Zimbabwe differing greatly on ideology.
He said the prevailing economic problems stemmed from western attempts to sabotage the revolutionary path Zimbabwe has taken by attempting to strangle the economy so that the revolution can abort and dissuade other developing world countries from following suit.
‘‘Imperialism has sought to strangle our economy so that what we are doing here does not succeed, because if it succeeds others will copy what we are doing elsewhere, and they try to divide us as much as possible, they try to tarnish Zimbabwe everywhere possible.’’
It was regrettable that some businesses had bought into the illegal regime change agenda, and were sabotaging the economy.
‘‘May I now finally refer to our situation here, also the situation of our people, our families, and that is a situation that is being caused by our industrialists and those in business. Sometime ago, there was a situation we recognised as one of sabotage in our economy.
"Prices were going up by the day, changing by the day, in a manner that baffled everybody, and at the same time there was glee in certain quarters in Europe that Zimbabwe’s economy was collapsing and alongside it, the Government.’’
The President said a taskforce was set up to look into the matter, and take action to prevent the escalation of unethical business practices.
The taskforce approached various business enterprises and representatives of business who said they could not produce because they were facing a variety of challenges, chief among them foreign currency shortages.
The funds they required were availed under the Basic Commodities Supply Side Intervention (Bacossi) facility, but still they did not supply the products, and where they did so, the prices were still unacceptably high.
He said Government might be forced to take action unless business sticks to the agreements struck with it.
‘‘Vakataura nevene vezvitoro nevemaindustries kuti mitengo iderere. Asi nekudaro kwacho vakabva vavamba kubvisa zvinhu muzvitoro ndokungosara mashelves asisina zvinhu.
"Vachitaurwa navo vakati hatina foreign currency, zvakare zvinhu zviri kutidhurirao, tirikushaya transport. Zvadaro zvavakataura zvakawanda, chitoro chega-chega, vese-vese vakataura kuti havana foreign currency yekuhodha zvinhu vaipihwa ipapo.
"Asi vadaro kwakazoitwa chibvumirano chekuti zvanga zvichiitwa zviregerwe, zvinhu zvidzokere mumashelves, vanhu vawane zvinhu nemitengo yakaderera, asi nanhasi zvinhu zvirikuramba zvichikwira .
‘‘So I want finally to warn them that unless they themselves have a discipline, a discipline recognisable by us, we might have to take action, and take action against them. We have tried to take a number of actions following certain decisions, discussions with various groups but if what we agree upon together does not find expression in the actions that follow then obviously we will have to decide on measures that will result in those actions being more positive than they are prone to be.’’
The Government, the President said, was working on various measures to improve the lives of the people, and among these was economic empowerment to give people access to mineral resources.
He said the empowerment programme would be broad-based and geared at ensuring that the majority benefit, and not a select few. He, however, warned beneficiaries not to defeat the programme by being used as fronts by foreign investors, as they (Zimbabweans) are entitled to majority shareholding in all business ventures.
‘‘The policies of Government must now address the issue of empowerment, and that is why empowerment of our indigenous people is a theme of this Congress.
"Our empowerment must be real empowerment, it should not just aim at giving one or two people or a few individuals an opportunity, it must address the people as a whole.’’
This realisation and aspiration, he said, was the reason why the Government had embarked on land reform to address the needs of the majority rural populace, who constitute over 75 percent of the population.
‘‘We have said in the mining sector, sure we want to have investment, sure we want to have expertise brought into the country, but not at the expense of our people. That is why we enacted a law, the Mines and Mineral Bill which aims at empowering the people and will insist on equity with regard to precious minerals, investment in precious minerals in favour of our people…
‘‘Chatisingade ndechekuti vedu, kanamaita partnership nevarungu, imi mosesekedzwa mberi mongova mafront chete, asi shure uku kwavanokambura zvinonaka vari varungu. You become mere fronts, no. We want you to be real owners, if it is a partnership, let it be a true partnership with them.
"In some cases you do not even see those who are behind. And the company is presented to us as that of indigenous people, when in fact it has some silent partners who are the main investors.
"No we don’t want that kind of business, be yourselves, be open and don’t agree to be used by others.’’
Turning to agriculture, the President said farmers should take advantage of the rains that have begun favourably, and use the equipment they were given under the farm mechanisation programme to maximise productivity.
He said all farmers must not forget that the land they have invited the backlash from Britain and her allies, and they owe it to the nation to put it to full use.
‘‘Land, land and agricultural activities must lead the other sectors as it were. In other words, all the other sectors, the manufacturing sector especially which leans on agriculture must not be allowed to suffer because agriculture has suffered.
"That is why we decided on helping all our farmers by way of procuring those tools, instruments that make for greater agricultural efficiency.’’
Features & Political Editor Caesar Zvayi
NEXT year’s harmonised elections will be held in March without fail, and contestants who will not be ready by then will have only themselves to blame, President Mugabe warned yesterday.
In his keynote address during the official opening of Zanu-PF’s Extraordinary Congress in Harare, President Mugabe said Zimbabwe did not have a culture of ambushing the opposition as was done in some Western countries.
‘‘We have four elections to prepare for, that of president, that of senators, that of members of the House of Assembly, and finally that of our councillors in local government.
‘‘We shall hold this combined poll in that month of March without fail, in the month of March without fail. I want to emphasise that because we started announcing that we would have this election in March next year, about six months ago, and our election processes here are never by way of ambush as they do in Europe, no, we announce them well in advance and the people must prepare for them.’’
In apparent reference to the MDC, particularly the Tsvangirai faction that has been calling for the postponement of elections to June claiming there isn’t sufficient time to come up with an environment conducive for a ‘free and fair’ election, the President said: ‘‘If some parties are not ready they have no one to blame, we have given them enough time and there is another three months to go.’’
The President said he was confident of winning as he has the support of the people.
‘‘I have only a small body, I weigh about 75kg, but I have about 14 million people that I lead in the country, and their welfare is my concern. Just calculate their weight on me, babies, ladies fat and thin, all of them I carry them here. I dare not, I dare not abandon them, and every one of them matters to me.
"Must I surrender today in 2007, and allow the British through a neo-colonialist approach to take over? What will those who have suffered and died for the country, those who have gone before me, and especially those I worked with? Ubaba uNkomo, Ubaba uMzenda vazakuuthini? I can’t let them down, No!
‘‘It’s aluta continua, it must be aluta continua for you too. If I show my fist like that, I must know it’s the fist of 14million people, ndoti kamuri kuoona kanonzi kaMugabe ikaka kane 14million people, their welfare is my welfare, their suffering my suffering, but they also have rights, their rights must be respected, their right over land, it’s their land after all, their gold, their platinum, their forests, their elephants, their everything in Zimbabwe. They own Zimbabwe, Mr Blair, Mr Brown, Mr Bush, you do not belong, you are not one of them. So keep out, keep out, keep out!’’
Cde Mugabe said Zimbabwe has a well-established and enviable democratic record, and has never stolen an election contrary to claims by the opposition and its Western overlords.
‘‘There is democracy in the country, we have held our elections timeously, every five years in a very free manner. We have never rigged an election, never ever.’’
The President said even though the Government knows that the MDC is a front for western interests, the democratic tradition had made them engage the opposition leadership in dialogue since they are Zimbabweans.
‘‘We know that the opposition themselves were put together by the British, the three parties — Labour Party, Conservatives and the Liberals — put aside a fund, the Westminster Fund, and on that strength they got the leaders of the trade union here to start a party, and we know it, it has not been denied and it has been published in Britain, and that’s how the MDC was founded.
‘‘But we accept they are Zimbabweans, and are our compatriots and we talk to them. Whatever views and illusions they may have entertained in the past, we try to talk to them and get them to correct their views and correct their stance, and avoid the influences that come from outside, from Europe.’’
The President thanked South African President Thabo Mbeki for mediating between Zanu-PF and the two MDC factions, saying even though he was mandated to do so by Sadc, he was also doing it on behalf of the ANC government. He called on Congress to adopt a resolution thanking the South African leader and Sadc for brokering dialogue.
The President said Zimbabwe does not entertain western interference because there are regional and continental structures to assist, where there is need for assistance.
‘‘But our posture is that they (the West) should not interfere in our internal affairs, they should not interfere in our regional affairs, we’ve parties here, the people here can talk to each other and resolve their differences.
"If we need assistance we have our neighbours, we have our Sadc friends, we have our Comesa friends, we have our African Union friends, those brothers and sisters of ours within the region, within the continent are best suited to give us advice.’’
He said British prime minister, Gordon Brown had proved to be a political midget by trying to isolate Zimbabwe, yet his predecessors, the Conservative government of Mrs Margaret Thatcher never behaved that way even though, at times, it had serious disagreements with Zimbabwe differing greatly on ideology.
He said the prevailing economic problems stemmed from western attempts to sabotage the revolutionary path Zimbabwe has taken by attempting to strangle the economy so that the revolution can abort and dissuade other developing world countries from following suit.
‘‘Imperialism has sought to strangle our economy so that what we are doing here does not succeed, because if it succeeds others will copy what we are doing elsewhere, and they try to divide us as much as possible, they try to tarnish Zimbabwe everywhere possible.’’
It was regrettable that some businesses had bought into the illegal regime change agenda, and were sabotaging the economy.
‘‘May I now finally refer to our situation here, also the situation of our people, our families, and that is a situation that is being caused by our industrialists and those in business. Sometime ago, there was a situation we recognised as one of sabotage in our economy.
"Prices were going up by the day, changing by the day, in a manner that baffled everybody, and at the same time there was glee in certain quarters in Europe that Zimbabwe’s economy was collapsing and alongside it, the Government.’’
The President said a taskforce was set up to look into the matter, and take action to prevent the escalation of unethical business practices.
The taskforce approached various business enterprises and representatives of business who said they could not produce because they were facing a variety of challenges, chief among them foreign currency shortages.
The funds they required were availed under the Basic Commodities Supply Side Intervention (Bacossi) facility, but still they did not supply the products, and where they did so, the prices were still unacceptably high.
He said Government might be forced to take action unless business sticks to the agreements struck with it.
‘‘Vakataura nevene vezvitoro nevemaindustries kuti mitengo iderere. Asi nekudaro kwacho vakabva vavamba kubvisa zvinhu muzvitoro ndokungosara mashelves asisina zvinhu.
"Vachitaurwa navo vakati hatina foreign currency, zvakare zvinhu zviri kutidhurirao, tirikushaya transport. Zvadaro zvavakataura zvakawanda, chitoro chega-chega, vese-vese vakataura kuti havana foreign currency yekuhodha zvinhu vaipihwa ipapo.
"Asi vadaro kwakazoitwa chibvumirano chekuti zvanga zvichiitwa zviregerwe, zvinhu zvidzokere mumashelves, vanhu vawane zvinhu nemitengo yakaderera, asi nanhasi zvinhu zvirikuramba zvichikwira .
‘‘So I want finally to warn them that unless they themselves have a discipline, a discipline recognisable by us, we might have to take action, and take action against them. We have tried to take a number of actions following certain decisions, discussions with various groups but if what we agree upon together does not find expression in the actions that follow then obviously we will have to decide on measures that will result in those actions being more positive than they are prone to be.’’
The Government, the President said, was working on various measures to improve the lives of the people, and among these was economic empowerment to give people access to mineral resources.
He said the empowerment programme would be broad-based and geared at ensuring that the majority benefit, and not a select few. He, however, warned beneficiaries not to defeat the programme by being used as fronts by foreign investors, as they (Zimbabweans) are entitled to majority shareholding in all business ventures.
‘‘The policies of Government must now address the issue of empowerment, and that is why empowerment of our indigenous people is a theme of this Congress.
"Our empowerment must be real empowerment, it should not just aim at giving one or two people or a few individuals an opportunity, it must address the people as a whole.’’
This realisation and aspiration, he said, was the reason why the Government had embarked on land reform to address the needs of the majority rural populace, who constitute over 75 percent of the population.
‘‘We have said in the mining sector, sure we want to have investment, sure we want to have expertise brought into the country, but not at the expense of our people. That is why we enacted a law, the Mines and Mineral Bill which aims at empowering the people and will insist on equity with regard to precious minerals, investment in precious minerals in favour of our people…
‘‘Chatisingade ndechekuti vedu, kanamaita partnership nevarungu, imi mosesekedzwa mberi mongova mafront chete, asi shure uku kwavanokambura zvinonaka vari varungu. You become mere fronts, no. We want you to be real owners, if it is a partnership, let it be a true partnership with them.
"In some cases you do not even see those who are behind. And the company is presented to us as that of indigenous people, when in fact it has some silent partners who are the main investors.
"No we don’t want that kind of business, be yourselves, be open and don’t agree to be used by others.’’
Turning to agriculture, the President said farmers should take advantage of the rains that have begun favourably, and use the equipment they were given under the farm mechanisation programme to maximise productivity.
He said all farmers must not forget that the land they have invited the backlash from Britain and her allies, and they owe it to the nation to put it to full use.
‘‘Land, land and agricultural activities must lead the other sectors as it were. In other words, all the other sectors, the manufacturing sector especially which leans on agriculture must not be allowed to suffer because agriculture has suffered.
"That is why we decided on helping all our farmers by way of procuring those tools, instruments that make for greater agricultural efficiency.’’
Friday, 7 December 2007
Brown/Bush: Mounting Amos, and Condy trots!
Brown/Bush: Mounting Amos, and Condy trots!
As you read this column, drums will start beating in Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal, marking the first ever convocation of Europeans and Africans, after a long and troubled seven-year hiatus. To some, these will be drums, tom-toms of joy. To others, these will be bells that toll the end to come. It all depends on where you stand, or who you stand with. Lisboa might be very far for Africa’s tardy and cracked barefoot, very far for Africa’s meandering path, but Lisboa will influence Africa’s futures in a very significant way. I am there, spirited from home by the great iron bird that walks straight, to a tuneful, airy hum.
As I ride this enchanted aluminium broomstick, ride this wonder of the white-man which, unlike God’s birds, flies without flapping its wings, so too flies and unfurls my mind, uninhibited, welcomed and melding with the vast blue that bear no milestones. As if to affirm the greatness of the earth, I soon discover no matter how high, you still need to peer down below, past the fleeting clouds, to reach the craggy earth for milestones. You look far down, vulnerable and overawed, hazily hoping for a helpful landmark to locate yourself in this great vastness, unremittingly azure. None comes. In desperation, you hope that beneath the melancholic hum and drone of the iron bird’s great and throbbing heartbeat, a croaky voice might just break out, deployed from the sealed cockpit to help the passengers with some bearings. Nothing comes to break the eerie purr of this great iron bird.
My whirring mind surmises what the captain might be up to. Maybe he is busily thinking of unpaid bills back home. Or some sumptuous girlfriend left behind, all the time quite oblivious of my little unshared anxieties about time and place. Or something more inane and stupid, this unfeeling pilot who pays no regard to I, the captive wonderer and navigator reversing and paying a good turn to Vasco da Gama’s voyages.
The West’s great black legion
To quieten my turbulent insides, I choose to reflect on this small cosmos called Zimbabwe: its land, its people, its leadership, its friends, its enemies, its victories, its defeats, its warts and all. I have nine long hours between home and Lisboa, nine hours of contemplation. From that airy vantage, I boisterously feel like some little god, able and placed to see the past, the present, the future as one short, thrifty continuum. After all, I am above, am I not?
Above the vast condition of mortal man and woman, too above to be impeded by this knoll, that hill, this mountain, that forest, this human throng, that cacophonous yell. I see, hear everything, whole and complete. I, the vain omniscient who can’t know where I am! Surprisingly, I soon discover that vastness gives no joy. Far from being invited to greater, celestial muses, my godly mind gravitates towards the mundane, even puny, towards the little failings of humankind. I think a lot about Condoleeza Rice; think a lot about Jendayi Fraser. Think quite a lot about Baronness Amos. Yes, think a great deal about McGee: white America’s new black man in Harare. I think also about Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer who gave us "The Man Died". I think about Bishop Sentamu, Bishop Tutu.
I think too about Kofi Annan; think about Collin Powell: that great African general which rapacious America deployed to quell and subdue small Arab peoples, before discarding him like a spent, flappy condom. Olonga too: that Kenyan who could not be a Zimbabwean, whose ambition was to be larger than the cricket butt and ball which brought him fame, all for the sake of embittered white Rhodesia. I think about Chiwoniso; I think about John Makumbe: a whole African Phd, now commanded and deployed by sisi Jenni Williams and her motley women from WOZA, to harm Zimbabwe and African interests. I think also about the so-called "Zimbabwe Vigil" and the planned marches of Lisboa, all to prove that Mugabe did mortally wrong to give the black Zimbabwean his due! I self-censoriously wonder why I, the god, still chooses to be man. Surely the conduct of mere mortals can never baffle gods, lest gods become mere men and women?
Bush’s mounts, Brown’s trots
As I reflect on this vast pantheon of black surfaces, I recall the wires reported that Condy this week was headed for Africa, an emissary of George W.Bush, America’s war-mongering President. The same wires — today’s sentinels and foremost mongers of global village rumours — also reported Brown — Britain’s utterly un-telegenic, unconvincing Prime Minister - has despatched Baronness Amos to Lisboa, to represent him. He himself won’t come, for fear of a handshake with Mugabe’s "coarse" hand! I reflect more. Both Bush and Brown are white Anglo-Saxons. That is a foolish point to make, especially when made by a god! How else can they be, they being Anglo-Saxons?
Neither the Union Jack nor the Stars and Stripes, bears the colour black. Ain’t no black on the Union Jack, some Carribean scholar (Baronnes Amos’ compatriot) once wrote. Is that not so? Yes, both are white, indeed as ashen as the deadly systems they run — or more aptly — they mind. The two women, on the other hand, are black, blacker than two nights put together. It does not matter where you inspect: kinky black hair, nubile, black pendulous breasts, black rotund formations that transfix male gaze — all these and much more, are all black, black like the remnant burnt-out stump from last season’s chitemene or mavivi.
When Tendai becomes Jendayi
Jendayi Fraser. Another surface: pitchy black, kinky haired, very flat nose that confidently spread across the face like a squatting African bullfrog. Just beginning of this week, she was on the wires announcing another raft of useless sanctions against Zimbabwe, black African Zimbabwe. The measures purport to add more black Africans to America’s list of banned persons; purports to deport children of Zimbabwean officials studying in America; promise worse sanctions, "unless political violence" stops! Such "dire" measures dropping from fleshy black pendulous lips of mother Africa’s abducted, still enslaved daughter. Good gracious God! Except through books and political rumours, this misbegotten daughter of Africa has not been here at all, knows nothing about Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe she knows is a construct of angry white America identifying with embittered Albion. Zimbabwe is very peaceful, and McGee will vouch that. The remotest it got by way of political violence came from MDC, America and Britain’s MDC! And foe her, the recompense is to add more Zanu (PF) people on the sanctions list, citing March 11 disturbances which again the MDC caused. Imperialism has no shame, I tell you!
Three black women and one man
Faced with an indelibly disastrous diplomatic defeat over Portugal, Brown has turned to Bush for some modicum of mitigation. Both have agreed to deploy three black women and one man (McGee) against a black President who is a hero of the African liberation struggle and contemporary African self-assertion. It is a cynical decision, but one quite revealing in terms of the menial place and role of blacks in the white world. And all four relish it. First Jendayi. She spoke of the additional measures with such gusto and lusto, that no one was left in any doubt that she relished wielding the dagger for the white assassin. "Jendayi" was this lady’s vain attempt at spelling "Tendayi", a Shona name which means "Be Thankful". She mis-spelt it to something narrowly vulgar, something bordering the monstrous. Prophetically, "Jendayi", the resultant linguistic mangle, is not something you readily yell in the presence of elders, still less in the presence of your in-laws, without inviting deep shame and revilement.
You have to be slow and deliberate to make sure you do not transpose an "e" for an "a", to end up with something decidedly vulgar and unmentionable in polite society. This is the ironic consequence of Miss Fraser’s maiden attempt at being African. A clear tragedy of good intentions. Miss Fraser’s original mistake will forever cause unending blushes on black surfaces. Most probably she does not know this, and may even be determined to keep this near-vulgar identity.
In Shona we say: "When Fate gives you a weeping wound, Fate wants you to die from flies". For her, this has turned out to be a very unhappy preordination. In dabbling in Zimbabwe’s shifty politics, she is probably seeking an escape from Somalia, her unmitigated disaster soon after leaving South Africa. She will soon find out that Zimbabwe is a worse slough which will drown her and her shameful career.
Condy’s African trot
With a despairing backdrop of Iraq, Condoleeza Rice has been sent to Africa in the hope of finalising plans for AFRICOM, a new African military command base for imperial America. It is a base which most Africans reject, but which America wants to set up willy-nilly. The Middle East has become too much of a hazardous unknown for rapacious America’s energy needs. America seeks to up Africa’s contribution to her energy needs, which stand at about 26 percent. Nervous America also sees Africa as a dangerous nexus for Al Qaeda resistance, what with the gory images to come from Somalia in the days of Clinton. It is a spectre America sees re-enacted in the present see-saw in that same country, clearly showing America and its askaris are far from pacifying or winning that great horn of Africa whose sharp end seem pointed at America’s interests. But at another level, mounted Condy trots for Bush to checkmate Lisboa. Remember US is Europe’s ally and competitor at the same time.
McGee’s striped insides.
As for McGee, well, he has made matters much easier for us. He made it quite clear in a recent interview that his black colour should not be misread by black Zimbabwe. It is only a colour which belie the red stripes and white stars which bind and lead him respectively. He is white America’s black agent, he confessed. We welcome his sincerity which we shall constantly play up to make sure no Zimbabwean thinks McGee comes from Zvimba! Interestingly, McGee told the weekly which interviewed him that America was not deporting children of officials studying in the US. His sister in servitude, Jendayi, has since contradicted that, again bringing out the timeless dilemma of those whose role is not to make voices, but to make echoes.
The lesson Andrew Young would not leave
Far from damning Mugabe, these three white black beings stand damned by their predecessors, most notably people like Andrew Young. In his small painful way, Andrew showed what a black man lucky enough to gaze at the white pinnacle could do with that new and briefly found fame and power. It would be fulsome to credit him with significant contribution to our struggle for Independence. But it would be mean not to state that he never contradicted it. The lot whose names I give above, are a happy antithesis of Africa’s search for fullness.
I will come back to that point. For now Baronness Amos, the good lady from Jamaica. In case she had any illusions, now she now knows why she hit fame by being Britain’s first ever black minister at a time of a vicious stand-off between UK and Zimbabwe. It all revolved around her pigmentation. Brown hoped to foist her on Europe as EU’s envoy to Africa (read Zimbabwe!). Europe rejected her.
She has since been dusted from the lair of hoary lords, to be pitted against waspish Mugabe whom Albion dares not confront. We are back to the black woman’s burden for the empire, indeed back to Susi and Chuma burdened with the decaying body of D. Livingstone. And of course if she chooses to misbehave in Lisboa, she will soon discover that the continent does not hesitate to impale a daughter who marries the enemy. Zimbabwe is not the country to pull back punches merely because the cornered but marauding baboon clasps its face in shame and helplessness. After all, so much is at stake.
The shame of artists
I also read from the wires that Wole Soyinka has joined with a cabal of writers, among them Haclav Havel who worked with America to destroy the socialist system in the old Czechoslovakia before dividing it, to urge EU to put Zimbabwe on the spot. This is not the first time a Nigerian has betrayed Zimbabwe’s cause, indeed not the first time Soyinka has struck a blow against Zimbabwe for the British. History is loud and clear on official Nigeria’s stance on Zimbabwe’s standoff with Britain. It is also clear on popular Nigeria’s deep solidarity with Zimbabwe in her struggles. Suffice it to say, indeed the man we assumed was Africa’s seer, has again died. As has indeed our own Chiwoniso Maraire who seems keener to hear ancient Nordic voices, in place of that of her own dear departed father who gave us the militant protest song "Takaramba", "We Said No!" in English. Why would Chiwoniso whose dated debut song still wails on our airwaves pretend she is muzzled? Because she needs a dry Nordic bone between her jaws? It is most unfortunate. Today she joins the likes of Conte in betraying her people’s cause. This is what pieces of silver do to weak souls.
Dressing up a lost cause
Which takes me to my main point. Zimbabwe’s struggle against imperialism has entered a critical penultimate stage. Imperial West is fumbling for cause and legitimacy, as Zimbabwe’s case sinks deeper and firmer in the minds of Africa and the progressive world. There is an attempt to dress up the West’s cause, the same way there was a similar effort in 1979 when the Internal Settlement was launched. The whole gallery of blacks I listed above is part of the dress-up, but one destined to fail and negatively play harbinger to a real resolution of this conflict. Both Bush and Brown have assembled a legion of blacks in the hope of confusing Africa. Hence the present flurry of black-led initiatives meant to undercut genuine African initiatives and solutions. It is important that Zimbabwe and Africa stand steadfast as we run the last lap.
Cahora Bassa!
Equally, Lisboa is significant. Portugal is the oldest imperial country, never to be equated with amateurish England which only begins to feature much later in relations with Africa. In the case of Zimbabwe, Portugal’s relations with us trace back to the early 17th Century, while the British only feature at the turn of the 19th Century. Portugal has a longer interaction with Africa than any other power in Europe and the West. Just a few weeks ago, she showed the way by letting go of Cahora Bassa, her last imperial link with Mozambique. On that beautiful day when Mozambique completed her sovereignty, we all leapt in joy and sang Cahora Bassa! The Job is Done! This is what Britain cannot do readily do regarding our Land. Clearly, it is not fortuitous that Lisboa is the turning point in the resolution of the stand-off between Zimbabwe and Britain. After Lisbon, Britain will beat a lonely sanctions path, innocuously supported by America and a few Nordic countries. The rest of Europe will none of it, which is how the sanctions will crumble. But none in Zimbabwe should ever impute purity to the motives of Europe. Europe remains an imperial bloc whose wish is to ring-fence Africa from "marauding" China. It is Europe’s fear of prowling China, not her conscience, which has seen the resumption of continental dialogue and the accommodation of Zimbabwe. The motive remains as ignoble as ever, and care must be taken to ensure Africa is not indentured to this torment. Already, this is coming through in the three documents proposed as outcomes for the great indaba. Far from being hostile to Britain, the three documents suggest a greater encirclement of the continent for a better British kill, using a slightly different argument and pretext. But this will not succeed if Africa stands firm. And united. Only then will Africa escape the fate of a mounted continent, galloping to self-ruin. Caveat Emptor. Icho!
l nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
As you read this column, drums will start beating in Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal, marking the first ever convocation of Europeans and Africans, after a long and troubled seven-year hiatus. To some, these will be drums, tom-toms of joy. To others, these will be bells that toll the end to come. It all depends on where you stand, or who you stand with. Lisboa might be very far for Africa’s tardy and cracked barefoot, very far for Africa’s meandering path, but Lisboa will influence Africa’s futures in a very significant way. I am there, spirited from home by the great iron bird that walks straight, to a tuneful, airy hum.
As I ride this enchanted aluminium broomstick, ride this wonder of the white-man which, unlike God’s birds, flies without flapping its wings, so too flies and unfurls my mind, uninhibited, welcomed and melding with the vast blue that bear no milestones. As if to affirm the greatness of the earth, I soon discover no matter how high, you still need to peer down below, past the fleeting clouds, to reach the craggy earth for milestones. You look far down, vulnerable and overawed, hazily hoping for a helpful landmark to locate yourself in this great vastness, unremittingly azure. None comes. In desperation, you hope that beneath the melancholic hum and drone of the iron bird’s great and throbbing heartbeat, a croaky voice might just break out, deployed from the sealed cockpit to help the passengers with some bearings. Nothing comes to break the eerie purr of this great iron bird.
My whirring mind surmises what the captain might be up to. Maybe he is busily thinking of unpaid bills back home. Or some sumptuous girlfriend left behind, all the time quite oblivious of my little unshared anxieties about time and place. Or something more inane and stupid, this unfeeling pilot who pays no regard to I, the captive wonderer and navigator reversing and paying a good turn to Vasco da Gama’s voyages.
The West’s great black legion
To quieten my turbulent insides, I choose to reflect on this small cosmos called Zimbabwe: its land, its people, its leadership, its friends, its enemies, its victories, its defeats, its warts and all. I have nine long hours between home and Lisboa, nine hours of contemplation. From that airy vantage, I boisterously feel like some little god, able and placed to see the past, the present, the future as one short, thrifty continuum. After all, I am above, am I not?
Above the vast condition of mortal man and woman, too above to be impeded by this knoll, that hill, this mountain, that forest, this human throng, that cacophonous yell. I see, hear everything, whole and complete. I, the vain omniscient who can’t know where I am! Surprisingly, I soon discover that vastness gives no joy. Far from being invited to greater, celestial muses, my godly mind gravitates towards the mundane, even puny, towards the little failings of humankind. I think a lot about Condoleeza Rice; think a lot about Jendayi Fraser. Think quite a lot about Baronness Amos. Yes, think a great deal about McGee: white America’s new black man in Harare. I think also about Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer who gave us "The Man Died". I think about Bishop Sentamu, Bishop Tutu.
I think too about Kofi Annan; think about Collin Powell: that great African general which rapacious America deployed to quell and subdue small Arab peoples, before discarding him like a spent, flappy condom. Olonga too: that Kenyan who could not be a Zimbabwean, whose ambition was to be larger than the cricket butt and ball which brought him fame, all for the sake of embittered white Rhodesia. I think about Chiwoniso; I think about John Makumbe: a whole African Phd, now commanded and deployed by sisi Jenni Williams and her motley women from WOZA, to harm Zimbabwe and African interests. I think also about the so-called "Zimbabwe Vigil" and the planned marches of Lisboa, all to prove that Mugabe did mortally wrong to give the black Zimbabwean his due! I self-censoriously wonder why I, the god, still chooses to be man. Surely the conduct of mere mortals can never baffle gods, lest gods become mere men and women?
Bush’s mounts, Brown’s trots
As I reflect on this vast pantheon of black surfaces, I recall the wires reported that Condy this week was headed for Africa, an emissary of George W.Bush, America’s war-mongering President. The same wires — today’s sentinels and foremost mongers of global village rumours — also reported Brown — Britain’s utterly un-telegenic, unconvincing Prime Minister - has despatched Baronness Amos to Lisboa, to represent him. He himself won’t come, for fear of a handshake with Mugabe’s "coarse" hand! I reflect more. Both Bush and Brown are white Anglo-Saxons. That is a foolish point to make, especially when made by a god! How else can they be, they being Anglo-Saxons?
Neither the Union Jack nor the Stars and Stripes, bears the colour black. Ain’t no black on the Union Jack, some Carribean scholar (Baronnes Amos’ compatriot) once wrote. Is that not so? Yes, both are white, indeed as ashen as the deadly systems they run — or more aptly — they mind. The two women, on the other hand, are black, blacker than two nights put together. It does not matter where you inspect: kinky black hair, nubile, black pendulous breasts, black rotund formations that transfix male gaze — all these and much more, are all black, black like the remnant burnt-out stump from last season’s chitemene or mavivi.
When Tendai becomes Jendayi
Jendayi Fraser. Another surface: pitchy black, kinky haired, very flat nose that confidently spread across the face like a squatting African bullfrog. Just beginning of this week, she was on the wires announcing another raft of useless sanctions against Zimbabwe, black African Zimbabwe. The measures purport to add more black Africans to America’s list of banned persons; purports to deport children of Zimbabwean officials studying in America; promise worse sanctions, "unless political violence" stops! Such "dire" measures dropping from fleshy black pendulous lips of mother Africa’s abducted, still enslaved daughter. Good gracious God! Except through books and political rumours, this misbegotten daughter of Africa has not been here at all, knows nothing about Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe she knows is a construct of angry white America identifying with embittered Albion. Zimbabwe is very peaceful, and McGee will vouch that. The remotest it got by way of political violence came from MDC, America and Britain’s MDC! And foe her, the recompense is to add more Zanu (PF) people on the sanctions list, citing March 11 disturbances which again the MDC caused. Imperialism has no shame, I tell you!
Three black women and one man
Faced with an indelibly disastrous diplomatic defeat over Portugal, Brown has turned to Bush for some modicum of mitigation. Both have agreed to deploy three black women and one man (McGee) against a black President who is a hero of the African liberation struggle and contemporary African self-assertion. It is a cynical decision, but one quite revealing in terms of the menial place and role of blacks in the white world. And all four relish it. First Jendayi. She spoke of the additional measures with such gusto and lusto, that no one was left in any doubt that she relished wielding the dagger for the white assassin. "Jendayi" was this lady’s vain attempt at spelling "Tendayi", a Shona name which means "Be Thankful". She mis-spelt it to something narrowly vulgar, something bordering the monstrous. Prophetically, "Jendayi", the resultant linguistic mangle, is not something you readily yell in the presence of elders, still less in the presence of your in-laws, without inviting deep shame and revilement.
You have to be slow and deliberate to make sure you do not transpose an "e" for an "a", to end up with something decidedly vulgar and unmentionable in polite society. This is the ironic consequence of Miss Fraser’s maiden attempt at being African. A clear tragedy of good intentions. Miss Fraser’s original mistake will forever cause unending blushes on black surfaces. Most probably she does not know this, and may even be determined to keep this near-vulgar identity.
In Shona we say: "When Fate gives you a weeping wound, Fate wants you to die from flies". For her, this has turned out to be a very unhappy preordination. In dabbling in Zimbabwe’s shifty politics, she is probably seeking an escape from Somalia, her unmitigated disaster soon after leaving South Africa. She will soon find out that Zimbabwe is a worse slough which will drown her and her shameful career.
Condy’s African trot
With a despairing backdrop of Iraq, Condoleeza Rice has been sent to Africa in the hope of finalising plans for AFRICOM, a new African military command base for imperial America. It is a base which most Africans reject, but which America wants to set up willy-nilly. The Middle East has become too much of a hazardous unknown for rapacious America’s energy needs. America seeks to up Africa’s contribution to her energy needs, which stand at about 26 percent. Nervous America also sees Africa as a dangerous nexus for Al Qaeda resistance, what with the gory images to come from Somalia in the days of Clinton. It is a spectre America sees re-enacted in the present see-saw in that same country, clearly showing America and its askaris are far from pacifying or winning that great horn of Africa whose sharp end seem pointed at America’s interests. But at another level, mounted Condy trots for Bush to checkmate Lisboa. Remember US is Europe’s ally and competitor at the same time.
McGee’s striped insides.
As for McGee, well, he has made matters much easier for us. He made it quite clear in a recent interview that his black colour should not be misread by black Zimbabwe. It is only a colour which belie the red stripes and white stars which bind and lead him respectively. He is white America’s black agent, he confessed. We welcome his sincerity which we shall constantly play up to make sure no Zimbabwean thinks McGee comes from Zvimba! Interestingly, McGee told the weekly which interviewed him that America was not deporting children of officials studying in the US. His sister in servitude, Jendayi, has since contradicted that, again bringing out the timeless dilemma of those whose role is not to make voices, but to make echoes.
The lesson Andrew Young would not leave
Far from damning Mugabe, these three white black beings stand damned by their predecessors, most notably people like Andrew Young. In his small painful way, Andrew showed what a black man lucky enough to gaze at the white pinnacle could do with that new and briefly found fame and power. It would be fulsome to credit him with significant contribution to our struggle for Independence. But it would be mean not to state that he never contradicted it. The lot whose names I give above, are a happy antithesis of Africa’s search for fullness.
I will come back to that point. For now Baronness Amos, the good lady from Jamaica. In case she had any illusions, now she now knows why she hit fame by being Britain’s first ever black minister at a time of a vicious stand-off between UK and Zimbabwe. It all revolved around her pigmentation. Brown hoped to foist her on Europe as EU’s envoy to Africa (read Zimbabwe!). Europe rejected her.
She has since been dusted from the lair of hoary lords, to be pitted against waspish Mugabe whom Albion dares not confront. We are back to the black woman’s burden for the empire, indeed back to Susi and Chuma burdened with the decaying body of D. Livingstone. And of course if she chooses to misbehave in Lisboa, she will soon discover that the continent does not hesitate to impale a daughter who marries the enemy. Zimbabwe is not the country to pull back punches merely because the cornered but marauding baboon clasps its face in shame and helplessness. After all, so much is at stake.
The shame of artists
I also read from the wires that Wole Soyinka has joined with a cabal of writers, among them Haclav Havel who worked with America to destroy the socialist system in the old Czechoslovakia before dividing it, to urge EU to put Zimbabwe on the spot. This is not the first time a Nigerian has betrayed Zimbabwe’s cause, indeed not the first time Soyinka has struck a blow against Zimbabwe for the British. History is loud and clear on official Nigeria’s stance on Zimbabwe’s standoff with Britain. It is also clear on popular Nigeria’s deep solidarity with Zimbabwe in her struggles. Suffice it to say, indeed the man we assumed was Africa’s seer, has again died. As has indeed our own Chiwoniso Maraire who seems keener to hear ancient Nordic voices, in place of that of her own dear departed father who gave us the militant protest song "Takaramba", "We Said No!" in English. Why would Chiwoniso whose dated debut song still wails on our airwaves pretend she is muzzled? Because she needs a dry Nordic bone between her jaws? It is most unfortunate. Today she joins the likes of Conte in betraying her people’s cause. This is what pieces of silver do to weak souls.
Dressing up a lost cause
Which takes me to my main point. Zimbabwe’s struggle against imperialism has entered a critical penultimate stage. Imperial West is fumbling for cause and legitimacy, as Zimbabwe’s case sinks deeper and firmer in the minds of Africa and the progressive world. There is an attempt to dress up the West’s cause, the same way there was a similar effort in 1979 when the Internal Settlement was launched. The whole gallery of blacks I listed above is part of the dress-up, but one destined to fail and negatively play harbinger to a real resolution of this conflict. Both Bush and Brown have assembled a legion of blacks in the hope of confusing Africa. Hence the present flurry of black-led initiatives meant to undercut genuine African initiatives and solutions. It is important that Zimbabwe and Africa stand steadfast as we run the last lap.
Cahora Bassa!
Equally, Lisboa is significant. Portugal is the oldest imperial country, never to be equated with amateurish England which only begins to feature much later in relations with Africa. In the case of Zimbabwe, Portugal’s relations with us trace back to the early 17th Century, while the British only feature at the turn of the 19th Century. Portugal has a longer interaction with Africa than any other power in Europe and the West. Just a few weeks ago, she showed the way by letting go of Cahora Bassa, her last imperial link with Mozambique. On that beautiful day when Mozambique completed her sovereignty, we all leapt in joy and sang Cahora Bassa! The Job is Done! This is what Britain cannot do readily do regarding our Land. Clearly, it is not fortuitous that Lisboa is the turning point in the resolution of the stand-off between Zimbabwe and Britain. After Lisbon, Britain will beat a lonely sanctions path, innocuously supported by America and a few Nordic countries. The rest of Europe will none of it, which is how the sanctions will crumble. But none in Zimbabwe should ever impute purity to the motives of Europe. Europe remains an imperial bloc whose wish is to ring-fence Africa from "marauding" China. It is Europe’s fear of prowling China, not her conscience, which has seen the resumption of continental dialogue and the accommodation of Zimbabwe. The motive remains as ignoble as ever, and care must be taken to ensure Africa is not indentured to this torment. Already, this is coming through in the three documents proposed as outcomes for the great indaba. Far from being hostile to Britain, the three documents suggest a greater encirclement of the continent for a better British kill, using a slightly different argument and pretext. But this will not succeed if Africa stands firm. And united. Only then will Africa escape the fate of a mounted continent, galloping to self-ruin. Caveat Emptor. Icho!
l nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Thursday, 6 December 2007
AN ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACT OF
AN ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACT OF
SANCTIONS AGAINST ZIMBABWE
SUPPLEMENT 7 OF THE FOURTH QUARTER 2005 MONETORY POLICY REVIEW STATEMENT
DELIVERED BY THE GOVERNOR OF THE RESERVE BANK OF ZIMBABWE
DR G GONO
24 JANUARY 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. DEFINITION OF SANCTIONS
3. TYPES OF SANCTIONS IMPOSED ONZIMBABWE
• Declared Sanctions
• Undeclared Sanctions
4. ANALYSIS OF EFFECTS OF SANCTIONS ON ZIMBABWE
• Impact on the Financial Sector
• Decline in BOP Support
• Sustained Decline in Offshore Financing
• Sustained Decline in Long-Term Capital
• Socio-Economic Impact
• Impact on Health Sector
• Impact on Agricultural and Rural Sector Development
• Impact on Education Sector
• Impact on Investment and Growth
•
5. IMPACT OF SANCTIONS ON REGIONAL COOPERATION
6. CONSTRAINTS ON POLICY
7. THE MEDIA AS A PENAL TOOL
8. THE ADVERSE DEMOSTRATION EFFECTS
9 TO RETALIATE OR NOT TO RETALIATE
10. CONCLUSION
1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
1.1 Zimbabwe has, over the past few years, received considerable adverse international media reports, as well as covert and overt alienation by some few countries, primarily on the back of the inevitable Land Reform Program the country implemented.
1.2 Within this context, debate has also been generated on whether or not Zimbabwe, as a country was under sanctions.
1.3 Others have argued that the “smart sanctions”, imposing travel bans on targeted individuals have not imposed an adverse burden on the economy as a whole.
1.4 However, adverse publicity, coupled with punitive measures by some foreign governments, multilateral institutions, as well as some private sector entities have worked to constrain the policy options available to the country, which in effect has worked to worsen the socio-economic environment, with the poor and the vulnerable groups being the hardest hit.
1.5 This Supplement explores the contextual form and meaning of a country under sanctions, and evaluates the extent to which the Zimbabwean economy’s performance has been constrained due to the phenomenon of sanctions.
2. DEFINITION OF SANCTIONS
2.1 Sanctions generally entail restrictions upon international trade and finance that one country imposes on another for political reasons. Traditionally, sanctions have taken the form of arms embargoes, imposition of trade and financial restrictions, interruption of relations by air and sea and diplomatic isolation.
2.2 Sanctions are basically measures applied in response to perceived wrong doing by a state, such as an act of aggression against another state or human rights violation from the perspectives of international conventions.
2.3 Sanctions are used as a policy of segregation for political and economic isolation by the imposing entities.
2.4 In recent years, the coverage of sanctions has widened to include other elements that are not directly linked to trade and commerce such as culture and sports.
2.5 Sanctions may also involve bans on economic, sporting and cultural contacts between countries, as well as “person – to-person” sanctions such as withholding visas or other diplomatic documents from citizens of another state.
2.6 Economic sanctions are usually the most common of all sanctions imposed on a nation. They imply the deliberate government aspired withdrawal, or threat of withdrawal of trade and financial relations including technical cooperation.
2.7 The United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan highlighted that ‘sanctions remain a blunt instrument, which hurt large numbers of people who are not their primary targets’.
2.8 In an effort to refine the effectiveness of sanctions, there has been a shift towards targeted sanctions which impose travel bans and freezing of foreign bank accounts of targeted individuals or entities.
3. TYPES OF SANCTIONS IMPOSED ON ZIMBABWE
Declared Sanctions
3.1 These are sanctions which are pronounced and normally legislated by the imposing country or organization. Targeted sanctions or smart sanctions fall under this category.
3.2 Targeted sanctions are meant to be precise, seeking to focus their impact on targeted individuals, with a theoretically minimal negative impact on the general populace. Typical examples of targeted sanctions for Zimbabwe include the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 by the US.
3.3 The Zimbabwe Democracy Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (Zidera)
3.3.1 The Zimbabwe Democracy Economic Recovery Act of 2001 Section 4(c) Subsection 1 allows US executive director to each international financial institution to oppose the vote against any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution (Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, 2001).
4 Undeclared Sanctions
3.4 These types of sanctions are not announced but are implied from the declared sanctions.
3.5 A good example is where Non-Governmental Organizations have moved their operations out of Zimbabwe since the enactment of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001. This Act outlines the scope of targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe by the USA.
4. ANALYSIS OF EFFECTS OF SANCTIONS ON ZIMBABWE
Impact on the Financial Sector
4.1 The combined effects of declared and undeclared sanctions on Zimbabwe have been to worsen the country’s BOP position as characterized by the following:
Decline in BOP Support
4.2 Zimbabwe’s balance of payments position has deteriorated significantly since 1997. In 1997, it deteriorated from a deficit of US$21 million to US$740 million. This unfavourable development emanated from the combined effects of poor export performance, high import demand, and reduced capital inflows, on the back of adverse publicity.
4.3 A combination of current account deficits and reduced capital inflows, resulted in excessive pressures on foreign exchange reserves, which, as a result, declined from US$830 million (3 months import cover in 1996) to US$272 million ( 1 month import cover) by end 1997.
4.4 The attendant foreign exchange shortages severely constrained the country’s capacity to meet foreign payment obligations and finance critical imports, such as drugs, grain, fuel and electricity.
4.5 Reflecting the shortages of foreign exchange, there has been a significant build up in external payments arrears. At the end of 1999, total foreign payments arrears amounted to US$109 million and have since increased astronomically to US$2 073.7 million by end of 2005.
4.6 This unfavourable development in the external sector has worsened the country’s creditworthiness as the country’s risk profile was heightened. This subsequently led to the drying up of traditional sources of external finance from the donor community.
4.7 The withdrawal of the multilateral financial institutions from providing Balance of
Payments support to Zimbabwe had a demonstration effect as some other bilateral creditors and donors also followed suit by either scaling down or suspending disbursements on existing loans for both Government and Parastatal loans.
4.8 Prior to these developments, the country had an impeccable record of prompt debt servicing and was highly rated in the international financial markets.
4.9 The capital account, traditionally a surplus account, has been in deficit since 2000.
This largely resulted from the perceived high country risk by both multilateral and bilateral creditors. As such, international investors preferred other countries for investment, thus depriving Zimbabwe of the much-needed foreign direct investment.
4.10 The overall balance of payments position is estimated to have recorded a deficit of US$266 million in 2005. This was financed through the accumulation of arrears which ended the year at US$2 073.7 million.
Sustained Decline in Offshore Financing
4.11 The combined effect of arrears has been to worsen the country’s relations with international creditors, thus creating a vicious circle.
4.12 The current wave of declared and undeclared sanctions is negatively affecting the image of the country, thereby distorting how financial markets assess the risk profile of Zimbabwe.
4.13 As a result, Zimbabwean companies are finding it extremely difficult to access offshore lines of credit because of the perceived country risk. Against this background, Zimbabwean companies have, over the past 5 or so years been dealing with their international suppliers strictly on a cash-upfront basis, with very minimal credit terms.
4.14 If the private companies manage to secure offshore financing it is usually at very high interest rates. Risk premiums have been pegged at high rates ranging from 8 to 15% above LIBOR, making it very expensive to borrow.
4.15 Zimbabwean importers are asked to pay cash upfront resulting in a significant squeeze on private sector cash flows. The deterioration in the balance of payments has led to bigger challenges, including underutilization of capacity and foreign exchange shortages.
Sustained Decline in Long-Term Capital
4.16 The sustained decline in long-term capital inflows has had ripple effects on the country’s employment levels, and its ability to provide basic goods and services to its people, ultimately leading to a decline in the standards of living.
4.17 The result has been large scale emigration, especially of skilled labour, thus further straining the economy’s capacity to hasten the pace of economic turnaround and development.
Socio-Economic Impact
4.18 Zimbabwe has seen widespread reversal and cessation of donor funding in the areas of social development such as health, education, and infrastructure development.
4.19 The withdrawals of the above donor funding programmes has had devastating effects on social services provision such as HIV and AIDS programmes, among others.
4.20 Some irrigation schemes which had sustained the lives of a substantial number of rural people have been dealt a heavy blow, which has resulted in increased levels of poverty in the rural population.
Impact on Health Sector
4.21 Health Services Support Programmes which were suspended include the following:
i) Supporting the provincial health service capacity building and policy issues to Ministry of Health & Child Welfare (MOHCW);
ii) Development of a gender strategy Support to HIV/AIDS activities;
iii) Integration of Zimbabwe Essential Drugs Action Program (ZEDAP) to national laboratories;
iv) Establishment of the health information system; and
v) Support to the Health Services Fund Transport Management.
4.22 The City of Harare Health Department used to derive benefits from the various
Joint Research Projects with international stakeholders and these have since been stopped, as part of the sanctions, effectively constraining the health delivery system.
Impact on Agricultural and Rural Sector Development
4.23 Some programmes for the Agricultural sector aimed at enhancing forestry extension services; development of agriculture policy; marketing information system; supporting irrigation schemes to small holders; provision of training to smallholder farmers; and direct support to farming households to assist them in income generating activities were also suspended, as part of the sanctions on Zimbabwe.
4.24 Against this background, the Government had to reallocate its purse to forestall constriction of the rural economy.
Impact on Education Sector
4.25 The Education Sector Support Programme which was established in January 1996, supported by donor funds was suspended after completion in 2000 and no new
programmes have since been funded.
4.26 The project facilitated the supply of text books, special education needs, and construction of school buildings, capacity building and promotion of gender equity in education in the rural areas.
4.27 All this has been put on hold following the imposition of sanctions.
Impact on Investment and Growth
4.28 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is a key driver of economic growth in any developing economy. The purpose of FDI is to stimulate economic growth and employment creation. FDI also positively impacts on the country’s balance of payments position.
4.29 The negative perception that has come with sanctions has negatively impacted on foreign direct investment coming into Zimbabwe, as investors tend to shy away from economies that are perceived as risky. In 1998, FDI inflows amounted to
US$444.3 million and by 2003 the inflows had declined to a mere US$3.8 million.
Figure 1: Foreign Direct Investment Inflows
4.30 The low investment levels in the export sector have exacerbated foreign exchange shortages, leading to shortages of fuel and imported raw-materials.
4.31 Yes, it is true that the transitory effects of the Land Reform Programme and inflationary pressures have contributed to a decline in output and hence underperformance of GDP but it is equally true that declared and undeclared sanctions have also resulted in the contraction in GDP.
4.32 It is time that the debate focuses on the significance of sanctions on achieving their objectives, compared to the devastating effects on the livelihood of the generality of Zimbabweans.
5. IMPACT OF SANCTIONS ON REGIONAL COOPERATION
5.1 The “smart sanctions” are also affecting the smooth running of regional groupings such as SADC and COMESA.
5.2 The European Union, through the European Development Fund compensates
COMESA member states for revenue losses suffered under the tariff phase down exercise under specific conditions which take into account macroeconomic policies.
5.3 As part of the sanctions Zimbabwe has not benefited from the fund and this could affect, in the long term, its tariff reduction process in line with other countries in COMESA, thereby undermining the regional initiatives.
5.4 Targeted sanctions have also resulted in Zimbabwe failing to be represented at regional pact meetings such as ACP- EU meetings. This means that the country is unable to present trade policy recommendations favourable to its people.
6. CONSTRAINTS ON POLICY
6.1 The cumulative effects of declared and undeclared sanctions has also been to narrow the policy space for the country and Authorities have had to realign policies, such as fiscal and monetary interventions to unlock more self-reliant instruments, as part of the turnaround programme.
6.2 Ordinarily, in a case where a country’s internal savings fall short of supporting ideal investment levels, the attendant internal gap is typically closed through Capital inflows, Foreign Direct Inflows, Portfolio investment and or international BOP support. But in the case of Zimbabwe, this was not the case since the external component has largely been campaigned away, leaving a very tight and limited policy space for monetary and fiscal policies.
6.3 The limited policy space has, thus, become a binding constraint on such policies as exchange rate management and interest rate determination, where an eclectic strategy had to be pursued, including concessional financing of the productive sectors and measured exchange rate adjustments.
6.4 Under conditions of a tight external sector position, aggravated by lack of international balance of payments support, the applicability of orthodox or free market based policy interventions becomes very limited.
6.5 A vicious circle has thus evolved since the imposition of sanctions on Zimbabwe.
The resultant decline in economic activity emanating from the sanctions has given rise to rising external payment arrears, and high country risk, which in turn, has adverse effects on economic activity.
7. THE MEDIA AS A PENAL TOOL
7.1 The negative international image on Zimbabwe has largely been non-factual bad publicity.
7.2 The Land Reform Programme has been misunderstood by the world due to bad publicity and calculated distortions of facts on the ground.
7.3 The negative publicity by local, regional and international media has thus, in effect, worked to undermine and destroy business confidence and investor sentiment towards Zimbabwe.
7.4 Bad publicity has dealt Zimbabwe’s tourism sector a painful blow.
7.5 Zimbabwe, as a tourist destination, has been falsely perceived to be an unsafe and risky country to visit, thus leading to a reduction in the number of tourist arrivals, thereby reducing foreign currency earnings.
7.6 Similarly, ordinary Zimbabwean travelers are finding it difficult to obtain visas to travel abroad due to negative perceptions and xenophobia arising indirectly from the targeted sanctions.
7.7 The trend on international tourist arrivals shown in Figure 3 below portrays a
Zimbabwe portrayed as a war zone and yet Zimbabwe has been a peaceful country, not only in the region but compared to any other country in the world.
7.8 International tourist arrivals dropped from a peak of 600 000 in 1999 to 470 000 in 2000, before declining further to 281 105 in 2002.
7.9 Recent turnaround measures have, however, started to reverse the adverse trend.
8. THE ADVERSE DEMONSTRATION EFFECTS
8.1 Deteriorating BOP support at a time when Zimbabwe’s export sector was constrained inevitably pushed the country into growing external sector payment arrears.
8.2 Against this background the IMF, World Bank and the ADB suspended their financial support to Zimbabwe, sparking widespread demonstration effects on other financiers and the donor community at large, who took the cue and also suspended their support. This put further pressure on the country’s external sector, constraining the recovery process.
8.3 It is for this reason that institutions such as the IMF sought to exercise the highest level of restraint through the publication of balanced country reviews, so as to avoid “talking weak economies into crises.”
9 TO RETALIATE OR NOT TO RETALIATE?
9.1 The pervasiveness and intricacy of the sanctions under which Zimbabwe is working to stabilize its business environment have generated considerable debate on whether or not Zimbabwe should undertake retaliatory measures.
9.2 Others have observed that whilst some industrial countries are working to undermine economic growth and development in Zimbabwe through declared and undeclared sanctions, their transnational corporations are lining their pockets with hefty dividends arising from extractive activities in the Zimbabwean economy.
9.3 The argument, some have put it, is that Zimbabwe ought to consider levying some dimension of a “sanctions tax” on such entities, as a retaliatory measure.
9.4 As Monetary Authorities, we do not believe this is the optimal way forward, and we are pleased that our Principals are of the same progressive view.
9.5 Our considered view is that through constructive engagement, the international community should assume a greater mode of objectivity and appreciate the true
Zimbabwean story for what it is, without inflammatory and often self engulfing emotions from gross inaccuracies.
9.6 Through constructive engagement, win-win frameworks can be generated, without the need to fight fire with fire.
9.7 Indeed two wrongs do not make a right. Time has come for the international community which is part of the Sanctions League to reconsider their position and remove these sanctions totally.
9.8 Whatever message the sanctions were meant to convey has been conveyed all these years and there are more serious issues for the world to deal with than continue to inflict pain and suffering on the Zimbabwean population.
10. CONCLUSION
10.1 Sanctions are a pervasive phenomenon with far reaching implications for the ordinary Zimbabwean, contrary to the view that these affect only the targeted individuals.
10.2 Thus, social sectors and the most vulnerable groups are the hardest hit, contrary to the postulate that the “smart sanctions only apply to and adversely affect the targeted few.”
10.3 As Zimbabweans, the lessons are very clear: there is need for unity of purpose and speeded upliftment of output in agriculture on the realization that we are our own
saviours.
10.4 There is need for a renewed deep sense of patriotism to safeguard what is ours and also the need to progress the business operating environment in a manner that enhances confidence, in order to unlock value in the country for vast investment opportunities strewn across all sectors, including agriculture, tourism, manufacturing and mining (Zimbabwe has the largest coal bed methane deposits and the second largest platinum deposits in the world).
10.5 Policy consistency; respect for private property rights; investment protection; a zero tolerance to lawlessness and corruption as well as full implementation of set socio-economic programmes are also vital steps that all Zimbabweans must take to heart as a tool against the adverse wave that is increasingly putting the country under siege.
10.6 As a united front, victory is certain.
Thank you.
DR G. GONO
GOVERNOR
RESERVE BANK OF ZIMBABWE
24 JANUARY, 2006
SANCTIONS AGAINST ZIMBABWE
SUPPLEMENT 7 OF THE FOURTH QUARTER 2005 MONETORY POLICY REVIEW STATEMENT
DELIVERED BY THE GOVERNOR OF THE RESERVE BANK OF ZIMBABWE
DR G GONO
24 JANUARY 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. DEFINITION OF SANCTIONS
3. TYPES OF SANCTIONS IMPOSED ONZIMBABWE
• Declared Sanctions
• Undeclared Sanctions
4. ANALYSIS OF EFFECTS OF SANCTIONS ON ZIMBABWE
• Impact on the Financial Sector
• Decline in BOP Support
• Sustained Decline in Offshore Financing
• Sustained Decline in Long-Term Capital
• Socio-Economic Impact
• Impact on Health Sector
• Impact on Agricultural and Rural Sector Development
• Impact on Education Sector
• Impact on Investment and Growth
•
5. IMPACT OF SANCTIONS ON REGIONAL COOPERATION
6. CONSTRAINTS ON POLICY
7. THE MEDIA AS A PENAL TOOL
8. THE ADVERSE DEMOSTRATION EFFECTS
9 TO RETALIATE OR NOT TO RETALIATE
10. CONCLUSION
1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
1.1 Zimbabwe has, over the past few years, received considerable adverse international media reports, as well as covert and overt alienation by some few countries, primarily on the back of the inevitable Land Reform Program the country implemented.
1.2 Within this context, debate has also been generated on whether or not Zimbabwe, as a country was under sanctions.
1.3 Others have argued that the “smart sanctions”, imposing travel bans on targeted individuals have not imposed an adverse burden on the economy as a whole.
1.4 However, adverse publicity, coupled with punitive measures by some foreign governments, multilateral institutions, as well as some private sector entities have worked to constrain the policy options available to the country, which in effect has worked to worsen the socio-economic environment, with the poor and the vulnerable groups being the hardest hit.
1.5 This Supplement explores the contextual form and meaning of a country under sanctions, and evaluates the extent to which the Zimbabwean economy’s performance has been constrained due to the phenomenon of sanctions.
2. DEFINITION OF SANCTIONS
2.1 Sanctions generally entail restrictions upon international trade and finance that one country imposes on another for political reasons. Traditionally, sanctions have taken the form of arms embargoes, imposition of trade and financial restrictions, interruption of relations by air and sea and diplomatic isolation.
2.2 Sanctions are basically measures applied in response to perceived wrong doing by a state, such as an act of aggression against another state or human rights violation from the perspectives of international conventions.
2.3 Sanctions are used as a policy of segregation for political and economic isolation by the imposing entities.
2.4 In recent years, the coverage of sanctions has widened to include other elements that are not directly linked to trade and commerce such as culture and sports.
2.5 Sanctions may also involve bans on economic, sporting and cultural contacts between countries, as well as “person – to-person” sanctions such as withholding visas or other diplomatic documents from citizens of another state.
2.6 Economic sanctions are usually the most common of all sanctions imposed on a nation. They imply the deliberate government aspired withdrawal, or threat of withdrawal of trade and financial relations including technical cooperation.
2.7 The United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan highlighted that ‘sanctions remain a blunt instrument, which hurt large numbers of people who are not their primary targets’.
2.8 In an effort to refine the effectiveness of sanctions, there has been a shift towards targeted sanctions which impose travel bans and freezing of foreign bank accounts of targeted individuals or entities.
3. TYPES OF SANCTIONS IMPOSED ON ZIMBABWE
Declared Sanctions
3.1 These are sanctions which are pronounced and normally legislated by the imposing country or organization. Targeted sanctions or smart sanctions fall under this category.
3.2 Targeted sanctions are meant to be precise, seeking to focus their impact on targeted individuals, with a theoretically minimal negative impact on the general populace. Typical examples of targeted sanctions for Zimbabwe include the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 by the US.
3.3 The Zimbabwe Democracy Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (Zidera)
3.3.1 The Zimbabwe Democracy Economic Recovery Act of 2001 Section 4(c) Subsection 1 allows US executive director to each international financial institution to oppose the vote against any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution (Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, 2001).
4 Undeclared Sanctions
3.4 These types of sanctions are not announced but are implied from the declared sanctions.
3.5 A good example is where Non-Governmental Organizations have moved their operations out of Zimbabwe since the enactment of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001. This Act outlines the scope of targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe by the USA.
4. ANALYSIS OF EFFECTS OF SANCTIONS ON ZIMBABWE
Impact on the Financial Sector
4.1 The combined effects of declared and undeclared sanctions on Zimbabwe have been to worsen the country’s BOP position as characterized by the following:
Decline in BOP Support
4.2 Zimbabwe’s balance of payments position has deteriorated significantly since 1997. In 1997, it deteriorated from a deficit of US$21 million to US$740 million. This unfavourable development emanated from the combined effects of poor export performance, high import demand, and reduced capital inflows, on the back of adverse publicity.
4.3 A combination of current account deficits and reduced capital inflows, resulted in excessive pressures on foreign exchange reserves, which, as a result, declined from US$830 million (3 months import cover in 1996) to US$272 million ( 1 month import cover) by end 1997.
4.4 The attendant foreign exchange shortages severely constrained the country’s capacity to meet foreign payment obligations and finance critical imports, such as drugs, grain, fuel and electricity.
4.5 Reflecting the shortages of foreign exchange, there has been a significant build up in external payments arrears. At the end of 1999, total foreign payments arrears amounted to US$109 million and have since increased astronomically to US$2 073.7 million by end of 2005.
4.6 This unfavourable development in the external sector has worsened the country’s creditworthiness as the country’s risk profile was heightened. This subsequently led to the drying up of traditional sources of external finance from the donor community.
4.7 The withdrawal of the multilateral financial institutions from providing Balance of
Payments support to Zimbabwe had a demonstration effect as some other bilateral creditors and donors also followed suit by either scaling down or suspending disbursements on existing loans for both Government and Parastatal loans.
4.8 Prior to these developments, the country had an impeccable record of prompt debt servicing and was highly rated in the international financial markets.
4.9 The capital account, traditionally a surplus account, has been in deficit since 2000.
This largely resulted from the perceived high country risk by both multilateral and bilateral creditors. As such, international investors preferred other countries for investment, thus depriving Zimbabwe of the much-needed foreign direct investment.
4.10 The overall balance of payments position is estimated to have recorded a deficit of US$266 million in 2005. This was financed through the accumulation of arrears which ended the year at US$2 073.7 million.
Sustained Decline in Offshore Financing
4.11 The combined effect of arrears has been to worsen the country’s relations with international creditors, thus creating a vicious circle.
4.12 The current wave of declared and undeclared sanctions is negatively affecting the image of the country, thereby distorting how financial markets assess the risk profile of Zimbabwe.
4.13 As a result, Zimbabwean companies are finding it extremely difficult to access offshore lines of credit because of the perceived country risk. Against this background, Zimbabwean companies have, over the past 5 or so years been dealing with their international suppliers strictly on a cash-upfront basis, with very minimal credit terms.
4.14 If the private companies manage to secure offshore financing it is usually at very high interest rates. Risk premiums have been pegged at high rates ranging from 8 to 15% above LIBOR, making it very expensive to borrow.
4.15 Zimbabwean importers are asked to pay cash upfront resulting in a significant squeeze on private sector cash flows. The deterioration in the balance of payments has led to bigger challenges, including underutilization of capacity and foreign exchange shortages.
Sustained Decline in Long-Term Capital
4.16 The sustained decline in long-term capital inflows has had ripple effects on the country’s employment levels, and its ability to provide basic goods and services to its people, ultimately leading to a decline in the standards of living.
4.17 The result has been large scale emigration, especially of skilled labour, thus further straining the economy’s capacity to hasten the pace of economic turnaround and development.
Socio-Economic Impact
4.18 Zimbabwe has seen widespread reversal and cessation of donor funding in the areas of social development such as health, education, and infrastructure development.
4.19 The withdrawals of the above donor funding programmes has had devastating effects on social services provision such as HIV and AIDS programmes, among others.
4.20 Some irrigation schemes which had sustained the lives of a substantial number of rural people have been dealt a heavy blow, which has resulted in increased levels of poverty in the rural population.
Impact on Health Sector
4.21 Health Services Support Programmes which were suspended include the following:
i) Supporting the provincial health service capacity building and policy issues to Ministry of Health & Child Welfare (MOHCW);
ii) Development of a gender strategy Support to HIV/AIDS activities;
iii) Integration of Zimbabwe Essential Drugs Action Program (ZEDAP) to national laboratories;
iv) Establishment of the health information system; and
v) Support to the Health Services Fund Transport Management.
4.22 The City of Harare Health Department used to derive benefits from the various
Joint Research Projects with international stakeholders and these have since been stopped, as part of the sanctions, effectively constraining the health delivery system.
Impact on Agricultural and Rural Sector Development
4.23 Some programmes for the Agricultural sector aimed at enhancing forestry extension services; development of agriculture policy; marketing information system; supporting irrigation schemes to small holders; provision of training to smallholder farmers; and direct support to farming households to assist them in income generating activities were also suspended, as part of the sanctions on Zimbabwe.
4.24 Against this background, the Government had to reallocate its purse to forestall constriction of the rural economy.
Impact on Education Sector
4.25 The Education Sector Support Programme which was established in January 1996, supported by donor funds was suspended after completion in 2000 and no new
programmes have since been funded.
4.26 The project facilitated the supply of text books, special education needs, and construction of school buildings, capacity building and promotion of gender equity in education in the rural areas.
4.27 All this has been put on hold following the imposition of sanctions.
Impact on Investment and Growth
4.28 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is a key driver of economic growth in any developing economy. The purpose of FDI is to stimulate economic growth and employment creation. FDI also positively impacts on the country’s balance of payments position.
4.29 The negative perception that has come with sanctions has negatively impacted on foreign direct investment coming into Zimbabwe, as investors tend to shy away from economies that are perceived as risky. In 1998, FDI inflows amounted to
US$444.3 million and by 2003 the inflows had declined to a mere US$3.8 million.
Figure 1: Foreign Direct Investment Inflows
4.30 The low investment levels in the export sector have exacerbated foreign exchange shortages, leading to shortages of fuel and imported raw-materials.
4.31 Yes, it is true that the transitory effects of the Land Reform Programme and inflationary pressures have contributed to a decline in output and hence underperformance of GDP but it is equally true that declared and undeclared sanctions have also resulted in the contraction in GDP.
4.32 It is time that the debate focuses on the significance of sanctions on achieving their objectives, compared to the devastating effects on the livelihood of the generality of Zimbabweans.
5. IMPACT OF SANCTIONS ON REGIONAL COOPERATION
5.1 The “smart sanctions” are also affecting the smooth running of regional groupings such as SADC and COMESA.
5.2 The European Union, through the European Development Fund compensates
COMESA member states for revenue losses suffered under the tariff phase down exercise under specific conditions which take into account macroeconomic policies.
5.3 As part of the sanctions Zimbabwe has not benefited from the fund and this could affect, in the long term, its tariff reduction process in line with other countries in COMESA, thereby undermining the regional initiatives.
5.4 Targeted sanctions have also resulted in Zimbabwe failing to be represented at regional pact meetings such as ACP- EU meetings. This means that the country is unable to present trade policy recommendations favourable to its people.
6. CONSTRAINTS ON POLICY
6.1 The cumulative effects of declared and undeclared sanctions has also been to narrow the policy space for the country and Authorities have had to realign policies, such as fiscal and monetary interventions to unlock more self-reliant instruments, as part of the turnaround programme.
6.2 Ordinarily, in a case where a country’s internal savings fall short of supporting ideal investment levels, the attendant internal gap is typically closed through Capital inflows, Foreign Direct Inflows, Portfolio investment and or international BOP support. But in the case of Zimbabwe, this was not the case since the external component has largely been campaigned away, leaving a very tight and limited policy space for monetary and fiscal policies.
6.3 The limited policy space has, thus, become a binding constraint on such policies as exchange rate management and interest rate determination, where an eclectic strategy had to be pursued, including concessional financing of the productive sectors and measured exchange rate adjustments.
6.4 Under conditions of a tight external sector position, aggravated by lack of international balance of payments support, the applicability of orthodox or free market based policy interventions becomes very limited.
6.5 A vicious circle has thus evolved since the imposition of sanctions on Zimbabwe.
The resultant decline in economic activity emanating from the sanctions has given rise to rising external payment arrears, and high country risk, which in turn, has adverse effects on economic activity.
7. THE MEDIA AS A PENAL TOOL
7.1 The negative international image on Zimbabwe has largely been non-factual bad publicity.
7.2 The Land Reform Programme has been misunderstood by the world due to bad publicity and calculated distortions of facts on the ground.
7.3 The negative publicity by local, regional and international media has thus, in effect, worked to undermine and destroy business confidence and investor sentiment towards Zimbabwe.
7.4 Bad publicity has dealt Zimbabwe’s tourism sector a painful blow.
7.5 Zimbabwe, as a tourist destination, has been falsely perceived to be an unsafe and risky country to visit, thus leading to a reduction in the number of tourist arrivals, thereby reducing foreign currency earnings.
7.6 Similarly, ordinary Zimbabwean travelers are finding it difficult to obtain visas to travel abroad due to negative perceptions and xenophobia arising indirectly from the targeted sanctions.
7.7 The trend on international tourist arrivals shown in Figure 3 below portrays a
Zimbabwe portrayed as a war zone and yet Zimbabwe has been a peaceful country, not only in the region but compared to any other country in the world.
7.8 International tourist arrivals dropped from a peak of 600 000 in 1999 to 470 000 in 2000, before declining further to 281 105 in 2002.
7.9 Recent turnaround measures have, however, started to reverse the adverse trend.
8. THE ADVERSE DEMONSTRATION EFFECTS
8.1 Deteriorating BOP support at a time when Zimbabwe’s export sector was constrained inevitably pushed the country into growing external sector payment arrears.
8.2 Against this background the IMF, World Bank and the ADB suspended their financial support to Zimbabwe, sparking widespread demonstration effects on other financiers and the donor community at large, who took the cue and also suspended their support. This put further pressure on the country’s external sector, constraining the recovery process.
8.3 It is for this reason that institutions such as the IMF sought to exercise the highest level of restraint through the publication of balanced country reviews, so as to avoid “talking weak economies into crises.”
9 TO RETALIATE OR NOT TO RETALIATE?
9.1 The pervasiveness and intricacy of the sanctions under which Zimbabwe is working to stabilize its business environment have generated considerable debate on whether or not Zimbabwe should undertake retaliatory measures.
9.2 Others have observed that whilst some industrial countries are working to undermine economic growth and development in Zimbabwe through declared and undeclared sanctions, their transnational corporations are lining their pockets with hefty dividends arising from extractive activities in the Zimbabwean economy.
9.3 The argument, some have put it, is that Zimbabwe ought to consider levying some dimension of a “sanctions tax” on such entities, as a retaliatory measure.
9.4 As Monetary Authorities, we do not believe this is the optimal way forward, and we are pleased that our Principals are of the same progressive view.
9.5 Our considered view is that through constructive engagement, the international community should assume a greater mode of objectivity and appreciate the true
Zimbabwean story for what it is, without inflammatory and often self engulfing emotions from gross inaccuracies.
9.6 Through constructive engagement, win-win frameworks can be generated, without the need to fight fire with fire.
9.7 Indeed two wrongs do not make a right. Time has come for the international community which is part of the Sanctions League to reconsider their position and remove these sanctions totally.
9.8 Whatever message the sanctions were meant to convey has been conveyed all these years and there are more serious issues for the world to deal with than continue to inflict pain and suffering on the Zimbabwean population.
10. CONCLUSION
10.1 Sanctions are a pervasive phenomenon with far reaching implications for the ordinary Zimbabwean, contrary to the view that these affect only the targeted individuals.
10.2 Thus, social sectors and the most vulnerable groups are the hardest hit, contrary to the postulate that the “smart sanctions only apply to and adversely affect the targeted few.”
10.3 As Zimbabweans, the lessons are very clear: there is need for unity of purpose and speeded upliftment of output in agriculture on the realization that we are our own
saviours.
10.4 There is need for a renewed deep sense of patriotism to safeguard what is ours and also the need to progress the business operating environment in a manner that enhances confidence, in order to unlock value in the country for vast investment opportunities strewn across all sectors, including agriculture, tourism, manufacturing and mining (Zimbabwe has the largest coal bed methane deposits and the second largest platinum deposits in the world).
10.5 Policy consistency; respect for private property rights; investment protection; a zero tolerance to lawlessness and corruption as well as full implementation of set socio-economic programmes are also vital steps that all Zimbabweans must take to heart as a tool against the adverse wave that is increasingly putting the country under siege.
10.6 As a united front, victory is certain.
Thank you.
DR G. GONO
GOVERNOR
RESERVE BANK OF ZIMBABWE
24 JANUARY, 2006
Tuesday, 4 December 2007
Insights from The Zimbabwe Elections 2005
Opposition Accuses Mugabe of Rigging the Vote
April 01, 2005
DemocracyNow.org
Yesterday, parliamentary elections took place in Zimbabwe. Reports from the country say that the elections went off relatively peacefully. And for the first time- the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change, was able to campaign openly. The party is the first to seriously challenge President Mugabe's government since Zimbabwe won independence in 1980. [includes rush transcript]
But even before the election, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangiari charged that the election was rigged. He said "we are not happy with the way the electoral playing field has been organized...This is not going to be a free and fair election."
Opposition leaders and human rights groups claim that the voter roles were inaccurate and that many who tried to vote were turned away. They also point to widespread fear and intimidation before the voting began. President Mugabe dismissed these complaints calling the elections completely free- and the Movement for Democratic Change a pawn of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other Western governments. Mugabe stated that he was "entirely, completely, totally optimistic" of victory for his Zimbabwe African National Union -Patriotic Front party. He called the election the "anti-Blair election."
Mugabe also dismissed the accusations of vote fraud. At a pre-election rally on Wednesday Mugabe told supporters "They know they will lose. They have prepared themselves to say the elections were not free and fair because of this and because of that." We are joined on the phone by two people in Zimbabwe who have been following the election results - Dumisani Muleya is the news editor for the Zimbabwe Independent and Omowale Clay is an activist with the December 12th movement.
Omowale Clay, speaking from Harare, Zimbabwe where he observed Monday's election. He is a member of the December 12th Movement International Secretariat
Margaret Lee, visiting scholar as the African Studies Program of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
AMY GOODMAN: Even before the election, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangiari, charged that the election was rigged. He said, quote "We're not happy with the way the electoral playing field has been organized. This is not going to be a free and fair election," he said. He repeated the charge earlier today after the polls closed.
MORGAN TSVANGIARI: I am very confident that it will reveal the extent of the fraud constituent by constituent, and by the way, we will be able to tell you – I have already made a preliminary announcement, as you have said, which was: How do you have 10 percent of the voters turned away?
AMY GOODMAN: That was Morgan Tsvangiari, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change. Opposition leaders and human rights groups claim the voter rolls were inaccurate and that many who tried to vote were turned away. They also point to widespread fear and intimidation before the voting began. President Mugabe dismissed these complaints, calling the elections completely free, and the Movement for Democratic Change a pawn of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other western governments. Mugabe stated he was quote "entirely, completely, totally optimistic of victory for his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front Party." He called the election the "anti-Blair election." Mugabe also dismissed the accusations of vote fraud at a pre-election rally on Wednesday. Mugabe told supporters, quote, "They know they will lose. They've prepared themselves to say the elections were not free and fair because of this and because of that." Well, today we're joined on the telephone by two people who have been following the election results. We are joined by Omawale Clay. Omawale Clay traveled to Zimbabwe to monitor the elections. We are also joined on the telephone here in the United States by Margaret Lee, a visiting scholar at the African Study Program of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Omawale Clay is an activist with the December 12th Movement here in the United States. Omawale, let's begin with you. Can you talk about what you observed?
OMAWALE CLAY: How are you doing, Amy?
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us.
OMAWALE CLAY: I am speaking to the Pacifica audience from Harare, Zimbabwe. I have been here with a December 12th International Secretariat foreign observer team which was invited by the Government of Zimbabwe to participate in observation of this historic election. I have been here on the ground for two weeks. We have traveled through three major provinces and on election day we viewed over 15 constituencies in terms of different polling stations. And I have something very important to report to the Pacifica community in general and to African people, in particular. Yesterday the people of Zimbabwe resoundingly said they will never be a colony again. Unofficial results have confirmed that Zanu PF has won a major victory, and by all counts will in fact capture over 2/3 of the electoral vote, which will give them the ability to restructure their constitution, to institutionalize the [inaudible] which was always the view of them fighting for the total emancipation of their people politically and economically. So I wanted to make sure to bring back the people, to also let them know, Amy, that democracy in Zimbabwe is not anything new. For the past 25 years as we celebrate the 25th silver jubilee, democracy was brought to Zimbabwe through national liberation armed struggle and it was never given to the Zimbawean people. But since 1980 when the first elections took place, there have been six major parliamentary elections that have taken place, and there have been three presidential elections that have taken place. So no one can teach Zimbabwe democracy. Zimbabwe is teaching it to the African and pan-African world, as well as to the neo-colonizers who are trying to re-colonize Zimbabwe.
To give you a little background, Zimbabwe has over 5,700,000 registered voters. For this election there were polling stations numbering 8,256. There were 50,000 translucent voting boxes, Amy, so that everyone could see the ballots that were in the boxes. There were over 7,000 international observers on the ground here and over 203 international press crews. SADC, the Southern African Development Community has election observers on the ground and it is important to note that Zimbabwe is the first country and the only country to hold its elections along the guidelines and principles of the SADC election law. And so the question of the elections in Zimbabwe is really more tied to the question of whether Bush and Blair, Britain and the United States, are able to capitalize on their plan to re-colonize Africans. We all know that the land question in Zimbabwe is why Zimbabwe is in the news. There have been elections and corruption going on all around the third world. Why is all the attention on Zimbabwe? Why is Tony Blair interested in the elections in Zimbabwe? Since the A1 and A2 land reform programs have been instituted, 14,955,967 acres of land have been returned to over 138,235 households in Zimbabwe, and this is historic. Never in the history of the African world has there been a mass transfer of land, wealth, the real wealth of the people been transferred back to the households. So this is what the real issue is, Amy, in Zimbabwe.
AMY GOODMAN: Omawale Clay is speaking to us from Harare, Zimbabwe, having observed the elections yesterday in that African country. On the line with us from the Washington area is Margaret Lee of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a visiting scholar in the African Studies Program. Your assessment of the situation in Zimbabwe?
MARGARET LEE: First of all, thank you, Amy, for inviting me to participate in this very important discussion. I was recently in Zimbabwe. I have to admit that I was not able to observe the elections. I was recently in Zimbabwe at the end of January and I have followed the Zimbabwe situation for two decades now. While I think that we do have some semblance of democracy in Zimbabwe, I think that one has to give perhaps a more objective overview of the situation. I mean, we know that since independence in 1980, that the Zanu PF has made it very clear that it has no intentions of giving up power to any form of opposition. So if you look at the history of Zimbabwe, the opposition movements that have come into existence have always been marginalized by Zanu PF. Now one of the problems right now, I think, in the country with respect to the opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change is that just like many other opposition movements, it has compromised itself. So one of the things that was very clear when I was in Zimbabwe in January was that there was not the same level of fear about the MDC that existed at the end of 1999 going into the elections of 2000. When I say compromised itself, specifically it aligned itself with the white farmers, many of the white farmers who had a vested interest in making sure that the land was not returned to the indigenous African population. It aligned itself with many individuals in South Africa that were not deemed to be pro-post-apartheid South Africa. It even aligned itself with RENAMO in Mozambique and that was the so-called liberation movement that was involved in incredible atrocities against the indigenous population in Mozambique. So there exist a lot of problems within the MDC. So I cannot honestly say to you that the election was compromised at this point. What I do know is that no matter what the outcome of the election, it is very clear that Zanu PF has no intentions of giving up power, Mugabe has pretty much made that very clear. Also I would like to suggest that -- [no audio]
OMAWALE CLAY: He was elected to office. So when you make that statement could you please be factual about it? There have been three presidential elections, and there have been six parliamentary elections over 25 years. You could make that same case for probably over half of the countries in the world. So when you make the statement they have no intention, that means that you're getting ready to make a subjective analysis as if you are in Mr. Mugabe's brain. Why don't we deal with the program of Zanu PF. And I understand that you haven't been to Zimbabwe that much.
MARGARET LEE: Omawale, first of all, please understand that I have actually lived in Zimbabwe, okay? So I have had extensive experience in Zimbabwe and I was just there at the end of January. Now what we do know about the history of elections in Zimbabwe is that most of the elections are very free and peaceful in the sense of the actual election day. But you cannot ignore all the human rights reports, you cannot ignore on the ground assessments
OMAWALE CLAY: Human rights reports that come from international organizations that are tied to western imperialism? Do you mean Human Rights Watch? Do you mean Amnesty International?
MARGARET LEE: I'm not going to get into that, but what I know is that I have read human rights reports coming out of Zimbabwe. I have talked to individuals as recently as the end of January who very much felt that they were living in a military state, actually experienced sitting in Zimbabwe and security guards coming closer and closer to the two of us who were in conversation with two young men from a [inaudible] area, so what I'm trying to suggest is that --
OMAWALE CLAY: Let me ask you a question. Are you saying to me that you believe that Zanu PF is not the party that the people of Zimbabwe have chosen to lead them?
MARGARET LEE: What I am trying to suggest --
OMAWALE CLAY: I would just like you to be very clear about this, because where you're coming from is --
MARGARET LEE: If you would give me the courtesy --
AMY GOODMAN: Omawale, let's let Margaret Lee respond to that question.
MARGARET LEE: I have given you the courtesy to speak. So please respect me in that light, okay? And we can have a very fruitful conversation. What I'm saying is that I take a historical analysis of the Zimbabwe situation, okay? And what I'm saying to you that since 1980, Zanu PF has made it very impossible for the opposition movements to gain ground in Zimbabwe. That is a historical fact.
OMAWALE CLAY: Base on what?
MARGARET LEE: There has been most recently, since 1999, incredible intimidation against those who support the MDC. The reason that I started by raising questions about the legitimacy of the MDC is to lay the foundation for the possibility that at this time many individuals, given the fact that the MDC has compromised itself so much, do not necessarily see the MDC as an alternative to Zanu PF, and therefore what I'm trying to suggest is that out of fear of the unknown, namely that they do often fear that the MDC does represent the western imperialist powers, that because they don't see a government that may be run from the west, that, yes, they do see Zanu PF as the only alternative. It does not necessarily mean that they do not want change, They don't necessarily see that the MDC is the route to go and therefore --
OMAWALE CLAY: Here's my -- here's my total disagreement with you.
MARGARET LEE: That's fine.
OMAWALE CLAY: The basis of what you're saying sounds totally subjective. I don't hear it based off of any facts. Let's microscope the election we're talking about right now. Because I don't want to go through a historical thing with you, because what you're saying doesn't have substance to it.
MARGARET LEE: So what kind of facts do you want?
OMAWALE CLAY: Can I finish? You're going into people's heads and you're telling me what the people of Zimbabwe, what they really want to do. The people of Zimbabwe fought a national liberation war. It wasn't a few individuals, it was a mass of Zimbabweans, armed and supporting their right to self-determination. It is 25 years since that time. It is a new democracy, but it is a very clear one on the question of which direction they want to go on. The people of Zimbabwe can choose for themselves who their leadership is and they have resoundingly chosen that. The MDC has been a product of British imperialism. It has been financed by the farmers. It has been financed by the West. In fact, I quote to you, Margaret, Chester Crocker, the Assistant Secretary of State of African Affairs when they were passing the Zimbabwe Democracy Act, one of the points he made to the Senators in testimony, and you can go to the testimony, so it is not something that's in my head, you can go to the testimony, he said, "To separate the Zimbabwean people from Zanu PF we are going to have to make their economy scream, and I hope you Senators have the stomach for what you have to do." That is a clear statement that the real problem that they have in Zimbabwe is the marriage between the Zimbabwean people and their national liberation forces. Zanu PF is the people of Zimbabwe.
AMY GOODMAN: Omawale Clay, on that note we're going to have to wrap this up, but we will certainly continue to look at Zimbabwe on this day after the national elections. Omawale Clay of the December 12th Movement, speaking from Harare, Zimbabwe, and in Washington, D.C., Margaret Lee of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, with the African Studies Program, recently back from Zimbabwe.
April 01, 2005
DemocracyNow.org
Yesterday, parliamentary elections took place in Zimbabwe. Reports from the country say that the elections went off relatively peacefully. And for the first time- the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change, was able to campaign openly. The party is the first to seriously challenge President Mugabe's government since Zimbabwe won independence in 1980. [includes rush transcript]
But even before the election, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangiari charged that the election was rigged. He said "we are not happy with the way the electoral playing field has been organized...This is not going to be a free and fair election."
Opposition leaders and human rights groups claim that the voter roles were inaccurate and that many who tried to vote were turned away. They also point to widespread fear and intimidation before the voting began. President Mugabe dismissed these complaints calling the elections completely free- and the Movement for Democratic Change a pawn of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other Western governments. Mugabe stated that he was "entirely, completely, totally optimistic" of victory for his Zimbabwe African National Union -Patriotic Front party. He called the election the "anti-Blair election."
Mugabe also dismissed the accusations of vote fraud. At a pre-election rally on Wednesday Mugabe told supporters "They know they will lose. They have prepared themselves to say the elections were not free and fair because of this and because of that." We are joined on the phone by two people in Zimbabwe who have been following the election results - Dumisani Muleya is the news editor for the Zimbabwe Independent and Omowale Clay is an activist with the December 12th movement.
Omowale Clay, speaking from Harare, Zimbabwe where he observed Monday's election. He is a member of the December 12th Movement International Secretariat
Margaret Lee, visiting scholar as the African Studies Program of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
AMY GOODMAN: Even before the election, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangiari, charged that the election was rigged. He said, quote "We're not happy with the way the electoral playing field has been organized. This is not going to be a free and fair election," he said. He repeated the charge earlier today after the polls closed.
MORGAN TSVANGIARI: I am very confident that it will reveal the extent of the fraud constituent by constituent, and by the way, we will be able to tell you – I have already made a preliminary announcement, as you have said, which was: How do you have 10 percent of the voters turned away?
AMY GOODMAN: That was Morgan Tsvangiari, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change. Opposition leaders and human rights groups claim the voter rolls were inaccurate and that many who tried to vote were turned away. They also point to widespread fear and intimidation before the voting began. President Mugabe dismissed these complaints, calling the elections completely free, and the Movement for Democratic Change a pawn of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other western governments. Mugabe stated he was quote "entirely, completely, totally optimistic of victory for his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front Party." He called the election the "anti-Blair election." Mugabe also dismissed the accusations of vote fraud at a pre-election rally on Wednesday. Mugabe told supporters, quote, "They know they will lose. They've prepared themselves to say the elections were not free and fair because of this and because of that." Well, today we're joined on the telephone by two people who have been following the election results. We are joined by Omawale Clay. Omawale Clay traveled to Zimbabwe to monitor the elections. We are also joined on the telephone here in the United States by Margaret Lee, a visiting scholar at the African Study Program of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Omawale Clay is an activist with the December 12th Movement here in the United States. Omawale, let's begin with you. Can you talk about what you observed?
OMAWALE CLAY: How are you doing, Amy?
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us.
OMAWALE CLAY: I am speaking to the Pacifica audience from Harare, Zimbabwe. I have been here with a December 12th International Secretariat foreign observer team which was invited by the Government of Zimbabwe to participate in observation of this historic election. I have been here on the ground for two weeks. We have traveled through three major provinces and on election day we viewed over 15 constituencies in terms of different polling stations. And I have something very important to report to the Pacifica community in general and to African people, in particular. Yesterday the people of Zimbabwe resoundingly said they will never be a colony again. Unofficial results have confirmed that Zanu PF has won a major victory, and by all counts will in fact capture over 2/3 of the electoral vote, which will give them the ability to restructure their constitution, to institutionalize the [inaudible] which was always the view of them fighting for the total emancipation of their people politically and economically. So I wanted to make sure to bring back the people, to also let them know, Amy, that democracy in Zimbabwe is not anything new. For the past 25 years as we celebrate the 25th silver jubilee, democracy was brought to Zimbabwe through national liberation armed struggle and it was never given to the Zimbawean people. But since 1980 when the first elections took place, there have been six major parliamentary elections that have taken place, and there have been three presidential elections that have taken place. So no one can teach Zimbabwe democracy. Zimbabwe is teaching it to the African and pan-African world, as well as to the neo-colonizers who are trying to re-colonize Zimbabwe.
To give you a little background, Zimbabwe has over 5,700,000 registered voters. For this election there were polling stations numbering 8,256. There were 50,000 translucent voting boxes, Amy, so that everyone could see the ballots that were in the boxes. There were over 7,000 international observers on the ground here and over 203 international press crews. SADC, the Southern African Development Community has election observers on the ground and it is important to note that Zimbabwe is the first country and the only country to hold its elections along the guidelines and principles of the SADC election law. And so the question of the elections in Zimbabwe is really more tied to the question of whether Bush and Blair, Britain and the United States, are able to capitalize on their plan to re-colonize Africans. We all know that the land question in Zimbabwe is why Zimbabwe is in the news. There have been elections and corruption going on all around the third world. Why is all the attention on Zimbabwe? Why is Tony Blair interested in the elections in Zimbabwe? Since the A1 and A2 land reform programs have been instituted, 14,955,967 acres of land have been returned to over 138,235 households in Zimbabwe, and this is historic. Never in the history of the African world has there been a mass transfer of land, wealth, the real wealth of the people been transferred back to the households. So this is what the real issue is, Amy, in Zimbabwe.
AMY GOODMAN: Omawale Clay is speaking to us from Harare, Zimbabwe, having observed the elections yesterday in that African country. On the line with us from the Washington area is Margaret Lee of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a visiting scholar in the African Studies Program. Your assessment of the situation in Zimbabwe?
MARGARET LEE: First of all, thank you, Amy, for inviting me to participate in this very important discussion. I was recently in Zimbabwe. I have to admit that I was not able to observe the elections. I was recently in Zimbabwe at the end of January and I have followed the Zimbabwe situation for two decades now. While I think that we do have some semblance of democracy in Zimbabwe, I think that one has to give perhaps a more objective overview of the situation. I mean, we know that since independence in 1980, that the Zanu PF has made it very clear that it has no intentions of giving up power to any form of opposition. So if you look at the history of Zimbabwe, the opposition movements that have come into existence have always been marginalized by Zanu PF. Now one of the problems right now, I think, in the country with respect to the opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change is that just like many other opposition movements, it has compromised itself. So one of the things that was very clear when I was in Zimbabwe in January was that there was not the same level of fear about the MDC that existed at the end of 1999 going into the elections of 2000. When I say compromised itself, specifically it aligned itself with the white farmers, many of the white farmers who had a vested interest in making sure that the land was not returned to the indigenous African population. It aligned itself with many individuals in South Africa that were not deemed to be pro-post-apartheid South Africa. It even aligned itself with RENAMO in Mozambique and that was the so-called liberation movement that was involved in incredible atrocities against the indigenous population in Mozambique. So there exist a lot of problems within the MDC. So I cannot honestly say to you that the election was compromised at this point. What I do know is that no matter what the outcome of the election, it is very clear that Zanu PF has no intentions of giving up power, Mugabe has pretty much made that very clear. Also I would like to suggest that -- [no audio]
OMAWALE CLAY: He was elected to office. So when you make that statement could you please be factual about it? There have been three presidential elections, and there have been six parliamentary elections over 25 years. You could make that same case for probably over half of the countries in the world. So when you make the statement they have no intention, that means that you're getting ready to make a subjective analysis as if you are in Mr. Mugabe's brain. Why don't we deal with the program of Zanu PF. And I understand that you haven't been to Zimbabwe that much.
MARGARET LEE: Omawale, first of all, please understand that I have actually lived in Zimbabwe, okay? So I have had extensive experience in Zimbabwe and I was just there at the end of January. Now what we do know about the history of elections in Zimbabwe is that most of the elections are very free and peaceful in the sense of the actual election day. But you cannot ignore all the human rights reports, you cannot ignore on the ground assessments
OMAWALE CLAY: Human rights reports that come from international organizations that are tied to western imperialism? Do you mean Human Rights Watch? Do you mean Amnesty International?
MARGARET LEE: I'm not going to get into that, but what I know is that I have read human rights reports coming out of Zimbabwe. I have talked to individuals as recently as the end of January who very much felt that they were living in a military state, actually experienced sitting in Zimbabwe and security guards coming closer and closer to the two of us who were in conversation with two young men from a [inaudible] area, so what I'm trying to suggest is that --
OMAWALE CLAY: Let me ask you a question. Are you saying to me that you believe that Zanu PF is not the party that the people of Zimbabwe have chosen to lead them?
MARGARET LEE: What I am trying to suggest --
OMAWALE CLAY: I would just like you to be very clear about this, because where you're coming from is --
MARGARET LEE: If you would give me the courtesy --
AMY GOODMAN: Omawale, let's let Margaret Lee respond to that question.
MARGARET LEE: I have given you the courtesy to speak. So please respect me in that light, okay? And we can have a very fruitful conversation. What I'm saying is that I take a historical analysis of the Zimbabwe situation, okay? And what I'm saying to you that since 1980, Zanu PF has made it very impossible for the opposition movements to gain ground in Zimbabwe. That is a historical fact.
OMAWALE CLAY: Base on what?
MARGARET LEE: There has been most recently, since 1999, incredible intimidation against those who support the MDC. The reason that I started by raising questions about the legitimacy of the MDC is to lay the foundation for the possibility that at this time many individuals, given the fact that the MDC has compromised itself so much, do not necessarily see the MDC as an alternative to Zanu PF, and therefore what I'm trying to suggest is that out of fear of the unknown, namely that they do often fear that the MDC does represent the western imperialist powers, that because they don't see a government that may be run from the west, that, yes, they do see Zanu PF as the only alternative. It does not necessarily mean that they do not want change, They don't necessarily see that the MDC is the route to go and therefore --
OMAWALE CLAY: Here's my -- here's my total disagreement with you.
MARGARET LEE: That's fine.
OMAWALE CLAY: The basis of what you're saying sounds totally subjective. I don't hear it based off of any facts. Let's microscope the election we're talking about right now. Because I don't want to go through a historical thing with you, because what you're saying doesn't have substance to it.
MARGARET LEE: So what kind of facts do you want?
OMAWALE CLAY: Can I finish? You're going into people's heads and you're telling me what the people of Zimbabwe, what they really want to do. The people of Zimbabwe fought a national liberation war. It wasn't a few individuals, it was a mass of Zimbabweans, armed and supporting their right to self-determination. It is 25 years since that time. It is a new democracy, but it is a very clear one on the question of which direction they want to go on. The people of Zimbabwe can choose for themselves who their leadership is and they have resoundingly chosen that. The MDC has been a product of British imperialism. It has been financed by the farmers. It has been financed by the West. In fact, I quote to you, Margaret, Chester Crocker, the Assistant Secretary of State of African Affairs when they were passing the Zimbabwe Democracy Act, one of the points he made to the Senators in testimony, and you can go to the testimony, so it is not something that's in my head, you can go to the testimony, he said, "To separate the Zimbabwean people from Zanu PF we are going to have to make their economy scream, and I hope you Senators have the stomach for what you have to do." That is a clear statement that the real problem that they have in Zimbabwe is the marriage between the Zimbabwean people and their national liberation forces. Zanu PF is the people of Zimbabwe.
AMY GOODMAN: Omawale Clay, on that note we're going to have to wrap this up, but we will certainly continue to look at Zimbabwe on this day after the national elections. Omawale Clay of the December 12th Movement, speaking from Harare, Zimbabwe, and in Washington, D.C., Margaret Lee of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, with the African Studies Program, recently back from Zimbabwe.
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Welcome Home Son of McGee
Welcome Home Son of McGee
The Herald (Harare)
OPINION
27 November 2007
Posted to the web 27 November 2007
By Caesar Zvayi
Harare
THERE is a new man at 172 Herbert Chitepo Avenue, Harare, the United States Embassy, and he is one of our own, at least as far as skin colour is concerned.
Dare -- not Gillian please, but dare as in presume -- dare we hope he will be different from the blundering Christopher Dell, the only diplomat to be put under 24 surveillance after becoming a de facto opposition activist?
I say "we" because I know progressive Zimbabweans share my sentiments. We hope James McGee's engagement will be more than skin deep. To this end Zimbabwe, welcomes the Son of McGee and hope he will not shame the ancestors in whose loins he crossed the Atlantic to his adopted home. McGee should never forget that he is descended from slave ancestors and those who enslaved his forebears are the same people trying to preserve ill-gotten colonial gains in Zimbabwe today.
As they say, a man is known by the company he keeps. I know back home in the impoverished ghettoes not many black brothers and sisters share McGee's regard for the Republicans on whose brief he was posted to Harare. Republicans, as exemplified by George W. Bush, are too rightwing, which is why many African-Americans have traditionally voted Democrats courtesy of the synergies struck during the tumultuous civil rights campaigns of the 1960s.
Which reminds me, McGee is African-American, meaning he is African first before he is American. I hope that realisation, particularly as there is no European-American but just American, will guide him as to how he can dispense his duties here.
I am, however, under no illusion that McGee is his own man since the post he holds was bestowed on him and he is answerable to those who sent him here.
I must hasten to add, McGee need not follow the destructive path that was pursued by his predecessor Dell, a man whose unbecoming behaviour saw him get demoted and posted to the conflagration in Kabul where he can't risk the "absent-minded" wandering he had become accustomed to here as the Taliban would make him mincemeat in no time.
If Dell was an honest man, he would have told McGee how free Zimbabwe is and then maybe McGee wouldn't have made those misguided utterances before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September 19, where he described the Government as "undemocratic, authoritarian, repressive", among other epithets.
During his confirmation hearing, McGee sounded very much like the disgraced Dell down to the refrain "If confirmed, I would continue our government's efforts in assisting the people of Zimbabwe in their pursuit of a democratically elected government that respects human rights and the rule of law . . ."
However, when he presented his credentials to President Mugabe on November 22, McGee was singing a different tune saying, among other things, he wanted to work with the Government and people of Zimbabwe.
While the double-speak may have been part of the parochial understanding of diplomacy Western envoys seem to have a predilection for, McGee must remember that Zimbabwe will not suffer his double standards. By presenting credentials to President Mugabe, he recognised him as the legitimate Head of State and Government of Zimbabwe, any pretensions to the contrary will be just that, hot air.
I see McGee is a veteran of the Vietnam War, where he earned three "Distinguished Flying Crosses" during his six-year "tour of duty" bombing hapless villagers from 1968 to 1974. We all know, as fellow black brother Muhammad Ali aptly put it, that Nam was an unjust war which, as fate would have it, Uncle Sam lost, and lost dismally.
The same is happening in Zimbabwe where, true to his rabble-rousing tradition, Uncle Sam is engaged in another unjust war with Zimbabwe, albeit a cold one, and McGee has, just as was done with Vietnam, been sent to the frontline. I just hope he is not looking for any medals here. If he is, he might do well to ask his predecessor Dell, the "wisdom" of such pursuits. He is also free to get a second opinion from one Sir Brian Donnelly, a British "gentleman" who had to drop all pretences at the gentlemanly behaviour his honorific denotes by leaving Zimbabwe in a huff without bidding his hosts farewell. This followed his unsuccessful attempts at trying to abet the illegal regime change agenda.
During his Senate hearing McGee, like Dell before him, boasted of his "experience with pro-democracy groups in Swaziland, Madagascar and the Comoros".
He was in Madagascar just after the fight between current President Marc Ravalomanana and Didier Ratsiraka, and presided over disturbing skirmishes between the government and opposition. In Swaziland, McGee was brash, going to the extent of holding a meeting with the leader of the banned People's United Democratic Movement, one Mario Masuku, something no ambassador in Mbabane had ever done.
In his defence, McGee gushed: "This is normal diplomatic practice. Swaziland's ambassadors should be doing the same thing in the countries where they are posted." I wonder what would happen to the Swazi ambassador in Washington if he were to hold a meeting with representatives of Al-Qaeda, I just wonder.
That aside, as testimony of our democratic values, McGee will find there is no banned opposition group in Zimbabwe. In fact, anyone can wake up and proclaim to have formed a party. The party does not even have to be registered, which is why we have fly-by-night parties like Egypt Dzinemunhenzva's African National Party, as well as "Iron Lady" Isabel Madangure's Zimbabwe People's Democratic Party.
McGee's predecessor, however, ended up abusing that freedom by mistakenly thinking he was ambassador to Harvest House, which is why he only bade Tsvangirai goodbye.
As fate would have it, McGee joins us at a time we are heading for a crucial election in March next year, during which Zimbabweans will choose their representatives at all levels of government, and they would want to be left alone to choose leaders of their choice.
I have no doubt McGee will find that our elections do not produce contested outcomes as happened with the two that brought and retained George W. Bush in power.
Tsvangirai only makes noise to mollify his backers. If McGee has familiarised himself with developments on the ground, he will have realised by now that Zanu-PF and the two MDC factions or fractions are engaged in serious talks aimed at managing that process, and the message from the Sadc initiative is clear: only Zimbabweans can resolve their domestic problems. Westerners can help that process by removing their illegal sanctions and stopping meddling in our internal affairs.
I see McGee, just like Dell before him, loves to harp about US "humanitarian assistance" to Zimbabwe. Said McGee: "We must also continue our humanitarian assistance to the Zimbabwean people and ensure that it reaches the people in need. In fiscal year 2007, United States food aid amounted to over US$170 million. Today the United States is helping to feed nearly one-in-five Zimbabweans. Non-food aid humanitarian assistance is approximately US$5,1 million, and HIV and Aids programmes were increased to US$31 million in fiscal year 2007. This funding is helping to deliver anti-retroviral treatment to 40 000 Zimbabweans. These actions demonstrate the generosity and compassion of the American people."
No McGee, such duplicity demonstrates the hypocrisy of the racist administration in Washington. What Zimbabwe needs is not "humanitarian assistance"; it needs to be freed of the ruinous sanctions your country imposed; it wants Uncle Sam to stop meddling in its internal affairs; most importantly, it wants to be left alone as a sovereign nation to chart its own course.
The "humanitarian aid" you harp about is designed to serve and perpetuate one stereotype, the one espoused by that poet of British imperialism Rudyard Kipling in his 1899 book, "The White Man's Burden", in which he suggest the white man has a burden to "civilise" and look after the "primitive" races.
I hope you are not consciously perpetuating that stereotype, mukoma (brother). After all, you are black like me.
The Herald (Harare)
OPINION
27 November 2007
Posted to the web 27 November 2007
By Caesar Zvayi
Harare
THERE is a new man at 172 Herbert Chitepo Avenue, Harare, the United States Embassy, and he is one of our own, at least as far as skin colour is concerned.
Dare -- not Gillian please, but dare as in presume -- dare we hope he will be different from the blundering Christopher Dell, the only diplomat to be put under 24 surveillance after becoming a de facto opposition activist?
I say "we" because I know progressive Zimbabweans share my sentiments. We hope James McGee's engagement will be more than skin deep. To this end Zimbabwe, welcomes the Son of McGee and hope he will not shame the ancestors in whose loins he crossed the Atlantic to his adopted home. McGee should never forget that he is descended from slave ancestors and those who enslaved his forebears are the same people trying to preserve ill-gotten colonial gains in Zimbabwe today.
As they say, a man is known by the company he keeps. I know back home in the impoverished ghettoes not many black brothers and sisters share McGee's regard for the Republicans on whose brief he was posted to Harare. Republicans, as exemplified by George W. Bush, are too rightwing, which is why many African-Americans have traditionally voted Democrats courtesy of the synergies struck during the tumultuous civil rights campaigns of the 1960s.
Which reminds me, McGee is African-American, meaning he is African first before he is American. I hope that realisation, particularly as there is no European-American but just American, will guide him as to how he can dispense his duties here.
I am, however, under no illusion that McGee is his own man since the post he holds was bestowed on him and he is answerable to those who sent him here.
I must hasten to add, McGee need not follow the destructive path that was pursued by his predecessor Dell, a man whose unbecoming behaviour saw him get demoted and posted to the conflagration in Kabul where he can't risk the "absent-minded" wandering he had become accustomed to here as the Taliban would make him mincemeat in no time.
If Dell was an honest man, he would have told McGee how free Zimbabwe is and then maybe McGee wouldn't have made those misguided utterances before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September 19, where he described the Government as "undemocratic, authoritarian, repressive", among other epithets.
During his confirmation hearing, McGee sounded very much like the disgraced Dell down to the refrain "If confirmed, I would continue our government's efforts in assisting the people of Zimbabwe in their pursuit of a democratically elected government that respects human rights and the rule of law . . ."
However, when he presented his credentials to President Mugabe on November 22, McGee was singing a different tune saying, among other things, he wanted to work with the Government and people of Zimbabwe.
While the double-speak may have been part of the parochial understanding of diplomacy Western envoys seem to have a predilection for, McGee must remember that Zimbabwe will not suffer his double standards. By presenting credentials to President Mugabe, he recognised him as the legitimate Head of State and Government of Zimbabwe, any pretensions to the contrary will be just that, hot air.
I see McGee is a veteran of the Vietnam War, where he earned three "Distinguished Flying Crosses" during his six-year "tour of duty" bombing hapless villagers from 1968 to 1974. We all know, as fellow black brother Muhammad Ali aptly put it, that Nam was an unjust war which, as fate would have it, Uncle Sam lost, and lost dismally.
The same is happening in Zimbabwe where, true to his rabble-rousing tradition, Uncle Sam is engaged in another unjust war with Zimbabwe, albeit a cold one, and McGee has, just as was done with Vietnam, been sent to the frontline. I just hope he is not looking for any medals here. If he is, he might do well to ask his predecessor Dell, the "wisdom" of such pursuits. He is also free to get a second opinion from one Sir Brian Donnelly, a British "gentleman" who had to drop all pretences at the gentlemanly behaviour his honorific denotes by leaving Zimbabwe in a huff without bidding his hosts farewell. This followed his unsuccessful attempts at trying to abet the illegal regime change agenda.
During his Senate hearing McGee, like Dell before him, boasted of his "experience with pro-democracy groups in Swaziland, Madagascar and the Comoros".
He was in Madagascar just after the fight between current President Marc Ravalomanana and Didier Ratsiraka, and presided over disturbing skirmishes between the government and opposition. In Swaziland, McGee was brash, going to the extent of holding a meeting with the leader of the banned People's United Democratic Movement, one Mario Masuku, something no ambassador in Mbabane had ever done.
In his defence, McGee gushed: "This is normal diplomatic practice. Swaziland's ambassadors should be doing the same thing in the countries where they are posted." I wonder what would happen to the Swazi ambassador in Washington if he were to hold a meeting with representatives of Al-Qaeda, I just wonder.
That aside, as testimony of our democratic values, McGee will find there is no banned opposition group in Zimbabwe. In fact, anyone can wake up and proclaim to have formed a party. The party does not even have to be registered, which is why we have fly-by-night parties like Egypt Dzinemunhenzva's African National Party, as well as "Iron Lady" Isabel Madangure's Zimbabwe People's Democratic Party.
McGee's predecessor, however, ended up abusing that freedom by mistakenly thinking he was ambassador to Harvest House, which is why he only bade Tsvangirai goodbye.
As fate would have it, McGee joins us at a time we are heading for a crucial election in March next year, during which Zimbabweans will choose their representatives at all levels of government, and they would want to be left alone to choose leaders of their choice.
I have no doubt McGee will find that our elections do not produce contested outcomes as happened with the two that brought and retained George W. Bush in power.
Tsvangirai only makes noise to mollify his backers. If McGee has familiarised himself with developments on the ground, he will have realised by now that Zanu-PF and the two MDC factions or fractions are engaged in serious talks aimed at managing that process, and the message from the Sadc initiative is clear: only Zimbabweans can resolve their domestic problems. Westerners can help that process by removing their illegal sanctions and stopping meddling in our internal affairs.
I see McGee, just like Dell before him, loves to harp about US "humanitarian assistance" to Zimbabwe. Said McGee: "We must also continue our humanitarian assistance to the Zimbabwean people and ensure that it reaches the people in need. In fiscal year 2007, United States food aid amounted to over US$170 million. Today the United States is helping to feed nearly one-in-five Zimbabweans. Non-food aid humanitarian assistance is approximately US$5,1 million, and HIV and Aids programmes were increased to US$31 million in fiscal year 2007. This funding is helping to deliver anti-retroviral treatment to 40 000 Zimbabweans. These actions demonstrate the generosity and compassion of the American people."
No McGee, such duplicity demonstrates the hypocrisy of the racist administration in Washington. What Zimbabwe needs is not "humanitarian assistance"; it needs to be freed of the ruinous sanctions your country imposed; it wants Uncle Sam to stop meddling in its internal affairs; most importantly, it wants to be left alone as a sovereign nation to chart its own course.
The "humanitarian aid" you harp about is designed to serve and perpetuate one stereotype, the one espoused by that poet of British imperialism Rudyard Kipling in his 1899 book, "The White Man's Burden", in which he suggest the white man has a burden to "civilise" and look after the "primitive" races.
I hope you are not consciously perpetuating that stereotype, mukoma (brother). After all, you are black like me.
Saturday, 24 November 2007
Morgan: Hurling the truant sleeper of Tarshish
Morgan: Hurling the truant sleeper of Tarshish
In the Great Book of Life is told the story of one Jonah, a Hebrew and the son of Amittai. To him, the Word of Jehovah began to occur, ordering him to go to Nineveh, the great bad city of godless permissiveness and libertinage. Jehovah wanted Nineveh warned of dire divine retribution, and Jonah was the carrier of that terrible message. Fully conscious of the consequences of bringing an unhappy message to an unrepentant community, Jonah did the reasonable thing for any mortal: he ran away, apparently forgetting Jehovah is omnipresent, is immanent.
Far down in his flight, at some place called Joppa, he found a ship about to leave for Tarshish; he promptly paid his fare before descending to the most secretive part of the ship, not just to "evade" Jehovah, but also to drown his troubled mind in the sound sleep of generations.
Against the internal peace soon to visit him through sleep, there was outward, traumatic discord which threatened to tear the ship apart, casting all on board into the fury and froth of raging waters. All, except the sleeper, prayed to their gods, hoping for saving divine clemency. The buffeted captain of the troubled ship soon got to where Jonah lay safe and well ensconced in folds of sound and indifferent sleep:
"What is the matter with you, sleeper? Get up and call out to your god!" he yelled, not terribly impressed.
Democracy in disaster
During which time the rest on the ship were casting lots to establish who in their midst had brought upon them this raging divine ire. The lots "caught" Jonah, surprisingly with all those on the ship still democratic enough to ask him: "What should we do to you, in order that the sea may become still for us?"
It was too generous a gesture for people menaced by such an overwhelming disaster.
Equally, Jonah reacted in a manner most baffling to laws of self-preservation: "Lift me up and hurl me into the sea, and the sea will become still for YOU; because I am aware that it is on my account that this great tempest is upon YOU."
The narrative goes on and on, including recounting how a big, benevolent fish ate the sinful Jonah, apparently to save him.
The ship is an abiding image in this great narrative we call the Bible. Equally, the notion of redemption through symbolic destruction, is prevalent. Such is the richness of Hebrew literature whose beginning is the Bible. I do not aver any doubts as to the holiness of this great book. Bishop Manhanga would kill me, having spared his precious Bible on hopes for my spiritual redemption. Besides, I consider myself religious, often admiring Jehovah’s rage. Or that of His Son who took a whip and tore the flesh of all those sinners who had turned His Father’s house into a Zimbabwe Stock Exchange! Enough of blasphemy.
Purge of MDC kulaks
For the MDC, time is long, very long. The Matibenga saga (or is it the Makone saga?) rages unabated, with each day that passes seeming like more fuel to a bad fire. Count me out; I bring no additional faggots to the MDC’s this Amaggeddon. Let me share with you the folds of this leaping blaze, which has left so dark a smoulder in this house all-party Britain built well before 1999. The entire leadership is afflicted by a giant seizure of paranoia, much of it fuelled by Ian Makone and his gracious wife, Theresa. There is a great tempest, a great purge afoot, as Tsvangirai’s erstwhile vananyachide, now passing for today’s kulaks of the new MDC with Tsvangirai nominally at the helm, Makone on the controls.
William Bango, the man who only last week misled The Standard into believing Tsvangirai had relented on the Matibenga saga, today stands accused of being a Zanu-PF mole. Or more accurately, a CIO mole. The boss is unhappy that he gave out that line, soon to be contradicted by an embarrassing flare-up right on the stoep! The accusation against Bango is shored up by verifiable facts: that he was detained on the side of Zanu-PF only to be released at Independence.
I confirm that this is, indeed, a fact. Bango was in detention, alongside the likes of the now incarcerated Dzvairo who helped him through his secondary school studies. His tormentors add he was at Ziana, and worked with the President’s Office on covering the President here at home and abroad. That is also true. They add he had(s) friends in the system. I am sure he does, as everyone else, including Theresa. They again add he, Sandra Nyaira and Nyakunu were deployed by the system to wreck the Daily News project. I have no view on that allegation. The charge sheet goes on and on.
The angry man from Chiurwi
Chamisa is out, has been for quite some days. Chamisa has very strong views on the Matibenga issue. He feels threatened by the waves of this great injustice authored by his leader under the spell and influence of the Makones. After all, his hold on leadership, alongside Mashakada and the likes of Chaibva and Sikhala, has always been tenuous, repeatedly challenged by the trade union wing within the MDC.
Fortunately, that student (not intellectuals, please) — trade unionist dialectic is no longer helpful as the formation continues to peel in ways that defy both rhyme and reason. But the insecurity is there, all the time reinforced by victimisation done on "the near other", too near even to be vicariously felt. The dismissal of Matibenga on frivolous grounds is keenly felt by all in comparable positions.
No one feels safe, least of all Chamisa. Not even the Chiurwi connection is near enough to strongly fasten him on Tsvangirai’s coattails. But beyond insecurity, Chamisa genuinely (and rightly) believes his boss has shown monumental leadership failures, all the time exposing to ridicule the very party he must uplift.
You blurt about CIO destabilisation of the MDC to Chamisa, most probably you walk away with a grievous limp, that is if you are that lucky. But the writing is clear. Tsvangirai is convening his Press brief through faraway Bennett, or through Luke Tambolinyoka. I could cite Pedzisayi Ruhanya, until now a Tsvangirai acolyte. Today he breathes fire against his erstwhile idol, urging his defeat in March 2008 so a defeated MDC is given chance to reorganise and grant itself a new leadership.
Upstaging Mbeki?
Presently Tsvangirai is shorn of all ramparts. His act at the Commonwealth people’s forum was pathetic. He could not answer crucial questions, including that on land. He had to be saved by the British convenors of the meeting from aggravated self-damage. It was bad. For a man who claims to wield keys to the MDC in his pocket, it was baddest. He had to run back home, hopefully to mollification by President Mbeki, the principal mediator.
Ill-prepared and ill-rested for the encounter, Tsvangirai walked into another disaster. The previous week he had met with President Mbeki, to exhort him to tell President Mugabe to stop politically-motivated violence. In the meantime, his thugs were descending upon women and journalists right on the "navel" of the capital, assaulting them for not being politically Y2Kompliant.
Kukataza chaiko nemabonza. Heads of State do not want lies given them, and I am sure President Mbeki is no exception. He may not have been terribly impressed by Tsvangirai’s bid to hide a big log lodged in his eye while drawing Mbeki’s attention to a speck in Mugabe’s eye. More blunders were to follow from this wielder of MDC keys.
The whole trip to Kampala -- what was it meant to do, or achieve? Well, to do many things. The British government, through the British Royal Society which carved the "People’s Forum", needed him there. He was there, as required. Secondly, the British government wanted him to influence the forum’s communiqué for the notice of Commonwealth Heads of Government and State whose agenda the British wanted to include Zimbabwe, a non-member of that useless colonial relic.
The British idea was to use Kampala to manage Lisbon which has been a spectacular failure in the much vaunted British diplomacy. More important, Tsvangirai was supposed to upstage President Thabo Mbeki who is expected to brief CHOGM on the situation in Zimbabwe from the perspective of his mediation. A Mbeki flying out of Harare to engage a CHOGM already poisoned by the man who bears "scars of Mugabe’s brutality", the British reasoned, would look absurd to proffer an optimistic prognosis. Given all this, Tsvangirai could not have come to a charitable Mbeki.
Hence the long MDC faces to emerge from the short meeting on Thursday, which the indefatigable Dumisani Muleya sought to perfume and repaint handsome. More than Mugabe can ever hope to do, desolate Tsvangirai is doing much to consolidate Zanu-PF’s image on the continent and abroad. And all these spectacular blunders indicate what remains of the faction which Chaibva declares has since become a fraction!
A faction that has become a fraction
More fractions. Mudzuri, oh Mudzuri, the boastful character! After a few hot ones (it does not have to be real beer), he is known to brag that only vaMugabe and he enjoy a national vote, he as mayor of Harare. Once upon a time, that is. Mudzuri is determined to add another boast in his brag. He wants to be leader of a new political party to take on Zanu-PF, born out of the rabble of the MDC.
He is decidedly irreverent in his description of Tsvangirai, and considers himself the focal point of the Matibenga effort which, by the way, enjoyed the backing of all democratic resistance committee "commanders", in this latest encounter with Tsvangirai’s thugs at Harvest House.
Mudzuri takes the likes of Mukonoweshuro; takes the likes of the irascible Kombayi, who would not be blocked in the ill-fated Saturday meeting. Back in Gweru, Kombayi controls all the structures against Tsvangirai, obliging the allegiance of all but one chairman. One needs to understand the migratory affinities between Masvingo and Midlands in Zimbabwe’s geopolitics. Matibenga has become a symbol of the Karanga factor in this faction which, unable to evolve a cause and an ideology, is woven around politics’ superfices.
And Biti?
For now, Biti stands seemingly close to the "president", but inwardly enjoying the accelerated destruction of his boss which leaves him with so many possibilities. After all, if the old MDC was a British creature, its successor — if ever there is going to be one — is going to be made by Zanu-PF. And Biti is close enough for notice.
One waits to see whether courtship with Mashakada, on the one hand, and Welshman Ncube, on the other, leads to conception and pregnancy. If it does, interesting things are in the offing. In the meantime, the British are threatening to put Zanu-PF "moles" on sanctions list, opening the stage for a night of long knives.
Joining the sanctions list
A real test for Biti is coming. Let me disclose that the inter-party dialogue is coming to some conclusion. Much of the work is done, with only item 5 remaining. This is the item which focuses on land and sanctions, among other things, an item dominated by Zanu-PF’s demands (I hope Muleya gets educated!). This item would have been despatched had it not been for Chinamasa’s other fixtures. I quite sympathise with all those who say MDC is pitted against years and years of Zanu-PF’s negotiating skills.
With Lisbon around the corner, item 5 assumes an extraordinary poignancy. Zanu-PF will push both factions to renounce and denounce sanctions; to uphold the land issue as a legitimate national question which stands resolved, irrevocably resolved, thanks to the Zanu-PF way of doing political business. Both positions have an especial resonance on Lisbon, on Britain and the EU specifically.
Once this is adopted, Lisbon will face an Africa which militantly demands that sanctions against Zimbabwe be lifted impedimenta, echoing the Sadc March Dar Communique. Britain will not be there to argue. Brown will not be there, which means the EU response will be lame, very lame, at every turn. Which brings up the big test to Biti, Welshman and their MDCs. If they accept the Zanu-PF position, they will have done the British in, and are sure to be included on the sanctions list, under Zanu-PF. If they comport to losing Britain’s foreign policy whims, they come back home to derision and collapsed talks, indeed will come home to a hostile Africa.
I hold the key
More than ever before, MDC formations are being asked to choose between being of Africa or by Europe. Whichever way the choose, Zanu-PF stands to win. I have said we will finish this irritant called sanctions this year. I still say so. Above all, more than ever, the MDC faction led by Tsvangirai is being asked to make a leadership choice in an environment of a gale. Unlike Jonah, this Morgan is not about to ask to be hurled. He is kicking. He will not go and would rather all drown. In short, he holds the keys!
Rylander and sinking Sweden
Now I know why Rylander has been stirring the Zimbabwean pot so vigorously. Back home, his government is divided, badly divided, over the issue of Zimbabwe. The liberal Prime Minister of Sweden wishes to go to Lisbon, justified by a public relations postulate that Portugal must bar President Mugabe from attending. Sweden fully knows Portugal cannot possibly do that, and still have the summit.
Elements within the coalition government which runs Sweden are saying the issue of Sweden’s attendance is not yet decided. There is an impasse which Rylander was hoping to help resolve by painting Zimbabwe darker than darkest. He is plain dishonest, and may pestilential airs that afflict all vandals gnaw his two-sitting apparatus!
Who is the Law Society in the National Scheme?
When did the Standard realise Masimirembwa owns and runs fowls? When? The day he ordered the reversal of illegal ZimInd newspaper prices? When also did the Standard know that Masimirembwa had problems with the Law Society?
So we get a burst of journalistic truth from the Standard the moment someone crosses its own path or that of its mother? It sounds a bit of disingenuous blackmail, does it not? Let us concentrate on the Law Society issue. The same Law Society blacklisted Lovemore Madhuku, the useless leader of NCA.
He had dipped his amoral fingers into a trust account. He was convicted of the offence. The same Law Society decided to rehabilitate him, against an enormous controversy regarding management of funds of the NCA. Madhuku is a political ally of the Law Society and all his sins shall be forgiven, leaving him white like wool.
The Standard had no problems with that. It wrote no headlines about that. Many other lawyers with far less offences (the Nyeketes, the Mararikes) to this day remain in limbo, many years after their "inexpiable" sins, which are redder than Macbeth’s dripping sword. This is the view of the righteous Law Society.
Partisans in law
Once you do not chant "Chinja!", you are in eternal trouble. Never mind that there is no Chinja anymore. The burdens of being a lawyer! Ndosaka vamwe takaita Shona mhani. But the matter is a lot larger. What is the status of the judgment of a narrow, unrepresentative and decidedly partisan professional group in national affairs? Is its judgment supposed to be proxy to Government?
Such that whoever it condemns stands condemned always, stands un-appointable for all times? That makes the Law Society Government’s surrogate, does it not? Do these papers understand what they are writing about? Government does not stand bound by unilateral judgments of unprofessional societies, less so when led by party partisans. Never! To hell with the dubious verdicts of the Law Society, if a real society it is. Who does not know it is in society with the British? I say to hell.
Icho!
l nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
In the Great Book of Life is told the story of one Jonah, a Hebrew and the son of Amittai. To him, the Word of Jehovah began to occur, ordering him to go to Nineveh, the great bad city of godless permissiveness and libertinage. Jehovah wanted Nineveh warned of dire divine retribution, and Jonah was the carrier of that terrible message. Fully conscious of the consequences of bringing an unhappy message to an unrepentant community, Jonah did the reasonable thing for any mortal: he ran away, apparently forgetting Jehovah is omnipresent, is immanent.
Far down in his flight, at some place called Joppa, he found a ship about to leave for Tarshish; he promptly paid his fare before descending to the most secretive part of the ship, not just to "evade" Jehovah, but also to drown his troubled mind in the sound sleep of generations.
Against the internal peace soon to visit him through sleep, there was outward, traumatic discord which threatened to tear the ship apart, casting all on board into the fury and froth of raging waters. All, except the sleeper, prayed to their gods, hoping for saving divine clemency. The buffeted captain of the troubled ship soon got to where Jonah lay safe and well ensconced in folds of sound and indifferent sleep:
"What is the matter with you, sleeper? Get up and call out to your god!" he yelled, not terribly impressed.
Democracy in disaster
During which time the rest on the ship were casting lots to establish who in their midst had brought upon them this raging divine ire. The lots "caught" Jonah, surprisingly with all those on the ship still democratic enough to ask him: "What should we do to you, in order that the sea may become still for us?"
It was too generous a gesture for people menaced by such an overwhelming disaster.
Equally, Jonah reacted in a manner most baffling to laws of self-preservation: "Lift me up and hurl me into the sea, and the sea will become still for YOU; because I am aware that it is on my account that this great tempest is upon YOU."
The narrative goes on and on, including recounting how a big, benevolent fish ate the sinful Jonah, apparently to save him.
The ship is an abiding image in this great narrative we call the Bible. Equally, the notion of redemption through symbolic destruction, is prevalent. Such is the richness of Hebrew literature whose beginning is the Bible. I do not aver any doubts as to the holiness of this great book. Bishop Manhanga would kill me, having spared his precious Bible on hopes for my spiritual redemption. Besides, I consider myself religious, often admiring Jehovah’s rage. Or that of His Son who took a whip and tore the flesh of all those sinners who had turned His Father’s house into a Zimbabwe Stock Exchange! Enough of blasphemy.
Purge of MDC kulaks
For the MDC, time is long, very long. The Matibenga saga (or is it the Makone saga?) rages unabated, with each day that passes seeming like more fuel to a bad fire. Count me out; I bring no additional faggots to the MDC’s this Amaggeddon. Let me share with you the folds of this leaping blaze, which has left so dark a smoulder in this house all-party Britain built well before 1999. The entire leadership is afflicted by a giant seizure of paranoia, much of it fuelled by Ian Makone and his gracious wife, Theresa. There is a great tempest, a great purge afoot, as Tsvangirai’s erstwhile vananyachide, now passing for today’s kulaks of the new MDC with Tsvangirai nominally at the helm, Makone on the controls.
William Bango, the man who only last week misled The Standard into believing Tsvangirai had relented on the Matibenga saga, today stands accused of being a Zanu-PF mole. Or more accurately, a CIO mole. The boss is unhappy that he gave out that line, soon to be contradicted by an embarrassing flare-up right on the stoep! The accusation against Bango is shored up by verifiable facts: that he was detained on the side of Zanu-PF only to be released at Independence.
I confirm that this is, indeed, a fact. Bango was in detention, alongside the likes of the now incarcerated Dzvairo who helped him through his secondary school studies. His tormentors add he was at Ziana, and worked with the President’s Office on covering the President here at home and abroad. That is also true. They add he had(s) friends in the system. I am sure he does, as everyone else, including Theresa. They again add he, Sandra Nyaira and Nyakunu were deployed by the system to wreck the Daily News project. I have no view on that allegation. The charge sheet goes on and on.
The angry man from Chiurwi
Chamisa is out, has been for quite some days. Chamisa has very strong views on the Matibenga issue. He feels threatened by the waves of this great injustice authored by his leader under the spell and influence of the Makones. After all, his hold on leadership, alongside Mashakada and the likes of Chaibva and Sikhala, has always been tenuous, repeatedly challenged by the trade union wing within the MDC.
Fortunately, that student (not intellectuals, please) — trade unionist dialectic is no longer helpful as the formation continues to peel in ways that defy both rhyme and reason. But the insecurity is there, all the time reinforced by victimisation done on "the near other", too near even to be vicariously felt. The dismissal of Matibenga on frivolous grounds is keenly felt by all in comparable positions.
No one feels safe, least of all Chamisa. Not even the Chiurwi connection is near enough to strongly fasten him on Tsvangirai’s coattails. But beyond insecurity, Chamisa genuinely (and rightly) believes his boss has shown monumental leadership failures, all the time exposing to ridicule the very party he must uplift.
You blurt about CIO destabilisation of the MDC to Chamisa, most probably you walk away with a grievous limp, that is if you are that lucky. But the writing is clear. Tsvangirai is convening his Press brief through faraway Bennett, or through Luke Tambolinyoka. I could cite Pedzisayi Ruhanya, until now a Tsvangirai acolyte. Today he breathes fire against his erstwhile idol, urging his defeat in March 2008 so a defeated MDC is given chance to reorganise and grant itself a new leadership.
Upstaging Mbeki?
Presently Tsvangirai is shorn of all ramparts. His act at the Commonwealth people’s forum was pathetic. He could not answer crucial questions, including that on land. He had to be saved by the British convenors of the meeting from aggravated self-damage. It was bad. For a man who claims to wield keys to the MDC in his pocket, it was baddest. He had to run back home, hopefully to mollification by President Mbeki, the principal mediator.
Ill-prepared and ill-rested for the encounter, Tsvangirai walked into another disaster. The previous week he had met with President Mbeki, to exhort him to tell President Mugabe to stop politically-motivated violence. In the meantime, his thugs were descending upon women and journalists right on the "navel" of the capital, assaulting them for not being politically Y2Kompliant.
Kukataza chaiko nemabonza. Heads of State do not want lies given them, and I am sure President Mbeki is no exception. He may not have been terribly impressed by Tsvangirai’s bid to hide a big log lodged in his eye while drawing Mbeki’s attention to a speck in Mugabe’s eye. More blunders were to follow from this wielder of MDC keys.
The whole trip to Kampala -- what was it meant to do, or achieve? Well, to do many things. The British government, through the British Royal Society which carved the "People’s Forum", needed him there. He was there, as required. Secondly, the British government wanted him to influence the forum’s communiqué for the notice of Commonwealth Heads of Government and State whose agenda the British wanted to include Zimbabwe, a non-member of that useless colonial relic.
The British idea was to use Kampala to manage Lisbon which has been a spectacular failure in the much vaunted British diplomacy. More important, Tsvangirai was supposed to upstage President Thabo Mbeki who is expected to brief CHOGM on the situation in Zimbabwe from the perspective of his mediation. A Mbeki flying out of Harare to engage a CHOGM already poisoned by the man who bears "scars of Mugabe’s brutality", the British reasoned, would look absurd to proffer an optimistic prognosis. Given all this, Tsvangirai could not have come to a charitable Mbeki.
Hence the long MDC faces to emerge from the short meeting on Thursday, which the indefatigable Dumisani Muleya sought to perfume and repaint handsome. More than Mugabe can ever hope to do, desolate Tsvangirai is doing much to consolidate Zanu-PF’s image on the continent and abroad. And all these spectacular blunders indicate what remains of the faction which Chaibva declares has since become a fraction!
A faction that has become a fraction
More fractions. Mudzuri, oh Mudzuri, the boastful character! After a few hot ones (it does not have to be real beer), he is known to brag that only vaMugabe and he enjoy a national vote, he as mayor of Harare. Once upon a time, that is. Mudzuri is determined to add another boast in his brag. He wants to be leader of a new political party to take on Zanu-PF, born out of the rabble of the MDC.
He is decidedly irreverent in his description of Tsvangirai, and considers himself the focal point of the Matibenga effort which, by the way, enjoyed the backing of all democratic resistance committee "commanders", in this latest encounter with Tsvangirai’s thugs at Harvest House.
Mudzuri takes the likes of Mukonoweshuro; takes the likes of the irascible Kombayi, who would not be blocked in the ill-fated Saturday meeting. Back in Gweru, Kombayi controls all the structures against Tsvangirai, obliging the allegiance of all but one chairman. One needs to understand the migratory affinities between Masvingo and Midlands in Zimbabwe’s geopolitics. Matibenga has become a symbol of the Karanga factor in this faction which, unable to evolve a cause and an ideology, is woven around politics’ superfices.
And Biti?
For now, Biti stands seemingly close to the "president", but inwardly enjoying the accelerated destruction of his boss which leaves him with so many possibilities. After all, if the old MDC was a British creature, its successor — if ever there is going to be one — is going to be made by Zanu-PF. And Biti is close enough for notice.
One waits to see whether courtship with Mashakada, on the one hand, and Welshman Ncube, on the other, leads to conception and pregnancy. If it does, interesting things are in the offing. In the meantime, the British are threatening to put Zanu-PF "moles" on sanctions list, opening the stage for a night of long knives.
Joining the sanctions list
A real test for Biti is coming. Let me disclose that the inter-party dialogue is coming to some conclusion. Much of the work is done, with only item 5 remaining. This is the item which focuses on land and sanctions, among other things, an item dominated by Zanu-PF’s demands (I hope Muleya gets educated!). This item would have been despatched had it not been for Chinamasa’s other fixtures. I quite sympathise with all those who say MDC is pitted against years and years of Zanu-PF’s negotiating skills.
With Lisbon around the corner, item 5 assumes an extraordinary poignancy. Zanu-PF will push both factions to renounce and denounce sanctions; to uphold the land issue as a legitimate national question which stands resolved, irrevocably resolved, thanks to the Zanu-PF way of doing political business. Both positions have an especial resonance on Lisbon, on Britain and the EU specifically.
Once this is adopted, Lisbon will face an Africa which militantly demands that sanctions against Zimbabwe be lifted impedimenta, echoing the Sadc March Dar Communique. Britain will not be there to argue. Brown will not be there, which means the EU response will be lame, very lame, at every turn. Which brings up the big test to Biti, Welshman and their MDCs. If they accept the Zanu-PF position, they will have done the British in, and are sure to be included on the sanctions list, under Zanu-PF. If they comport to losing Britain’s foreign policy whims, they come back home to derision and collapsed talks, indeed will come home to a hostile Africa.
I hold the key
More than ever before, MDC formations are being asked to choose between being of Africa or by Europe. Whichever way the choose, Zanu-PF stands to win. I have said we will finish this irritant called sanctions this year. I still say so. Above all, more than ever, the MDC faction led by Tsvangirai is being asked to make a leadership choice in an environment of a gale. Unlike Jonah, this Morgan is not about to ask to be hurled. He is kicking. He will not go and would rather all drown. In short, he holds the keys!
Rylander and sinking Sweden
Now I know why Rylander has been stirring the Zimbabwean pot so vigorously. Back home, his government is divided, badly divided, over the issue of Zimbabwe. The liberal Prime Minister of Sweden wishes to go to Lisbon, justified by a public relations postulate that Portugal must bar President Mugabe from attending. Sweden fully knows Portugal cannot possibly do that, and still have the summit.
Elements within the coalition government which runs Sweden are saying the issue of Sweden’s attendance is not yet decided. There is an impasse which Rylander was hoping to help resolve by painting Zimbabwe darker than darkest. He is plain dishonest, and may pestilential airs that afflict all vandals gnaw his two-sitting apparatus!
Who is the Law Society in the National Scheme?
When did the Standard realise Masimirembwa owns and runs fowls? When? The day he ordered the reversal of illegal ZimInd newspaper prices? When also did the Standard know that Masimirembwa had problems with the Law Society?
So we get a burst of journalistic truth from the Standard the moment someone crosses its own path or that of its mother? It sounds a bit of disingenuous blackmail, does it not? Let us concentrate on the Law Society issue. The same Law Society blacklisted Lovemore Madhuku, the useless leader of NCA.
He had dipped his amoral fingers into a trust account. He was convicted of the offence. The same Law Society decided to rehabilitate him, against an enormous controversy regarding management of funds of the NCA. Madhuku is a political ally of the Law Society and all his sins shall be forgiven, leaving him white like wool.
The Standard had no problems with that. It wrote no headlines about that. Many other lawyers with far less offences (the Nyeketes, the Mararikes) to this day remain in limbo, many years after their "inexpiable" sins, which are redder than Macbeth’s dripping sword. This is the view of the righteous Law Society.
Partisans in law
Once you do not chant "Chinja!", you are in eternal trouble. Never mind that there is no Chinja anymore. The burdens of being a lawyer! Ndosaka vamwe takaita Shona mhani. But the matter is a lot larger. What is the status of the judgment of a narrow, unrepresentative and decidedly partisan professional group in national affairs? Is its judgment supposed to be proxy to Government?
Such that whoever it condemns stands condemned always, stands un-appointable for all times? That makes the Law Society Government’s surrogate, does it not? Do these papers understand what they are writing about? Government does not stand bound by unilateral judgments of unprofessional societies, less so when led by party partisans. Never! To hell with the dubious verdicts of the Law Society, if a real society it is. Who does not know it is in society with the British? I say to hell.
Icho!
l nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
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