Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) Run-off pullout: Morgan dancing to master’s tune

Run-off pullout: Morgan dancing to master’s tune
By Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia

THE frisky announcement made by Morgan Tsvangirai on Sunday, June 22 was not made on behalf of people who support MDC-T and most certainly not on behalf of the generality of Zimbabweans. It is obvious that the euphoria that came with Tsvangirai’s lead in the first round of the presidential election has turned into hypochondria and the calamitous state of the opposition has meant that MDC-T has had to be seen to be doing something to avert Tsvangirai’s melancholy that has come with the revival of Zanu-PF’s fortunes. That ‘‘something to be done’’ is now coming under the guise of a concern for the "suffering people" of Zimbabwe.

Tsvangirai’s announcement of his intended withdrawal from the run-off set for Friday is dressed in altruism and an omnifarious assortment of pretences designed at creating the impression of popularity and humanitarianism as part of Tsvangirai’s political personality.

The world is meant to see in Tsvangirai’s efforts to topple President Mugabe, the equivalent of Fidel Castro on the outskirts of Havana in the historic revolutionary ousting of Batista in 1959.

The irony that those who backed Batista back Tsvangirai and his intended victim is the equivalent of Castro is conveniently shelved in favour of the politically expedient doctrine of dictatorships and despotism.

This is the doctrine that says the man who called for the total isolation of Zimbabwe and its economic strangulation can turn out to be the messiah and redeemer of the same people whose suffering is a direct result of his retrogressive campaign.

The man who has stood firm against this economic aggression has been angrily labelled a "ruthless dictator".

Those who today are involved in political violence are by all means petulant social misfits whose behaviour borders on perversity.

There is simply no politician worth dying for and every person has a right to their life, despite their political wisdom or lack of it.

There is consensus that violence of any form is intolerable and there is absolutely no middling when it comes to people who lack respect for life.

Killers have to be condemned the same way we condemn James D. McGee for his part in the killing of innocent Vietnamese and the same way we condemn the British and the Americans for taking away the lives of Iraqis with impunity.

It is the reckless and hasty conclusion that the political goons involved in the violence reported across Zimbabwe are a State-sponsored lot that needs interrogation.

This assertion is meant to portray the Government as the anti-people monster bent on abusing the very people for whom those in Government sacrificed life and limb in a war for popular liberation some 28 years ago.

At the same time, Tsvangirai, the anti-people sanctions evangelist is portrayed as the altruistic leader of an enfranchising political party so worried about the people that they can afford to forego a "coming election victory" if only to save people from "the brutality of the regime".

And who pays the piper?

Washington and London continue to shamelessly stand on the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans with their hands endlessly dripping with the blood of innocent civilians — they stand shouting endless truisms for the people of Zimbabwe.

What rank hypocrisy!

The US is taking Zimbabwe to the UN Security Council in the name of humanitarianism.

This is when the people make good politics.

If you come from a country such as Zimbabwe, where the concept of people makes good politics, then your passport becomes an automatic qualification for asylum visas.

Your country has no struggles making world headlines from the Western media and your country makes it ahead of the poorest of the poor at the UN meetings.

Zimbabwe has retaliated to the Western sanctions by banning the West from any involvement in the country’s affairs and imperialism cannot stand such defiance.

They have simply ordered Tsvangirai to assume a posture of a man of the people and to ensure that he gives the impression that the people are desperately crying to the West for redemption.

This is the context in which the announcement of withdrawal from Tsvangirai is structured.

Now that the announcement has come, what is coming next is Western commercial propaganda.

Zimbabwe will be portrayed as a country facing genocide.

People across the world can be frightened by massive propaganda and the West is well aware of that. That is not a surprise.

Take a classic example, Germany.

It was the most civilised country in the world, the leader in the sciences, the arts — the Weimar Republic.

Within two or three years it had been turned into a country of raving maniacs by extensive propaganda from the Anglo-American machinery. It worked.

It is meant to work for Zimbabwe today.

The propaganda frightened the Germans and many thought they were defending themselves against the Jews and the Bolsheviks.

The rest is history.

The US held about 120 000 American citizens of Japanese descent on the basis of this same propaganda.

Today, one needs to check the media and see how often it is mentioned that before Zimbabwe embarked on the land reform programme, over 75 percent of its arable land was in the hands of 4 000 white farmers.

How many times is it mentioned that Zimbabwe embarked on the land reform programme after Britain reneged on its 1979 commitments to the land question, namely to provide funding for land redistribution?

Equally, one needs to check how often it has been mentioned that when Iran began enriching uranium again, it was after the Europeans had rejected their side of the bargain, namely to provide firm guarantees on security issues.

These guarantees are no trivial matter for they were meant to ensure that Iran would not be attacked.

When one side backs down, one expects the other side to back down as well.

That is what happened with Iran and Zimbabwe.

When one side is sanctioned and economically strangulated, one expects that side to counter the pressure by whatever means within their capacity.

This is why Western media and election observers are banned from Zimbabwe.

This is why MDC-T is labelled a treacherous party behind the sabotaging of the Zimbabwean economy.

It is because indeed they are.

All this has not been mentioned once in the Western media.

It is not that the Western Press does not know this.

They know, but it is not the kind of reporting consistent with Western imperialism.

The Western Press will not report that Iran is virtually surrounded by US military forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and the Persian Gulf.

If they do, it’s because the US is defending itself against terrorists not because it is part of the grand strategy to control Middle East oil resources.

Let it be known that the US foreign policy, just like all of Western foreign policy; is not designed for the benefit of the population, local or foreign.

It is designed for the benefit of power sectors.

To these power sectors, it is useful to dominate the world, by force if necessary.

To this end, the 40 million US citizens that cannot afford to buy food are no priority when the US spends on its military misadventures in Iraq and its sponsorship of rebel civic groups in Zimbabwe.

Even Australia can afford US$18 million towards MDC-T ahead of its appallingly poor Aboriginal communities.

If one were an idealist holding the view that the country is its population, then the extravagant expenditure in Iraq is unacceptable.

But if one were a realist who holds the view that the country is the people who own the country, then the expenditure is a gain.

The same is true for trade deficit.

There is a huge trade deficit for the US if one thinks the country consists of its people but there is no trade deficit if one takes the more reasonable view that the country is the people who own the country.

To these few people, it works like this.

If Dell exports computers from China to the US, it is considered US exports, not US imports. And it is, from the point of view of Dell management.

In this context, there is no trade deficit.

The same goes for US and Western foreign policy.

It does not serve the local populations. It is based on the two pillars of corporate policy.

Noam Chomsky gives these policies as: "Policy one is stuff the pockets of your rich friends with as many dollars as possible. Policy two is get into a position where you can shake your fist at the world and they will do what you want them to do — intimidate the world by force."

The invasion of Iraq achieved those goals. Nobody at Halliburton is complaining that they are going broke.

In fact, the same companies that once supplied Iraq with weapons are now being paid to do what is called "reconstruction" of Iraq, robbing US taxpayers for obscene profits.

The amount of corruption and robbery under the Iraq occupation has been colossal and the imperial gangsters are just making out fine on that.

These are the people who have instructed Tsvangirai to make the people of Zimbabwe a tool of convenience in their ambitions to make profit out of the resources of Zimbabwe.

These people will splash pictures of fighting Zimbabwean villagers daily. This is not because they really wish the villagers were not fighting and neither does it mean that they mean well for the cause of these people. History does not absolve the West when it comes to such virtues. It condemns them with no qualification.

The alleged deaths of 80 people, according to Tsvangirai; cannot be a number terrible enough to move the holes in the chests of such heartless people as George W. Bush, Gordon Brown, David Miliband and Condoleezza Rice. It becomes a number terrible enough only if it can provide a platform for imperial victory.

Those in the Diaspora will confess that they are not exactly treated as equal fellow human beings in their workplaces and adopted communities.

This is precisely because many of them are in the West because they make good politics for the power centres that run Western countries and not because they are exactly fellow human beings with equal standing to their hosts.

Zimbabweans are today so important for their usefulness to gain UN sanctions over their own country. They are very important for their usefulness to give the US-led Western alliance a pretext for military intervention in Zimbabwe.

The MDC leadership is appealing for such intervention and also hoping that it comes under the proxy of an African face. The West know what Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia has been doing in Somalia on their behalf and they are hoping there will be a Zenawi among Zimbabwe’s neighbours.

The Chad-Sudan conflict is another inspiring example for the West. One leader up north of Zimbabwe is yet another encouragement.

The pretext for intervention is what the worry is and it’s nothing close to the plight of Zimbabweans. Neither is it anything to do with democracy or freedom. That does not even exist in the US and will not exist through the MDC or through Iraq’s Nouri Maliki. Simply put, that is not the intention.

It is important for Zimbabweans to read the MDC-T move well and to unite and do a one love act that will shame the imperial monsters that front Tsvangirai as a soldier of democracy much against his own character leadership style if the goings on in the opposition MDC-T are to be taken into account.

The people of Iraq have been abused for imperial purposes and so were the people of Nicaragua, Chile, Haiti and so on and so forth.

In all these cases the intervention by Western countries did not bring any happiness.

In fact, in all these cases the people became poorer than they were before the intervention and Zimbabwe will be no exception if these imperial monsters were ever allowed to set their ruthless feet in the country.

If indeed Tsvangirai carries out the Western threat to pull out of the run-off, then Zimbabweans must remember that they alone hold the solution to their problems, especially the political ones.

This is no time to be waiting upon the Americans and the British. Enemies cannot be friends just because there is a family disagreement.

Zimbabwe we are one. Together we will overcome. It’s homeland or death!

l Feedback: wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawarova.com. For more of Wafawarova’s work visit www.rwafawarova.com

Labels: COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, NEOCOLONIALISM, ZIMBABWE

posted by MrK @ 1:52 AM