(HERALD) G8: The real crisis is not in Zimbabwe

G8: The real crisis is not in Zimbabwe
By Political and Features Editor Mabasa Sasa

IN 1899, Rudyard Kipling, probably the best known of Britain’s imperial poets, penned an ode titled "The White Man’s Burden" in which he implored the United States of America to join Britain in fully embarking on imperialist wars of conquest and extolled the "virtues" of colonialism. The publication of the poem coincided with the start of the Philippine-American War and the ratification of a treaty in the US Senate that seized territories from Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba and the Philippines.

Theodore Roosevelt, a senior navy officer and soon to be president of the US, sent a copy of the poem to a friend of his, Senator Henry Lodge, with a note that read it was "rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view".

America subsequently went on an imperial rampage that today is encapsulated in the horror of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over 100 years later, it would not be surprising if one were to find that former British prime minister Tony Blair and his equally inept protégé Gordon Brown also sent a copy of this poem to George W. Bush to rope him into their modern wars of conquest — both economic and military.

The recent decision by the G8 to take what they term "financial measures" against Zimbabwe in the face of not only well-tempered advice but also stringent opposition not to do so, is but just another manifestation of the continued dominance of Rudyard Kipling’s mentality in the West today.

Meeting in Japan, Britain, it’s adopted cousin in the imperial agenda the US, and their allies decided — while sitting as a private club that has no international statutory authority — that "financial measures" should be put in place until Morgan Tsvangirai is unconstitutionally declared head of state in Zimbabwe.

The sheer arrogance of the whole move is what is quite astounding.

Apart from the fact that Zimbabwe has a sovereign constitutional process pertaining to elections borne out of negotiations between Zanu-PF and the opposition that legitimately elected President Mugabe into office, the manner in which the African contingent at the summit was ignored raises bile.

The G8 invited Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania to Japan and these seven countries impressed upon them that sanctions, by any name, were not the best means of engaging Zimbabwe.

This was in line with a resolution passed by the African Union at its own summit in Egypt earlier on indicating that the continent was rallying behind President Mbeki’s mediation efforts.

This is a mediation effort that has been doubly endorsed — by Sadc and now by the AU.

So what is it that makes eight countries, all thousands of miles away from Zimbabwe, decide that Africa does not know what it wants and that they alone have the right to decide which route a sovereign nation should take?

It is a paternalistic attitude harking back to Kipling’s days when the white world was barbaric and brazen enough to believe that they had a duty to help poor, ignorant non-whites because they did not have the good sense to know what was good for them.

And just like in Kipling’s days, it is not a simple matter of cultural and political imperialism, but is indeed one of the faces of neo-colonial intervention in the affairs of a nation that has a blood-won right to be called independent.

The Western media have typically latched onto the G8 resolution as a victory over the maniac Mugabe who has the temerity to declare that resources in Zimbabwe should be used for the development of Zimbabwe and the people of Zimbabwe by the people of Zimbabwe.

The uninformed targets of the Western media’s Kiplingesque reportage of Zimbabwe, as well as the rest of the Third World, genuinely believe right now that they are helping this country by passing arrogant G8 resolutions.

For them, they have a philanthropic, God-given commission to haul helpless Zimbabweans out of the bondage President Mugabe has put them in by giving them land and pushing for indigenous ownership of resources.

What emerges from this mindset is what President Mugabe himself referred to when addressing the UN General Assembly in 2006 as a "new religious-political order where Bush is God and Blair is his only prophet".

In 2005 Mick Hume (Africa: A Stage for Political Poseurs) tried to explain the resurgence of this white-man’s-burden mentality as a reaction to a failure by the West to deal with their own problems at home and trying to immerse themselves in other people’s issues as a futile face-saving gesture.

And this partly explains the feverish fixation with Zimbabwe.

After being imposed as prime minister, Gordon Brown faces double massacre from Middle Eastern bullets in his foreign policy and from ballots back home.

He cannot win an election at home, he cannot win in the Middle East and galled by the fact that President Mugabe has overwhelmingly won an election, he perhaps thinks that he can win through the G8.

The real crisis for the dour and doughy Brown is not in Zimbabwe but is in the UK.

The real crisis for Bush is not in Zimbabwe but in the US where disenchantment with the Middle East imperial wars has gained common currency and people are starting to question why prisoners are being detained for years at Guantanamo (an imperial territory stolen from Cuba) without trial.

The real crisis for Sarkozy is not in Zimbabwe but in France where his wife leaves him and comes back to the matrimonial bed at will.

In this regard Hume was right: Africa, in particular Zimbabwe, has provided the West with a stage on which they can grandstand.

But it also goes beyond mere grandstanding. There are vital issues at stake that could forever rattle global economic geo-political relations.

After grandstanding so much about Zimbabwe, there is no way the West can humbly accept defeat and go home to wipe bloody noses without setting a "bad" precedent for downtrodden people across the globe.

For if little Zimbabwe can tell G8 countries where to stuff their words, then what will other countries with even more mineral resources than ours do?

If Zimbabwe can get away with land reforms, how will America stop Iran from attaining nuclear energy? How will they stop Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa et al from nationalising Latin America?

That is why the G8 cannot listen to what Africa says about Zimbabwe.

The West stands to lose a lot from failing to impose its will over and above that of Africa and hence we even see them unashamedly asking the United Nations to overturn the domestic constitutional process that resulted in June 27, its crushing result and its permanence.

Britain and its allies cannot afford to give dialogue a chance and they will thus proceed to try and legitimise their illegal sanctions through the offices of the UN.

They fear that if dialogue takes place and follows an almost similar trajectory to that seen last year that culminated in the co-sponsored Constitution of Zimbabwe (Amendment) Act Number 18 they will lose even the latitude to grandstand here.

Their continued meddling in Zimbabwe’s affairs relies on polarisation and the accompanying absence of holistic dialogue between Zimbabweans.

The G8 resolution is an attempt to perpetuate division in Zimbabwe.

They have this hope that the threat of sanctions will embolden the opposition not to do the right thing and sit at a negotiating table with Zanu-PF in the misguided, but very cynical, belief that the more Zimbabweans suffer, the more likely they are to sell their birthright.

As for the African continent, the behaviour of the G8 should show them that the West cares not one iota what they think or feel and to be used in Brown and Bush’s modern Kipling-induced attacks on Zimbabwe is to agree to be vassal states forever.

Charles Taylor put it aptly when he was handed over to Europeans to face charges of various crimes against humanity.

Few will sympathise with Taylor after fomenting the kind of trouble he did in West Africa, but that does not mean to say he was a total idiot.

Taylor was used by the United States but when the fun of raping West Africa was over, they threw him aside like the latex sheet he allowed himself to become.

In a belated "aha moment", he issued a stark warning to the rest of the continent: "Today it’s Taylor, tomorrow it’s you."

Today the G8 is passing resolutions on Zimbabwe, tomorrow . . . who knows?