(TALKZIMBABWE) When obedience becomes the problem

When obedience becomes the problem
Reason Wafawarova—Opinion
Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:40:00 +0000

TO some people the Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai appears to have suddenly evolved or reformed into an African outfit, especially after the March 29 election. The MDC-T’s March expostulation over the election result was not motivated by a realisation that Africa held the solution to African problems, in this case the Zimbabwean problem.

Rather, the MDC-T was doing the bidding of the real MDC-T in London – a bidding that seeks a remonstrant African regional body that sees Zimbabwe as an island of anarchy, barbarism and political ferociousness.

The appeal to Sadc by the MDC through President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia was neither an appeal of Africanhood nor that of neighbourhood. It was rather a well-calculated appeal for obedience to the voice that is pretending to rule this world – the Anglo-American voice.

By riding on the crest of an admittedly remarkable performance in the harmonised election, the MDC sought to stand on high ground to play bait and magnet to the obnoxious African leaders who have frustratingly and continually failed to obey the Western order to condemn President Robert Mugabe.

On homesoil, the Western ruling elite runs what they call Western democracies and that is done on the principle of obedience. This is the same principle that drives both the imperialist doctrine and the Western foreign policy. It is the principle that calls for international obedience to the US’ idea of world order.

SADC countries are now meant to see Zimbabwe the way Condoleeza Rice wants them to – and some have obeyed. Thabo Mbeki continues to be called names because he happens to be the “disobedient” yet well-positioned leader.

Howard Zinn, in his essay “The Problem Is Civil Obedience” says, “Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is obedience.” He was talking of people behaving and taking orders and not questioning the US political system.

Zinn was talking about the Western population being turned into “media echo chambers” through obedience to power and authority. In the US the suppression of the critical facts about the potential confrontation with Iran is just obedience authority.

Equally the suppression of critical facts over why Zimbabwe has been going on the economic downtrend in the last years is just a mere obedience to power and imperial authority.

The suppression of critical facts over the economic strangulation of Cuba in the last 48 years is yet another example of obedience to authority.

The list goes on and on but surely those who in 2007 dismissed claims from Washington and London that Zimbabwe was a hopelessly failed state cannot today point at what has made them see the American light all after Morgan Tsvangirai found himself in what he thought was striking distance to the leadership of Zimbabwe.

Then these African leaders placed hope in an African solution and now some have joined those who call Britain and the US the international community – and they want this “international community” to intervene in Zimbabwe. This is not a matter of independent change of opinion but a classic example of the problem of obedience and subordination to power, not just over Zimbabwe but also over Iraq, Iran and other places like Afghanistan. If there were a world referendum over the Iraq War, George Bush would be lucky to get 10% of the vote. But the war is still on because many people chose to obey the emperor.

In the West this obedience and subordination is so apparent because there the state is always so powerful – take for example the United States. In the same way they control their population the US uses its economic and military might internationally to make sure that this kind of obedience obtains across the world.

Many European investors have pulled out of Iran not because they agree or believe that Iran is planning to destroy the world – the nonsensical myth that George W. Bush shamelessly wants the world to believe. The Wall Street Journal of January 2006 quoted some of them saying, “We do not want to offend the United States. Its too dangerous” No doubt President Levy Mwanawasa will understand their position empathetically.

International affairs have become very much like the mafia. One cannot offend the don. It’s dangerous, especially if the don is wounded and cornered like the case with George W. Bush right now. It is difficult to know what he is going to do before he joins the dustbins of history in December this year. It is understandable when some people chose to play it safe for the sake of safeguarding US donor funding and of avoiding the unthinkable prospect of US-led sanctions. This is when obedience becomes our problem.

And how do we confront this knotty quagmire? Zimbabwe has a lot of models to copy from. Malaysia is one, Cuba is an excellent model, Venezuela is another and Iran is yet another very good model. These countries have managed to do without the required obedience from the empire and it is always important to look at how this has been achieved.

In terms of democracy, the Western populations are subjected to the idea of two main presidential candidates who went to the same elite universities and often run with the same programmes all because the same corporations fund them.

Just over three years ago, Bolivia and Haiti had democratic elections in the true sense of the word. In December 2005, Bolivia elected someone from the ranks of its population. It was the first time an indigenous person was ever elected to lead that Latin American country. That man was Evo Morales.

There was no obedience to Washington as we are all being coerced to do when it comes to Morgan Tsvangirai of Zimbabwe.

We are all supposed to obey the Western voice that says this man is the hope for democracy, he is a victim of a brutal dictatorship, he is the saint that was slain for our tribulations and he is the light shining in the abyss of primitive African darkness.

Some people have even had the temerity to question, “What kind of a person actually votes Mugabe?” And the logic behind this? He is a dictator just one level below Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler. And who says so? It is of course the mighty Americans and their bitter cousins in Britain.

Why do they say so? He is the man who violated the West’s idea of property rights by repossessing, or is it grabbing white occupied land before redistributing it to unskilled black villagers. Surely dictators do not come any worse, do they?

What should the world make of a “Third World” African leader of a landlocked country who says Western investors can ONLY own 49% of the means of production in his country? He is of course a bloody dictator!

This is why when such a man is running in an election against a “democrat” like Morgan Tsvangirai the whole election must, by definition be a Tsvangirai issue. And if the “democrat” sees a threat in the “dictator” and tells the mighty Americans about it everyone must, by the law of democracy, listen attentively to what the Mighty White House will say through the lessor emperors in London.

Washington and London then speak to Tsvangirai and tell him not to legitimise “the dictator” through an impending loss and Tsvangirai only asks what, when and how should he act. An election withdrawal is ordered and the master says even a Sunday, the Christian Holy day will do. The order is carried out and is accompanied by the hilariously unnecessary theatrics of “fleeing” to the Dutch embassy. Did the Holy Book say, “The wicked flee when no one pursues”?

When Tsvangirai wants the world to believe that someone wants to assassinate him we are all supposed to believe that without question and yet we are told we are all a bunch of conspiracy theorists when we point out that the CIA has carried out more than 600 assassination attempts on Fidel Castro of Cuba.

For “dictators” like Castro it must all be the figment of the imagination of hopeless leftists drugged in conspiracy theories. Of course assassination claims are no doubtable claims if they come from such Western approved democrats like Morgan Tsvangirai. They are natural targets of such barbarity.

In Bolivia, they acted in a way that enabled them to participate in the democratic system. They did not have to obey the voice that told them to vote someone favourable to the empire. They obeyed their identity. They obeyed the Bolivian voice and they obeyed their national interest. That is real obedience and not the kind America is trying to force on Zimbabweans and the leadership of Africa.

The one expected of us is an obedience that can get you birthday banquets in packed auditoriums in London if only your stature could be used as a role model for others.

The striking thing about Bolivia is that there is an indigenous majority, just like in Zimbabwe and most of the African states. That is one sure thing that the Pentagon and the US foreign policy planners are dead worried about.

Not only is Latin America and Africa falling out of control but for a start the indigenous populations are beginning to occupy both the political and economic arena, and the loss of control is getting substantial. For Latin America the threats are Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia while Zimbabwe leads the likes of Namibia, Sudan and a few other African countries that are aiming to free themselves from the doctrine of Western obedience.

Some Latin Americans are even calling for an Indian nation and the idea is to control their own resources. It does not matter much that they barely have the capacity to develop those resources because some of them do not even want those resources developed. They would rather have their own lives and keep their resources unprocessed than have their society and culture destroyed so that some people can sit in traffic jams in New York and London.

This is what is called democracy – the reclaiming of land by indigenous Zimbabweans. That’s the functioning of democracy where the needs of the grassroots are carried out. This threatens the US and the rest of the West and they call it populism.

When Martin Luther King led a popular movement in the US there were great truly democratic changes that took place. It is interesting to note that King’s legacy has been imperially modified to suit what today stands as American democracy. He is greatly honoured for having opposed racist sheriffs in Alabama and this, as well as other glorious rhetoric is what we are solemnly told to believe each Martin Luther King Day.

What happened to King when he turned his attention to poverty and war? He was condemned and they said he had lost his marbles and he did not know what he was doing. The last two years of King were full of condemnation and when he was assassinated he was supporting a strike of sanitation workers in Memphis and he was planning a poor people’s march on Washington. Not only is he not praised for this but also we are never told that he did such things.

When he did his belated and tepid criticism of the Vietnam War, he was sharply denounced, condemned and the US elite bitterly told the world that he had lost his direction and he did not know what he was doing anymore.

The editors of the New York Times and those of the rest of the Western mainstream media do not have a problem with denouncing racist sheriffs and this is why it is easy to honour Nelson Mandela as the epitome of great world leadership. They all think fighting racism is just fine and for sure it is.

What about letting landless peasants get their land back from those who stole it? This is like Luther letting sanitation workers have decent wages or letting poor people participate in the political and economic system of the US. It is what is called unacceptable and one will be overstepping the line.

There is no need for quantum physics if one wants to see why President Mugabe was “honoured” with the knighthood in 1994 and why such an “honour” has had to be revoked in 2008.

He got that honour for excellent leadership in leading his people against colonialism and for shifting to the right after the fall of the USSR. That is fine and within the limits of what is seen as respect for Western civilisation.

Reclamation of land and passing an indigenisation law that entails 51% control of local resources are quite a different issue. It is called overstepping of the line of obedience and by definition that is what the West calls lawlessness and whoever leads such a thing is again by definition, a despot and a dictator.

This is the position President Thabo Mbeki is hopelessly failing to appreciate by not doing exactly what Washington and London have been telling him for the past nine years. This the position so well understood by President Mwanawasa who has expressed his horror about what is happening Zimbabwe in the traditional Western analogy of the Titanic for the benefit of Westerners. What a good global citizen this African brother has become.

This is when obedience becomes a problem. When we have to obey a democracy that promotes only candidates compatible with Western aspirations. It is good for Africa to correct the ills of its own political systems – ills such as the trends of violence that we saw after the 29th of March Zimbabwe election. Such correction must be guided by honesty and fair judgement. It must be corrected in the context of its causes and effects and not in the context of political benchmarks from Washington or London.

When London says, “We are appalled” we must remember this is an appalled former slave master, an appalled former oppressor and coloniser and there should naturally be nothing romanticising about such a position. Basically, Zambia cannot be appalled because London has been appalled, especially over Zimbabwe. It simply makes no minimum sense.

Africa, we are one. This is time for discernment. It is homeland or death. Together we will overcome.