Maravi

(HERALD) Would-be invaders, you are warned

Would-be invaders, you are warned
By Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia

IT appears President George W Bush’s recent "surprise visit" to Iraq was one too many as he got a shoeful of surprises himself.

Muntadhar al-Zeid, the now famous shoe-hurling journalist, might be in the custody of those who chose to get angry on behalf of the US President, but his surprise act is significant in more than one way.

To Nouri Maliki, the Iraqi puppet leader who was installed by Washington, Zeid was an embarrassment to Iraq and as such Maliki would have charges of "insulting the State" preferred against the journalist.

Had it not been for Bush’s excellent ducking skills, Maliki was going to face the real embarrassment of watching his master with a bloody nose, all coming from the hand of his own countryman — himself uncontrollably angered by the treacherous "security deal" that his own leader was signing with this "killer of Iraqis. . . killer of children."

Judging by the massive marches and protests against the continued detention of Zeid, one can only conclude that the journalist expressed the will and opinion of those numbers that are marching in his support.

In short, they are thanking Bush the way they know best.

This is farewell the Iraqi way — a farewell to an unwanted "liberator" who has clearly overstayed his welcome, if ever there was any.

The Western media has been quick to give the world the religious symbolic meaning of an Islamic person throwing a shoe at someone; that this is a grave insult based on how a shoe is associated with filth in the religion of Islam. That as it may be, one wonders if Zeid would have preferred a shoe ahead of any deadlier weapon if there was one at his disposal.

The attack on Bush might have provided a lot of entertainment internationally with him proving to be an artful dodger, but it reflects very badly on America’s "democratisation project" in the Middle East and it throws a lot of questions on the politics of international intervention.

Well, the incident is obviously a mockery of the much hailed security skills of the CIA and the Secret Service, especially when one considers that the attacker had time to reload.

The international intervention doctrine is what we have heard the confused Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga tirelessly preaching with an absolutely empty but very loud voice. Odinga wants to create a Nouri Maliki out of Morgan Tsvangirai and he wants the US-led Western powers to do an Iraq on Zimbabwe.

Of course, Odinga does not speak on behalf of Kenya or its government but on behalf of Tsvangirai, whose behalf is no more than a treacherous pack of instructions from Washington.

Desmond Tutu still cherishes the idea of another Nobel Peace Prize and he thinks Zimbabwe is an excellent opportunity to showcase his compatibility with Western opinion. Tutu thinks hitting headlines as a good old man in Western media is such a fantastic idea that he will stop at nothing to help the West throw blows at any of their perceived enemies.

He has able support from one hell of an errant bishop in London, the comic John Sentamu, a man who passes for a perfect lunatic when stripped of the media glory he enjoys from the BBC.

Zimbabwe’s own Pius Ncube would be enjoying these moments of "calls for outside intervention" if only he had not given in to the oldest temptation in history; the thing that made him Zimbabwe’s fastest trousers-dropper before his world collapsed on his treacherous political career.

The events in Iraq show us that the thinking on the ground at grassroots levels of countries deemed to be candidates for outside intervention is not always the same with that of those that call for such intervention.

This writer will bet that if Zimbabwe were invaded (and God forbid), the grassroots population will be appalled just like was the case with the Iraqis.

If Tsvangirai were installed as a stooge leader of Zimbabwe and he dared invite his master for some fancy deal-signing ceremony, then the story would not have a happy ending at all because Zimbabweans throw spears instead of shoes when they are insulted.

One can imagine the signing of some "non-racial land redistribution treaty" or anything to the effect of returning land to the people who invested in Tsvangirai.

That is the kind of insult that drove Zeid to forget that Bush considered himself the most powerful man in the world, and he decisively had the Emperor ducking like an errant schoolboy.

The fact that at least 200 lawyers are reported to have offered to defend Zeid for free is a measure of the amount of international support his cause has attracted, especially when one hears that a sizeable number of these lawyers are US citizens.

Bush reckons Zeid was just "seeking attention", and for sure he got lots of it, although it is highly unlikely that this is what he was after.

In 1986, we were all made to adjust to the elitist opinion that came through the so-called debate over US intervention in Nicaragua.

This "debate" was very similar to what we hear being discussed about Zimbabwe today in Western political circles.

In the first three months of 1986, the US Congress was debating funding for the Contras and the two major national newspapers — the New York Times and the Washington Post — devoted to this matter at least 85 opinion pieces, according to Noam Chomsky in his book "The Culture of Terrorism".

Every one of the selected writers was critical of the Sandinistas, with the overwhelming majority bitterly hostile, just like with the numerous columnists being afforded space on Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe in Western media today. You could not write without bashing the Sandinistas and at the same time expect coverage in mainstream Western media, and today you cannot write without bashing President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF and at the same time expect even a paragraph in Western media.

That is how elitist opinion is shoved down the throats of every commoner.

In all, the 85 columns that were published by these two papers, not even one phrase noted that in sharp contrast to US foreign policy and its clientele, the Sandinista government, whatever its sins, did not slaughter its own population and that this government had attempted social reforms for the benefit of its people before this was deemed too dangerous by America, deciding in the process to abort the reforms through a terrorist attack.

The atrocities of the Contras were highly tolerated by Washington, the same way the reported planning of an armed insurgency in Zimbabwe is already hailed as "democratic resistance" in the West.

There is all this reporting of a long list of President Mugabe’s alleged crimes, including but not limited to "stealing elections since 1980", "killing his own people", "stealing farms", "starving his own people", "gross human rights abuses", "stifling freedom of Press and expression" and "bringing cholera to his own people".

Of all these reports and allegations, there is hardly any phrase noting that the Zanu-PF Government corrected a colonial imbalance where 75 percent of the country’s arable land was in the hands of 4 000 white famers.

There is hardly any phrase that says the response to the Land Reform Programme by Western powers has been a systematic strangulation of the Zimbabwean economy and that the country has been subjected to ruinous sanctions for its efforts in attaining justice for its indigenous population. There is no phrase that says the Zanu-PF Government, whatever its sins, does not hate and kill its own masses but has policies that seek to empower the local masses economically.

Rather, we hear that these policies are bad or unsound – that the "regime" is egregious in human rights violations. In Nicaragua there was no room for contributions from Oxfam America, who had reported that: "Among the four countries in the region where Oxfam America works (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua), only in Nicaragua has a substantial effort been made to address inequities in land ownership and to extend health, educational and agricultural services to poor peasant families."

In Zimbabwe those who hail the country’s outstanding achievements in educating its population in the last 28 years are totally ignored, at best treated or labelled the regime’s apologists or propagandists if they keep repeating the unwanted and unwelcome reminders.

Those who hail the country for coming top in efforts to combat HIV and Aids prevalence even under the extremely hard economic conditions largely caused by Western-imposed sanctions are also labelled "those propping the regime".

And none of this can be known outside narrow circles that escape the constraints of the Western indoctrination system, and these views are inexpressible in the opinion pages of the Western Press, especially when it is time to "debate" the propriety of an escalation of hostility against Zimbabwe, like we see and hear with this bull-dusting about "intervention in the wake of the cholera pandemic".

There is no room for Sadc’s position, no room for South Africa’s quiet diplomacy. Rather, there are acres of space to cover the obnoxious rants from Sadc’s slouching novice, Sereste Khama Ian Khama of Botswana, who happens to think that regional consensus is meaningless if it does not remove Mugabe for him and his comrade in treachery, Tsvangirai.

As a response to Tsvangirai’s disregard for the mandate and regional authority of Sadc, the West sees it fit to correct the wrong man, Robert Mugabe, by continually saying the way to solve the stalemate is to have him removed from office.

Just like Washington tolerated the atrocities of the Contras while blaming the Sandinistas for everything that was not going well in Nicaragua, we see London and Washington tolerating Tsvangirai’s disgusting flip-flops and even patiently putting up with his apparent lack of political skill and a clear absence of political acumen.

All this can wait if only the brain-dead brave man can help push out Robert Mugabe.

If at all reported in the West, the political shortcomings of Morgan Tsvangirai (which are many) are only blandly covered, evoking no comment and quickly forgotten.

Someone at the BBC aptly described Tsvangirai by saying "the only consistent thing about him is inconsistency".

However, this unfitting character for a whole would-be Prime Minister is sidelined as irrelevant when it comes to the agenda of foreign interference in Zimbabwe.

This practice of engaging in elitist indoctrination of the ordinary people is far more general in the West and it is very understandable.

One can see it very clearly in the pursuance of a commitment to "objectivity" in reporting on "fledgling democracies" like Kenya and Botswana, and the "resistance to tyranny" in Zimbabwe.

The Western media will not report that Sadc wants Tsvangirai sworn in as Prime Minister based on the position the regional body adopted in South Africa recently.

They will not report that the majority of Zimbabweans are frustrated that Tsvangirai is increasingly proving to be unreliable and dishonest by the way he keeps changing his positions in the negotiations for an inclusive Government. This is largely because he is changing these positions on behalf of Western elites.

The Iraqi shoe-hurling scene should serve as a reminder to those hankering for military intervention in Zimbabwe – a reminder that the locals are not going to line up the streets throwing flowers at invaders but will be hurling more deadly weaponry at whoever takes it upon themselves to liberate Zimbabweans from their independence. It is this writer’s conviction that Zimbabweans can walk through this hard time together and come out of it in harmonious victory.

Zimbabwe, we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

l Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawarova.com or visit www.rwafawarova.com

Labels: NEOCOLONIALISM

posted by MrK @ 11:01 AM