Maravi

(HERALD) Biti, mythical portrait of African

Biti, mythical portrait of African
By Reason Wafawarova

THE Mid-Term Budget Review by Finance Minister Tendai Biti was clearly no dexterous piece of act in as far as it dismally failed to address the issues affecting the rural poor and the urban unemployed, and in as much as the statement blatantly lied about "salary increases" for civil servants when, in fact, the inclusive Government is only slightly adjusting the existing allowances.

Instead of addressing the needs of the people, some of whom, in either genuine honesty or plain naivete, do place their hopes in Minister Biti’s capabilities, the minister chose to address what he called "an era of economic fascism and economic hedonism".

The mythical portrait of Africans as "fascists" and "hedonists", or as lazy, gluttonous, womanisers, drunks or backward, is an age-long tradition held by those that were once upon a time our colonisers and oppressors.

Minister Biti recently held an interview with CNN and he clearly appreciated this view from the West that Zimbabweans are a failed people and that the daunting task of saving all of us rested on the shoulders of "Tendai Biti, the tough-talking Zimbabwean Finance Minister", to quote Biti’s interviewer, Robyn Curnow.

When Biti describes his predecessors as economic fascists and hedonists, he is not only doing it for obvious politicking reasons, where painting Zanu-PF with the nastiest of colours is supposed to be seen as good politics. He is basically perpetuating the MDC-T-Western alliance rhetoric where the Zimbabwean former opposition party is often called upon to say what cannot be allowed by black ears to come out of white mouths.

The mythical crude caricature of President Mugabe and officials from Zanu-PF today is not very different from that given to the colonised African in the last century.

Just as the bourgeoisie proposes an image of the proletariat, or as the existence of the coloniser required that an image of the colonised be suggested, today the imperial supremacist suggests an image for weaker nations that are victims of imperial aggression; more so those that are at the forefront of seeking genuine freedom and independence from imperial domination.

These images become excuses without which the presence and conduct of the imperialist would seem shockingly unacceptable. The favoured image becomes the myth of survival that suits so well the politics of imperial domination.

The interest of Britain and the West in Zimbabwe’s land and mineral wealth would be shockingly unacceptable if President Mugabe is not presented as an "economic fascist", "a dictator", "a tyrant", or the Great Satan with no regard for the rule of law.

Mugabe, the freedom fighter, the liberator, the statesman, the pro-people policymaker or the man of reconciliation, is the wrong Mugabe if all these attributes were executed at the expense of Western hegemony. He could easily be all these things, if he did not engage in "economic fascism" and if he had allowed Western economic hegemony free rein more or less like what the legendary Nelson Mandela did in South Africa.

The land-redistributing Mugabe is a "fascist" and a "hedonist". He is the tyrannic monster with no place in the 21st century. He is a "lawless dictator" who cannot be allowed to engage with "the civilised world".

The mythical portrait provided by these derogatory names attributed not only to President Mugabe, but to the generality of African leaders, is quite useful. It is a portrait designed to attract a unanimous approval to the notion that African leaders are inherently dictatorial and corrupt, the same way the colonisers agreed that the colonised peoples were all lazy.

This mythical portrait of the African of today occupies an important place in the dialectics exalting Western hegemony and humbling the people of the developing world.

Nothing can justify the Western privileged economic position today than the West’s industry, and nothing can better explain the destitution of Zimbabwe today than "unsound policies" and "dictatorial rule".

Nothing can justify Zimbabwe’s decline in farm produce after land was redistributed better than the indolence of black farmers, their lack of farming skills and their chaotic land grab "from productive farmers".

The mythical portrait of the Zanu-PF leadership in Zimbabwe mirrors the one often cast for the generality of African leadership; no wonder both Sadc and the African Union have both been labelled "dictator clubs", not least by Biti himself. It is an image that includes an unbelievable barbarity, brutality, and astonishing corruption, while that of the West and its favoured and sponsored African political parties is that of a virtuous taste for justice, human rights and untainted democracy.

The Western elites are not so displeased with the dictatorships, corruption or laziness of African leaders, whether real or imagined. They talk of it all with amused affability, they joke about it all, and they take up the now too common expressions, perfect them, and keep inventing others. Nothing can describe well enough the extraordinary deficiencies of former colonies. They become eloquently lyrical about it all, in a spectacularly negative way.

To the former colonisers, this is a vindication that Africa made a terrible mistake by kicking out colonial regimes and introducing majority rule. It must be made unequivocally clear that Zimbabweans made a terrible mistake by removing colonial settler farmers from the country’s arable lands and redistributing this land to "unskilled indigenous farmers".

Western media went hysterical praising Barrack Obama for his "tough love" message that blamed Africa’s leadership for its failure to take responsibility and for continually blaming colonialism for the continent’s problems.

If Obama delivered this message out of tough love, his Western admirers share no such love for Africans with him. Rather, they find in his message an endorsement of the mythical portrait that says without Western guidance, Africa will go nowhere.

But one may want to ask: Is Africa really led by lazy and corrupt leaders? That question is thoroughly poorly stated. Can one sensibly accuse an entire continent, an entire people, of laziness, tyranny and corruption?

It can be suspected of individuals, just like it can be suspected in Western countries too. One can wonder loudly what a weak African government that is confronted with powerful Western countries demanding politically motivated changes through the collaboration of some locals is supposed to do to defend itself.

What is such a government supposed to do when its already weak economy is made to scream by the imposition of economic sanctions even without the endorsement of the United Nations?

Zimbabwe right now wants to come up with a homegrown constitution, but Western funding has flooded the process already, truly without invitation, and when the insidious recipients of such funding are prevented from hijacking a national process on behalf of foreigners, then the mythical portrait of tyranny is repeatedly waved on Western television screens.

We hear Information and Communication Technology Minister Nelson Chamisa say his party is a member of Dr Lovemore Madhuku’s National Constitutional Assembly, whatever that means, but Dr Madhuku does not want a constitution-making process led by politicians. We hear the MDC-T prefers this process facilitated and coordinated by a Parliamentary Select Committee, and yet Minister Chamisa says as a member of the NCA, his party also supports Madhuku’s initiative to come up with a constitutional draft.

Dr Madhuku says his organisation has no plans to produce such a draft but to make sure the process is led by "an independent body".

Both the NCA and MDC-T elements involved in the constitution-making process are recipients of Western funds that have come in the name of promoting democracy.

In a clear but inadvertent admission that the NCA is a front for a Western political agenda against President Mugabe and Zanu-PF, Dr Madhuku explained to Lance Guma of the pirate radio station SW Africa, the real reason why the NCA exists.

He said: "The NCA was formed (and) on day one we refused to have Mugabe to have anything to do with the making of a constitution and that is why we exist and that is why we are where we are today." Can it be clearer than this?

Dr Madhuku can do the nation a favour if he can explain how a foreign-funded body can claim to be independent enough to make for Zimbabwe a homegrown constitution.

And what is Zimbabwe supposed to do when it has, on the one hand, one political party with one leg in Government and another in Western funds, and a civic group masquerading as a "National Assembly" while being bankrolled by the same Western funds?

What is Zimbabwe supposed to do when any attempt to oppose this funding and meddling is dismissed as a perpetuation of dictatorial rule?

We hear Zanu-PF is accused of seeking to "protect its unlimited powers", through the Kariba draft, particularly the powers of the President. We are told this draft is a product of a collective effort from the three parties currently in Government.

Dr Madhuku is understandably not impressed. The interesting part is that the MDC-T is pretending to oppose this document to suit their image of multiple colours. They are Western-funded, a member of the NCA, colleagues if not allies of Zanu-PF in as far as the Kariba draft is concerned, and also part of the inclusive Government.

The West is fast losing trust in the MDC-T, Madhuku is infuriated, Zanu-PF is watching over its revolutionary shoulder restlessly and the people are confused.

The West is battling to see who can deliver a constitution that meets Western benchmarks between the MDC-T and Dr Madhuku’s NCA and Zanu-PF wants to thwart all Western meddling and push for its own interests, often called the national interest.

This hypochondria characterising the constitution-making process has nothing to do with the people of Zimbabwe, never mind what Madhuku, the politicians or Zinasu may say publicly.

If the people spoke on the constitution, they did so in 2000 and what they said is available data that can be revisited. What was captured and adopted from that raw data is also there in the politically rejected draft that was presented for the referendum.

We do not need Western funding to revisit what people said and to come up with another draft, that factors in new inputs, whether from the Kariba draft or from the civic society. All we need is common sense and goodwill.

The accusation that we Africans cannot govern ourselves has nothing to do with an objective notation, subject to possible changes, but is an institutionalised label. By this accusation, the West establishes Africa as being inept and incapable of democratic governance. It has been decided that corruption and conflict are constitutional in the very nature of African leadership.

It has become obvious that the African leadership; whatever may be undertaken, whatever zeal may be applied, can never be anything but corrupt and undemocratic.

Whenever the West states, in their language, that African states are democratic weaklings, they suggest thereby that this deficiency requires Western protection.

This is why we have neo-colonial protectorates like Botswana, where the leadership accepts without question that it is in their own interest and that of their country that the heavy responsibility of business ownership and control of the means of production be reserved for Western experts.

Whenever the West adds, in order not to be labelled with the old colonial brush, that African leaders are backward, wicked, with evil, thievish, somewhat sadistic instincts; the expectation is to justify the severity of this continued political meddling.

After all, the West must defend the poor "ordinary people of Africa" or of Zimbabwe against the dangerous and foolish acts of the irresponsible, and at the same time protect Africans against themselves!

In fact, the average African’s lack of desires is well documented; his ineptitude for comfort, science, progress, and his astonishing familiarity with poverty.

The West, therefore, stands as the good-hearted civilised people dead worried about things that hardly trouble the interested party. We are supposedly that hopeless.

That is why we are told that Africans are notorious for their ingratitude; the good Western efforts of charity are wasted, the colonial development done by Westerners is not appreciated or preserved.

This is why Ian Smith’s Rhodesia will forever be hailed for its glorious and gracious charity to black Zimbabweans.

In the eyes of Western elites, it is virtually impossible to save the African from the myth of the portrait of wretchedness — the portrait has been indelibly engraved.

It is only us Africans who can free ourselves from this very derogatory label. If we cannot show our independence in basic procedures like budgets and matters of drafting constitutions, then we can only entrench ourselves deeper into this engraved portrait of uselessness.

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 reason@rwafawarova.com or wafawarova *** yahoo.co.uk or visit www.rwafawarova.com

Labels: BUDGET, NEOCOLONIALISM, TENDAI BITI

posted by MrK @ 5:45 PM