Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) Zimbabwe and the battle of ideas

Zimbabwe and the battle of ideas
Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:34:00 +0000

LAST week this writer took a look at Netfa Freeman’s work relative to the pro-West adulatory writings of Briggs Bomba, a self styled Zimbabwean donor-monger that masquerades as a high achiever on matters of human rights and good governance, albeit in the most apparent lackey adherence to Western bidding on matters related to Africa.

In his “Ballots vs Bullets in Kenya and Zimbabwe” essay, Bomba tried this idea of “independent civil society” in Africa and by that he explicitly explained that the concept means organisations “without loyalty” to African governments.

The fact that these organisations have been used for decades by imperialist governments to implement immoral foreign policy objectives in different countries is totally ignored in Bomba’s idea of “independent civil society”.

The funnelling of funds into civic groups by the CIA and other imperialist forces has been proven many times over and Nefta Freeman cited a paper presented by CIA agent, Philip Agee in 1979. Agee pointed out that there were opportunities in the developing world for the US to create the “American Political Foundation” to explore ways the US could exploit civil societies in other countries for their own ends.

He explained that this was the genesis of “new policy agendas” of the USAID and eventually it all led to the formation of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983. NED became the new dispensary of CIA funds since its formation and Bomba prides in discipleship status to organisations such as this.

Bomba is one of these misguided human rights evangelists who hold the view that it is appropriate for African NGOs to be funded by non-African governments and they are proud of this hostility that says it is inappropriate if such NGOs are funded by African governments.

The illusion is that somehow European governments are more interested in good governance than their African counterparts. Bomba and other like minded people will have the whole continent believe that the future of Africa should be left to the telescopic and hypocritical goodwill of Western taxpayers.

These people view those NGOs that relate well to African governments or even get some material support from them as “political apologists”, “puppets” or “bootlickers”, yet those dependent on Western governments are by that very fact considered “independent”. Clearly Bomba thinks fooling people is an easy venture and he probably believes he is succeeding.

Briggs Bomba had a lengthy attack on the Zimbabwean judiciary, whom he accused of being “dominated by loyalists”.

This is despite the fact that Morgan Tsvangirai was acquitted on charges of plotting the elimination of President Mugabe and a whole list of other court decision in favour of the MDC and those against the interests of Zanu PF.

The essay by Bomba contains a sweet-reading series of unsubstantiated accusations against President Mugabe and the government he led at the time the essay was written. He made unverified and reckless claims against the military, the intelligence community and the police, accusing all of them of merging “seamlessly with the violent campaign machinery of the ruling Zanu PF”.

He equated this to Kenya where “the police stood in President Kibaki’s corner and brutally massacred hundreds of opposition activists in protests that followed the disputed election”.

This claim is despite the fact that there was not a single incident of police confrontation with opposition activists anywhere in Zimbabwe during the time in question.

This is also despite that there were at least 1,500 confirmed deaths in Kenya while Morgan Tsvangirai’s unsubstantiated claims on the deaths of his supporters was at its most 185.

The Zimbabwean police have challenged those making these claims to come forward with evidence but nothing much has come out of it.

Bomba made an incorrect distinction between Kenya and Zimbabwe when he wrote, “Kenya, unlike Zimbabwe, the opposition used mass mobilisation and threats of total economic paralysis to leverage its power...”

Surely the MDC have tried and failed to use mass mobilisation a number of times; this highlighted by the mega-flop 2003 “Mass Action” or “Final Push” campaign. The fact that no sane Zimbabwean heeded the call of the MDC-T does not mean that they did not have the mass mobilisation strategy as one of the directives from their masters in London and Washington.

As for “total economic paralysis” to leverage power; it is laughable that Briggs Bomba sought to dissociate the MDC-T from this evil practice at a time the party was signing Article IV of the so-called GPA, which acknowledges the ruinous effect of the illegal sanctions that the MDC invited from Britain and her allies – sanctions which David Miliband says can only be removed at the request of Prime Minister Tsvangirai and his gang in the MDC-T leadership.

Basically writers like Briggs Bomba write from a flawed ideological premise, and they ignore Western interests and policy in Zimbabwe and in Africa. These writers bemoan the lack of “access” and “diplomatic leverage” for Western saviours to deal with “ruthless regimes” as is often said of President Mugabe’s Government.

They want to make their readers believe that the West can make things right in Zimbabwe.

Bomba had high praises for the role of the United States, Britain and others in the brokering of the Kenya power sharing deal, but he had all sorts of problems with SADC’s efforts in securing Zimbabwe’s power sharing deal. Maybe he needs a reminder that the West’s interests in Kenya have never been under threat so far.

There are no Western regime change shenanigans in Kenya and that is why both Kibaki and Odinga are easily acceptable without any scepticism. In fact, it is reality that Britain and other Western countries prematurely extended congratulations to Kibaki on his “electoral victory”, having to be forced to rescind it two days later once they were aware of the humiliating discrepancies that characterised the election result, and more importantly the unrest that erupted soon after the announcement of the result.

Compare this with Zimbabwe where both the US and Britain have been excessively obsessed with the outcome of elections since Zimbabweans repossessed their colonially stolen land in 2000.

The 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2008 elections were all roundly condemned as marred in the West even before they had taken place. The only reason this happened was that the prospect for victory of their favoured MDC and its leader did not look good enough, and they always wanted the option of playing the fraudulence card so as to dismiss any result that did not suit them.

Bomba calls the ruinous sanctions on his own country “isolationist diplomacy” and he finds it perfectly in order that the US and the UK continue to declare that they want nothing short of regime change in Zimbabwe. CRTTT6T555555learly there is nothing remotely diplomatic about that kind of aggression.

The Canadian writer, Stephen Gowans, does seem to have a much better grasp of the politics of Zimbabwe than Briggs Bomba in many respects. In his essay, “Zimbabwe at War” Gowans asks these pertinent questions:

• “Should an election be carried out when a country is under sanctions and it has been made clear to the electorate that the sanctions will be lifted only if the opposition is elected?” or as it is today, only when the same party makes a request for the lifting of sanctions, as recently outlined by David Miliband.

• Should a political party which is the creation of, and is funded by, hostile foreign forces, and whose program is to unlatch the door from within to provide free entry to foreign powers to establish a neo-colonial rule, be allowed to freely operate?”

• “Should the leaders of an opposition movement that takes money from hostile foreign powers and who have made plain their intention to unseat the government by any means available, be charged with treason?”

This writer will add and ask: Should a Prime Minister of a Government under an illegal sanctions regime refuse to call those sanctions by name, insisting on vague inferences like “restrictive measures”?

Should such a Prime Minister call for a phased removal of those sanctions at a time his own Finance Minister and his own Deputy are joining unanimous calls for the total and unconditional removal of such a sanctions regime?

Stephen Zunes is one Western apologist on matters related to Zimbabwe. Like many others he contrives credibility from a leftist posturing against imperialism and he hides his true identity in sophisticated writing as he did in the article, “African Dictatorships and Double Standards”.

Zunes does not want to be associated with Western propaganda of demonising Zimbabwe while overlooking the West’s own iniquities in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

He however assumes this uninformed view that US condemnations on Zimbabwe are all based on human rights-motivated good intentions. He even congratulated George W. Bush’s administration for “joining” what he called “a unanimous UN Security Council resolution condemning the campaign of violence unleashed upon pro-democracy activists and calling for increased diplomatic sanctions.”

Unless one was a propaganda peddler, phrases like “isolationist diplomacy” and “diplomatic sanctions” are a complete contradiction of terms with no meaning whatsoever.

Zunes completely ignored the April 5, 2007 statement by the US State Department when they went public saying that, among several other measures they were working to “discredit the government of Mugabe”. No honest political analyst can ever ignore such facts.

Rather Zunes decided to write that the US government “has justifiably criticised the Zimbabwe liberator-turned-dictator Robert Mugabe”. This in reality means that the US government that supported Ian Smith’s UDI madness and his atrocities on innocent refugees during Zimbabwe’s liberation war, the same US government that conspired to murder Patrice Lumumba, to assassinate Samora Machel, Thomas Sankara, to overthrow Kwame Nkuruma of Ghana,Salvardo Allende of Chile, Maurice Bishop of Grenada, Haiti’s Aristede, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Pathet Lao of Laos and to invade South Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan; is now responsible for altruistic mass-saving nobilities in Zimbabwe.

We have not even mentioned the creation of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.

Zunes misrepresented fats about the UN Security Resolution in question. Firstly it was a US/UK initiated resolution so the US did not “join” anything. Rather the two enemies of Zimbabwe collaborated with others to join them.

Secondly the resolution that Zunes hysterically praised as unanimously adopted actually failed to pass in the UN Security Council as Russia and China did a double veto against it, leaving what Netfa Freeman called “the indisputably racist governments of the US, UK and The EU” to execute their own illegal sanctions – sanctions they today say can only be removed at the request of their quisling party, the MDC-T.

These sanctions are not mere travel bans or “restrictive measures” as Tsvangirai infamously calls them. They explicitly outline stipulations designed to damage the economy of Zimbabwe by denying any extension of credit lines to the Government, or any balance of payment assistance by international financial institutions.

They also actively dissuade investment in, or trade with Zimbabwe, while at the same time barring tourists from travelling to Zimbabwe on the pretext of baseless red-level travel warnings.

Added to this, the sanctions directly bar any trade with Zimbabwe’s top 40 corporations, and a freezing of these companies’ assets, if ever they are located abroad.

These are the factors totally ignored by Bomba and Zunes, and they preach this vainglorious gospel that Britain and the US want nothing in Zimbabwe besides democracy and human rights.

Anyone who fails to see the direct correspondence between the Western aggression on Zimbabwe and the repossession of land in 2000 is either insane or just deliberately trying to be obnoxious with the cause of Zimbabwean masses.

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

*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: COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, REASON WAFAWAROVA, STEPHEN GOWANS

posted by MrK @ 12:41 AM