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(HERALD) Zimbabwe: Bloody, triad Dominions against clean diamonds

Zimbabwe: Bloody, triad Dominions against clean diamonds

WAS it Thomas Carlyle, the only literate English witness to the millenarian French Revolution, who wondered why Paris beheaded a king one Monday, only to turn out so noisy, selling sugar, a mere five Mondays later?

Was it not he who, led by this dramatic shift in national feeling and purpose, concluded that cities in revolution are subject to puzzling alternations, indeed are given to short memories, short spurts of sense of sin and guilt, to great confusion of philosophers so given to interpreting reality in terms of cause and effect?

He, indeed it was, who noted that politically, scarcity is always factitious. Spectacular non-event.

This week bore witness to a meaningless political spectacle by way of a recall and reshuffle of Morgan Tsvangirai’s faction in the MDC, itself a fraction in the larger inclusive government.

I have a feeling the reader's sense and expectation is that I devote some time and space to a gloating analysis of this non-event which the media would want to thrust upon us as the major development of the week, if not of post-rapproachment Zimbabwe.

Sorry, good reader, I disagree.

There is nothing much to think about, or write home about regarding this empty gesture from the MDC leader, a gesture which he himself now regrets ever making anyway. The consequences are coming, fast and thick.

Not even Personnel Officer.

Originally calculated to demonstrate untrammelled power and say over men and women of faction, the reshuffle has demonstrated the exact opposite.

It has shown the full length and breadth of his own powerlessness as a political leader and a premier of this country.

Firstly, it has shown his own powerlessness against powerful donors who willed the reshuffle, thereby showing they will not allow the man even the marginal role of a personnel officer of (t)his party.

He cannot move his cadres at will, whether out of, or in Government.

Secondly, it has shown his powerlessness against those he imagines he has neutralised, hindsight-ly realising he has indeed released them from the constraining chores of government to brew more deadly mischief against him within the party — singly and in alliance, within and without his formation, under and beyond his party.

If Tsvangirai sought to demonstrate power, he would have done so not by having the reshuffle, but by not having one when donors demanded it.

If Tsvangirai was secure in his party presidency, he would not have precipitated a reshuffle when everyone expected him to make one.

Like the proverbial hare with something after its life, he has run in broad daylight towards a homestead full of meat-hungry humans.

Something must be after his life and journalists shall, in the intervening weeks feed with remarkable frenzy on the decaying carcass of such an intimation.

Darting arrows against ambitions

Today Tsvangirai has given new and unsavoury meaning to his premiership: far from being a platform for genuine public service, for proving a far better governor than Zanu (PF)’s Mugabe as his donors want him to, he has shown his post in Government is utilitarian: a selfish extra string on his bow, from which darts deadly arrows against any who threaten him, or who seek to read the party constitution against him.

That constitution will not go away with Mudzuri’s departure from Government. Nor will the inner drive to succeed Tsvangirai diminish in the hearts of those men he blames for having it in their bosoms, or fanning it in those with it.

Not even his own fears of being succeeded will go away. What is worse, Tsvangirai has told his partners in the GPA that his men and women are judged, not by how well they serve Zimbabwe, but rather by how well they work towards narrow "change" which his ambitions pursue through his party.

So Mugabe will be justified to dig in on strengthening sovereignty.

So Mutambara will be justified in digging in on seeking a generational mandate that excludes Mugabe and Tsvangirai, both on grounds of age.

And that Tsvangirai has sacked so many and moved so many around, is proof enough of what we have always known: that Zanu (PF) rules the roost of inclusivity, to the utter disgust of Tsvangirai's regime-change minded donors. His party is not having its way in government.

Give a dog a bad name . . .

Hardly a week after this misdeed, Tsvangirai faces great anger; greater danger, greatest vulnerabilities presently only masked by thin bravado and clumsy role acting.

He is a sleepless man, and mumbles loud enough to be heard by his opponents.

His supposed victims — Mudzuri foremost, Mhashu most wronged — surely saw this coming?

The approach of this non-event was uproarious, waking up even those soundly sleeping and snoring in the vertiginous heights of Shawasha Hills?

From the day of his swearing on that fateful day in February 2009 — mwedzi waKukadzi in Shona — Mudzuri became twice bigger than the proverbial dog to whom a bad name is thrown to ensure it is suitably hanged.

To his ill-fated name were added two bad ones — Zesa and Noczim — both deadly but sweetly, ornately and volubly packaged as "the Honourable Minister of Energy".

Today he knows there was a dagger in his president’s smiles.

This appointment, this assignment, guaranteed him a double noose, a double execution and, as the Prime Minister hopes, double death. What was he to do with a USD$10 million budget, against such hungry, badly starved dogs?

This man is from Zaka rinopisa.

But the Prime Minister needs to know that Mudzuri is an angry man from Zaka, Zaka rinopisa.

He will come back, either directly from Zaka or from the Mbudzi political cemetery. Or from both, to kick over filled bowls, plates and cups, thereby ruining the happy dinner.

Like Macbeth, Tsvangirai has killed sleep.

Mudzuri knew his fate — some would say courted it even — which is what makes his fall padded; which is what makes all this drama a perfect red herring which is being drawn at great expense to real issues confronting our nation.

More important, the certainty of a fourth MDC formation after the first three led by Tsvangirai, Mutambara and Sikhala, has been so overbearing to require any crystal ball looking or seers.

There have been enough factors within Tsvangirai's faction and leadership style to guarantee such an eventuality, enough factors and calculations within western interests to compel it.

The report on the wanton violence and wanton sexual abuse of female staff at Harvest House was but a tip of a big iceberg.

MDC-T is organised around slaves in the kitchen, slaves in the field. It has a two-tier rewarding system, yielding two economic types from its own supporters: the obese, the starving. Indeed, scarcity factious.

Politics’ great alchemy.

Yet in terms of national politics, such splits count for little, if not for nothing. Of course Zanu (PF) must exploit them, to the fullest.

But it must know that the country's political scene will remain a two-horse race, with little ones paling into mere shades of the dominant two.

The Mavambos, the MDC-99 or whenever, will always be shades of the dominant two. Carlyle put it so well when Insurrectional France seemed on the brink of being fractured into as many parties as there were opinions, which he counted to be seven hundred and forty-nine!

Far from fearing this seeming looming chaos, he found comfort in two contrapuntal human tendencies: an individual nature and necessity to follow one's own road; a gregarious nature or necessity to travel by the side of others.

The endless turbulence of politics derive from these two contradictory impulses which keep repelling and attracting, till once the master-element get evolved, and this wild alchemy arranges itself yet again.

He concluded: "To the length of seven-hundred and forty-nine parties, however, no nation was ever yet seen to go. Nor indeed much beyond the length of Two Parties; two at a time; — so invincible is man's tendency to unite, with all the invincible divisiveness he has!

Two Parties, we say, are the usual number at one time: let those two fight it out, all minor shades of party rallying under the shade likest them; one the one has fought down the other, then it, in its turn, may divide, self-destructive; and so the process continue, as far as needful.

This is the way of Revolutions, which spring up as the French one hasdone; when the so-called Bonds of Society snap asunder; and all the Laws that are not Laws of Nature become naught and Formulas merely".

Is this love?

But a quick postscript to this dramatic non-event. I feel for Minister Mangoma whose Medium Term Policy (MTP) will now have to conclude without him.

He had worked so hard, braved repeated indignities from his colleague in Finance to be denied the crowning moment. But he has to make way to a more cosmic fight.

Much worse, what is the man supposed to do with Zesa and Noczim so the two bad names won't guarantee him an limping exit?

What can he do against a harsher verdict on Mudzuri, the legendary parsimony of Biti and against withering anger from a frustrated consumer?

And the lively Theresa Makone — vaChihera?

Whereas it is in her totem to swim against the current, and even win, u-uhh, what her husband engineered this time is a heavy one. Do I hear Bob Marley humming: "Is this love/ Is this love that I am given?"?

One day the kingmaker in the Prime Minister's Office might have to answer to a song, the same way Biti might have to answer why he attracts the support of western NGOs, and that of Ian Kay, the face of Rhodesia's white landed Noblesse.

Given his support catchment, his clear lack of a personality for the demos, outside convincing answers, he is a man not likely to end well.

Bloody nations, clean diamonds.

Sorry for this long digression which was meant to ensure the rest of the readership is spared from devoting much thoughts to the inane.

The real issue for the nation remained diamonds, our diamonds bloodied by immigrant, dominion, nations of America, Australia and Canada, reinforced by this who-ever-has-money-can-bed-me tribe called NGOs.

As I write, the Kimberley Process meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, has broken up inconclusively. Another meeting has been scheduled for mid-July in Russia.

The issue will be Zimbabwe and her diamonds: that tiny country at the centre of an enormous controversy threatening to rip apart a 75-nation voluntary world organisation.

Gentle reader, your country has already forced the Kimberly Process meeting to go beyond it scheduled three days, into a fourth day, a first in the ten-year record of this voluntary body of diamond producing and buying nations.

It is clear we deployed hard diamonds to drill through the hard pedestal the KPC thought it rested, while keeping the gem quality shimmering tantalisingly to keep and sustain the interest.

See where we stand: an unacknowledged sixth member of the Security Council!

We do matter, gentle reader. Our small nation shall determine the course of history, thereby making prophesy come true.

We got all the attention, quality attention too as a diamond producing nation. Another exhilarating statistic: we command 25 percent of the world’s diamond sales!

Flotilla of NGOs!

Before Tel Aviv, Zimbabwe merited three major reports ostensibly from powerful NGOs, in reality from powerful nations, led by America. The only other thing that worried Obama this and last week, over and above the oil spill, was Marange, our Marange!

He now can pronounce this founding home of the Hera people, my people. Human Rights Watch wrote. Global Witness wrote. So did PAC from which I drew an outrageous quote last week. Two of the reports had sixteen pages each, one twenty-eight.

All had one mind, one language, same malice to clearly show the idea was to replicate one lie in true Goebellian style.

As if this was not enough, the three Governments mobilised and funded these writing pimps, all to create a spectacle in Tel Aviv.

It was a massive flotilla of NGOs far more deserving of bombs and guns than the humanitarian one attacked by Israel a few weeks back. But Israel's arms are American, and shall not be used against America's cause and crusaders.

It’s the land again, stupid!

The script was a simple one. Zimbabwe should not get certified an exporter of good diamonds. As if that epithet makes our diamonds any less refulgent.

What is more, Zimbabwe had to be expelled or at the very least suspended from the Kimberley Process, itself a precursor to similar graduated agitation at the UN for Security Council action. Yes, you re right, gentle reader.

It recalls a similar action at the UN Security Council a few years back, only thwarted by a double veto — another first in history — by Russia and China, themselves supportive members of the KPC.

One report made it very clear: the issue of Marange was a continuation of the great fight for white property rights in Zimbabwe, against marauding Zanu (PF).

This is why these reports are copious in their condemnation of River Ranch Mine which is co-owned by Rtd General Mujuru and some Saudi investor, while being loudly quiet about the bigger Murowa Diamond Mine which is owned by the West through Rio Tinto.

The racism is so blatant. Why should Mujuru not mine diamonds? What is it that makes Saudis unacceptable as investors that Westerners are?

Thieving De Beers

And the Zimbabwe Government comes in for a withering attack for not following due diligence in selecting partners for Marange, and for allowing these "dubious" companies to sideline ZMDC which belongs to Government.

Is this real concern on the part of these dominion nations to protect Zimbabwe's national interest? Why put ZMDC under sanctions then if there is so

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Zimbabwe: Bloody, triad Dominions against clean diamonds

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much love for it?

Why rip us through Rio Tinto and De Beers, if there is genuine concern for Zimbabwe? For a very long time, De Beers (may the whole lot get drunk!) would ship our massive mounts of ore to South Africa in the name of further metallurgical tests. It was already mining diamonds, smuggling them out as ore illegally. History will some day tell us what we were prejudiced as a Nation by these crooks who initiated the KPC to salve their bloodied consciences. No one raised a finger against De Beers whose hands were long bloodied in history to get any redder! It was only when Zimbabwe woke up from its slumber that De Beers ran away, abandoning the diamond field to a phantom creature called ACR, Andrew Cranswick's ACR. Today Cranswick poses as a bona fide informant to these highly judgmental reports. My foot!

The 1% triad.

Worse happened in Tel Aviv. Faced with a clear stalemate, the chair of the meeting called for a vote. Zimbabwe won overwhelmingly, with the three British dominions standing on their own, their paltry worth augmented by a noisy flotilla of hired NGOs. Even European Nations who do not have an iota of goodwill against this Nation voted against the ban, voted with Zimbabwe. The report under debate was a KPC-written report, for goodness' sake. It came from a monitor KPC appointed. The West wanted an American. We did not want him and said so. Zimbabwe wanted a Namibian. The West did not want him and said so. The compromise was Chikane, a De Beers employee. He came, he saw, he wrote, he tendered. Now those who commissioned him no longer liked what he saw and reported. They want him investigated. What kind of people-nations are we dealing with? Not to embarrass these big boys, the chair asks for a vote on the Chikane report. The vote comes down in favour of Zimbabwe which secures almost all the votes, including that of the host nation, Israel. To save the big bullies again, the chair suddenly remembers KPC is not governed by vote, but by consensus. So the vote is put aside for further consensus-generating negotiations.

Biti's name, Maguwu again.

At that stage stunning proposals are made, seemingly by NGOs, basically by the bloody dominion triad. Chikane must be dismissed and disciplined, to be substituted by a new monitor commanding the trust of the unholy triad's NGOs. Who be this? Some gentleman called Tendai Biti! Yes, our Finance Minister in the Inclusive Government under President Mugabe being redeployed by NGOs on the instigation of three British dominion states! Back home, Tsvangirai is failing to convince donors that the same Biti must be axed! I wonder what would have happened if Zimbabwe had conceded to this one. When this demand is thrown out with Minister Mpofu's well-known manner of showing contempt, a second name is tendered. Who be it this time? Maguwu! Yes the same Maguwu who faces serious charges that are before the courts. What is it that made the two men so favoured? Again, this is thrown out with the contempt of an angry war-veteran minister. But the worst was still to come. It came. Zimbabwe should only be certified on condition it cedes 1% value of its total diamond exports to US, Australia and Canada through their NGOs! Aahh? I am not bluffing. That demand was made by this Mr. 1% triad in full view of all the delegates. Can anyone tell me who is bloody? Picking our pockets in the broad lights of 21st Century? Does imperialism have to be so brazen? Kugona muroyi humupa mwana adye. So sang Oliver Mutukudzi in relation to the KPC process he will never get to know about. Icho!

Labels: MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NATIONAL UNITY GOVERNMENT

posted by MrK @ 3:15 PM