Maravi

(HERALD) MDC, project of opportunism

MDC, project of opportunism
By Jupiter Punungwe

ALEX Magaisa in his article titled "Gamu: Little pawn in a much bigger game" has managed to eloquently capture the essence of the issue and motivation of most, if not all Zimbabwean asylum seekers.

Their basic motive is to try and make money in the UK and the West in general (most of which they send home to Zimbabwe). Their common tactic is to tell the British system what it wants to hear.

"I am running away from that ‘monster’ Robert Mugabe, the one you know about so well."

Believe me, thousands have succeeded. The British system has been scammed with "monster Mugabe" stories for over a decade. It seems it is only now that they are starting to wake up and smell the coffee.

If one checks the travel records of most people who have asylum, and who can afford travel, you will probably find that they travel to South Africa where they disappear for weeks.

I personally witnessed at least one case where a person with asylum flew into South Africa caught a bus to Zimbabwe and sneaked across the border without producing their passport (a very easy matter at the porous Beitbridge border) and spent weeks enjoying life with their relatives before they sneaked back to South Africa and flew back to their host country.

It is an open secret that most people who seek asylum are under no threat whatsoever and quite a good number actually support Zanu-PF, the party which most asylum seekers claim to be running away from.

Unfortunately, this practice of telling potential sponsors, hosts and other benefactors stories they want to hear does not start and end with seeking asylum.

Indeed the entire fabric of opposition politics in Zimbabwe is woven upon telling sponsors what they want to hear. From the word go I have been calling the MDC a bunch of opportunists much to the chagrin of many of their supporters who threw all kinds of insults at me.

For the record, I don’t recall ever being insulted by Zanu-PF despite voicing equally strong opinions against them. This opportunism and lack of firm ideological direction was evident during the negotiations that led to the inclusive Government.

We had a situation where an MDC "spokesperson" in Zimbabwe would say something, another in South Africa would say something contradictory and yet another in the UK would come up with a third position independent of the first two.

We were also constantly entertained with the spectacle of the MDC agreeing to something during closed negotiations with Zanu-PF, then changing position after it’s own meeting and yet another position change after meeting Western ambassadors.

What this underlines is that there is no solid ideology or set of solid principles binding the MDC together.

Each interest group party to the MDC project have their own individual opportunistic agendas, and the parties do not quite understand each other’s agendas.

Hence when any of the parties is not present at a particular event its agendas are not very well taken care off. The interests of the MDC’s western sponsors have suffered most from this phenomenon.

Because they are not bona fide Zimbabweans they could not be part of the internal workings of the inclusive Government. Once they were not part of events their core interests were slowly left to gather dust. The Zimbabwean politicians from the MDC meanwhile pursued their objective of accumulating personal wealth with vigour.

Pitched battles were fought over allocation of vehicles. In the constitutional outreach process pitched battles were fought over allowances bringing the whole process to a halt.

Yet the same pitched battles have not been fought over the contents of the constitution despite suggestions that Zanu-PF’s position was sometimes getting an unfairly advantageous hearing.

Matters that go to the heart of Western interests are only made noise about when they attract media attention. Without media attention they are quietly ignored. For example the MDC made a lot of noise about the Zanu-PF driven indigenisation laws but once the media was quiet, they also went quiet.

The same applies to the Roy Bennett issue. The MDC make some noise every now and then otherwise they are quite happy to amble along without him.

I have no doubt that for the majority of the MDC leaders the primary objective was to accumulate personal wealth or at least create the necessary opportunities.

The Westerners, on the other hand, have an agenda to eliminate Mugabe as a threat to their entrenched interests. By and large the MDC leaders have got what they wanted. On the other hand the Western interests haven’t, "Mugabe" is still a threat to their interests.

I put the word Mugabe in quotes because the real threat to Western interests is the African Nationalistic ideology that Mugabe forcefully espouses.

However, the truth is that the African Nationalistic ideology is an ideology that is embraced and shared by anyone who has lived under and has had to fight off the rabid racism, discrimination, oppression and exploitation of Africans that were the cornerstones of colonialism in Africa.

Even the opposition politicians sponsored by the West embrace African nationalism deep down in their hearts, but usually carefully cloak those feelings because of the direct financial gain to be had from not showing Westerners too openly that you don’t like what they did to your people, while pretending to be pursuing their interests.

The West has one lesson to learn. The Africans politicians singing the loudest praise to the West are the ones most likely to be incorrigible liars. They are simply telling the West what they want to hear.

Once it comes to true feeling, simple logic is enough to conclude that the evils of colonialism and racism mean that it will be a very long time before Africans genuinely like the habits of Europeans.

punungwe *** gmail.com

Labels: GAMU NHENGU, MDC, PROPAGANDA

posted by MrK @ 3:57 PM