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(TALKZIMBABWE) MDC-T: How lies become the truth

MDC-T: How lies become the truth
By: Tendai Midzi
Posted: Sunday, October 17, 2010 1:59 am

GEORGE Orwell in one of his seminal writings once remarked that political prose is formed "to make lies sound truthful ... and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." This contagion is prevalent in today's fast moving media world that it spreads even to the unsuspecting. Time and place are often used in politics, together with language, to protect or defend a way of thinking. Sometimes it is used to influence certain kind of behaviour.

In his book, Language and Politics, John E. Joseph calls the latter "the manufacture of consent", borrowing from Pulitzer Prize winner, Walter Lippman. This is the use of propaganda by politicians and media to to influence certain kinds of behaviour, yet maintaining an illusion of political free will.

Noam Chomsky summed this up perfectly as "Propaganda is to democracy as violence is to totalitarianism".

In Zimbabwe the use of language to perpetuate lies has become almost polemical, warlike and hostile and created a web of deceit involving so-called independent media, the MDC and other variously titled organisations like the National Constitutional Assembly.

Those who peddle lies are almost believable, and their perseverance and repetition of lies makes one start to believe them. I usually treat the anti Zanu-PF rhetoric like the weather in London — sought by vampires, simply endured by normal people.

Nevertheless, for the past ten years I have been tickled by the MDC's rather brush use of language, to hoodwink the people of Zimbabwe; and to claim some superficial superiority over politics in Zimbabwe.

Many half-baked ideas of the MDC are advanced subtly and subliminally as groupthink, rather than the secret plan of an ideologically bereft and politically greedy cabal.

Under the rubric of “democratic space,” politicians from that party have produced faux news, and the accompanying media has lied on their behalf.

There is a string of fabulists in both MDC camps, who hoodwink people to think they are "progressive forces" engaged in some "democracy project".

The terms "the people","the democratic forces", "the democratic project","human rights","progressive forces", etc have been employed subliminally to support the political adventurism of the MDCs; yet people have never really had time to understand what the MDC means by all this.

The formations have never really told the people of Zimbabwe what their vision of the country is; yet they are supported by those who do so, on no basis.

This is why that party has often run into problems with adventures like "The Winter of Discontent" and "The Final Push". People simply didn't understand what the MDC was up to with these calls.

In a recent interview, MDC-T spokesman Nelson Chamisa said that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai would boycott any voting on the new constitution because this is what "the people" are telling him.

Chamisa falls short of describing who "the people" are and what exactly they told the MDC-T leader.

Deputy Prime Minister and MDC-T second-in-command Thokozani Khupe recently told Zimbabweans in the United States that Zimbabweans back home do not need to own the means of production; but want jobs.

Media has also failed to catch other fabulists like Dr Lovemore Madhuku who claim:

"We have always said the constitutional process is not people-driven" yet at the same time produce their own constitutional document, flatly rejecting the Kariba Draft.

Dr Madhuku is, subliminally, saying the National Constitutional Assembly that he represents is "the people" and then passes off his rhetoric as inspired by some form of a "democratic project", needless of the fact that his project does not have any "people" in it. Who does he represent? Who wrote the NCA version of the Zimbabwe constitution?

For over a decade, the anti-Mugabe media has cranked out a steady stream of overhyped and bogus claims to democracy oft repeating words like "progressive forces", "change", "foreign investors". This was meant to effect some twisted volte-face over Zanu-PF's ability to be progressive.

MDC was seen as progressive and Zanu-PF not; and this was simply based not on some fact, but some mindless claim.

What could be more progressive than empowering people through giving them 51 percent of their means of production, their land and their sovereignty?

MDC-T wishes all these policies reversed, and land to be redistributed yet again, colonial-style; yet claims to be progressive and democratic. This is not change. This is maintenance of the colonial land distribution status quo.

These empty, but lofty words have been internalised by many unsuspecting Zimbabweans who now wait for Manna from Heaven, to be delivered by the likes of Tendai Biti, Nelson Chamisa and PM Tsvangirai.

Yet Zimbabweans do not know if these people can deliver in real terms.

There is just that claim that "We will deliver for the people". What exactly will you deliver? How will you bring "foreign investors" over the North Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean to Zimbabwe? How will you get foreign assistance from countries that are trying to save the penny?

The United Kingdom is cutting government expenditure to tackle a huge budget deficit. There are austerity plans in Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain and other troubled spots in Europe. How will the West assist Zimbabwe? Will they really assist Zimbabwe?

In fact, it is interesting that we first have to let go of the land and industry to get assistance. We have to open up our economy to external trade shocks and many other vulnerabilities in order to be assisted by people who need assistance themselves.

There is raging debate about the high levels of foreign assistance in the UK today. How does PM Tsvangirai propose to convince millions of Britons who are going to lose their jobs that Zimbabwe needs US$10 billion?

Will David Cameron and Nick Clegg support the impoverished people of Zimbabwe before they sort out the rising child poverty levels, high levels of sexually transmitted infections and rising levels of gun and knife crime in Britain's inner cities?

Yet there are so-called experts who talk highly about Western assistance, trying to hoodwink the people.

Where were these "assistors" in the 1990s when Zimbabwe suffered the effects of the World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programmes?

Where were they in the pre-MDC and pre land reform programme period?

The media has been manufacturing dissent on behalf of narrow, MDC-T interests.

However, the more they try to tighten their grip on the public discourse, the more the audience slips through their fingers, as messages become mixed and confused. And the pro-MDC media publishes those messages.

Chamisa, the fallacious raconteur tells mischievous anecdotes about the state of the nation. He epitomises the cold, heartless logic that seeps out from the symbiosis of capitalism and corporate journalism. Everything is defined by money, yet people are hoodwinked to think there's a high moral responsibility.

He gives a redefinition of Zimbabwe's reality, not its representation. His role is to give a sterile memorial of the past, and desecrate the liberation struggle; yet his life has only spanned three decades - which ironically coincide with Zimbabwe's indepedence.

MDC-T has been lying to people that sanctions do not affect them. With sanctions, the civilian population is not “collateral damage” — it’s the primary target. They are meant to inflict pain on people, and turn them against government.

Anyhow we should sometimes exclude the MDC-T for ignorance. The sanctions project is bigger than the MDC-T, that's why they don't understand it. It was hatched in the West, but facilitated by the groups inside who gave endless lists of people's names and surnames (and their children's names and surnames) and various company details. Otherwise how does the US Congress know so much about Zimbabweans' personal data?

It was all part of an elaborate propaganda scheme to foment hatred and disgust in the hearts and minds of the Zimbabwean people and turn them against the liberators, and change the independence and sovereignty discourse of Zanu-PF to the survival discourse, by manufacturing consent for imperialist-driven agenda.

It’s a lot easier to destroy a nation and its people when you can convince the rest of the world to despise them and view them as “less than.”

The so-called independent media is the stenographer of power. So called "publishers" working as proxies for big power write stories that suit the interests of that power — that velvet glove that clothes the iron fist of the West. They’re not the watchdogs of democracy and truth; they’re the lapdogs of big spenders.

The discourse on indigenisation and economic empowerment troubles these former elites, like Charleswood Estate's Roy Bennett (and many of their middle class economic hit-men) who have the “class envy” — they can’t stand the idea of the poor/working class masses they enslaved for so long having anything.

This is the crux of the matter.

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Tendai Midzi writes from the UK. He can be contacted via tendaimidzi1@yahoo.com

Labels: MDC, NEOCOLONIALISM, PROPAGANDA, SANCTIONS, ZDERA

posted by MrK @ 4:40 AM