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(HERALD) Tafataona Mahoso: War against racist myths of ‘democracy’

Tafataona Mahoso: War against racist myths of ‘democracy’
Sunday, 15 May 2011 00:00 Blogs
AFRICAN FOCUS

There is a white racist myth of “democracy” which has taken root among certain groups in Zimbabwe in the last 15 years or so. It has been promoted through foreign-funded NGOs and foreign-sponsored media.

One example of this myth was an opinion authored several months ago by one Nevanji Madanhire and published in The Standard. The gist of the opinion piece was that Britain, Europe and the Unites States, as champions of “democracy”, sought to effect regime change only against those “Third World” leaders who had over-stayed and were old.

If Africans, especially Zimbabweans, would just change their leaders and ruling parties like race-horses and keep them young, photogenic and emulating TV celebrities — then imperialism would leave them alone.

This argument is a lie and it seeks to promote gross ignorance among readers. The empire’s opposition to leaders of other countries, the empire’s sponsorship of illegal regime change against other countries, has absolutely nothing to do with how long the ruling party has been in power or how long the President or Prime Minister has been in office or how young or old the head of state and government may be. This argument about longevity or age is intended to shift focus from the content of a revolutionary programme and away from the tangible interests of the people to personalities and parties.

This argument makes it easy to target, stigmatise and destroy entire movements by focusing on their leaders and deleting the content of their programmes and achievements.

The US likes to present itself as a model in limiting presidential terms of office, but the truth is that there were no limits on how many terms the US President could serve until 177 years after independence.

Patrice Lumumba, the first popularly elected Prime Minister of Congo (now DRC), was almost a boy when the Belgians overthrew, tortured and murdered him with the help of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Lumumba’s administration did not even last a year! So age and length of time in office were not the reasons for regime change in Congo (DRC).

In Russia, the real darling of Western imperialism was neither former president Vladmir Putin nor the current Dimitri Medvedev, though both are very young and celebrity-like.

Western imperialism loved the old and alcoholic President Boris Yeltsin because he allowed the Western plunder of Soviet and Russian assets. Cde Fidel Castro of Cuba and Cde Che Guevara were almost boys when they came to power in 1959.
But imperialism ordered a swift illegal regime change programme against them which is legendary and well documented.

In fact the Cuban Revolution was not yet two years old when the US Central Intelligence Agency sponsored and launched the illegal invasion known as the Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17 1961.

Just to change pace, let us move to the example of Haiti. According to Professor Noam Chomsky:

“Then in 1990, something happened which really surprised everyone (within imperialist circles).
There was this free election in Haiti, which everyone (within imperialist circles) assumed would be won by the former World Bank official we (the US) were backing (Marc Bazin), who had all the resources, foreign support and so on . . . Well, all of a sudden, in December 1990, . . . grassroots organisations came out of the woodworks and won the (popular) election (for the popular priest turned politician, Jean-Bertrand Aristide).

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was young, energetic, popular and close to the poorest of the poor communities in Haiti, a real champion of “grassroots development”.

How did the white empire respond to his popular victory against its candidate, the former World Bank official? Professor Chomsky continues:

“At that point, the only question for people who know anything about (North) American history should have been, “how are they going to get rid of this guy?” — because something like the Aristide victory simply is not tolerated in our (US) sphere: a populist movement based on grassroots support, and a priest infected with liberation theology. That won’t last. And, of course, the US instantly started to undermine the Aristide government . . .”

Aristide was exiled to South Africa. Neither age nor length of time in office had anything to do with his ouster by the US.

A few other examples help to dispel the myth.

In 1951, Iranians popularly elected Dr Mohammad Mossadegh as Prime Minister. Mossadegh immediately formulated and pushed a new policy to increase the share of oil profits going to Iranians as opposed to foreign oil companies.

The US Central Intelligence Agency immediately began plotting a coup d’etat against Dr Mossadegh’s government.

The media was roped into the campaign to demonise Dr Mossadegh and by the time of the coup d’etat, 80 percent of newspaper content in Iran was influenced by the CIA. Mossadegh’s government was overthrown in 1952, that is only within a year or so of Mossadegh’s election. Neither age nor length of time in office had anything to do with that illegal regime change.

If we move on to Chile, we see the same pattern. Salvador Allende’s Unity Movement won free and fair elections in 1970 on a platform of land redistribution and workers’ rights.

The US government, through the CIA, brought together banks, multinational companies, sponsored trade unions, elements of the Chilean armed forces and sponsored media in Chile to work on sabotaging the economy, imposing sanctions on the country and demonising the government.

President Salvador Allende was murdered in a CIA-sponsored coup d’etat on September 11 1973. Neither his age nor the length of time he was in office had anything to do with the coup d’etat.

Jaime Roldos was yet another young, brilliant and promising president.
At the earliest opportunity after his election as President of Ecuador, Roldos put together a package of laws and a programme of action to enable the people of Ecuador to reclaim their oil assets by regulating oil companies. The CIA placed explosives on his plane and he died in a crash on May 24 1981.

People in our region are aware of the important role which the first President of Mozambique, Samora Machel, played in helping Zimbabwe liberate itself.
They remember how both Zimbabwe and Mozambique pledged to host the liberation movements of South Africa despite threats from the apartheid regime.

Machel, too, died in a plane crash in 1986. And the suspects remain the apartheid regime of South Africa and the CIA. Long before the crash, it was clear that the imperialists and the apartheid regime were opposed to Samora Machel and would have been happy if his government were to be overthrown by the so-called Mozambique Resistance Army (Remano), which they sponsored.

Coming to Zimbabwe, it is well documented that both the imperialist powers and white settler communities in Southern Africa were opposed especially to the late Cde Herbert Chitepo and Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe as leaders of Zanu and Zanla.

Cde Chitepo was assassinated in 1975. As soon as Cde Mugabe took over the leadership of Zanu from Rev Ndabaningi Sithole, the imperial powers and the white settler communities started a vicious campaign demonisation which continues to this day.

That vicious campaign has had little to do with age or length of time in office. It began long before there was any state office for Cde Mugabe at all.

To put to rest the myth of age and length of time in office as reasons for imperialist regime change campaigns again leaders in the South and the East, it might help our readers to return to the longest on-going regime change campaign, that of the US against the Cuban Revolution:

When the criminal “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba failed to topple the Cuban Revolution in 1961, the US intelligence and military forces concluded that only a direct massive invasion of the island could overthrow the government of Cuba.
These forces therefore submitted a document on March 9 1962 called “Pretexts to Justify US Military Intervention in Cuba”. Among the nearly 20 actions proposed to
trap Cuba in an all-out war were the following provocations:

l We could blow up (our own) US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.

l We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in Cuban waters (and claim that it was a real vessel attacked by Cubans.)

l We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the US, even to the extent of wounding them and publicising the events.

l It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a US aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack.

Other provocations included hiring highjackers or attacking civilian airlines in the name of the Cuban Revolution so that Cuba could then be accused of sponsoring terrorists.

Still others included faking a Cuban attack on the US airforce, using US-owned MIGs which would be made to look Cuban. All these efforts were being made only within three years after the initial success of the revolution.

Although the documents on US attempts to destroy Cuba were unknown in the 1960s, astute US intellectuals were aware of the threat of US imperialism to human rights and self-determination. For example, Henry Steel Commager concluded in 1968, after looking at US policies toward China, the Soviet Union, Vietnam and Cuba, that:

“We looked with horror on the concentration camps of the last (Nazi) war, but we set up “refugee camps in Vietnam which are . . . concentration camps . . . Only a people infatuated with their own moral virtue, their own superiority, their own exemption from the ordinary laws of history and morality, could so uncritically embrace a double standard of morality as have the American people.”

This was written more than 40 years ago, but we see the continuing US hypocrisy and double-standards over Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and many other places.

The problem which Nevanji Madanhire and others create for African readers, when they focus on age and length of time in office as reasons for imperialism’s illegal regime change campaigns is part of a bigger issue.

African media and media in Africa usually copy the Western framing and accept the resulting dispositional explanations, as Anver Versi of African Business once wrote in the February issue of 1998.

The article was called “On knocking African leaders”.

“So, if a leader is rotten, it must follow that (powers) who support him are equally rotten . . . the names of Idi Amin Dada and Bokassa immediately spring to mind. But who are the midwives in the birth of these monsters?

“In the case of Amin it was the British and Israel; in Mobutu’s case, it was that great champion of freedom and democracy, the United States of America.”

Versi then referred to the problem of lack of research, borrowed framing, poor training and lack of confidence among African journalists:

“Leaders who have grown up from their native soils cannot be put in the same category (as foreign-sponsored puppets).

“Many of them suffered great tribulations and made enormous sacrifices for (and with) their people . . . The challenges they faced (and continue to face) have been far more daunting than anything any Western leader has had to confront since the World War . . . the issue of African leadership is a complex one and it needs substantial study.

Unfortunately, most of us in Africa, particularly poorly qualified and badly paid journalists, just do not have the analytical tools to work through leadership issues.

“We tend to look to (those we think are,) the experts, the well-educated, thoroughly trained and richly resourced Western journalists for a lead. When they dismiss African leadership with a few worn-out clichés, we follow suit. In the process we reduce our own politics, economics and situation in history into the juvenile language of (Western) tabloids.”

The claim that African leaders are hated by the West because of age or length of time in office is one example of the juvenile clichés of Western-sponsored tabloids.
The problem which the editor of African Business referred to here is the removal of history and context from media stories.

History provides the appropriate context for current power struggles.

The Western imperialist template distorts and deletes the content of the programmes of the African liberation movement because the imperialists know that the puppet movements they sponsor here do not have much to offer the people.

So they must focus on non-essentials, on matters of style.

That is why the lie had to be invented: That the Anglo-Saxon axis would leave Zimbabwe alone if the people changed their leaders like race-horses and kept them youthful, photogenic and celebrity-looking.

That way the people stop talking about land, minerals, coal, platinum, diamonds and illegal sanctions but instead focus on individuals out of context.

But who could be more photogenic and youthful than Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1959? Who could be more youthful than Patrice Lumumba in 1960? Why did imperialism not leave them alone?

Labels: COLONIALISM, DEMOCRACY, NEOCOLONIALISM

posted by MrK @ 11:20 PM