(THE INDEPENDENT UK) How Mugabe won over a nation – again

Friday, March 16, 2012

(THE INDEPENDENT UK) How Mugabe won over a nation – again

COMMENT - Talk about reality being caught in a false narrative, based on nothing except propaganda, that they cannot report on reality.

How Mugabe won over a nation – again
Alex Duval Smith
Friday 16 March 2012

After 32 years in power, Zimbabwe's President is winning new adoration with a familiar formula: taking from white businesses to give to black people. In Harare, Alex Duval Smith reports

He may face opprobrium abroad, but at home President Robert Mugabe has soared back to popularity thanks to a campaign to turn over white-owned companies to black Zimbabweans. A crusading indigenisation programme – the corporate version of the farm invasions a decade ago – on Tuesday netted its juiciest prey yet when the world's second-largest platinum miner, Impala, agreed to cede 51 per cent of its Zimbabwean arm, Zimplats.

The controversial minister for indigenisation and youth, Saviour Kasukuwere, described the deal as a "historic moment for Zimbabwe and for the region" and called on black Africans to "reclaim their resources". The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the opposition party which in 2009 formed a power-sharing government with Mr Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), sees the indigenisation wave as a feeding frenzy by ruling-party cronies that will deter foreign investors.

But it is working for the 88-year-old president.

[No British report on Zimbabwe can be complete without mentioning the age of President Mugabe, something unthinkable in African culture. Of course they never mentioned the age of President Mubarak of Egypt, because he was playing ball. How is this not propganda? - MrK]

In questionable health and in power for 32 years, Mr Mugabe has suddenly, in the eyes of many Zimbabweans, regained the revolutionary credentials he earned fighting white rule in the 1970s.

[There is absolutely nothing 'sudden' about this. The ZANU-PF fought for the independence of Zimbabwe from 1965 to 1980. They redistributed the land that was stolen from the people at gunpoint under both colonialism and UDI (the last dispossession happened in 1973). For 10 years, they were vilified, and the government and country put under economic sanctions like ZDERA, because they dared to challenge corporate 'property rights' - the property rights of crooks like Anglo-American, which was smuggling diamonds out of Zimbabwe for years, and has massively evaded taxes. Today, after massive resistance from the MDC and their rhodesian backers, they are finalising a partial transfer of ownership of the economy into Zimbabwe hands. What on earth is 'sudden' about this? The only thing 'sudden' is the partial U-TURN on behalf of the British media, who now realise that they are, again, on the wrong side of history. - MrK]

Emboldened by international sanctions,

[That's insane. International sanctions like ZDERA destroyed the Zimbabwe Dollar from 2002 onwards, and people were almost convinced, as intended, that the MDC was the alternative, rather than the creator of those sanctions. - MrK]

he is riding a wave of populist glory born of lots of rhetoric

[Riding a wave of populist glory? Now who is engaging in rhetoric? Land redistribution is real, indigenisation is real, so what 'wave of populist rhetoric' is President Mugabe riding? - MrK]

and a few converging realities: tens of thousands of resettled peasants

[That's hundreds of thousands of resettled families. I guess they 'did know how to farm' after all. - MrK]

have reaped bumper tobacco crops, civil servants have taken possession of thousands of hectares of redistributed farmland,

[That's as stupid slur. Desperately trying to cling on to the 'elite capture' slur, even against all evidence. - MrK]

and national pride is back, boosted by major diamond finds.

At the same time, the MDC has suffered its share of corruption scandals.

[They have. And that's because they a) are neoliberals who don't believe in restrictions on business or their own personal conduct and b) because they have no ideology that appeals to the Zimbabwean people, so they just steal what they can wehn they can. - MrK]

It has failed to reverse poverty or define itself as a reforming force within the power-sharing administration.

[That is because they are there to fulfill the Anglo-American and the IMF's agendas. We all know how that works whereever they were tried out - including in Zimbabwe from 1991-1996 as the WB visited austerity and pro-corporate policies on the people - the unilateral imposition of which led to the creation of the MDC. - MrK]

And the indigenisation programme, despite its popularity, has divided the trade unions, the MDC's electoral heartland.

In an interview with The Independent, Mr Kasukuwere , 41, did not deny that indigenisation was favouring Zanu-PF "cronies". In his office on the 20th floor of the Mukwati buildings, in Harare, the firebrand politician and businessman said:

"Indigenisation is undoing yesterday's cronies. That is why they are complaining. We are empowering the people of Zimbabwe irrespective of their tribe, language or home area. Yes, some will do better than others, but should I cut down those who are going to grow taller to help those who are still below? Every nation must have a middle class, and if I can create an environment in which millions of Zimbabweans are cronies, then fine, good.''

[So is the writer admitting that President Mugabe has millions of cronies, also known as The Zimbabwean People? - MrK]

Mr Kasukuwere , who is among 112 Zimbabweans under European Union sanctions, denied that the programme was a ruinous electoral ploy. "We want to get our people out of poverty. Who can be against that? There is now an appreciation that if the majority of the population remain a minority in the economic affairs of the country then they are beggars. They can now see which political party has their interests at heart."

[You know, Ben Freeth tried the 'land reform as as ruinous electoral ploy', which was 'used as a sweetener' for the 2000 elections talking point before. It didn't work for Land Reform, so why do they think they can make mileage out if it today. The rhodies and the corporatists have been not only rooting, but trying to make both fail, and they haven't, because of the resolve of the President of Zimbabwe and the people of Zimbabwe. - MrK]

Fourteen years ago, Zimbabwe was a breadbasket for southern Africa.

[Fourteen years ago, many Zimbabweans still lived on the low rainfall RESERVATIONS they had been relegated to, so that the center of the country could become a whites only area. Oh, those lovely days of colonialism and white rule. And when was Zimbabwe EVER the breadbasket of anything? And of Africa? If you look at maize production numbers, there were years in the 1990s that as low or lower than some years during the 2000s? Reason? Drought. And that was without the destruction of the national currency through ZDERA. - MrK]

Maize, tobacco and much more were produced by 4,500 commercial farmers – mostly white – using a black workforce.

[Who lived in abject poverty. See Mugabe And The White African. At one point Freeth even turns to his workforce before he is flying off to Namibia, and tells them, as if this is the 19th century instead of the 21st: "I will bring you blankets." Really? How about paying them enough so they can buy their own blankets? - MrK]

Then Mr Mugabe launched the often-violent "fast-track land redistribution" drive.

[Source? Violence during the Fast Track program was extremely rare. Of 4,500 white farmers, only 6 were killed (0.13%). And not by 'Mugabe's thugs', but by their neighbors, who were fed up by their attitudes. Compare that with 600 white farmers out of 40,000 killed (1.5%) in South Africa, without land reform. Clearly, it has always been much safer to be a white farmer in Zimbabwe, than in South Africa. - MrK]

The MDC was supported by the white farmers. Elections in the 2000s were violent, and in the 2008 presidential polls, Mr Mugabe finished neck-and-neck with MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. A South African-brokered unity government took office in 2009, with Mr Tsvangirai as prime minister. It brought hyperinflation under control by replacing the local currency with the US dollar. Donor countries took over funding social ministries to support the 11-million-strong population. With a few exceptions, Zimbabweans are limping along under the burden of an economy going nowhere.

An agreement to move towards elections with a new constitution has become mired in party infighting. MDC finance minister Tendai Biti on Wednesday warned that the government would have to "close" unless the treasury received income from the diamond fields. Sensing his new-found popularity, the president has begun claiming he will call elections with or without a replacement constitution. He could also simply throw out the proposed document when it comes and hold elections using money from diamonds and indigenisation.

Mr Kasukuwere, accused by human rights activists of leading Zanu-PF mobs before the 2002 elections,

[HILARIOUS! Source? - MrK]

said the next poll would be violence-free. "We want peaceful, free and fair elections. Let us sell our ideas. People now understand what President Mugabe has been aiming at. He is the only politician who has clearly articulated his thoughts, unlike the other political parties who are just feeding on our people – look at the corruption in the local councils they [both wings of the MDC] control. How can they win elections when it is clear that they are a tool, an agent? They are incompetent, corrupt characters."

Zanu-PF's recent popularity surge has wrong-footed the MDC. Mr Tsvangirai, who recently visited the Marange diamond field, welcomed it as a boost for the country, even though his supporters are critical of the army's heavy hand in the extraction process. To Zimbabweans, the prime minister is seen as speaking with one voice when he addresses investors, and with another – more Zanu-friendly – when at home.

Mr Kasukuwere said his next targets, as he implements the 2007 indigenisation legislation, will be banks, such as Barclays, Standard Bank and Stanbic. "They take our deposits and yet refuse to lend. They have not been interested in funding our [resettled] farmers. "

[And that is perhaps the most interesting and relevant point of this article. Foreign banks in Africa are not lending to local entrepreneurs or farmers, which is part of what leads to a massive liquidity gap - the difference between savings rates and lending rates. Domestic borrowing by the state is too blame too, but the real issue is the anti-inflation, low wage, currency (meaning savings and earnings) depreciation policies that come straight out of the IMF and World Bank. Policies that benefit transnational corporations, and especially the banking dynasties that hold their shares. And that is a global problem. - MrK]

Details of Tuesday's Zimplats deal remain sketchy. But Impala has agreed to transfer 10 per cent of Zimplats shares to the community around its mines, 10 per cent to employees and 31 per cent to a National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund. State media put the total value of the Zimplats transfer at £383 million. Other miners with interests in Zimbabwe, such as Anglo Platinum and Rio Tinto, will watch developments closely. A few investors have sold up or left Zimbabwe, such as the South African construction giant Murray & Roberts.

Eleven years after the farm invasions were at their height, the Commercial Farmers' Union is struggling financially and has only 575 members, many of them past farming age or having moved their operations to Zambia, Australia or Britain. They are no longer political players and may no longer support the MDC.

It is a climate in which poverty grinds on and politics boils down not to delivery but to which party makes the best promises.

[But... you just wrote an entire article on the redistribution of the nation's mines to the people. And you've admitted that land reform was not an 'unmitigated disaster' and that yields have come back. So what non-delivery but promises are you talking about? Talk about cognitive dissonance taking time to catch up with the non-propaganda facts. - MrK]

To many Zimbabweans, President Mugabe once again looks like the country's best defender.

Fighting talk: The president's man

The son of a liberation war fighter, Saviour "Tyson" Kasukuwere is President Mugabe's point man on the issue he holds dearest: indigenisation.

Aged 41, he built his fortune a decade ago after using his ruling party connections to win five contracts to import oil. But Kasukuwere's oil company, Comoil, and his Migdale transport firm, both run by his wife Barbara, have suffered as a result of American sanctions that forbid US companies from doing business with his concerns.

"If anything, sanctions have emboldened me," he said.

[Those are personal sanctions, not the blanket sanctions that the entire government was put under like ZDERA. - MrK]

Mr Kasukuwere joined the the Central Intelligence Organisation straight from school. He moved into business in his mid-20s and only entered politics when he ran for Mount Darwin South in 2000, a constituency about 200km from Harare, becoming Zanu-PF's youngest MP.

He became deputy youth minister in 2005 and was studying for a political science degree when he was appointed minister of youth and indigenisation in 2009. He went on to do a masters degree in inter- national relations with a thesis on indigenisation and empowerment.

Labels: INDIGENIZATION AND EMPOWERMENT ACT (ZIMBABWE), ROBERT MUGABE, SAVIOUR KASUKUWERE