(HERALD ZW) Letter from Zimbabwe: To Mugabe with love
November 8, 2013 Shingirai Huni Opinion & Analysis
Baffour Ankomah
COMMENT - Former South African President Thabo Mbeki: He said: “I get very, very agitated about Zimbabwe, because it’s very, very clear that the offensive against Zimbabwe is an offensive against the rest of the continent . . . Of course that offensive is not in the first instance about Zimbabwe, it’s about the future of our continent. So the Zimbabweans have been in the frontline in terms of defending our right as Africans to determine our future, and they are paying a price for that. I think it is our responsibility as African intellectuals to join them, the Zimbabweans, to say No!” - MrK
THREE months after Zimbabwe’s July 31 2013 general elections, Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party have still not come round to officially accept defeat, even though he has officially formed and announced a shadow cabinet to “shadow” the Zanu-PF cabinet announced by President Robert Mugabe on August 30.
In mathematics, that amounts to an official acceptance of defeat, doesn’t it? But don’t tell Tsvangirai, he and his party top brass might not have done mathematics at school.
In those days we called it arithmetic, and though MDC-T is a party of lawyers, and in fact it is full of some of the sharpest lawyers in Zimbabwe, they don’t always know the right court to go to seek relief for their electoral grievances.
Can you believe it? Some of the sharpest lawyers in Zimbabwe do not know the right court to go for seeking which relief? And you are talking about mathematics?
It will be way above their heads! But never mind, let’s get on with the job in hand.
For those readers in the four corners of the world who were not in Zimbabwe to see how the 2013 elections unfolded, let me say this: I arrived in Zimbabwe in mid-April 2013 and stayed all the way up to the July 31 elections — and I am writing this piece from Harare almost three months after the elections.
So I can say, with some authority, that I saw the three-month pre-election period, I saw Election Day itself, and I saw (and continue to see) the post-election period.
And I shake my bald head with disbelief, sincerely, when Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party behave as if they were the only strangers in Jerusalem, pretending not to have seen the huge writing on the wall, of the defeat that faced them at the elections.
But they saw it, and knew it was coming! That is why they didn’t want the elections on July 31. Remember, no one runs away from an election they know they will win.
When they failed to stop the elections from being held on July 31, a date which had first been ordered by the Constitutional Court and then only confirmed by President Mugabe in obedience to the Court order, they moved to their Plan B, even though minutes of that Plan B had leaked to the press and been published five weeks previously.
And the Plan B was simple:
(a) Discredit the elections even before they are held.
(b) Contest the elections — if we win fine; if we don’t win, insist that the results have been rigged and therefore the elections are not free, fair and credible.
(c) Get Western countries (the MDC-T’s traditional allies) not to lift the economic sanctions that Prof Arthur Mutambara, the ex-leader of the smaller MDC splinter party, said in 2009 were imposed to help him and Tsvangirai to win power.
This is why, despite the best efforts and reports of all the most credible election observer teams which observed and monitored the elections (African, local, and global), who say categorically that the elections were free, fair and credible, Tsvangirai and his MDC-T, backed by their Western allies (Britain, USA, Canada, Australia and the EU) still say the elections were not free, fair and credible.
But there is something here we must all know. On August 23 2013, the ex-South African President Thabo Mbeki put the position taken by the MDC-T’s Western allies in context, profoundly, in a lecture he gave at the University of South Africa (Unisa).
He said: “I get very, very agitated about Zimbabwe, because it’s very, very clear that the offensive against Zimbabwe is an offensive against the rest of the continent . . . Of course that offensive is not in the first instance about Zimbabwe, it’s about the future of our continent. So the Zimbabweans have been in the frontline in terms of defending our right as Africans to determine our future, and they are paying a price for that. I think it is our responsibility as African intellectuals to join them, the Zimbabweans, to say No!”
Are you listening Africa?
Coming from Mbeki, we must take it seriously.
This is why I also get worried when all of a sudden Tsvangirai and MDC-T try to create an artificial political crisis around the election.
Yet until the election date was announced in June, Tsvangirai appeared to have no problem with President Mugabe or anything else.
In fact, from his body language, he now saw Mugabe as a father figure, a superior politician and leader to himself.
This was so evident on May 22 2013 when Mugabe signed Zimbabwe’s new Constitution into law at a ceremony at State House. Tsvangirai was in his element that day, cracking jokes and laughing heartily with the President.
He even went as far as asking Mugabe to give him the pen he used to sign the Constitution to keep as a souvenir.
And the president obliged.
It was that day that Tsvangirai did the unthinkable, the Zanu-PF clenched-fist salute and “Pamberi” slogan, and then said in his speech afterwards: “I am humbled by this occasion. We want to congratulate the President for performing this historic and significant event. When you signed the Lancaster Constitution [in 1979], you said you signed it with a heavy heart. I hope in signing this Constitution, you will go down [in history] a very satisfied man.”
An equally happy Mugabe responded by turning to Tsvangirai and saying in Shona, to loud applause: “We used to say this demon [pointing to Tsvangirai]. And he also used to say this old man has his many issues. We then exorcised the demons from each other.’’
Tsvangirai loved it and laughed heartily. Looking at Tsvangirai’s body language on that day sitting beside Mugabe, clapping from time to time when Mugabe said something that delighted him, one could easily tell the transformation in the man who was once deemed as Mugabe’s mortal enemy.
Yet all hell broke loose two weeks later when Mugabe confirmed the election date as ordered by the Constitutional Court. Tsvangirai and his MDC-T colleagues, knowing they were going to lose, now resorted to subterfuge.
Their fear had been fuelled by several opinion polls and reports published in 2012 and early 2013 by Western-based pollsters, institutions, and newspapers predicting a big victory for Mugabe and Zanu-PF.
True to the opinion polls, when the election campaign started in earnest, Mugabe consistently pulled between 20 000 and 40 000 enthusiastic supporters to his star rallies in the 10 provincial capitals of the country.
I know because I attended some of the rallies, and the energy that oozed from the crowd surprised even Mugabe himself.
It was genuine enthusiasm for the 89-year-old freedom fighter who fought for land reform for his people and was still fighting to indigenise the ownership of Zimbabwe’s manifold resources for the people.
In contrast, apart from the MDC-T’s manifesto-launching rally at Marondera and its very last star rally in Harare, Tsvangirai struggled throughout the campaign to pull any crowds at all.
And he appeared not to have any serious policies to sell, beyond saying “we see jobs” and “we have rich powerful friends who can help us transform the economy”.
When Mugabe and Zanu-PF were talking about empowering Zimbabweans to take control of their country and economy via their indigenisation and economic empowerment policy, Tsvangirai was talking about “rich and powerful friends” from the West who would come and transform the economy.
It was a mismatch really.
I kept e-mailing friends outside Zimbabwe, telling them that if the crowds that Mugabe was pulling to his rallies could be translated into votes, he and Zanu-PF would beat Tsvangirai and MDC-T out of sight.
And that is exactly what happened.
Nobody needed to rig these elections to beat Tsvangirai.
The voters simply did not buy his message, they had now known him in the five years of the inclusive Government as an emperor without clothes, and they simply turned their backs on him.
As Paul Themba Nyathi, an MP and senior official of the smaller MDC party, who lost his seat in the Gwanda North constituency in Matabeleland, put it tellingly: “There is something that made people to fall in love with Zanu-PF again, and it’s not intimidation. I got a feeling [during the campaign] that Gwanda North was unwinnable. People who used to come to our rallies and support us suddenly could not look me in the eye. They started vacillating.
“We had a free and fair contest, everyone was free to canvass, and the vote was peaceful in Gwanda North. Hand on heart, I think Zanu-PF beat us fair and square.” — New African magazine.
Labels: 2013 ELECTIONS (ZW), BAFFOUR ANKOMAH, REVOLUTION, THABO MBEKI
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COMMENT - This post contains both parts I and II of this interview.
Arena:- President: Last bastion of Africanism
Thursday, 30 June 2011 01:00
BAFFOUR Ankomah (BA), editor of New African, a Pan-African magazine published by IC Publications in London is currently in Zimbabwe. HILDEGARDE MANZVANZVIKE (HM) had an interview with the scribe she believes is one of Africa's most respected journalists. This is Part 1 of the interview.
HM: Thank you for taking time to have this interview. I started reading New African in the 80s and that was when a friend, an academic recommended that I should never skip reading Baffour's beefs. With such a long history, I have so much to ask, but I will limit myself.
We were at Gwanzura Stadium on March 28, 2008 when President Mugabe held his last rally before the harmonised elections the following day. You made a remark that I will never forget - when you said that Zimbabweans did not know and understand what they were doing. What was it that you had observed and why were you concerned knowing that people were going to the polls the following day?
BA: Thank you for being a long-time New African reader. Yes, Baffour's Beefs goes back a long way - in fact to July 1988, and it has allowed me room to vent my spleen and write about anything that came to my bald head.
It's been on and off, of late, because sustaining the column and making it relevant over this long period - is it 23 years? - is not easy.
I write out of inspiration, but sometimes I am so dry of inspiration that I feel it is not worth putting anything in that column. But it's been wonderful having it.
Regarding March 28, 2008 and President Mugabe's last election rally: As I stood in Gwanzura Stadium amidst all the cheering and chanting of party slogans, I felt that most Zimbabweans in and outside the stadium had not yet understood the "war" their country was in.
Perhaps, because it was not a hot war with bombs and airplanes flying about, most Zimbabweans had not factored - for lack of a better term - "cold war" that the imperial powers had unleashed on their country.
I had earlier spoken to the former Zimbabwean foreign minister, Stan Mudenge, who had told me what Robin Cook, the now deceased foreign secretary of Britain, had told him years before. "Stan," Cook had told Mudenge, "you guys must get rid of Bob (President Mugabe)."
Stan said he had told Cook back: "For the same reasons that you guys want him out, we want him in."
Cook then went on the offensive: "OK, you guys must not say we didn't warn you: If you don't get rid of Bob, what will hit you will make your people stone you in the streets."
What Cook said was pregnant with meaning. And, as a Ghanaian who had studied in depth how the imperial powers had overthrown our first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and succeeded in getting Ghana back in their sphere of influence, and also having then lived in Britain for 23 years and watched how Britain and its allies were so hung on bringing Zimbabwe down in the vain hope that it would spur the people to take to the streets and overthrow President Mugabe's Government, my soul was grieving that most Zimbabweans in 2008 did not appreciate the enormity of the war confronting their country.
Perhaps, the fact that a multi-million rate of inflation can be wiped out overnight by the inauguration of an inclusive Government and, the adoption of the US dollar as the main medium of exchange in Zimbabwe, should tell the people who were pulling the strings behind their suffering.
HM. So much has happened on Zimbabwe's political landscape, including the formation of the inclusive Government that includes both formations of the MDC. Before, and after that you personally, and New African have never stopped telling the Zimbabwean story? Why the passion for Zimbabwe, and what is that untold Zimbabwean story that you feel the world and Zimbabweans should know?
BA: It goes back to what I have just said. The imperial powers had unleashed a silent and unseen war on Zimbabwe, and they had mobilised all their media in the effort to crush Zimbabwe.
As an African who knew the value of land - both the spiritual and economic aspects - to our people, I watched in utter horror, from my base in London, how the British (and the Western media in general) had drawn a line in the sand and were standing on one, the white side, saying we will support our people - the British and European-descended people of Zimbabwe - willy nilly.
It made it impossible for the Africans at New African to cross the line to the white side. We told ourselves: "We will do likewise and equally support our people - the nationalists of Zimbabwe - who were fighting for a piece of their own country."
The whole thing was about land and who controlled it. The human rights issues and the alleged economic mismanagement, though important, were just a convenient digression.
The imperial powers had calculated that if they could get President Mugabe out of power, the land issue would be dead and buried. And they nearly, very nearly, got him in the March 2008 elections.
For me, the passion for Zimbabwe that you talk about, comes from a philosophical base. If we all don't support Zimbabwe and the country is crushed by the imperial powers that will be the end of the aspirations of the African people who face the same skewed land ownership problems in Southern African and elsewhere.
I may be dead and lying in my grave, but one fine day the people of South Africa and Namibia will rise up and fight for their land, hugely encouraged by the Zimbabwean example.
That was one of the main reasons why the imperial powers wanted a failure in Zimbabwe - the contagion effect. But God bless their poor hearts, it's too late now; the train has already left the station.
And whether they like it or not, it might be two or three or even ten generations down the road, the people of South Africa and Namibia will rise up and sort out their land problem.
And, that is the untold story that we at New African want the world to know about Zimbabwe - the pride and shining example that Zimbabwe gives to African nationalists across the continent.
I have looked throughout history - both the pre and post independence history of Africa - every African leader (and he could have been traditional or political) who was assailed by the imperial powers was defeated in the long run. Except President Mugabe!
He is the only African leader still standing, after 10 years of sustained and intensive assault by the combined might (and I use "combined" advisedly) of the imperial powers. That needs a PhD course to unravel.
HM: Other journalists have decided to tell the Zimbabwean story with an overdose of Western flavour - demonising the Zimbabwe leader and his party, Zanu-PF. When the West slapped sanctions on Zimbabwe, some journalists were directly affected.
Correspondents writing for Zimbabwean publications like The Herald, eg Peter Mavunga and others were threatened with deportation from the UK. However, as a Ghanaian, you live in London, and New African publishes from there. Hasn't this affected you as well? Have there been attempts to stop you from reporting on Zimbabwe?
BA: No, New African has not broken any British law, and as they say they are a democratic country, we take them by their word, and as such, we haven't suffered or been threatened by the British state to close down.
Yes, they don't like our reporting of Zimbabwe, telling the story from the African point of view, but so long as we haven't broken any of their laws, they allow us to operate in peace.
Rather, there are other ways to kill a publication of our nature, without closing it down. Between 2002 and 2006, they nearly got us when the Western multi-national companies that used to advertise with us, pulled (out) their business.
It started with Mercedes Benz in May 2002 when we ran a cover story with the headline: "Land issue: Mugabe is right!" Mercedes Benz headquartered in Germany that had booked six months adverts with New African, pulled it (out), with the excuse that they "don't advertise in a magazine that supports violence".
But were we supporting violence? We were supporting the African people of Zimbabwe who were fighting for their land.
Soon after the Mercedes Benz action, all the other car makers, including even the Japanese ones, who used to advertise with us, stopped.
The other multi-nationals followed suit. And, we were in real trouble. Being a Pan-African magazine based in London, much of our advertising came from, and still comes from companies that have cross-border operations, and they happened to be the multi-nationals, so when they stopped advertising with us, we really stared death in the face.
It was then that I vowed that if I ever got any money and wanted to buy a car, I would never ever buy a Mercedes Benz! In return for their stand against the African people! And it so happened, that in 2005 I came to Zimbabwe and attended the 25th anniversary of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces at the National Sports Stadium in Harare, and every car that was used by the army officers and Government officials that day - starting from "Zim 1" by the President to the lowliest military officer in that stadium was a Mercedes Benz!
The irony was not lost on me. I turned to one of my friends standing to my right and said: "Well, this is a funny world, isn't it? Mercedes Benz is starving New African of adverts because they say we support Zimbabwe, and here we are - Zimbabwe giving its money to Mercedes Benz by buying all this long line of cars from them."
I still find the situation very funny: Our magazine was dying because of our support for Zimbabwe, and yet Zimbabwe was subsidising Mercedes Benz by buying a fleet of their cars! But my vow still stands. Until I die,
I will never ever give my hard-earned money to Mercedes Benz by buying one of their cars.
They may make the best cars in the world, God bless them, but for what they did to us and their non-support of the African people when it mattered most, they have truly lost me as a customer!
HM: A few months ago while talking to journalists about reporting and the national interest, you made reference to Kwame Nkrumah's legacy which Ghanaians and Africans are beginning to realise. Then you said that you don't mind being one person to be associated with President Mugabe 40 years from now when people realise his net worth. What did you mean?
BA: One day, President Mugabe will be rehabilitated as President Kwame Nkrumah has been. Nkrumah became a demon and monster after the 1966 coup that overthrew his government.
Even the books he had written were put in a huge heap and set alight in Accra. A British headmaster led the burning of Nkrumah's books at one of the country's elite secondary schools, Achimota. The West mobilised its media to drag Nkrumah's name in the mud, so much so that only the foolish and the damn crazy associated themselves with Nkrumah in those days.
Today, 45 years after his overthrow, Nkrumah has become a hero again, not only in Ghana but across Africa and the world. And everybody now wants to associate with him. Even his shoe-shine boy wants people to know that he was Nkrumah's shoe-shine boy.
The same will happen to President Mugabe. This man who has been turned into a demon and monster overnight by the West will some day in the future be rehabilitated!
It could be 10 years, 20 years or 30 years from now when the land issue would have proved an absolute winner in Zimbabwe. By then President Mugabe's shoe-shine boy would be proud to be known as the shoe-shine boy of President Mugabe.
HM: Since the Tunisian uprisings, people are claiming that the United States of America, the EU and their allies are trying to recolonise Africa, especially considering what is happening in Libya. To use the term from New African, is Africa being carved up again, and why would such a scenario take place?
BA: It was former President Thabo Mbeki who so poignantly asked the question in a recent article for the US-based Foreign Policy magazine: "Why is the UN entrenching former colonial powers on our continent?"
Mbeki asked the question following the UN and French action in Cote d'Ivoire that overthrew the substantive president, Laurent Gbagbo, and the installation of what many consider as a "Western puppet" in his place.
Is Africa being carved up again? I think we are already carved up - there are some African countries who today are in the French sphere of influence, and others in the British, American or Portuguese spheres of influence.
For Africa to have participated in the disgrace going on in Libya - I mean our UN Security Council temporary members, South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon - to have voted for a "no-fly zone" in Libya and in effect what is now happening there, is a disgrace that will haunt those three countries forever!
**************
This is part 2 of the interview HILDEGARDE MANZVANZVIKE (HM) had with New African editor Baffour Ankomah (BA). The first part appeared on Thursday, June 30 on the column, The Arena with Hildegarde.
HM: You have been a media practitioner for decades. Was journalism your passion?
BA: Yes, I have done nothing else in my life! I started working as a journalist in 1980, the same year that Zimbabwe gained its independence. So, Zimbabwe and I have something in common. No wonder, Zimbabwe stirs all the passions in me.
HM: The media terrain globally has experienced tremendous changes, with the electronic technology especially. What are some of the issues that have impacted the media terrain and the journalistic profession? Are we also getting closer to the paperless society?
BA: A paperless society may be a long way away, especially in Africa where many people don't have their own computers. Even in Europe and America where the electronic revolution and new technology are far advanced, a paperless society is still a long way away.
But you are right, some newspapers in Europe have lost, or are losing, a good part of their circulation due to the explosion of new media, and this is changing the media terrain. But as a print man, I would like to think that printed newspapers and magazines will stay in business - and be profitable - for a long time to come.
HM: How would you describe the media in Africa, and Zimbabwe in particular - the strengths and weaknesses, and what should be done to improve the situation?
BA: Because of a lack of resources - for research and other things, including the education we receive in African journalism schools - the African media is generally weak.
Added to this, is the fact that we try to imitate the Western media without going the whole hog. The Western media support their mother countries when it comes to their national interests. In Africa, we don't even teach national interest, which is totally different from government interest.
As such, the "best journalist" in Africa is the one who fights his or/her own government and tries to bring it down, irrespective of the fact that national interest may be involved.
For example, in Zimbabwe, the land issue is a national interest issue. President Mugabe's Government will go some day, but the land will forever remain a national interest issue to Zimbabwe.
Thus, if a journalist cannot distinguish between this national interest or the government which is fighting to safeguard it, and those who say "everybody under 40 years in Zimbabwe want a job, not land", then that journalist is in trouble.
And, this is what is happening right now in Zimbabwe.
I am sorry to say that the Zimbabwean media scene is so polarised. The so-called "independent" media, and even the state-owned media, cannot distinguish between national interests and government interests.
In fact, most people outside Zimbabwe will be astonished to know that there are private newspapers in Zimbabwe that constantly attack the Government and the president, irrespective of the national interest issues involved, and are free to continue the attack.
HM: Do you think that local journalists have the requisite skills and knowledge to transform the media landscape?
BA: I cannot answer this question properly without knowing the resources at the disposal of local journalists.
You may have all the skills, but without a good resources backing, you may find yourself wanting in many aspects of your job.
HM: How about news coverage?
BA: My last two answers above cover this question as well. The polarisation of the media scene and the lack of resources are two major factors impinging on news coverage in Zimbabwe.
HM: Women in the media is a touchy issue with arguments centering in most cases on why there are no women editors, and the fact that this affects the news reports, with some claiming that women are usually portrayed negatively. As someone who has interacted with the Zimbabwe media for years, how would you respond to these claims?
BA: You mean no woman has held an editor's position in Zimbabwe before? That astounds!
Something must be done then. Or are they saying the women in the media do not have the skills to become editors?
HM: How about Zimbabwe's media laws. Are they in tandem with media laws in other parts of the world?
BA: Every law in Zimbabwe is supposed to be "draconian", but I can tell you that Britain has the most laws impinging on media freedom than any country in the whole wide world!
In 2006, we were able to count 50, repeat 50, different kinds of laws impinging on press freedom in Britain, including one that goes back to 1840 - The Treason Felony Act, which says anybody who advocates in print for the downfall of the King or Queen should be banished for the rest of his natural life.
This law was enacted in 1840 and it still sits in the British statute book! So does Britain have "draconian" media laws?
I leave your readers to figure the answer.
HM: What do you think your contribution to the telling of the African story has been over the years? How about New African and other IC publications? Any word of advice, caution and encouragement to Zimbabwean journalists?
BA: Short of inviting me to blow my own horns, which I would hate to do, I would say I have done my bit over the last 23 years at New African to tell the African story from the African point of view.
My colleagues in the other IC publications (we now have 9 of them) are doing likewise, and I will leave our readers to make the judgment.
I think readers are the best judges when it comes to the effectiveness of journalists and publications.
HM: You have travelled the length and breadth of Africa. Any part of Africa, apart from Ghana, which you have fond memories of?
BA: That is a difficult question, for every African country is unique in its own way, and it is difficult to pick and choose.
However, after covering Zimbabwe intensely for the past 10 years, I now have a special affinity and fondness for this country. Zimbabwe has now become my pet project.
It may interest you to know that I know Zimbabwe better than I know my own country, Ghana, and I consider Zimbabwe as my second home.
HM: What else do you do apart from overseeing the editing of New African - I mean pastimes?
BA: Editing New African is a 24-hour project, it leaves you very little room to do anything else. But I am a keen jogger and gardener, and an avaricious reader of factual books.
HM: Any thoughts of retiring, or are journalists like teachers - once a teacher, always a teacher?
BA: Yes, once a journalist always a journalist. But I hope to hang my gloves, as they say in boxing, next year after the London Olympics. That would give me 24 years at New African. I want to go back home to Ghana and impart some of the knowledge I have acquired in the profession to the younger generation of journalists coming up.
tendai.manzvanzvike@zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: BAFFOUR ANKOMAH, INTERVIEW, JOURNALISM
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COMMENT - An older article from New African Magazine's editor Baffour Ankomah on Zimbabwe. However, it contains a lot of home truths not elaborated on in the mainstream media.
In the name of democracy
Baffour's Beef
“He [Mugabe] was extremely magnanimous in allowing Ian Smith to go on in Zimbabwe – I wouldn’t have, I really wouldn’t – and I think that was partly because he didn’t want to alienate whites. That attitude lasted for quite a long time, 15 years or so” – Lord Carrington, the former British foreign secretary who negotiated Zimbabwe’s independence constitution at Lancaster House, quoted by Heidi Holland in her new book, “Dinner With Mugabe – The untold story of a freedom fighter who became a tyrant”, published in March 2008.
Human beings have short memories! If not, how could the Western world engage in the orgy of Mugabe-bashing that we have seen since the 29 March elections in Zimbabwe? In fact, the bashing has been going on for far longer - since 2000 when the Zimbabwe land issue blew up, after some Africans decided that enough was enough and they wanted their stolen ancestral land returned to them!
Since then, the once “blue-eyed boy” from the rolling hills of Zimbabwe, who once dined and wined with British royalty, who once received countless unsolicited honorary degrees from Western universities, and numerous awards from the likes of the Hunger Project for being “the best African president”, has sadly become a tyrant!
In her book, Heidi Holland hurls silly adjectives at President Mugabe who has now become some kind of political football worthy to be kicked and spat upon by all and sundry in the Western world. Holland’s colourful description of Mugabe include: “Naivety, emotionally immature, paranoid, no warmth, from dirt-poor childhood, loner, emotionally underdeveloped, has no conscience and sense of concern for others, monster, ruthless tyrant, a damaged person underneath, reviled politician, unstable, deluded, personality disorder, and mad”.
Holland, who now lives in South Africa, describes herself as: “A Western-orientated writer with an involvement albeit peripheral in the politics of Rhodesia and Zimbabwe.” She narrates how when she was trying to get an appointment to interview Mugabe for the book, Mugabe’s press secretary George Charamba asked her what she thought of Zimbabwe and she replied “it’s a tragedy”, Holland says: “I expected him to raise his voice again: His snarled comment: ‘So you have written a Eurocentric book’, to which I replied: ‘Of course, I can only be who I am’, seem certain to incur his displeasure.” In 1975, Holland had allowed her friend, Dr Ahrn Palley, a constitutional expert and fellow activist, to hold a secret meeting in her “ranch-style home” in Zimbabwe with Mugabe who was about to flee to Mozambique after his release from 11 years in jail. Holland says she provided “dinner” for Palley and Mugabe, and this qualifies her to regurgitate it in 2008 as a “dinner with a freedom fighter who became a tyrant”.
For those Africans who don’t know the issues at stake in Zimbabwe and who think Gordon Brown and “the international community” are jumping mad because they want Africans to have more democracy (Brown is yet to be elected by his own people anyway), please take a cue from Holland’s “Of course, I can only be who I am.” I was in Zimbabwe before, during, and after the 29 March elections, and I entreat all to read my report overleaf.
In April last year, when Nigeria’s opposition parties rejected the result of the presidential election won by Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, and alleged that the election had been heavily rigged against them, Britain and “the international community” pretended they had gone on holiday. Over 200 Nigerians died in both pre-and post election violence, yet did we see Brown or any of those jumping mad over Zimbabwe today, jumping mad over Nigeria? President Paul Biya of Cameroon, already 26 years in power, has just received parliamentary support to change the constitution again so that when his current term ends in 2011, he can run – again - for another 7 years. And “the international community” is not jumping mad about Biya. Why? Don’t Cameroonians deserve more democracy? That should make us pause and reflect. Before then, to enrich our understanding of what is happening in Zimbabwe, let’s look at some issues raised by Holland in her book. She interviewed Clare Short, the former British secretary for overseas development, whose 5 November 1997 letter repudiating British colonial responsibility for funding land reform in Zimbabwe, sparked the troubles we’ve seen in that beautiful country for the past eight years.
Holland reports that Clare Short tried to shift the blame, first on Peter Hain, the South African-born British minister for Africa at the time. “I think the rhetoric of the UK [on Zimbabwe] was badly handled by Hain, of all people,” Holland quotes Short as having said. “I remember being in my bedroom in Birmingham and hearing him on the radio. I thought, ‘Peter, you sound like a colonial master speaking up for white farmers’. And of course, the media here loved that.”
Short went on: “One of Britain’s errors was the noisy rhetoric. We should have kept it right down, not tried to take a leading position, and we should have made sure that the neighbouring countries were absolutely clear as to how much money was on offer and how strongly the case for redistribution was supported internationally. We should have made that our rhetoric. I absolutely don’t accept that the letter I wrote was seminal, although of course I would take it away if that could stop the destruction and suffering that has gone on in Zimbabwe. But it is definitely Mugabe who is responsible.”
Well, the man Short’s department employed to investigate the Zimbabwean land issue, does not think so. Soni Rajan is an independent London-based consultant on international development who was employed by the ODA to investigate land redistribution in Zimbabwe on a number of occasions, both under the Tories and during Clare Short’s time.
Rajan told Holland “It was absolutely clear from the attitude of her [Clare Short’s] staff towards my recommendations that Labour’s strategy was to accelerate Mugabe’s unpopularity by failing to provide him with funding for land redistribution. They thought if they didn’t give him the money for land reform, his people in the rural areas would start to turn against him. That was their position; they wanted him out and they were going to do whatever they could to hasten his demise.”
What really strikes me in Holland’s book is her description of our late president, Kwame Nkrumah, as “a revered premier”. Since when did Nkrumah become a “revered” figure? Between 1960 and his overthrow in February 1966, and even long after his death in April 1972, Nkrumah was “a Mugabe” in the eyes of Western governments and their writers. All the adjectives and insults that Holland heaps on Mugabe today were hurled at Nkrumah! It is a mark of the versatility of the human mind that today, when history has absolved him, Nkrumah could be fondly looked at as a “revered” figure. He wasn’t “revered” when the West wanted him out!
Zanu PF will look back on the 29 March elections with trepidation at its own suicidal tendencies. In the midst of a deteriorating economy, and shortages of essential goods and services, the March elections were always going to be crucial to the destiny of the country. And yet Zanu, a party of such impeccable liberation credentials, went into the elections riddled with destructive infighting which saw – and this is no laughing matter – in some constituencies, two Zanu PF candidates fighting for the same seat and confusing their voters, and thus allowing the opposition to win the seat (or seats) by default.
Sabotage by the business community which increased prices in the run-up to the elections also did not help. There are still 400 British companies based in Zimbabwe and who dominate the economy. The government can shout as much as it likes, but the companies are private and they make their own decisions – which are not always in favour of the government. By increasing prices in the weeks leading to the elections, they sent a strong message to the electorate. The government’s tendency to allow things to drift, even in the face of clear signs of sabotage, also added to its electoral woes. The government watched on, apparently unconcerned, as commercial banks allowed long queues form at counters and ATMs in the crucial weeks leading to the elections. This was a sure way of creating disaffection among voters who were forced to queue for hours to withdraw their own money. The time they spent in the queue gave them the opportunity to talk and damn the government.
Zanu PF’s message at the rallies was also not very effective. It was long on the liberation war and short on the way out of the economic hardships. While the history was fine, people were yearning to hear about their stomachs and how the current difficulties were being, or going to be, resolved. That message was lacking.
‘Morgan is more’
In contrast, MDC-Tsvangirai ran a slick campaign and promised that their “friends” abroad had $10bn at the ready to heal the economy at a stroke, in the wake of a Tsvangirai victory. In certain instances, though, their adverts on the state-owned ZBC TV and radio, and even in the state-owned print media, were better and sharper than Zanu PF’s. The simple catchphrase: “I am Morgan. You need more. And I need your vote”, caught attention better than Zanu’s many long-winded messages.
Tsvangirai’s campaign was also hugely aided by six anti-Mugabe weekly newspapers (three based in Harare, two from South Africa and one from the UK, and all freely distributed in Zimbabwe’s urban areas). They tore Mugabe and Zanu into shreds week after week. There were also the Voice Of America’s Studio 7 broadcasting propaganda into Zimbabwe from Washington DC, and SW Africa Radio doing the same from the UK. All together, this gave “Morgan Is More” an advantage over Zanu PF in terms of media messages.
All said and done, the much expected presidential run-off is going to be a very interesting election.
Labels: BAFFOUR ANKOMAH, HEIDI HOLLAND, NEOCOLONIALISM, PROPAGANDA, ROBERT MUGABE, ZIMBABWE
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Are the tables turning?
By Baffour Ankomah
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness; and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts." — Mark Twain, the American author and humorist, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. So it has happened — America’s vote pointed to its future instead of its past. Welcome, President Barack Obama. If for nothing else, your election will help educate those who have for a long time believed in black inferiority.
As the great British journalist, writer and broadcaster, Sir Peregrine Worsthone (born December 22, 1923), once confessed in an article for the Daily Mail in April 1998: "Race is still a problem for some of my generation. No longer because we regard blacks as inferior but because, having done so in the past, traces of that prejudice remain in the blood despite being banished from the brain.
"Looking back, I am amazed about the depth of racist indoctrination which I received at school and in the home, not explicitly but implicitly. At the best, blacks were regarded as delinquent children, and at the worst cannibals and savages. For years, those assumptions lingered, seriously affecting my reporting on the decolonising process in Africa." Well, perhaps, I am going ahead of myself. But why not?
If an established journalist and broadcaster like Sir Peregrine, who was once editor of The Sunday Telegraph and contributor to numerous British newspapers and radio, could publicly confess that assumptions about blacks lingered for so long that it "seriously" affected his reporting of the decolonising process in Africa, it is a cause for celebration that today one of these "savages" now sits in the White House, not as a "cannibal" but as the president of America!
In fact, three things happened in 2008 that deserve celebration by our people.
The first was Obama’s election, followed by Lewis Hamilton becoming the first black person to win the Formula One motor racing title (which my countryman, Cameron Duodu, so eloquently elaborated on in the New African, December 2008, p74-76); and last but by no means the least (and I know I will be damned for saying this, but I will still say it because it is the truth!) — is the victory, some might call it Pyrrhic, but victory nonetheless, of the first African leader in both pre- and post-independence history to be still standing after having been assailed for 10 long years by the combined might of the nations of European stock: President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. I will take them one by one.
When Obama said in his victory speech, "This is our time . . . and where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can", I read it as: "Yes, there is a God, and He can’t be mocked."
I don’t know what Obama, a Christian himself, will say about this, but we must admit that his election is a huge jump from the days when people of African descent were considered as mere chattels worthy of being flung into the sea to save the slave master’s insurance costs.
As Lord Mansfield, the UK’s Lord Chief Justice put it in 1783: ". . . Though it shocks one very much, the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard."
Well, we pray that this new "horse" in the White House will open the eyes and the mind of the Mother Country to give more "horses" a chance around the cabinet table in London, in fact, in all walks of British life, and, hopefully, some day at No.10 Downing Street.
I bet it must have put the British to shame, their faces gone red, when Obama’s landslide victory flashed on their TV screens.
"We are the Mother Country," they must have whispered to themselves, "and yet we don’t have one — just one — black person as a full minister sitting at the cabinet table with us. And blacks have been here for over 400 years, since the early 1600s?"
As S.I. Martin reveals in his book, Britain’s Slave Trade, published in 1999: "By the last quarter of the 18th century, London had become the largest black metropolis outside the Americas.
"It was home to an estimated 10 000 to 15 000 people of African origin among its 800 000 residents."
Over 400 years later, not one person of African origin is anywhere near the top echelons of the British government!
Would Obama’s election bring any change? Would we ever see a black British Prime Minister? And why not?
It is a challenge that the Mother Country should relish. Come on, prove us wrong, "Great" Britain!
Elsewhere, and especially for discerning Africans, the other significant success in 2008 was achieved by the man so despised in the West that some call him Hitler (as though Hitler was African): President Mugabe.
Looking back into history, from the first encounter of Europeans with Africans on our shores, we can’t find one example of any African — leader, community or nation — not one, that was assailed by the combined might of the nations of European stock and survived!
The Asantes held the British at bay over five debilitating wars, but finally succumbed in 1900.
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was cut down in five years of assault by the nations of European stock. His economy then overwhelmingly dependent on cocoa exports, collapsed dramatically when an artificial credit crunch was induced in Ghana by the West via the deliberate manipulation of the world cocoa price which fell calamitously from a high of £480 a ton in the early 1960s to an incredible £60 a ton by 1965.
In 1999, 33 years after Nkrumah’s overthrow, the British daily, The Times, admitted in a leader comment that "Nkrumah was brought low by the cocoa price".
Patrice Lumumba fared even worse in Congo. He was gone within seven months of independence, his Belgian killers cutting up his body as a butcher does to beef, and dousing it in a barrel of acid to obliterate the evidence.
Today, the same people come to us as preachers of human rights and democracy. May the Good Lord help them to see beyond their feeding spoons.
Yes, just look around you, in Africa’s pre- and post-independence history, every one of our leaders who was disliked by the nations of European stock was cut down and overthrown.
The French were particularly brutal in this venture, dispatching all they disliked in their so-called "sphere of influence" in Africa.
And behaving to type, for the past 10 years — since 1998 — when Zimbabwe had a dispute over land reform with Britain, and Britain assembled its allies to its side, President Mugabe has been under a continuous assault by the combined might of the nations of European stock.
As they did in Nkrumah’s Ghana, they have deliberately engineered an artificial credit crunch in Zimbabwe, cutting the country off from the international financial system for eight years now, and thereby inducing an economic implosion and an inflation rate that have never been seen since the bad days of Germany between 1914 and 1923.
And yet, at issue in Zimbabwe is a just cause — the land issue. I have gone back to my scratch book to find this entry for Charles Powell, Mrs Thatcher’s long-time foreign policy advisor who, while at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1979, was instrumental in the Zimbabwe independence negotiations at Lancaster House.
Talking about Zimbabwe’s land issue in an interview with David Dimbleby for a BBC-1 documentary broadcast on June 24, 2000, Powell said on camera: "We tackled it really from the point of view of the Rhodesian regime, not the future of Zimbabwe. The real concern at the beginning was to offer guarantees, assurances, protection, to the white farmers."
In 1979, Zimbabwe was like a baby about to be born, and the parents of this baby, according to Powell, did not tackle the core issue in the life of the baby from the point of view of the future of the baby, but from the view of the dying Rhodesian regime.
And yet, because Zimbabwe wants to reverse this horrendous legacy, the man at the helm of the reversal must be cut down via an artificial credit crunch whose aim is regime change.
And so we have seen Iceland, a country of just 301 000 people, being given a US$2,1 billion emergency loan by the International Monetary Fund to rescue it from the jaws of the credit crunch now sweeping over the nations of European stock.
Another US$2,5bn facility from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, and additional funds from Russia, Poland and the Faroe Islands will take Iceland’s package to US$5,2bn.
In all, Iceland intends to borrow US$10bn or US$330 000 for each of its 301 000 population.
In contrast, the IMF has been prevented by the same nations of European stock from giving Zimbabwe, a nation of over 13 million people, any loan at all for the past eight years.
And Zimbabwe is still a member of the IMF!
Instead, during the same period, the IMF has been religiously calling time on its old loans to Zimbabwe without mercy, forcing a nation in a far worse credit-crunch condition than Iceland, to pay up or face the music.
The IMF has also recently announced a bailout package of US$100bn for Hungary, Ukraine, Serbia and Pakistan, but nothing for Zimbabwe.
Over 2 000 years ago, the philosopher Solon of Athens wrote that: "The Law is like a spider’s web. The small are caught and the great tear it up."
All this must have greatly displeased the Creator of Mankind, who upon looking down on what is happening, must have said: "Well, these nations of European stock, I will let them taste a teeny bit of their own medicine. I will see how they would like it, confronted with a credit crunch."
And now they are all scampering like headless chickens!
Gordon Brown whose country, along with the Americans, has been the cheerleaders in the campaign to deprive Zimbabwe of international credit, have suddenly realised how important the flow of credit, or government borrowing, is to nations and their economies.
Just imagine the effect it will have on British life if Brown’s government is prevented from borrowing the £118bn it says it needs to borrow to get Britain out of the credit crunch and recession. Zimbabweans are human beings too!
All told, with a multi-million-digit inflation, an economy on its knees, and an electorate justifiably voting with their stomachs or "stoning the leadership", as the late Robin Cook had threatened would happen if Mugabe was not gotten rid off by Zanu-PF, Mugabe was a ripe candidate for a big fall.
But what do we see? The man is still standing!
Though wounded somewhat politically (he has now to share power with the opposition), he has nonetheless become the very first African leader to be undefeated after 10 years of brutal assault by the nations of European stock.
Is it the beginning of the turning of the tables?
l Baffour Ankomah is the editor of the New African magazine.
Labels: BAFFOUR ANKOMAH, COLONIALISM, GREAT DEPRESSION II, INFLATION, RACISM
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