Legitimizing Global Tyranny: Moving Towards World Government
by Jurriaan Maessen
Global Research, May 21, 2012
Gideon Rachman’s 2008 article titled ‘And now for a world government’ and, more recently, Scientific American- editor Gary Stix’s piece Effective World Government Will be Needed to Stave Off Climate Catastrophe, illustrate a widespread and dangerous misconception. It also demonstrates the cunning of one world- propagandists in the crafting of their arguments. In Rachman’s article we are shown typical Palaeolithic artistry: horses, warriors, deer and, portrayed on the very same rocky surface, a globe. It is almost admirable were it not so deviously cunning, to bundle within a single image the primitive with the “modern” and by doing so, considering the latter as the logical conclusion of the former. Rachman explains:
‘For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government.’
This statement may be considered as the basic assumption out of which a lot of these globalists’ musings emanate. Point of departure is always the human journey, that once upon a time began with cave-scribbling tribes scattered aimlessly on the planet surface, in the course of time crystallizing into sophisticated city-states, in turn evolving into even more sophisticated nation-states- and finally, approaching present-day, culminating into one world-state, eclipsing all of the above.
It sounds logical, treacherously logical. As we take a closer look at this line of reasoning however, we immediately encounter difficulties. The logic as it turns out, is not so logical after all- and besides, without long term historical precedent. History is certainly littered with tyrants and their attempts to bring about overarching supranational states. And without exception, their enterprises eventually failed, forcing freedom loving people throughout history to build firewalls against tyranny, at the same time compelling the elite to refocus their eyes on more modest ambitions.
That the implementation of a one world government is not some magical or mysterious suggestion that can only be understood by an arduous reading between the lines, as some naive debunkers have suggested, has been disproven by the fact that the aim of global government has been spelled out for us word for word by overeager transnationalists and the think tanks they tend to assemble in. Like any governmental decree, the implementation of an actual world state to replace the nation-state of old requires a theoretical legitimization. The people designated to clear the theoretical brushes, so to speak, have been picked from the marble halls of academia. In this article I will shed some light on some of these.
Professor Saul Mendlovitz, founder and co-director of an international think tank ominously called the World Order Models Project (WOMP) has since 1968 attempted to formulate an answer to the question what world government should look like. The World Policy Institute gives a description of the project by stating that “this was one of the first truly global think tanks, with partners and contributors in India, China, Africa and Europe.”
Mendlovitz, as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, received his first funding for the project from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation. As Daniel Taylor points out in his excellent 2007 article on the World Order Models Project:
“Saul H. Mendlovitz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, directed the project. Richard A. Falk, also a member of the CFR, contributed academic work. The goals of the WOMP, according to Mendlovitz, were to “…go beyond the nation-state system…to use a much broader range of potential actors, including world institutions, transnational actors, international organization, functional activities, regional arrangements, the nation-state, subnational movements, local communities, and individuals.”
Taylor goes on to write that “The long term goals of WOMP (2011-2013), as Mendlovitz states, is to establish “…a global tax scheme to establish and maintain a basic needs regime for global society… a complete and general disarmament with alternative security system in place…”
Richard Falk, the CFR member mentioned by Daniel Taylor, has openly written about WOMP’s endeavors throughout the last half of the 20th century, claiming world government is not one of them. In his Global Constitutionalism and World Order Falk writes:
“Contrary to many outside critics, the Models Project has never identified itself with the advocacy of world government or world federalism (…). And yet, more than anyone in his generation, Mendlovitz (…) has kept alive the notion that a global constitutional order is theoretically necessary and historically inevitable.”
The notion that Mendlovitz is not an advocate of world government, as Falk suggests, contrasts sharply with statements made by Mendlovitz himself at his acceptance speech at the award ceremony of the 1990 UNESCO ‘Prize for Peace Education.’ Mendlovitz, as co-Director of the World Order Models Project (WOMP) stated (page 36):
“it is my personal belief (not shared by all members of WOMP) that there is an overwhelming surge in the direction of global polity and that a world state is emerging. Indeed, some of the policy elite are beginning to discuss a single world central bank and a single currency.”
All this is not science, of course. Rather, it is an attempt to scientifically legitimize a move toward world government. It is not a new concept, the idea that the large emerges from the small, rising in the steadiest of lines upward in time. This idea accommodates our most intimate fancies about time, evolution and progression. The mind, after all, tends to construct scientific parameters around the immeasurable unpredictability of the universe hoping to encapsulate infinity. It also watches nature and then, one on one, projects it onto political systems. The problem is that once these counterfeit scientists have calculated their way towards world government, and propagate its inevitableness, the sociopaths move in to seize control.
Two years after Mendlovitz’s speech, two term President of the European Commission Jacques Delors gave a speech to the Royal Institute of International Affairs titled ‘The European Community and the New World Order’. Invoking the famous New World Order-speech of George Bush senior, Delors took it a step further, speaking of “world government”, “transferring sovereignty” and a “worldwide single market”.
In his speech, Delors advocates the destruction of sovereignty of all nation-states as a remedy. Furthermore, he states this to be neseccary in order to prevent “human rights violations”:
“International apathy about human rights violations will not be able to hide behind pretext of immutable, inviolable national sovereignty much longer.”
As it turns out, also in this respect Jacques Delors has proven himself a prophet- as the borders are eroding worldwide while the central banks consolidate power. After he elaborates further on the fact that globalisation is often counteracted by grass roots movements, attempting to preserve national sovereignty, Delors throws up his arms in feigned indignation:
“I would add- and I will not go into detail- that economic integration, unless it is backed by a strong political will, will not in itself produce stronger international institutions or help create world government.”
Here we see that all transnational institutions have global government in mind- or better: they have all been erected with the aim of establishing it.
In 2003, University of Chicago’s Alexander Wendt witch-crafted a philosophical monstrosity under the header “Why a World State is Inevitable: teleology and the logic of anarchy”. Carefully avoiding any moral implications clinging to his manuscript, Wendt argues the case for world government as the necessary and inevitable end result of the current merging of nation-states into ever-larger bodies of influence.
“(…) this article argues that a global monopoly on the legitimate use of violence- a world state- is inevitable.”
Wendt invokes many of the major philosophers in order to add credibility and substance to the concept of the inevitability of a world state emerging out of the ruins of national sovereignty. After parading big names to invigorate his “big idea”, the author finally departs from a neo-Darwinian predisposition and the self-organizing principles included in it. In the struggle of nation-states, Wendt concludes, there can be no other outcome than the formation of a world state to settle all scores. He forgets to mention that neo-Darwinism can just as easily be applied to the idea that life organizes itself into more complexity as it evolves. But Wendt pays no heed: he raises his finger in foreboding: the greatest threat on the path to world government, he states, is national sovereignty. Wendt:
“Rather than go down with the ship of national sovereignty, states should try to “get the best deal” they can in the emerging global constitution.”
After identifying the main enemy to world dictatorship, he then proposes to co-opt the natural drive towards auto-determination in order to bring about his desired world state.
“Nationalist struggles for recognition are by no means over, and more new states- “more anarchy”- may yet be created. But while further fragmentation is in one sense a step back, it is also a precondition for moving forward, since it is only when difference is recognized that a larger identity can be stable. (…) Far from suppressing nationalism, a world state will only be possible if it embraces it.”
Everyone dedicated to fight the push for world dictatorship should wash their ears well with this statement. For the New World Order will pull out all the stops, including flirtations with national sovereignty, courting true libertarianism and align itself with any and every grassroots movement springing up out of the soil. The anti-venom is education, education and some more education. Anything too much centralized leaves itself wide open to infiltration.
Self-education that is. As we know, all institutionalized schooling has for many decades now been infiltrated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). At a meeting in 2009, Mr. Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yai, Chair of UNESCO’s executive board, admitted the organization was created to “think global governance”:
“You will recall, dear colleagues, that I said, before Mr Ban Ki Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, that UNESCO’s role is to think global governance. That is why the Organization was founded. We come to the rescue of the system especially when the economic machine runs out of steam, as it clearly has today. It is thus a matter of urgency to set up a long-term working group on global governance. I hope that a State or group of States will seize on this worthy proposal, and that the Organization, as of this session, will give it the attention it warrants.”
At her installment as Secretary-General of UNESCO in October 2010, Irina Bokova stated:
“I am convinced of the need for global governance, founded on universal ethics, in order to take up these common challenges.”
In a 1968 publication by Louis Francois for UNESCO, the author elaborates on the need for a worldwide education-system as opposed to the old, discarded one which still recognized sovereignty of the nation-state (page 18):
“We are witnessing the establishment of a new world order based upon the system of the United Nations”, Francois explains.
He links a growing world population as one of the main obstacles to be overcome in the quest for a global educational system (page 25):
“(…) not only is the population of the world increasing; it is also growing younger (…). So the first obstacle to be overcome by education is that of quantity. The first problem to be solved by a ministry of education is that of accommodating and teaching these rapidly increasing multitudes of young people.”
On page 32 the author arrives at the logical destination of his train of thought:
“Educational expansion is hard put to it to keep up with the huge growth of population.”
In order to effectively guide the population toward slavery, the number of people should be reduced lest its effectiveness wear off.
“Wherever we look“, says Francois on page 36, “education is striving to forestall the demographic explosion.”
All these statements do not fall out of the clear blue sky. UNESCO’s founder, Vice President of the Eugenics Society and foremost transhumanist Julian Huxley explained why global governance is crucial in his UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy:
“Even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
Another “founding father” of the scientific dictatorship, Sir Bertrand Russell once explained:
“Every government that has been in control of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen …”
With a sharp sense of foresight when it comes to media matters, Francois describes the future of education and what its ground principles are on which this future should be founded (page 80):
“Promoting the recognition of the fact that, if the countries of the world are still divided by their interests and their political convictions, they are, day by day, growing more closely interdependent in matters of economics, science, technology and culture. Promoting awareness of the fact that nations must cooperate, that is to say work together for their common good within international organizations.”
“To sum up”, the author concludes on page 98, “UNESCO serves as a catalyst for dynamic ideas. Well placed to hear of what is happening in the world, sensitive to the nation’s needs, UNESCO is aware of the very first stirring of ideas, follows their development and can, at the proper time, co-ordinate, harmonize and finally impose them in their full force.”
It would almost be amusing, this notion that UNESCO is merely picking up on ideas, if it were not so horribly cynical in the end. The calculated and synchronized move toward a brave new world is not a bottom-up thing, somehow evolving naturally from the grass roots; it is a top-down system, posing as grass roots, crafted to brainwash as large an audience as it can through the use of mass media, schooling systems and other available instruments of propaganda.
In 1974, the Director-General of UNESCO, Rene Maheu, stressed the importance of gathering all media, irrespective of its medium, under the great wing of UNESCO and the globalists. At a banquet of the International Coordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere Programme in Williamsburg, USA, Maheu starts out by giving some insight in UNESCO’s long-term vision for mankind (page 2):
“The rationale behind the MAB (Man and the Biosphere) programme is to ensure that the physical, biological and other environmental requirements of man are placed in the hands of each of us (present) and remain under our overall control.”
Explaining to his listening audience that the earth will disintegrate if not for “a collective effort planned, organized and executed by the international community acting in concert”, the Director-General goes on to state:
“I believe that we have now reached the point in world affairs where we must have a systematic reorganization of international relations on all levels.”
He of course favors the UN as the proper body to do the reorganizing, gives it its proper name (page 4):
“I wish to reiterate my firm conviction- together with my hope- that a new world order- political, monetary, economic and social- should now be established.”
Precisely ten years after Louis Francois outlined the plans for a new world order, a meeting of “consultants” was organized at UNESCO Headquarters discussing “the free and balanced flow of information in a new communication order.”
The participants were carefully selected (page 1):
“Fifteen consultants and observers from university and professional circles and representatives of international journalists’ organizations attended this meeting. The main purpose of the meeting was to review briefly the origins of the concept of a free and balanced flow of information, to analyze the current state of discussions and the components of a new world order, together with its legal, technological and socio-economic implications, and to maker suggestions and recommendations for future action by UNESCO and other international organizations.”
One of the aims described in the document, was (page 2): “Preparing and carrying out “pilot programmes” of education incorporating these principles.” Regarding the before mentioned “legal implications”, one of the proposals was to “draw up regulations relating to international mass communications (page 3).”
There is nothing like a strong choke hold to force your subjects into submission. When the status of the journalist in this new world order was discussed, the participants agreed that they would first have to “assess the feasibility of establishing an international code of ethics which would be adopted by journalists possessing a “universal” sense of mission, that is to say transcending their national origin in the defense of peace and fraternity (page 3).” After we strip off the Orwellian euphemisms, this code of ethics clearly equals a strangling oath of obedience.
Among the many disturbing recommendations made by the panel, such as setting up “an international fund for the purpose of renting news transmission channels”, the need was expressed “to set up a “World Press Council” to help ensure the truthfulness and objectivity of information, in the event of it proving impossible to devise and adapt an “international code of ethics (page 6)”’.
A transnational body, in other words, that will decide whether a news item is truthful or not. While the going was good, the participants also called for (page 4) “seminars for professionals in order to make them understand the need to broaden the concerns of those who, in the mass communication process, have the responsibility for selecting information, in other words, those who act as information filters (Gate-Keepers).”
At a 1983 UNESCO conference, there seemed to be an even greater consensus on the strategies that should be implemented in order to reach a new world order- and it appears that those in attendance had a swell time debating semantics (page 16):
“The participants regarded the new world order as a recognized concept, developing but irreversible, which would be established stage by stage.(…) The establishment of a new world communication order appeared to one participant as a participation, a world response to the communications revolution, whereas another emphasized the importance of the word “new” in describing the concept.”
Bordering on the ridiculous, this exchange between globalists is nevertheless significant for it occurred long before papa Bush delivered his famous ‘new world order’ speech before the US congress in 1991. It became part of the nomenclature long before that within the seclusion of key globalist meetings. On page 10 some participants of the conference declared that “the effort to establish a new world information and communication order in stages could not be separated from the effort to promote a new international economic order.”
Or, if I may add, a scientific world order. Just recently I covered statements made by professor of physics at California State University and American representative to the UN, Roger Dittmann, who in 2004 wrote that all policies related to Agenda 21 should be pursued with the aim of worldwide population reduction and population control: “The Big Die Off”, as the professor calls it.
In his presentation Sustainable Development, the New International Scientific Order, and UN Reform Dittmann outright calls for a new “International Scientific Order” to make sure the entire scientific community will be made ready to implement worldwide population reduction objectives. Dittmann:
“Not only do people require organization about their (multiple) identities (including professional, scholarly, and scientific), they need international, even supranational affiliation, facing a common adversary.”
This common adversary-remark neatly ties in with the Club of Rome’s 1993 The First Global Revolution in which the authors state:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
As the theoreticians pancake hypothesis upon hypothesis to prove their position, namely that a world state is inevitable, a closer inspection of their work reveals it is a false understanding, manufactured by a biased predisposition: both time and space have stunningly little regard for our fancies, phasing- as they do- in and out of our grasp as quickly as you can say ‘fallacy’. History, it seems, does not support their arguments.
After the Roman Empire had collapsed, other, smaller kingdoms emerged out of its ruins. This applies to the Greeks, the Babylonians, and almost every other system with imperial designs. The Egyptian kingdom, once a vast and powerful culture, grew to be just a shadow of its former self at the beginning of our calendar. Charlemagne established the great Frankish empire only to unwittingly lay the groundwork for the establishing of sovereign states in the centuries to come, like Germany and France. We have only to study history in order to counter the mythology of a gradual evolution towards a one world system. There is no evidence supporting an historic, chronological pattern of progression from the small to the great. More often than not it is the other way around, for excessive power always provokes resistance.
Global Research Articles by Jurriaan Maessen
Labels: COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, EUGENICS, GLOBALISATION
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Despite dire predictions, state farm jobs aren't disappearing
Former Mexican foreign minister calls for North American union
Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's foreign minister from 2000-2003 and a professor at New York University, expects North American economies tied together in a European Union-style system complete with open borders. With the present porous border, many Mexican take jobs on farmers, predicted to disappear due to protections for the environment, but guess what actually happened? We trim, blend, and append two 2010 articles from (1) BigThink.com, Feb 16, the interview of Castañeda by Stephen C. Webster; and (2) the Los Angeles Times, Feb 22, on farm jobs by Bettina Boxall.
by Stephen C. Webster and by Bettina Boxall
Former Mexican foreign minister calls for North American union
With nearly 11% of Mexicans living in the United States, former minister Jorge Castañeda see Mexico “moving closer and closer to forms of economic integration with the United States and Canada and conceivably Central America and Caribbean in the coming years."
"I don’t see Mexico as a Latin American country. Too much trade, investment, tourism, immigration, remittances, absolutely everything is concentrated exclusively with the United States. So, Mexico has to be part of a North American community, a North American union, which at some point should include some type of monetary union along European lines with a free flow of labor, with energy being on the table, etc."
In May of 2005, the Council on Foreign Relations released a document entitled "Building a North American Community" in which it calls for an EU-like integration of Canada, the United States and Mexico.
While the document does not specifically call for the ceding of sovereignty between the three nations -- as some vocal opponents of the idea have suggested -- it does recommend the formation of a North American Advisory Council and a multinational inter-parliamentary group to facilitate mutual cooperation. Though the group originally set out to achieve this goal by 2010, few Americans are even aware of it.
CFR member Carlos Heredia wrote, "To the extent that citizens of the three partner countries see that North American integration brings concrete benefits, a new constituency will be galvanized to support these efforts in the years to come."
"How far away are we from that?" Castañeda asked, rhetorically. "Quite far, but so did it seem back in Europe in the 1950's and very little time later they came around and understood that that was their future lay. Already Mexican society is voting with its feet. We have a higher share of Mexicans living in the United States than we have ever had in our history. One out of every nine Mexicans, Mexican citizens, people born in Mexico, live in the United States today."
In recent weeks, Castañeda appeared on CNN's Amanpour for a debate about the drug war. He explained that marijuana should be legalized in order to take away the drug cartels' primary revenue source.
"Having recklessly plunged the country into [the drug war], what President Calderón and the United States should do is sit back for a second, think this through, see what they want to achieve, what is achievable, and what should be done that's new," he said.
"There are more and more states in the US that are moving towards decriminalization at least of marijuana. Mexico is still a very important producer of marijuana. Some people say that up to 60% of the profits of Mexico’s cartels come from marijuana. Well, if the United States or California is de facto legalizing it through medical marijuana, what sense does it make for Mexicans to die to stop marijuana from entering the US when once it enters it can be sold legally at over 1,000 dispensaries in Los Angeles, more than the number of public schools there are in Los Angeles?
JJS: One way America and Mexico are already joined is that most of America’s food is harvested by Mexicans, to a large extent in California, which last year had a drought the threatened agriculture.
Despite dire predictions, state farm jobs aren't disappearing
"People in California's breadbasket face complete economic ruin," said California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, unless government weakens endangered species protections to deliver more water to San Joaquin Valley farms.
Richard Howitt, a UC Davis economist, predicted that water cutbacks could cause a loss of as many as 80,000 jobs and up to $2.2 billion in revenue.
A chorus of Central Valley politicians and farm groups bemoaned environmental protections that cut water deliveries and the jobs that depend on them.
But in Fresno County, the state's top-producing agricultural county, the number of farm jobs rose slightly last year. Farm employment has increased statewide since 2006 -- a year of bountiful water supplies in the valley -- and dipped only slightly between 2008 and 2009.
Growers of major crops such as rice and processing tomatoes enjoyed a bumper year in 2009. Grape production was down slightly, but still among the highest on record.
And though photographs of farmers bulldozing their almond groves for lack of water were a media favorite, California had more acres of bearing almond trees last year than ever before.
Most of the acreage left unplanted was on the valley's west side. But other parts of the valley didn't have water problems.
"The west side of the valley was a major wreck," said Al Montna, a Sacramento Valley rice grower and president of the State Board of Food and Agriculture. "We had hearings at the Fresno County Farm Bureau where growers and farmworkers were crying.
JJS: The land cries too. Yet it need not be a win/lose situation. Geonomics -- sharing the worth of Earth while forgoing taxation on our efforts and subsidies to special interests (like big growers) -- is a way to utilize our planet and conserve her, too.
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Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics.
Labels: CANNABIS, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, NEOLIBERALISM
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A Handsome Investment Opportunity: Washington’s Plan for a Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe
By Stephen Gowans
July 21, 2009
Washington’s plan for a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe has been sketched out by Michelle D. Gavin, White House advisor and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council [1], while she was a research fellow at the influential Council on Foreign Relations. In Planning for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe [2], a paper which spells out “a vision for (Zimbabwe’s) future and a plan for how to get there,” Gavin explains how the “existing roster of (Zimbabwe’s) civil society leaders…lends itself to the U.S. desire” to put Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources, including its farmland, up for sale to U.S. investors.
Gavin cautions that a populist and nationalist reaction against the U.S. plan could arise, and recommends three counter measures: a job creation program; co-opting the corps of Zimbabwe’s middle-level military officers with training programs, exchanges and pay increases; and entrepreneurship programs to divert the energies and attention of politicized youth.
What is the Council on Foreign Relations?
The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) is the largest U.S. ruling class policy organization. Founded in 1921 by bankers, lawyers and scholars interested in carving out a larger role for the United States in world affairs, the organization’s membership is today dominated by finance bankers, corporate executives, and lawyers, supplemented by journalists, scholars and government and military officials.
The CFR is funded by corporations, wealthy individuals and sales of its journal, Foreign Affairs. Its most important function is to bring together small discussion groups, of 15 to 25 corporate executives, State Department and Pentagon officials, and academics, to explore specific issues in foreign affairs and identify policy alternatives. Discussion groups often lead to study groups, led by a research fellow, Gavin’s role at the CFR. As sociologist William Domhoff explains,
“The goal of such study groups is a detailed statement of the problem by the scholar leading the discussion. Any book that eventuates from the group is understood to express the views of its academic author, not of the council or the members of the study group, but the books are nonetheless published with the sponsorship of the CFR.” [3]
The books and papers are sent to the State Department, where their recommendations are often adopted, either as a result of the prestige of the CFR or because members of the CFR circulate freely between the organization and the State Department and National Security Council. Gavin herself is emblematic of this career path.
Gavin’s Analysis
It is quite astonishing that the United States can deny that it is imperialist, when scholars, government and military officials and CEOs, meet under the auspices of the CFR to plan the future of other countries. In an affront to democracy and geography, Gavin, a U.S. citizen, articulates the CFR’s “vision for (Zimbabwe’s) future and a plan for how to get there.”
Gavin attributes Zimbabwe’s economic difficulties to “gross mismanagement,” rather than U.S. efforts to undermine Zimbabwe’s economy, a commonly practiced deception by U.S. officials. While “President Mugabe and his cronies frequently claim that Western sanctions are sabotaging the Zimbabwean economy,” she writes, this cannot be true because “there are no trade sanctions on Zimbabwe.”
True, there are no formal trade sanctions, but there are plenty of financial sanctions, a point of which Gavin must surely be aware. She was a long-serving foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, a co-sponsor of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery of Act of 2001 (ZDERA), along with Hillary Clinton (now U.S. Secretary of State), Joseph Biden (now U.S. Vice-President) and the arch racist Jesse Helms. Gavin, herself, describes ZDERA as “a law prohibiting U.S. support for both debt relief and any new assistance for Zimbabwe from the international financial institutions.” This means that Zimbabwe has been barred from accessing development assistance and balance of payment support since 2001, a virtual economic death sentence for a Third World country.
Gavin’s deception extends to claiming that while “it is true that major donors oppose extending any additional support to Zimbabwe at international financial institutions, Zimbabwe’s own deep arrears and the ZANU-PF government’s unwillingness to pursue sustainable economic policies prevent this support from being extended anyway.”
If this is true, why did the U.S. government go to the trouble of creating ZDERA? And why is Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Finance, now under the control of the U.S.-backed Movement for Democratic Change, complaining that ZDERA is undermining its efforts to bring about an economic recovery? In May, Finance Minister Tendai Biti pointed out that,
“The World Bank has right now billions and billions of dollars that we have access to but we can’t access those dollars unless we have dealt with and normalized our relations with the IMF. We cannot normalize our relations with the IMF because of the voting power, it’s a blocking voting power of America and people who represent America on that board cannot vote differently because of ZDERA.” [4]
As bad as ZDERA is, it’s not the only financial sanctions regime the United States has used to sabotage Zimbabwe’s economy. Addressing the Senate Foreign Relations African Affairs Subcommittee, Jendaya Frazer, who was George W. Bush’s top diplomat in Africa, noted that the United States had imposed financial restrictions on 135 individuals and 30 businesses. U.S. citizens and corporations who violate the sanctions face penalties ranging from $250,000 to $500,000. “We are looking to expand the category of Zimbabweans who are covered. We are also looking at sanctions on government entities as well, not just individuals.” She added that the U.S. Treasury Department was looking into ways to target sectors of Zimbabwe’s critical mining industry. [5]
On July 25, 2008 Bush announced that sanctions on Zimbabwe would be stepped up. He outlawed U.S. financial transactions with a number of key Zimbabwe companies and froze their U.S. assets. The enterprises included: the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (which controls all mineral exports); the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company; Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe; Osleg, or Operation Sovereign Legitimacy, the commercial arm of Zimbabwe’s army; Industrial Development Corporation; the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe; ZB Financial Holdings; and the Agriculture Development Bank of Zimbabwe. [6]
Two other aspects of Gavin’s comments on Zimbabwe’s economy must be addressed.
First, her reference to senior Zimbabwe officials as “cronies” of Robert Mugabe: This is a transparent effort to discredit Zimbabwe’s government through name-calling, a hoary practice that, during the Cold War, led U.S. officials and mass media to adopt differential terminology depending on whether they were referring to capitalist or socialist countries.
The Soviet Union had a “regime”, “secret police”, “satellites” and an “empire” while the United States had a “government,” “security organizations,” “allies,” and “strategic interests.”
The propaganda function of the term “cronies” becomes evident when used against the United States. Were we to talk of Obama and his cronies (his top advisors and cabinet officials) we would be dismissed as crude propagandists. “Cronies” not only serves a clear propaganda function, it also reflects Washington’s frustration with Mugabe’s having built up a loyal circle of advisors and political lieutenants, whose members the United States has been unable to co-opt.
Second, Gavin’s attributing “Zimbabwe’s own deep arrears” to international lending institutions to the former “ZANU-PF government’s unwillingness to pursue sustainable economic policies,” requires some explanation of what sustainable economic policies are.
Sustainable economic policies, from the point of view of the World Bank, IMF and the North Atlantic financial elite that dominates these organizations, are policies which benefit the lenders.
Credit does not come without strings attached, and the strings are often deeply inimical to local populations. The economic policies the Mugabe government pursued, under the guidance of the World Bank and IMF, hardly sustained the people of Zimbabwe.
“In January 1991, Zimbabwe adopted its Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP), designed primarily by the World Bank. The program called for the usual prescription of actions advocated by Western financial institutions, including privatization, deregulation, a reduction of government expenditures on social needs, and deficit cutting. User fees were instituted for health and education, and food subsidies were eliminated. Measures protecting local industry from foreign competition were also withdrawn.
“The impact was immediate. While pleasing for Western investors, the result was a disaster for the people of Zimbabwe. According to one study, the poorest households in Harare saw their income drop over 12 percent in the year from 1991 to 1992 alone, while real wages in the country plunged by a third over the life of the program. Falling income levels forced people to spend a greater percentage of their income on food, and second-hand clothes were imported to compensate for the inability of most of Zimbabwe’s citizens to purchase new clothing. A 1994 survey in Harare found that 90 percent of those interviewed felt that ESAP had adversely affected their lives. The rise in food prices was seen as a major problem by 64 percent of respondents, while many indicated that they were forced to reduce their food intake. ESAP resulted in mass layoffs and crippled the job market so that many were unable to find any employment at all.
In the communal areas, the rise in fertilizer prices meant that subsistence farmers were no longer able to fertilize their land, resulting in lower yields. ESAP also mandated the elimination of price controls, allowing those shop owners in communal area who were free of competition to mark prices up dramatically…By 1995, over one third of Zimbabwe’s citizens could not afford a basic food basket, shelter and clothing. From 1991 to 1995, Zimbabwe experienced a sharp deindustrialization, as manufacturing output fell 40 percent.
“The government of Zimbabwe felt it could no longer endure this debacle, and by the end of the 1990’s, started moving away from the neoliberal program. Finally, in October 2001, the abandonment of ESAP was officially announced. ‘Enough is enough,’ declared President Mugabe.” [7]
Zimbabwe: A handsome investment opportunity
Gavin estimates that the overall costs of undoing the damage of U.S. economic sabotage “fall between $3 billion and $4.5 billion over five years,” representing a substantial investment for the U.S. government. But “such a substantial investment makes sense,” Gavin concludes, because “private investors have expressed strong enthusiasm for Zimbabwe’s long-term potential.”
However, taking advantage of Zimbabwe’s long-term investment potential may not be easy, she cautions, for the suspicions of populist and nationalist Zimbabweans must be overcome. “The United States and others should be aware of nationalist and populist sensitivities,” she warns.
The creation of “a reform agenda” and “a more favorable investment climate” could lead Zimbabweans to believe that U.S. involvement ”is leading to a selling off of valuable natural resources in deals that are lucrative for foreign investors but do little for the Zimbabwean people.”
Zimbabweans’ experiences with World Bank and IMF economic structural adjustment programs of the 1990s, and the experiences of Serbia – in which the United States created a reform agenda and more favorable investment climate after the socialist-inclined Slobodan Milosevic was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup – serve as warnings. In Serbia, U.S. involvement led to a selling off of publicly and socially-owned assets in deals that were lucrative for foreign investors but did little for the Serb people.
“In Serbia dollars have accomplished what bombs could not. After U.S.-led international sanctions were lifted with Milosevic’s ouster in 2000, the United States emerged as the largest single source of foreign direct investment. According to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, U.S. companies have made $1 billion worth of ‘committed investments’ represented in no small part by the $580 million privatization of Nis Tobacco Factory (Phillip Morris) and a $250 million buyout of the national steel producer by U.S. Steel. Coca-Cola bought a Serbian bottled water producer in 2005 for $21 million. The list goes on.” [8]
Meanwhile, in the former Serb province of Kosovo, the
“coal mines and electrical facilities, the postal service, the Pristina airport, the railways, landfills, and waste management systems have all been privatized. As is the case across the Balkans, ‘publicly-owned enterprises’ are auctioned for a fraction of their value on the private market with little or no compensation for taxpayers.” [9]
Prior to the U.S. corporate takeover, the Yugoslav economy consisted largely of state- and socially-owned enterprises, leaving little room for U.S. profit-making opportunities, not the kind of place U.S. banks, corporations and investors are keen on. That the toppling of Milosevic had everything to do with opening space for U.S. investors and corporations was evident in chapter four of the U.S.-authored Rambouillet ultimatum, an ultimatum Milosevic rejected, triggering weeks of NATO bombing. The first article called for a free-market economy and the second for privatization of all government-owned assets. NATO bombs seemed to have had an unerring ability to hit Yugoslavia’s socially-owned factories and to miss foreign-owned ones. This was an economic take-over project.
To lull Zimbabweans into accepting the selling off of their valuable natural resources, Gavin recommends that U.S. investors establish “a corporate code of conduct that takes into account these sensitivities” and that they “be sensitive to Zimbabwe’s urgent need for job creation when considering how they might protect and nurture long-term investments.”
This says that U.S. investors should tread carefully when gobbling up Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources, and that creating jobs may be a way to stifle nationalist and populist sentiment.
The outcome of “the more open investment climate,” of course, would be to deliver ownership of Zimbabwe’s natural resources and economy to the corporations, investment banks and wealthy investors represented among CFR members, while Zimbabweans are relegated to the subordinate role of employees. U.S. investors would create jobs to reduce nationalist opposition, but this would be a sop. The Zanu-PF program of making Zimbabweans masters in their own house would be reversed, and Zimbabweans would return to the role of creating wealth for foreign owners, mired in poverty and condemned to perpetual underdevelopment.
Restoring private property rights
Zimbabwe’s long-term potential for U.S. investors can’t be realized unless investments are protected from expropriation. “The core conditions for a resumption of assistance” therefore “must include…repeal of the legislation passed in recent years” that “gutted private property rights,” Gavin writes.
Restoring private property rights is also critical to Washington’s plan for Zimbabwe’s farmland. The essence of the plan is to clear “away obstacles to private investment,” by according ownership rights to families on redistributed land. They would be able to sell their land, transferring ownership to the highest bidder. At the same time, expropriated white farmers would be fully compensated, thereby acquiring the means and the legal structure to reclaim their farms.
Foreign investors could also buy large tracts of lands, helping to “facilitate the consolidation of small parcels into more economically viable entities.” This is a vision of a commercial agricultural sector based on ownership of vast tracts of land by foreign corporations and white farmers restored to their former dominant positions, in which black Zimbabweans are relegated to the role of farm workers, or, once again, to the least favorable land.
Gavin worries about politicized youth, especially those who participated in “farm invasions and youth militia activities,” presumably because they represent an activist nationalist sector likely to oppose the selling off of Zimbabwean’s natural resources, including its farmland.
In order to divert their energies, Gavin recommends “programming for youth through credit schemes, technology-focused skill building, programs to foster entrepreneurship and empowerment initiatives designed to give young people an ongoing, institutionalized voice in government.”
This borrows from the successful strategy of ruling class organizations in the United States to move the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements off the streets and to bog them down in legalistic and bureaucratic activities. This was done, in part, by funding voter registration drives and lowering the voting age to 18 from 21 – anything to remove militants from the streets and to bring them into formal institutional structures the ruling class dominates.
“By 1963, the civil rights movement was becoming more militant, and the ‘black power’ slogan, first used by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, made elites nervous. The Ford and Rockefeller foundations responded by creating the National Urban Coalition to transform ‘black power’…into ‘black capitalism’.” [10] This was done by providing funding for the same kinds of activities Gavin wants to promote in a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe: micro-credit loans, entrepreneurship programs, and engagement of youth in electoral and parliamentary processes.
The culmination of this program in the United States was the election of Barack Obama, who, in a recent speech to mark the centennial of the NAACP, described his election, blacks in political office, and black CEOs running Fortune 500 corporations, as the final goal of the civil rights movement. Because a militant black power movement was hijacked and turned into a movement for black capitalism, the United States remains profoundly unequal in employment, income, opportunity and education, with blacks on the bottom rung of the ladder.
By Obama’s own admission, “African Americans are out of work more than just about anybody else…are more likely to suffer from a host of diseases but less likely to own health insurance than just about anybody else…” and “an African American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a prison.” [11]
To illustrate how effectively the co-opting of the black power movement has emasculated efforts to end oppression of blacks in the United States, the best Obama can offer to redress the appalling level for racial inequality is to urge black U.S. citizens to do what he urged Africans in his Ghana speech to do: stop blaming others and try harder.
“We’ve got to say to our children, yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crimes and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood you will face challenges that somebody in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. But that’s not a reason to get bad grades—that’s not a reason to cut class—that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands—you cannot forget that. That’s what we have to teach all of our children. No excuses. No excuses. You get that education, all those hardships will just make you stronger, better able to compete. Yes we can.” [12]
There’s nothing wrong with a determined approach to overcoming obstacles, but there’s an ambiguity in Obama’s message that borders on racism. It’s clear that he acknowledges that blacks face obstacles, and it’s also clear that he does not foresee the obstacles being removed, otherwise why would he urge blacks to overcome them, rather than act collectively to eliminate them? The ambiguity arises because Obama urges blacks not to attribute their condition to the obstacles they face. Why not? If the obstacles are real, why not acknowledge them, and organize politically to remove them? The alternative interpretation is that Obama means the obstacles are not formidable, and that blacks are using them as an excuse to cover up for personal failings. If this is indeed what Obama means, his analysis is deeply racist. By contrast, Zanu-PF has worked to remove obstacles to black Zimbabweans left in place by the country’s colonial heritage and hasn’t adopted the Obama approach of leaving racist structures in place while bidding the victims to pick themselves up by the bootstraps.
To consolidate its control over Zimbabwe, Washington plans to energetically engage “middle-level officers” of Zimbabwe’s military, purged of “clearly political actors,” in “a dialogue about security sector reform.” Middle-level officers would be targeted for pay increases, to be underwritten by “donors other than the United States,” who Gavin believes would “be best equipped to assist with this.” It is standard operating procedure in the imperialist playbook to engage the officer corps of countries to be subordinated to outside control. As Szymanski and Goertzel explain, imperialist military power can be
“exerted through the support of local military institutions and the resultant gratitude of the officer corps. The local military establishment frequently are willing to support the imperialists against their own people. Metropolitan countries train the officers of Third World armies, either in the metropolitan countries (the top officers), or in Third World countries (low-level officers.) They provide military advisers at all levels of the chain of command, and they provide the modern weapons of war—airplanes, tanks, artillery, etc.—on which Third World armies are totally dependent.” [13]
This is the CFR’s vision for Zimbabwe. True to imperialist practice, Gavin recommends that the United States secure the loyalty of Zimbabwe’s middle-level officers with training programs, exchanges and technical assistance. She expresses frustration that Zimbabwe’s senior officer corps, many of whose members are ideologically committed to national independence, remain loyal to Mugabe and his nationalist goals. Middle-level officers would be promised promotions to replace loyal senior officers, who would be purged.
Conclusion
While working as a research fellow at the CFR, Michelle Gavin set forth the vision of the United States’ top executives, investment bankers and corporate lawyers for Zimbabwe’s future and a plan for how to get there. Not surprisingly, the future the CFR envisions is one of a more open investment climate in which U.S. corporations, banks and investors can buy Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources and purchase vast tracts of farmland to establish profitable commercial agribusinesses. Having moved to the U.S. National Security Council as Senior Director for African Affairs, Gavin is ideally situated to see the CFR plan and vision she articulated converted into action.
To guard against the United States realizing its plan to plunder their wealth, Zimbabweans should recognize that:
The United States is working through civil society actors to achieve its goal of reversing the gains of land reform and selling off Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources.
Washington has followed a two-step approach to Zimbabwe’s economy.
First, sabotage it, and then attribute the country’s economic difficulties to “mismanagement.” In this way, Washington creates the conditions to bleed support for Zanu-PF, if it can control Zimbabweans’ understanding of why their economy is in crisis. Washington created the economic hardships Zimbabweans face, through the Economic Structural Adjustment Programs of the 1990s and financial sanctions since 2001. It’s important for Washington to avoid blame for Zimbabwe’s crippled economy, and to attribute blame wholly to Zanu-PF. Accordingly, Washington will continue to minimize, if not hide altogether, the role of its financial sanctions in undermining Zimbabwe’s economy, citing mismanagement as the cause. The North Atlantic mass media, which tends to uncritically reflect the pronouncements of U.S. officials on foreign affairs, will echo Washington’s fabrications.
If Washington manages to sideline Zanu-PF, and the U.S.-backed MDC secures a decisive grip on power, Washington will pressure the MDC to create a reform agenda that emphasizes the creation of an investment climate favorable to the sale of Zimbabwe’s natural resources, and its state-owned assets, including arable farmland, to foreign investors.
Programs to promote entrepreneurship, training and skills development will be used to depoliticize Zimbabwe’s youth so that their patrimony can be stolen from under their feet. Job creation will be used as a sop to mollify nationalist sentiment. In this, Zimbabweans should recognize that the economic sabotage policies of the United States and its North Atlantic partners are implicated in the problem of mass unemployment, and that foreign investors, while promoting job creation as a necessary political maneuver to guard against a populist reaction to the sell-off of Zimbabwe’s assets, will allow unemployment to rise again once Zimbabwe has been parceled out to foreign investors.
The United States will seek to safeguard the investment of its banks, corporations and wealthy individuals, by co-opting the middle-level officer corps, and using Zimbabwe’s military as an extension of U.S. military power, to suppress populist revolts.
1. http://myafrica.allafrica.com/view/people/main/id/07UF2C6ymSBPq5-O.html. Accessed July 20, 2009. “Opinion: Obama’s Africa Policy,” Maternal Health, Medical News Today, July 13, 2009, describes Gavin as a White House advisor. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/157217.php
2. Michelle D. Gavin, Planning for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe, CSR No. 31, October, 2007. Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Zimbabwe_CSR31.pdf
3. G. William Domhoff, “Who Rules America? Power and Politics, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Fourth Edition, 2002.
4. The Herald (Zimbabwe) May 5, 2009.
5. TalkZimbabwe.com, July 16, 2008.
6. The New York Times, July 26, 2008; The Washington Post, July 26, 2008; The Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe), July 27, 2008.
7. Gregory Elich, Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit, Llumina Press, 2006.
8. Elise Hugus, “Eight Years After NATO’s ‘Humanitarian War’: Serbia’s new ‘third way’”, Z Magazine, April 2007, Volume 20, Number 4.
9. Ibid.
10. Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, State University of New York Press, 2003.
11. Remarks by the President to the NAACP Centennial Convention, New York, July 17, 2009.
12. Ibid.
13. Albert J. Szymanski and Ted George Goertzel, Sociology: Class, Consciousness, and Contradictions, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1979.
Labels: AIR ZIMBABWE, BARACK OBAMA, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, HILLARY CLINTON, MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, NEOCOLONIALISM, RICHARD HOLBROOKE, STEPHEN GOWANS, ZDERA
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US Senate dashes Tsvangirai's hopes
Philip Murombedzi
Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:58:00 +0000
PRIME MINISTER Morgan Tsvangirai will face a hard task of trying to convince President Barack Obama to remove sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe as it emerged Wednesday that the United States (US) Senate has passed a resolution to maintain the restrictive measures in place.
Tsvangirai plans to make his case Friday in a meeting with President Obama as part of a three-week state visit of Western countries. He also will meet Thursday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Last week President Mugabe met with US Congressman Donald Payne ahead of PM Tsvangirai's state visit to discuss easing of sanctions and open up diplomatic lines between the two countries.
Payne, together with select MDC-T leaders, took part in the drafting of the notorious sanctions document named the Zimbabwe Democracy Recovery Act (ZIDERA) in 2001-2002.
During his meeting with President Mugabe, Payne said the decision to remove sanctions lay mainly with the US Congress. He added that Congress would take the initiative on ZIDERA and would send it to the executive for consideration in the shortest possible time.
It has now emerged that the US Senate - one of the two Houses of the bicameral United States Congress - on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution saying ZIDERA will remain in place "until there is sufficient proof that Harare was moving towards the restoration of the rule of law and upholding of human rights".
The Senate said suspension of non-humanitarian government-to-government assistance will also remain in place until “there is demonstrable progress toward restoring the rule of law, civilian control over security forces, respect for human rights in Zimbabwe”.
The resolutions were co-sponsored by Senator Peter Feingold, Senators Johnny Isakson, John Kerry, James Inhofe, Sheldon Whitehouse, Bill Nelson, Roland W. Burris, Richard J. Durbin, Benjamin L. Cardin, Mel Martinez and Sam Brownback.
The Senate resolution follows an announcement on Monday by a top Whitehouse diplomat that Washington announced that it would not immediately increase aid to Harare’s inclusive Government formed last February.
US diplomat for Africa, Johnnie Carson, said this week that "Washington was troubled by the absence of reform in Zimbabwe and had no plans for now to offer major aid or lift sanctions" against Zimbabwe.
The statements by the US administration and Senate are a blow on PM Tsvangirai’s efforts to reopen dialogue with the US and call for the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe.
His meeting with President Obama is unlikely to yield much without the support of the US Congress.
President Mugabe "not best of angels"
Meanwhile, PM Tsvangirai has told journalists in Washington that President Robert Mugabe is not the "best of angels", but the inclusive Government, and its political underpinnings, remain strong.
"I am very realistic about what we need to do, and what our shortcomings are," he told journalists adding that he was aware that the southern African nation "needs to earn the confidence of the international community."
The PM also said the inclusive Government was still in no position to pay off approximately US$133 million in arrears to the International Monetary Fund which looks likely to keep the door shut on most new grants to Zimbabwe for the foreseeable future.
Tsvangirai dismissed questions about senior military and security leaders saying he was certain they would back the inclusive Government.
"I don't have to have personal love of generals or personal relationships. If anyone wants to have an attitude towards me, he is also undermining the inclusive Government," he said.
Regarding his MDC-T party's call for the reversal of appointments of the central bank governor and the attorney general, the PM was more conciliatory than on previous occasions. He said the credibility of the institution was more important than that of the individual.
""It is a very important issue, that is why it is a deadlocked issue," PM Tsvangirai said. "The credibility of the reserve bank -- not the merits of the individual -- is very very important."
Speech at the Council on Foreign Relations
In a separate speech delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations, PM Tsvangirai Zimbabwe was implementing "democratic reform". He said the AG and the RBZ governor should resign but not President Mugabe.
He said that "Zimbabwe is changing. Already Zimbabwe is a different place, a significantly better place. As a nation we were near death, and we have come back to life."
"I think it will be important for the United States to give transitional support to the government," Tsvangirai said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. "If this government were to collapse because it had failed to raise sufficient resources ... what is there to replace it, and what would be the future of Zimbabwe?"
The PM, in a scripted speech ended, "Thank you, America for having kept hope alive. Join me America, as our peoples move forward together."
Reuters, AFP and other sources were used in compiling this report.
Labels: COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, SANCTIONS, ZDERA
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Tsvangirai's address to the US Council on Foreign Relations
Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:55:00 +0000
BELOW is the full text of an address by the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, The Right Honourable Morgan Tsvangirai, to the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, Wednesday June 10th 2009.
Full text
I am here today to say thank you to America from the people of Zimbabwe. And I want to thank the Council on Foreign Relations for the great opportunities that you provide speakers like me to address these kind of forums.
Thank you for your humanitarian aid, which as we speak, has saved the lives of a million Zimbabweans. Thank you for your support for our struggle for democracy, a struggle that continues today.
From your very founding, you stand upon the idea that all men—all men everywhere—are created equal. That revolutionary ideal echoed through your history—through Abraham Lincoln who looked for the day that the weight would be lifted off the shoulders of all men, and all would have a chance.
And President Barack Obama just last week, telling an audience in Cairo that the hope of America is the hope of all humanity.
So as you provide emergency food and medical assistance to the people of Zimbabwe, you also shine the light of hope to us and indeed to all the dark places of the globe.
I first came to America 20 years ago as a young union leader. I had the good fortunate to be selected for an international visitors program.
I spent 4 weeks, here, visiting all across the country from New York to Wyoming to California --I saw your nation from sea to shining sea.
This was an eye opening experience, as you can imagine, for a young man who had gone down into the mines in 1974. But one thing struck me that may surprise you.
I was struck by how much the people of America reminded me of the people of Zimbabwe.
Mining, even in the best of circumstances is hard and dangerous work; and most who do it learn to be good judges of the character of those around us. And what I saw in the American people is also what I saw, and see, in the people of Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans, like Americans, are a hard working people; people who persevere in hard times and people with—I’m told the American word is “gumption.”
The independent Zimbabwe I knew as a union leader was the best country in Africa. We were a nation of different tribes, but without tribal differences. We were a place where people of different backgrounds came together working our farms and mines and making them the envy of our continent. Our school system became the best in Africa—we had good health care, and our life expectancy rivaled that of nations in the global North.
In the last ten years, all that has been destroyed. Ten years ago we were the 2nd largest economy in our region, behind only South Africa. Now we are the smallest, behind the tiny nations of Swaziland and Lesotho.
The often unhappy 20th century saw too many countries devastated by war, and too many governments which intentionally persecuted portions of their own people. Despite the dawn of this new hopeful century, Zimbabwe stands as a remarkable testimony of the power of a corrupt government, in pursuit of selfish policies, to impoverish an entire nation.
The problem was evident to most Zimbabweans by the mid-1990s.
In 1999, from my post as Secretary General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, I called a National Working People’s Convention, which led to the organization of the Movement for Democratic Change as a direct response to the people’s dissatisfaction with the current political dispensation.
In the year the 2000, President Mugabe, in an attempt to circumvent a new people’s constitution, orchestrated one of his own which would have increased his own powers, while diminishing those of the people.
To prevent this travesty, I joined other church, civil society, human rights and labor leaders in the The National Constitutional Assembly, to campaign against the imposition of this shamconstitution. In a national referendum it was rejected by the majority of Zimbabweans, the last election in Zimbabwe that outside observers have labeled free and fair. Sadly, rejection of the government at the polls did not lead to the democratic change that the people wanted.
In the series of elections since then, marred by violence and voting irregularities, the results announced by the ruling party in each case left the democratic opposition just short of the votes needed to take power.
At the end of 2008, African leaders, many genuinely concerned about democracy and others who could no longer ignore the Zimbabweans dying on their streets, brought about a negotiated settlement which resulted in my becoming Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.
The leaders of our party, the Movement for Democratic Change, agreed to that negotiated settlement very reluctantly. Many of us had been tortured by the regime with which we were to form this new government; all of us had seen friends and supporters killed.
In the weeks leading up to this negotiated settlement, President Mugabe began a campaign to force out the humanitarian agencies which were the only source of sustenance and medical support for the majority of Zimbabweans. To walk away from the negotiating table would have been to watch as many as four million people starve and generations lose their right to education and employment opportunities.
Thus, we decided that we had to take the struggle for democracy into a new arena--- but this does not compromise our ideal to fight for democracy. Like Nelson Mandela, I agreed to work with a non-democratic regime as a transition to full democracy.
June 11, marks four months since my swearing in as prime minister.
Zimbabwe is changing. Already Zimbabwe is a different place, a significantly better place. As a society, we were near death, and we have come back to life.
In our first hundred days we provided first aid in a desperate situation; and we did four big things—real change that brought real results.
First, we stopped the printing presses. The Zimbabwe dollar, the most inflated currency in the history of the world, is gone. The US dollar and South African rand are effectively our national currencies. As a result, our record-setting inflation is gone.
Second, we stopped forcing the print media to be licensed. If I may paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, a people with newspapers and no government are safer than people who have a government but no newspapers.
Third, we have launched constitutional reform, which will lead to a people driven constitution and free elections. This was the promise of the National Constitutional Assembly; and it will come to pass.
Fourth, we took the riot police off the streets. Our capital city, Harare is no longer a city under armed occupation.
With those four steps, we have kept hope alive.
Our schools, which had almost all closed, are now mostly open.
The year’s backlog on marking exam papers has been cleared, so children can receive their grades.
Some of our hospitals have some medication to treat some of the sick. Garbage is being removed from the streets in our cities and towns. Food aid is mostly available for the five million people who need it. The basic necessities of ordinary life are present on our store shelves. All these are the results of our specific policies but also of the people’s trust. The people have gone back to work because they trust that the struggle for democracy in the new arena will be successful and that henceforth their government will be on their side.
As the people gain hope and change gains momentum, bigger challenges lie ahead.
On June 1, the Movement for Democratic Change at its tenth annual convention, formally appealed to SADC—the South African Development Community—to resolve the government deadlock over Reserve Bank Governor and the Attorney General.
Under the Global Political Agreement, both of those positions were to be filled by consensus of all parties; and both incumbents were unilaterally re-appointed by President Mugabe.
It is time that the Africa leaders, those who said the Global Political Agreement was an African solution to an Africa problem, it is time for them to step up.
The people of southern Africa, led by their labor unions, churches and liberation heroes have proved to be friends of the people of Zimbabwe in their time of need; their government leaders need to follow suit.
I welcome the involvement in Africa of President Barack Obama. And his emphasis on rebuilding what you call America’s “soft power.”
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is the architect of the worst inflation in the history of the world. Our reserve bank has managed the economic policies that pushed at least three million refugees (out of a population of twelve million) to swim crocodile infested rivers to escape our once happy land.
We need to rectify the un-procedural appointment of the Reserve Bank Governor and the Attorney General. The office of the Attorney General has been so compromised that instead of dispensing justice to all fairly, we have witnessed selective application of the law.
The Africa leaders who are guardians of the inclusive government need to step forward now and tell President Robert Mugabe that Gideon Gono and Johannes Tomana must go.
The global political agreement, of which those leaders are the guarantors, must be enforced.
As I am here in Washington DC, I also need to address the application of the GPA on the question of the restrictive measures against officials of the prior government.
The GPA calls for all parties in Zimbabwe to work for an end to these restrictions. I am committed to the implementation of the GPA and the restoration of the rule of law. Those in our government who are personally listed, should join me in that stand. When they do, world support for the removal of all restrictions will be unstoppable.
Now, let’s look ahead. Zimbabwe over the last decade, can serve for many years as a bad example. A government that refuses to be accountable to the people can implement policies that bankrupt a nation. [? - MrK]
I look forward to Zimbabwe serving as a good example.
Under our Short Term Emergency Recovery Program, farmers are no longer required to sell their crops to the government’s grain marketing control board. The government’s prior monopoly policies meant low prices for the farmer, high costs to the consumer, and overseas bank accounts for a few. No wonder we were producing only 20% of the food we needed.
Our STERP also allows our mines to sell minerals at world prices which should reverse the collapse of our mining sector. The plans of the previous government to nationalize the mines have been shelved.
We will also change the policies that brought our manufacturing sector to operate at only 10% of capacity.
In addition, we will again welcome the world at our airports. Tourism is 10% of our economy yet we scared away our tourists while preventing airlines from bringing them to our beautiful country.
Finally, one of our greatest needs is the return of talent. Sadly, many of those who first fled from the previous government were those whose language proficiency and educational attainment made them most marketable in other countries—the brightest graduates of what was once the best school system in Africa. We need those people to come back home. They have an indispensable place in the new Zimbabwe.
Let me reiterate, once again, that democratization is the first plank of our economic recovery program. We will build Zimbabwe around democracy, free elections, freedom of speech and assembly, respect for property rights, and the rule of law. The growth of prosperity that follows these policies will be slower than the collapse brought about by their absence. But just as inevitable.
Each time I am amazed and challenged by America. Amazed by what free people, blessed by rich resources, can do. And challenged by the knowledge that Zimbabwe, also blessed by rich resources and burning with the desire to be free, can do what you have done here.
As America has been a beacon of hope for the world, Zimbabwe can be the engine of progress and democracy that transforms the African continent.
Thank you, America for having kept hope alive. Join me, America, as our peoples move forward together.
Thank you.
Labels: COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI
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