Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Reason Wafawarova
23 April 2008
opinion
Sydney — To many, the US presidential race, still in its primary phase; represents the compendium of democracy.
The race, impassioned almost to the point of hysteria, however, hardly represents any healthy democratic impulses.
Monopoly capitalism, otherwise known as imperialism, has a methodology that encourages people to vote, but not to participate more meaningfully in the political arena. Essentially the election is just another sophisticated method of marginalising the population.
In the US, each election comes with a huge propaganda campaign meant to condition people to focus on such personalised quadrennial extravaganzas as is seen right now between Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton.
When people are subjected to these massive public relations shows they are all meant to think that what is going on "is politics".
When Zimbabwe's Zanu-PF and the MDC were campaigning across the country just before the March election, the electorate and the global community was conditioned to think what was going on was politics. In fact, this is not politics per se. It is only a very small and almost irrelevant part of politics.
When the people rose in the human rights movement of the sixties, the US ruling elite did not call it politics but rebellion. When the people of Zimbabwe, rose to repossess their stolen lands from those who unjustly occupied it, the ruling elite running the affairs of imperialism in our time did not call it politics but lawlessness and barbarism. When workers rise against the employers to improve their welfare capitalism does not call it politics but lawlessness.
It is when the same workers rise against governments that run against the imperial grain that the capitalist ruling elite will call it politics -- and good politics for that.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions was never reported as playing good politics when they organised strikes to get reasonable wages in 1981 and 1982. They were not even hailed as playing good politics when they protested against the IMF instructed Esap in the nineties.
It is when they stood against a peasant-pleasing Government during the land reclamation phase of 2000 that the ZCTU became internationally recognised political players. Likewise, Cosatu of South Africa is considered playing good politics for its anti-government stance, and not necessarily for championing the cause of the workers they represent.
For accepting Western funding and championing the stage-managed democracy and human rights campaign on behalf of their financiers, both the ZCTU and Cosatu have earned themselves titles of international political players.
Electoral democracy has carefully excluded the population from political activity, and that is not by accident. The imperial authority has invested a lot of money and has put an enormous amount of work into that disenfranchisement campaign.
As already cited, the outbursts of popular participation in democracy that shook the US in the 1960s terrified the sectors of privilege and power, namely the rich owners of multinational companies and their running mates in political offices. These people mounted a fierce counter-campaign, taking various forms, until today.
In the US, Obama, Clinton and McCain can run because they are funded by similar concentrations of private power -- centres of power that are supporting client political parties across the world; parties such as Zimbabwe's opposition MDC.
Candidates sponsored by the imperial sector do understand that the election is supposed to stay away from the issues. For those in the West the election is supposed to stay away from the Iraq and Afghanistan issues, or if it does dwell on such issues it must interrogate why the US-led Western alliance is not winning and not why they are illegally occupying these weaker countries.
For the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai of Zimbabwe, the electorate must stay away from issues like the biting sanctions imposed on the country by the West. The election must stay away from the injustice of the pre-2000 land tenure system where 75 percent of arable land was in the hands of a few privileged white farmers.
If the election does dwell on the sanctions issue then the electorate must be told that sanctions are nothing more than mere travel bans on President Mugabe and his cronies. If the election cannot ignore the land issue then the electorate must be told that the process was chaotic, the resettled farmers lack the competence and skills to farm and that all the land acquired is in the hands of President Mugabe's cronies.
This is what was happening in the pre-election campaign preceding Zimbabwe's now disputed March election.
Political candidates sponsored by the imperialist ruling elite are just creatures of the public relations industry, which keeps people out of the real political process.
The task of such candidates is to focus attention on the candidates' personal qualities and not on policies, that is when they are not focusing on demonising their political competitors -- normally viewed as anti-imperialist, socialist or whatever does not comply with the imperial order.
Such political competitors become by definition, dictators, despots, tyrants or authoritarians.
This way, the voters are often made to end up endorsing an image, not a platform.
The Western media has done all in its power to create the image of democracy in the person of Tsvangirai and his MDC -- that despite the man's despicable record of dictatorial tendencies within his own party.
President Mugabe has, from 1999, created a platform for self-determination, independent nationalism, sovereignty and economic empowerment -- and for his efforts the West has awarded him the dictator's notorious label.
The West has done all in its power to thwart the platform for black empowerment in Zimbabwe while promoting the vainglorious image of democracy through a man who is hardly democratic even to himself.
The vocation of Western propagandists that sell political candidates in the West and their stooges in the developing world is just like that of industry selling commodities.
Business devotes enormous time in coming up with advertisements that do not convey information but rather create illusions and deceit in order to fool consumers into making irrational choices. Much the same method is used to undermine the platform for true democracy by simply keeping the electorate uninformed and mired in delusion and misinformation.
The politics of electoral democracy will make the world believe that the delay in the announcement of election results in Zimbabwe is the beginning and end of democracy. In fact, the delay is the "killing of democracy".
While the conduct of the election and the resultant reported irregularities are all pointing to a nasty and maybe clumsy piece of act by some of those who presided over the election, the development is obviously nothing near the death of democracy.
It is those who wish to remove peasants from the land where they were resettled that are after killing democracy. It is those who wish to restore the privileges and monopoly of the former white farmers that are after killing democracy in Zimbabwe.
It is those who are hell bent on reversing the gains of the hard-won 1980 independence that are after killing democracy in Zimbabwe.
It is those that are creating an image of democracy and undermining the platform of the true empowerment of indigenous Zimbabweans who are hell bent on killing democracy.
Internationally, it is those who are calling for dominating the world by military force that are killing democracy. George W. Bush has even called for the US total control and "ownership of space" in order to expand monitoring and first strike capabilities.
These are the people killing democracy and not some small electoral body struggling with the verification of an election result in some sanction-smitten small African country. The people who are "democratising" Iraq through firepower and marines are the real killers of democracy. The people who will not allow the people of Cuba their right to self-determination in terms of running their economy the Cuban way are the killers of democracy.
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