Harare — IT appears that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his team of novices have perfected the art of whinging and complaining about what they call Zanu-PF's perpetual violation of the Global Political Agreement.

These people preach about the inviolability of the GPA with the power of arch-angels and when they start talking about what they call "outstanding issues" to the GPA one is left with the impression that the main objective of the GPA -- recovering of Zimbabwe's shattered economy -- is done with and all in that regard has been successfully accomplished.

With the bulk of the civil service earning no more than US$140 a month, schools struggling to operate at the very basic level and hospitals barely providing basic primary health care to the public we have a Prime Minister with the temerity to tell the world that the outstanding issues are about staffing the offices of the Attorney-General and Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

We are made to believe that if President Mugabe did the PM's bidding on who becomes the country's Attorney- General and the central bank Governor, as well as swearing in one Roy Bennett as deputy minister, then all is done with the GPA.

And the MDC-T actually expected Sadc to treat this myopic campaign with the seriousness that it takes to make up an agenda for a regional summit.

The sidekicks of the MDC-T in the lunatic fringe of the NGO sector unsuccessfully did the lobbying bid for the PM's party and its financial backers in the West.

Sadc did not buy into this illustrious campaign, and all sane people did not expect the regional body to take the NGO-MDC-T lobby seriously, but this is beside the point. The just-ended Summit in the DRC did not have Zimbabwe on the agenda.

It is unfortunate that Zimbabwe was robbed of the importance of its real outstanding issues because some people decided to take unpalatable jokes as what matters for the country.

The pledges promised by Sadc countries to help Zimbabwe to recover its shattered economy, the lifting of the ruinous economic sanctions from Western countries and the need to revive Zimbabwe's agricultural sector for the benefit of the region are the important issues that could have taken Zimbabwe right on to the agenda of the Summit, but these were deemed peripheral and irrelevant matters by those obsessed with staffing issues in Zimbabwe's public sector.

The Prime Minister has refused to acknowledge the existence of economic sanctions against Zimbabwe and he has publicly said that to him they are mere "restrictive measures". The United States extended the sanctions regime by one year at the beginning of this year and all the US Western allies have declared that they will keep sanctions against Zimbabwe in place until they are satisfied with "political reforms" on the ground.

The traditional trend in international relations has been that the United States interacts with less developed countries from a point of military strength and political weakness. The consequence is always the need to use violence or economic warfare to demolish countries perceived as enemies to US hegemony.

Another consequence is always the constant effort to evade diplomatic settlement. These two consequences being unacceptable, the ideological Western institutions are tasked to portray them as the opposite of what they are.

In particular, the diplomatic record must be recast in such a way as to justify further resort to violence and economic warfare rather than political settlement on the principle that the enemy cannot be trusted, whoever it happens to be. For Zimbabwe the enemy is President Mugabe and Zanu-PF and they always are accorded the technical designation of "human rights violators" so as to alienate them from international public opinion.

The diplomatic record for Zimbabwe has been recast around the so-called GPA "outstanding issues" and the propaganda of "lawlessness on farms", as well as the baseless claims that prosecution of politicians from the MDC-T is synonymous with persecution.

The conclusion that Zanu-PF and President Mugabe "cannot be trusted" is fair enough, as long as we add the missing phrase: "Nor can anyone in the MDC-T or anyone else, particularly the United States and its Western allies."

The classic demonstration of Zanu-PF iniquity is President Mugabe's so-called "unilateral appointment" of the Attorney-General and the Reserve Bank Governor, as well as the "failure to swear in Roy Bennett" as a deputy minister.

The factual record of denouncing the appointments made by President Mugabe; well before the lifespan of the inclusive Government, lacks ideological serviceability, so it has been replaced by mythical reconstruction crafted to satisfy Western doctrinal requirements. Whatever the facts, the records must show that it is Zanu-PF and President Mugabe that cannot be trusted.

The importance of this task of sanitising history as we see happening with claims that President Mugabe has had 29 years "of misrule and economic mismanagement", has been heightened by the understanding that the United States has faced similar "threats" to those from Zimbabwe before, and has basically responded in the same way.

The US massacred millions of people in Central America during the Cold War, and to the elites from the US, political weakness necessitated resort to violence and evasion of diplomacy, along with a concomitant and unceasing commitment to damage control to prevent public awareness of the facts.

The US is maintaining its economic warfare on Zimbabwe and is expanding the sanctions regime because they realise they have a political weakness to outmanoeuvre Zanu-PF and President Mugabe. At the same time, they want to sanitise the economic sanctions as "mere travel bans" or "restrictive measures" so they can control the damage of having the public aware of the reality of the harm the US and its Western allies are doing to the masses of Zimbabwe.

The principle that Zanu-PF cannot be trusted to live up to agreements coexists, though uneasily, with a second doctrine: that the Western-backed MDC-T seeks negotiations and political settlement, while the "tyrants" refuse, and must be driven to the negotiating table by more and more sanctions.

The US is backing MDC-T not for the cause of a political or diplomatic settlement, but rather using sanctions to eliminate this threatening possibility, and for the same reason the MDC-T adherence, and by extension US adherence to the GPA agreement will remain an unlikely prospect.

These remarks are obvious, well supported by the regime change doctrine, by the historical and documentary record of the West-MDC-T relationship.

Just like contra aid in Nicaragua in the mid-eighties was treated as a "noble objective" of "democratising Nicaragua" by the US Congress, and like that aid was also meant to "compel the Sandinistas to agree to negotiations", MDC-T targeted aid is meant to "democratise Zimbabwe" and "to compel the masses of Zimbabwe to support Mr Tsvangirai's party".

Despite the fact that Nicaragua was always committed to the path of diplomacy during the conflict with CIA-backed Contras, the US portrayed the opposite image. Similarly, we are told that the path of a diplomatic settlement as facilitated by Sadc and the AU in Zimbabwe is unworkable, despite Prime Minister Tsvangirai saying the settlement is working whenever it suits him.

So the murderous war sponsored by the CIA in Nicaragua was acceptable because it was meant to force the Sandinistas to the negotiating table, or more precisely, to remove them from power; just like the ruinous economic sanctions against Zimbabwe are meant to "enforce reforms" on the part of Zanu-PF, or more precisely to remove the liberation movement from power.

Had the Japanese fascists attained the US level of hypocrisy, they might have justified Pearl Harbour on the grounds that it was necessary to compel the United States to overcome its vicious internal racism and to begin serious moves towards true democracy; they could have argued that they needed to continue the attack because of the harsh measures that the United States was instituting, demonstrating its totalitarian nature, including martial law and suspension of elementary rights in its Hawaiian colony, and the dispatch of 120 000 Japanese-Americans to concentration camps, and all measures of internal control and repression.

We can all imagine how such an argument would has been received, but surely the standard for little Zimbabwe must be different, and of course the US adheres to no standard of consensus by right and might.

The biggest challenge to the GPA cannot be the two individuals occupying positions of Reserve Bank Governor and Attorney-General. That's plainly is ridiculous. The greatest challenge is what the US and its running mates in the inclusive Government want to achieve through this diplomatic settlement, if we want to be charitable enough to call it that.

Sadc, the AU and perhaps Zanu-PF; all expect the GPA to be the working tool in recovering Zimbabwe's economy and restoring the country's peace to where it was before Britain founded and funded on behalf of Western interests, this political project we called our opposition political party in 1999.

However, the MDC-T spokesperson, Nelson Chamisa, thinks the GPA is meant to drive Zanu-PF into "political oblivion" and it is reasonable to conclude that his opinion is not the isolated opinion of a youngster.

The reported anger from Minister Tendai Biti after the disbursement of US$510 million from the IMF can only be understood in the context of Chamisa's opinion. That kind of financial injection may as well render irrelevant the gospel of attaching the people's suffering and poverty to Zanu-PF and in that context whoever released that money acted against "the democratic forces" of Zimbabwe.

The only reason sanctions remain in place today is that those who imposed them are against the GPA, never mind what the congressional delegation from the United uttered when they were recently in Harare.

Even George Schultz claimed to support the Contadora peace process in Central America when, in fact, Washington was dead committed to destroying the process.

It is not unreasonable to say some in the inclusive Government are against the GPA, on their own behalf or on behalf of those who sponsor their thinking and actions.

Clearly, economic sanctions are still favourable with some in the inclusive Government while to others they simply do not exist because President Mugabe and Zanu-PF say they do.

As it is, we cannot even use the IMF financial injection to import farming machinery from the United States because ZDERA orders that the machinery be confiscated and that the suppliers be jailed.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer