Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Joseph Chiteza
23 September 2009
opinion
Harare — We have often heard manipulative political statements to the effect that there are no economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe but that the sanctions are targeted on individuals who violated human rights and who must change or face the music.
This silly western propaganda does not help but create a notion that Africans in general and Zimbabweans in particular, are so foolish that they can easily buy whatever ideology the rabid imperialists want the world to believe.
For starters, how do you separate the leadership of this country (the liberators from colonial bondage) President Mugabe and his crew from the rest of the country.
So naïve is the argument about the "targeted sanctions" to the extent that in layman's language, it should answer the question of how one can deflate the tyres of the horse of an articulated vehicle and expect the trailer to proceed with the journey?
Once you impose sanctions on the leadership, you have automatically imposed sanctions on everybody. It is as simple as that.
The influence of the Western elites to this hullabaloo is not in doubt except to those who have already accepted this kind of manipulation.
Sanctions must go, they are there whether we want to hide the fact or not.
Many of us have once or twice shouted, screamed, blew donated whistles, waved red cards or simply ran along to have a feel of what it is to be defiant and militant against the so called land invaders-the "creepy creatures" who nonetheless gave us independence but are in our manufactured view, right candidates for travel restrictions because they took the bull by the horns in solving land imbalances.
Many of us were forced to leave Zimbabwe and cross borders, to fly across oceans to "civilisation", to "escape from these people" who now stand sanctioned and vilified in the western world.
The wise west had one objective, to win hearts and minds of victims of the "land grab" and the so-called rights abuses.
Many of them were young, adventurous, and educated hunters of fame. Many of them were also ordinary people from all walks of life. They had to taste western sweetness so as to eventually sing like Viomark and Paul Madzore.
Fiction and spin are weapons of mass manipulation. Significantly, Africa seems to see the coercive influence of people who speak with negative overtones which have helped to undermine many people's critical thinking abilities, defenses, cognitive processes, values, ideas, attitudes, conduct and ability to reason. Anxiety and stress building tactics are effective because their bigoted spokesman declared that the Zimdollar is dead and will not be revived.
This writer says bigoted because the man is a beneficiary of sums of money that helped shape the language that he speaks and the money was created in western capitals by several bullying organisations.
It was a confirmation that by giving excessive rewards to opposition politicians and punishing their equals with isolation (travel restrictions), bullying can create undue psychological and social influence.
A "do not resuscitate" phenomena now grips our timid Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who cannot see anything good out of a nation with silver, gold, platinum, uranium, copper, gas, diamonds, coal and of course the land that President Mugabe repossessed from his "Nordic friends and allies."
How can we be proud as a people if our money does not bear the Great Zimbabwe Ruins symbol or Epworth Balancing Rocks? Forget the economic undertones of fiscus and et cetra, the point is we must not be loud speakers of the doomsayers who will kill us en masse by restrictive measures and economic sabotage.
The grand scheme was to portray leaders in Zimbabwe, who reversed the land imbalance, as representing bad political headaches.
The cure lay in respecting white elitist property-rights and "investors" who remove goods from shelves when it suited them, signed cheques when the CNN were in tow, and met Nelson Chamisa in secret locations in Zimbabwe to ask "a few questions."
It may not be funny to see our dear Minister baring his head to be interviewed by a banned journalist in secret. It, however rouses the mind why he was attacked at the airport.
We wonder why Zanu-PF ambushed the politician in the airport lobby, of all places. We wonder what part his "friends and allies" were doing while he was being kicked.
Why was no one allowed to apply first aid to a bleeding but brave politician who was filmed visibly sobbing and shaken?
The first thing that medicine tells people to do is to stop bleeding if someone is hurt and to apply a bandage to minimise contamination.
Mr Chamisa whose eloquence was to be used for the MDC is seen in video clips with eyes closed and dried blood on his face none of which was wiped away!
Was this pure coincidence or staged propaganda to create savages of some sort? In the west, taking your hats off as a sign of respect is equal to accepting that "I am your humble servant and will do your bidding."
The clip in which Chamisa does that is on your tube and he is heard complaining that Zanu-PF are out to destroy MDC but, however, tells the world that they are the biggest party of relevance in Zimbabwe.
Everyone now uses the MDC language for personal gain at the expense of Zimbabwe's self-image.
We are doomed as nation thanks to the lies by many in the name political change. Mr Makuvise, who was a fugitive from "brutality", would agree if he were honest with the truth. He is now snoring in the safe comfort of his house in our beautiful Zimbabwe.
It is not about one single white man living side by side with black Zimbabweans in the high-density suburbs of Dzivaresekwa.
Some people had to be used to deceive a lot of people that there was nothing that would destroy their country but the behaviour of some men and women who wanted acting irrationally by challenging white hegemony.
They alone are now the supposed victims of targeted sanctions and bullies who must change, who must not brutalise and maim, who must relent their hold on stolen properties and who must give way to change.
The MDC seem not to care but their relatives buy from the same shops that service the Zanu-PF "junta" as put by one of them.
We learn from childhood that if you don't deceive you don't get what you want. We all think in the manner that re-distribution of land was bad because of the rewards of antagonism which flowed since 1999.
Many have said that it was chaotic and favourable to cronies and big wigs, which confirms how information has been camouflaged, how a twist and turn of facts left us dazzled.
The landowner has always and largely been white and therefore this noise is about white landowners that refuse to give in to the reality and change in political winds.
The business operator and industrialist has always been a foreigner of some sort whose astute mind has plundered economies unhindered by cameras and evidence.
They are smart. Mugabe and Tsvangirai are two sides of one coin who can never be separated by history and can burn together in the hell of misinformation.
They both suffered under Rhodesian apartheid which went into hibernation when Mugabe took political power but remained the most viable manipulative force on the ground judging by Eddie Cross' utterances in many of his publications. Our behaviour has changed since this programme of action was set in motion.
It is folly to think that western propaganda that destroyed the Soviet Union played no party in this grand scheme.
American and the English have their agents on our soils and on our very heads. They direct the movement of our political traffic right across the political divide.
Many of us only see the negatives President Mugabe brought to Zimbabwe, thanks to bread and crumbs that fuel our very political lives -- ask Prime Minister Tsvangirai.
Many of us seek to perpetuate the negative spin and even the young have used their bountless energies to promote this negation because Musekiwa made it into England without sweat while our deputy prime minister even went as far as NASA although he could not bring moon dust to us.
We effectively allowed ourselves to be dominated, restrained, controlled by western sentiments that yesteryear prohibited us from walking in First Street and today seek to restrict us from thinking outside the box.
This writer says this because there was open selection of individuals who were easily coerced and influenced to derail a national cause that could have allowed whites and blacks to live side by side and treat each other equally now and forever.
The many invisible steps, which the western world put in place count to millions of atoms and elements, which ensured that the targeted subjects were forced to adapt in a series of tiny invisible steps.
We heard that a brilliant actor and musician went to South Africa to be treated for hyperkalaemia, which is a condition that disturbs body functions because there is high invisible elements of potassium in the body.
This might have been happening for some time until the sufferer developed signs and symptoms.
The fatality of that condition cannot be left to imagination or interpretation. It is devastating. This can be compared to our situation in Zimbabwe.
We have people in Zimbabwe whose well intentioned purpose was to allow democracy to flourish in Zimbabwe but were feeding on the wrong western prescribed medicine that zombied them.
These people took up opposition politics and became opposition voices or simply put became vehicles of change and this happened in small but calculated steps.
We must applaud them for wanting change and for causing change but at what cost. We must also remove the scales and see the collateral damage that was caused by other invisible forces that we have always refused to acknowledge.
Do we really disbelieve the voices that tell us that economic and not targeted sanctions exist and must go?
Do we believe that the South Africans who have not done anything to dismantle the cornerstones of apartheid are fooling us by telling us that sanctions are not targeted political weapons but economic bombs that are killing the uninitiated?
We must look at our personal levels and see the anger and pain caused by others who aided and abetted our efforts to refuse equality in its true sense.
The MDC must ask their white counterparts why they are so opposed to land redistribution.
Surely change should be for the better and not for worse but this is not the case. Zimbabweans are being made to suffer for what is right. The year 1998 and early 1999 were better than any other day that came after our prime minister accepted farmer cheques in the war zones of Trelawney.
He might be driving in 4x4s and living away from the general decay in schools, hospitals, homes, suburbs, villages and the people. He might go to meet the people who bully his equals with sanctions and travel restrictions but the gutters that drain water in student hostels at Pari and Harare Hostels are in dereliction and point at something or someone who is wrong somewhere.
They are dead and need renovation and renewal and not the stupid noise of they and not us.
The blame is always on land invasions and cronism but surely how can someone who cannot travel to buy sugar in the store be expected to make sweet tea or be blamed for the bad taste?
If our leaders cannot engage the industrialist who manipulated science to make life better, should we blame the leader for that or the person who put the barriers?
If a driver cannot cross a flooded river do we blame the driver or the shimmering water in the swollen river?
Surely one cannot go on stage and pretend that Mugabe is the person who emptied shelves of goods while adorning western blinkers and displaying apologetic shame that deceives us of the real causes.
It is like offering oneself to be arrested on behalf of a fugitive from the law who absconds from justice.
Equality starts with all people living side by side, the rich and the poor, the famous and the infamous, the orators and the mute.
Chamisa and Biti had no cause abandoning Dz and Kuwadzana to live closer to white civilisation in leafy suburbs, that is the starting point.
Roy Bennett should buy his house in Mufakose and send his children to some local school and then preach equality and human rights.
Damn the populists of our time. The truths is that western elites are good learners and therefore know the best way to manipulate gullible people who start with nothing and build capitals out of their illusions and imaginations.
Most of the people who took opposition politics have this imbedded feeling that can be compared to a level of paranoia which promotes horizontal violence and blames it on others. They have the kind of defense mechanism that blames others and creates saints in themselves.
They believe in the evils of others that are in better positions but remain part of their culture.
They were given stereotypes by America and Britain and became eloquent foot soldiers who have no guns.
Western media and a plethora of other shadow Internet sites are being used on us to re-evaluate the most central aspects that could change our lives.
We must see land acquisition as a negative process that causes pain and suffering. Efforts were made to destabilise this process and they remain viable and will be used despite the Inclusive Government.
The callousness remains palpable and we cannot pretend that the cancer of neo-colonialism and empirism fizzles away like fanta in a bottle.
Fertilizer companies closed and Rio Tinto stopped making ploughs. Seed making companies either closed or might have applied heat to processed seeds to influence germination and the black farmer failed to take off the ground.
There are many reasons why black farmers failed to produce better than the previous minority landowners and colonialists.
The urban dweller was undermined by his industrialist paymaster and at times told to stay at home with his full but penury pay. Zimbabweans have been battered into submission and cannot remember their history prior to 1999.
Our basic consciousness, reality awareness, world view, emotional control and defence mechanisms have been severely weakened by coercive mind control tactics that purport to represent poor people but are simply sympathetic to the desire by the west to keep white domination in full control.
The 400 British companies in Zimbabwe could make our economy one of the best in the world if they wanted to participate in local development but they obviously are more determined to lie and deceive Chamisa who thinks by dancing alongside Bennett in Mutare, he gets closer to civilisation. We cannot be a people if we are so aversive to land re-distribution.
We can never be happy people if we subject our equals to intense provocative actions, if we seek to undermine them even when we are very well aware that they control the law enforcing agents who must protect us.
We must respect the judgements of our liberators to wage a Third Chimurenga unless we believe that the First Chimurenga was not necessary, that whites had the god given right to lash out with a whip at us in order to make us work.
We must be confident that equality has to be built by dismantling the barriers that kept us divided and re-moulding them somehow.
Land re-distribution is right and no black man of substance should see it negatively. The west is simply using non-physical punishments such as intense humiliation, cash reward, and loss of privilege, social isolation, social status changes, intense guilt, anxiety, manipulation and other techniques to remain relevant to a world that hates their propaganda.
The effects of sanctions on us could have not succeeded if we had not cooperated in self-destructive tendencies.
We failed to make normal, wise or balanced decisions because forces from western fronts unknowingly manipulated us.
We are in denial that George Soros was protecting a few business friends when he made Madhuku his local loud mouth.
We refuse to accept that the cumulative effect of western interference in the form of shadow groups and open civil society groups were an effective form of influence than the so called torture, pain and oppression that the government is accused of bringing to the people of this country.
We have had had force shoved down our throats to say Mugabe must go.
We have been forced to feel threatened and coerced psychologically by what we perceive to be dangerous, not necessarily by that which is dangerous.
We may even deny that our loved ones are dying even when they have no life left in them. This self-deception only helps to quell our anxieties and reduce our fear but remains pathological and wrong. They do not serve our best interests but the interests of others.
These were created to effect regime change. Those who profited from this scheme know themselves and are not going to suddenly become saints and saviours.
They will continue to violate the most fundamental concepts of basic human rights such as the freedom of choice by condemning those who choose nationalism to servitude by enforcing divide and rule tactics.
This to others can be outrageous, distressing and totally unacceptable and yet others will celebrate, only for a while because the sun is shining on them.
Zimbabweans must wake up to this sort of strategy or suffer more humiliation, and the eventual death and destruction.
This writer wishes fools of the past were present to tell this story.
Unfortunately, many of them never got the chance to tell us how they were misled. Many of them went round and came round.
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Instead of removing sanctions, how about creating a governmental system that does not allow leaders to take whatever they want from the treasury to pay their own debts? A democracy is usually pretty good at that.
ragtimer, finally you are talking common sense approaches that I too support. Yes it is true that there has been some looting of Zimbabwean resources by the Zanu-pf and the spoil system of giving expensive cars to members of parliament. This has to go!
Common sense? I am taking scientific approaches that produce a given result. Whether anyone supports them or not has no bearing on how they work. People did not float around before the Law of Gravity was known, and even if the entire human race demanded the Law of Gravity be eliminated, things would still fall down when they are dropped. The only effect would be that nobody would be able to understand why.
This is what is happening to Zimbabwe... nobody can understand why they must rely on foreign aid when they once grew a surplus of food, nobody can understand why the money is worthless when there are huge numbers like "1,000,000,000,000,000" printed on it. The laws of science cannot be broken, and the mysterious witchcraft that is destroying Zimbabwe is caused not by the influence of the West, but by the fact that the leaders of Zimbabwe are going mad trying to find a way to hold themselves above scientific law, just as their military might has rendered them above the laws of all men, including the ones they themselves force other people to obey.
Ragtimer, do not get too much over your head!!!!
"...nobody can understand why they must rely on foreign aid when they once grew a surplus of food, nobody can understand why the money is worthless"
When you say "nobody", I assume you mean the millions of Africans who support the immediate and unconditional removal of hurtful Western sanctions. I assume you also mean the leaders of SADC countries who have also called for the immediate and unconditional removal of hurtful sanctions. And I assume you also mean, those African Union leaders who have also called for the immediate and unconditional removal of hurtful sanctions.
So you've already exposed your hand when you refer to defenders of Zimbabwe like me and those above as "nobody".
Anyone who claims not to understand why Zimbabwe depends on foreign aid is not economically savvy enough to comment on the Zimbabwe situation. It is ignorant in the extreme to claim that nearly a decade of Western-backed IMF & World Bank financial sanctions were not bound and even designed to cripple Zimbabwe's economy. Not to mention complete misunderstanding/feigned blindness of the importance of lines of credit for any country whose economy has traditionally been dependent of foreign trade.
I'll tell you what - take your non-understanding mind elsewhere. While you're at it ask British and other Western-owned companies to get themselves out of Zimbabwe where their main interest is still in milking the country's wealth and whilst they're at it tell them to get their rotten, stinking, African-despising governments to remove their so-called targeted sanctions that are as refined as a mallet.
Get out of Zimbabwe and get your grubby filthy hands off of her neck and take your foot off of her windpipe. Then, in record time, you'll find Zimbabwe does just fine.
Selector, "Anyone who claims not to understand why Zimbabwe depends on foreign aid is not economically savvy enough to comment on the Zimbabwe situation." That is simply idiotic and rubbish on your part. So, anyone not agreeing to your comments is not savy! That sounds lik dictatorship and a monopoly on ideas!
Your comments sounds like the usual white anglo self importance statements about Africa. You white anglos make way too many unsupported statements about Africa. With one billion people in Africa and 54 different countries, what time do you find to examine all countries?
White anglos in Africa are concentrated in Southern Africa, but even us have had a mouth full of white anglos and are ready to get ride of you...You talk a lot of rubbish and nonsense. Is it no wonder the UK, will soon drop out of the top 20 richest countries in the world!! You just talk ...talk...and more talk...What are you producing????
Phiri
It seems you may have missed my point and have failed to see that I was condemning ragtimer's comments whilst agreeing with yours when you said, "The fact remains that sanctions on Zimbabwean “leaders” affect mostly “non-leaders”, which is everyone one of us Zimbo’s".
My post condemns the British in particular along with the EU & US for deliberately trying to, with some success it must be said, cripple Zimbabwe's economy and, I might add, enforce illegal regime change.
As for those who claim not to understand why Zimbabwe is dependent on foreign aid my point, which I thought was self-explanatory, was that years of Western financial sanctions were bound and even designed to cripple Zimbabwe.
Considering you and I do not appear to be in any disagreement on this, it's a shame you seem to have misinterpreted my comments. As defenders of Zimbabwe you and I are in a substantial minority on a world stage. At the very least, we'd do well to present a united front rather that rip into each other about that which we patently agree.
Guidance and protection.
See all comments (17).
I wish I had written this article, but with a different twist! The fact remains that sanctions on Zimbabwean “leaders” affect mostly “non-leaders”, which is everyone one of us Zimbo’s. The article is factual about the effect on Zimbabweans. It is no surprise then that most Zimbabweans pin their hopes on the GNU for further removal of sanctions. Leaders like Tsvaigirai and others are not on any one’s sanction list, but mostly Zanu-pf leaders (who happens to be the major players in Zimbabwe on running the gov’t) are on the list.
The article does not go into details about why sanctions were imposed in the first place! There are no suggestions on how Zimbabwe would work to have the sanctions removed or the obvious, improving human rights in Zimbabwe to gain favor in removing sanctions.