Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Tafataona Mahoso
22 October 2009
opinion
Harare — LAST week's revelations by the US State Department during hearings before the US Senate Sub-Committee on African Affairs were quite shocking.
The US is involved in an on-going pre-emptive rigging of the next Zimbabwe elections in favour of MDC-T and in favour of the US and its white allies.
In the hearings, US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Johnnie Carson and Usaid Assistant Administrator for Africa, Earl Gast, told US lawmakers that, in the next Zimbabwe elections which President Robert Mugabe is yet to schedule, the US government is already running on the MDC-T side because it has no confidence that without massive help from the Anglo-Saxon axis led by the US, MDC-T could win free-and-fair elections against the African liberation movement in Zanu-PF.
Accordingly, the two officials were asking for more funds to add to the more than US$200 million pledged to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai when he visited the US in June 2009.
For their part, the two officials pledged that the US State Department and Usaid would ensure that the only media houses, the only journalists, the only NGOs, the only political parties and politicians to benefit from the funds are those definitely aligned to MDC-T and opposed to the national liberation movement in Zanu-PF.
The two US officials also revealed that their institutions have ensured that other Anglo-Saxon countries UK, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Australia, Germany, France, Switzerland and Netherlands will also run on the side of MDC-T by directing all their governance monies and technical assistance to only those entities and politicians aligned to MDC-T.
But, how did the US government expect Zimbabwean voters to succumb to such pre-emptive rigging?
The two presentations made it clear that the strategy of the US government was to provide through MDC-T-aligned NGOs and ministries those goods and services, which the people cannot get because of sanctions.
The trick which is supposed to produce victory for the US-MDC-T ticket is based on the theory of what Naomi Klein calls "the love shack."
The trick is a form of criminal humanitarianism, whereby those who engage in humanitarian relief are motivated to do so by the fact that they are the very same forces who caused the disaster, which now makes relief necessary.
In "The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism", Naomi Klein gives the following account of the US torture centre at Guantanamo Bay, supposedly set up to isolate and try terror suspects:
At the US-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, there is a room known as "the love shack."
Detainees are taken there after their captors have decided they are not enemy combatants and will soon be released. Inside the love shack, prisoners are allowed to watch Hollywood movies and are plied with American junk food.
The author then cites the experience of one British Moslem detainee, Asif Iqbal, who was taken to that room and who says: "We would get to watch DVDs, eat McDonald's hamburgers, eat Pizza Hut (pizza) and basically chill out. We were not shackled in this area.
"We had no idea why they were being like that to us. The rest of the week we were back in the cage as usual ... On one occasion Lesley (an FBI official) brought Pringles (chips), ice cream, and chocolates; this was final Sunday before we came back to England."
In the case of the illegal regime change camp against Zimbabwe in defence of Anglo-Saxon capital and in defence of white Rhodesia, imperialism has become even more sophisticated than the US torturers at Guantanamo Bay.
It has lined up an incredible procession of African loud months and black stooges in order to hide the herd instinct of the white nations opposed to Zimbabwe's land reform and cited in the latest hearings before the US Senate Sub-committee on African Affairs.
The African loud months fronted by the Anglo-Saxon axis have included Archbishop Peter Sentamu, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former Archbishop Pius Ncube, Graca Machel, Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Colin Powell, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and an even longer procession of purchased and retained "journalists".
By marshalling and orchestrating these loudmouths and busy bodies to keep the MDC-T company, imperialism hopes to turn the reaction into an organic social movement.
But this has been tried on a global scale without success. That is why we cite Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism".
Imperialism's "Democracy Project" is discredited in Zimbabwe. Behind that Stan Rylander smile is a painful recognition that the people of Zimbabwe would not need so much humanitarian relief if the Anglo-Saxon powers had not responded with illegal sanctions to the people's genuine demand for their land.
We cite Naomi Klein here because she understands how imperialism has always used charity, humanitarian relief and humanitarian intervention as instruments of mass torture, aggression and destabilisation in the pursuit of regime change.
The people now know that the humanitarian relief chamber full of apparent goodies and luxuries is part of the same structure housing the torture chamber and it is the torture which makes relief and charity necessary. But the oppressor or torturer must appear to be a separate person from the relief provider, even though he is one and the same.
So, it should not be surprising that the very same countries which tried to strangle our land reform and agriculture are now offering some assistance to chosen groups, through NGOs.
By using MDC-aligned NGOs to fill the yawning gap in services and inputs created by illegal sanctions; by using lies to blame the effects of illegal sanctions on Zanu-PF; and by trying to hide the roles of both the MDC formations and their donors in the destruction of people's livelihoods in Zimbabwe, the US government believes it can win the next elections for MDC-T but MDC-T alone stands no chance. That is why there is so much fussing everywhere.
Why the US wants early elections and why the campaign has to start now
The first reason why the US wants to push MDC-T out of the inclusive Government and to demand elections now is that the majority of the people are fast getting over the seven-year shock treatment to which they have been subjected through economic terrorism.
For Zimbabwe, our equivalent for September 11, 2001, our equivalent for the Iraq invasion and war on terror, our equivalent for the global toxic debt is the economic crisis precipitated by illegal sanctions which on November 2, 2005 Christopher Dell said had pushed the economy back 56 years to 1953.
That is really sensational stuff but it has been suppressed because of what it implies for the national debate on sanctions.
The country has therefore undergone mass shock and there are things which those who have suffered mass shock should and should not do.
First, they must know that they have been exposed to pure and raw global events moving at lightning speed.
In other words, they have already been opened up, through someone else's strategy and through the free flow of their wealth to the outside world.
If our readers wonder what that means they should contemplate the lightning events which finally led to the temporary abandonment of the Zimbabwe dollar.
These events have not been explained in the media except from the point of view of those who imposed the illegal sanctions on the people.
According to Klein: "A state of shock, by definition, is a moment when there is a gap between fast-moving events and the information that exists to explain them." That gap is fast disappearing.
In other words there is a new narrative among the majority of Zimbabweans which is fast replacing the MDC-T narrative made in Washington, London and Brussels.
The elections have to be held before the MDC-T's foreign scripted narrative is replaced in people's minds, as the people begin to ask deep questions about the actual work and activities of the MDC formations since September 1999.
The second reason is directly related to the first. On September 22 2009, former MDC MP Gabriel Chaibva appeared with former MDC-T's Senator Obert Gutu on ZTV's Melting Pot programme. The discussion confirmed several facts which were still not clear in the minds of supporters of the MDC formations in particular, though they may have been clear in the minds of Zanu-PF supporters.
The discussion left no doubt in the minds of viewers that the US and its allies were relating to the Zimbabwe Government in corrupt, intrusive, unfair and discriminatory ways. One gross example of these ways and means being Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's illicit government structure which was being paid for by the US and its allies through the World Bank
The second fact was that the US sanctions law against Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA), did not become a sanctions law by default.
From the very day that leaders of the old MDC met in Nyanga to draft the bill in 2000, the full intention was to invite financial, trade and travel sanctions meant to strangle the economy, according to Chaibva.
The third fact was that, of all the leaders of the old MDC at the Nyanga meeting, which drafted the sanctions bill, only former MP for Highfield, Munyaradzi Gwisai objected and made it clear that it was treason for a political leader to beg enemies of his own people to impose illegal and racist sanctions on the same people.
The fourth critical fact the programme revealed was Munyaradzi Gwisai's reading of the decision by top leaders of the old MDC to invite illegal and racist sanctions to be imposed on the people.
Chaibva said Gwisai declared that the MDC (still united at the time) had been taken over by Anglo-Saxon capital and that from 2000 onwards, the party would be run from London, Washington DC and Brussels, but not from Harvest House, Harare. What made these revelations significant was the fact that Chaibva, the one making most of the revelations, was at the Nyanga meeting in 2000.
Obert Gutu, who on behalf of MDC-T denied what Chaibva said, was not at the Nyanga meeting and may not even have been a member of the party at the time.
The third reason for panic in Washington and within MDC-T ranks is also related to the first two reasons.
On 24 September, Christiane Amanpour of CNN interviewed President Robert Mugabe, expecting to destroy the President's credibility and standing once and for all. That was just two days after the Chaibva versus Gutu appearance on ZTV.
As even supporters of MDC-T have admitted, it was MDC-T and its Rhodesian lobby throughout the Anglo-Saxon world who suffered the most damage during the CNN attempt to destroy President Mugabe.
Amanpour exposed her Rhodesian links going back to the war of liberation against the white racist Smith regime in which the US was also on the side of the Rhodesian settlers. That history is documented by Professor Gerald Horne in the book, "From the Barrel of a Gun: the United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980".
The fourth reason arises also from the very first one. Once the population of Zimbabwe gets over its initial state of shock, it begins to make two demands on the so-called "people-driven constitution writing process."
It begins to say a people-driven constitution should not be funded by donors through NGOs; it begins to say such an exercise must be funded by Cabinet through Treasury. This was not MDC-T's idea. This was not the view of MDC-T's sponsors and handlers.
It follows that if the donors, the NGOs and MDC-T cannot manipulate the constitution writing as originally planned, the constitution draft that is likely to be accepted by the same recovering population will not be a constitution for regime change. It is likely to be a constitution for consolidating national sovereignty, national independence, economic indigenisation, majority empowerment, indigenous land reclamation and land tenure reform.
If that is looking like a foregone conclusion, then MDC-T, the Rhodesians and the regime change lobby may as well abandon their former position of "no election before adoption of a new constitution."
That position was abandoned last week. It was abandoned at least temporarily because the likely constitution draft is unlikely to serve the original purpose of regime change.
But also abandoned without shame is the myth that MDC-T joined the inclusive Government in order to help solve an acute economic emergency caused by illegal sanctions.
The current boycott of all government executive business means that in MDC-T thinking the economic emergency can wait. The people's needs can wait.
The fifth reason for the rush and panic is that -- once the full implications of the illegal sanctions and involvement of the MDC formations in asking for them become clear to the majority -- that majority also becomes aware of the incompetence of the leaders of these formations.
The issue of incompetence first arises over the question which Gwisai raised at the Nyanga meeting which Chaibva referred to during the ZTV programme: How could these leaders ask foreign powers to strangle their national economy without realising that the majority of the people would also be strangled in the process?
The issue of incompetence also arises once the people realise that the so-called "rich donors" who were going to help the MDC formations to rebuild the strangled economy have not only reneged on that promise.
They have an economic emergency of their own. So the 10 billion pounds sterling which was supposed to give Morgan Tsvangirai the "keys" to Zimbabwe's economic recovery and instant prosperity is not going to come.
But why and how did these leaders ever come to believe that such massive aid would come, anyway? Which history were these leaders reading to be able to believe such delusional things?
If the people take the view that the MDC formations never believed that massive aid would come to rebuild the strangled economy, and then the leaders have to appear as liars who told the people that massive aid would more than compensate for the damage caused by sanctions.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Herald. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
