Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Reason Wafawarova
12 November 2009
opinion
POLITICAL concepts like democracy, human rights, terrorism or even rule of law always carry with them two approaches when one analyses their general use.
In academia, the intellectual community often adopts a literal approach, taking the topics quite seriously and trying to establish the best definition of each term from research and serious consultation.
Politics, systems and institutions of power adopt a propagandistic approach, construing the concepts to be more of images at the service of political expediency; making the image of one political group pretty at the expense of another.
In each case, the procedure is usually very clear.
The literal approach begins by determining what constitutes democracy, human rights, terrorism or rule of law.
Then the approach seeks instances of each of the respective phenomenon, concentrating on concrete examples, and trying to determine causes and remedies.
This is the approach that an ordinary street political activist or a common cyber political blogger is not only unimpressed with, but also largely incapable of implementing or even comprehending.
Even many established politicians fall in this category and this way the propagandistic approach becomes more of a political doctrine.
Most of the loudmouths in the NGO community screaming democracy or human rights belong to a cabal that is not knowledgeable in the least about the literal approach to these concepts they love to preach so much about.
This is quite apparent in Zimbabwe where all and sundry can claim to be political commentators and experts on such matters as international law or human rights law.
The most abused term is obviously democracy, daily misused and abused by a misguided movement that even has the face and temerity to call itself a movement for democratic change.
To many in this movement, "democracy" is about screaming against Zanu-PF and these are fully convinced that a change of government that brings MDC-T to power would be the arrival of democracy.
Such unfounded and baseless assumptions are understandable when one looks at the image of democracy that is preached by the Western media in particular and that is advocated by Western politicians, who have appointed themselves the guarantors of democracies for lesser peoples in developing countries.
The intellectual community seeks the reality of the concept of democracy while political activists and media propagandists seek an image of democracy that suits not the needs of the people, but the cause of a preferred political agenda.
The propagandist approach dictates a course that expounds a thesis that democracy is a responsibility of selected politicians whose rhetorical licence to this entitlement is compliance to the global political order sought by the supremacist Western Alliance.
Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan enjoys this entitlement and so does Morgan Tsvangirai and Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq.
These are democrats by image and not by definition or reality.
They can afford to cause all sorts of problems in their respective countries as we have seen with the gross electoral fraud in Afghanistan and Tsvangirai's infantile flip-flops.
In fact, the political groups led by these characters are called "democratic forces" by title in the West while their political competitors at home are either dictatorships or terrorists.
Terrorism is, in fact, a responsibility of some officially designated enemy and so are the ideas of dictatorships and lawlessness.
When the United States massacres civilians in Iraq and in Afghanistan such an atrocity is just "retaliation" or "self-defence".
It is only when resistance groups fighting the US-led Western Alliance occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan carry out an attack that such an action becomes an act of terrorism.
Tsvangirai can clandestinely change the constitution of his party to extend his stay as the leader, and such fraud has been made to carry the image of democracy.
A democratic endorsement of President Mugabe as a candidate of his Zanu-PF party is what carries the reality of a dictatorship and even those who endorsed him have been vilified and called unprintable names.
There are no surprises that the propagandistic approach is adopted by governments in general and by political parties in opposition as well.
The worrying trend is that the same is largely true of the media and sometimes even scholarship in the Western industrial democracies, and these issues have been documented in extensive detail by authors like Noam Chomsky.
Commenting on aggression, Michael Stohl said: "We must recognise that by convention -- and it must be emphasised only by convention -- great power use and the threat of the use of force is normally described as coercive diplomacy and not as a form of terrorism, though it commonly involves the threat and often the use of violence for what would be described as terrorist purposes were it not great powers who were pursuing the very same tactic."
Of course, one qualification must be added: the term "great powers" is restricted to favoured states in the Western convention.
China and Russia are often granted no such rhetorical licence, and are often charged and convicted for alleged human rights abuses on the flimsiest of evidence.
That has become the mirror image of the Chinese legacy and Russia has not been spared the ridicule on Georgia.
The mirror image of President Mugabe is that of a ruthless dictator despite the evidence of him leading an inclusive Government running the affairs of Zimbabwe.
That of Tsvangirai is of a hard-fighting democrat despite his running of a parallel government meant to undermine the very Government in which his is Prime Minister.
The image of a persecuted political party is what has been created for MDC-T and Zanu-PF has been permanently tainted with the image of a ruthless group of thugs with a heartless resolve to make the rest of Zimbabwe suffer.
This image is what the West prefers for Zanu-PF and any denials are treated with ruthless aggression.
Now we hear that MDC-T's version of outstanding issues is unquestionably justifiable and that these issues by conventional logic must make Zanu-PF look the ugly monster that we are told the party is.
MDC-T gleefully lobbies for the firm retention of sanctions on Zimbabwe in the vainglorious belief that says such a crisis is "political leverage" over Zanu-PF and we hear democrats lead the party. Democrats do not scheme on how to starve a nation.
Any appearance of an MDC-T linked person in a court of law in Zimbabwe has now become a form of "human rights abuse" and we are supposed to accept this Western conventional logic as factual lest we are labelled Zanu-PF apologists or Nazis.
We are told the public media in Zimbabwe spreads hate speech against MDC-T and its leader yet we have online papers like zimsituation.com printing unprintable insults about members of Zimbabwe's First Family and the country's Head of State and Government, and Commander in Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.
This writer was alerted of part of such despicable publications by a reader two days ago, and the reader said editors who allowed articles and comments as offensive as was forwarded from zimsituation "must face the wrath of the law, however harsh that law may be".
The irony of it is that these same publications are run by people who cry loudest against mere criticism of MDC-T, and they have even lobbied for the deportation of the likes of this writer because they reckon it is hate speech to say MDC-T is a puppet organisation funded by the British and the United States.
Frankly speaking, that is not even analysis. It is simple observation that is apparent to everyone in and outside MDC-T.
The propaganda approach to the rule of law is what Tsvangirai used when he recently "disengaged" from the inclusive Government in protest over Roy Bennett's indictment for trial.
The Prime Minister approached the whole issue with a shut mind and an open mouth.
This is the same approach we see adopted by those donor mongers that masquerade as human rights defenders. They employ the same propagandistic approach in defining human rights, strictly limiting the alleged abuse of such rights to Zanu-PF and its leadership, with all others playing victim.
Surely true human rights defenders would not find logic in supporting and defending a political party that uses economic sanctions as some form of leverage for political expediency.
No sane human rights defender would celebrate a sanctions law that isolates such a big employer as Ziscosteel with no regard for the job losses of so many innocent people and the livelihoods of the thousands of families dependent on them.
But the team that calls itself human rights defenders in Zimbabwe is advocating more sanctions so that Zimbabwe does not recover economically under the leadership of President Mugabe.
The Trumpet has declared that the International Monetary Fund money recently released to Zimbabwe was the Prime Minister's initiative and that Morgan Tsvangirai is the only contact person recognised by the IMF.
This clearly is a base lie not worthy a comment.
The paper then claimed that "Mugabe wants to spend this money but does not want to share power" with the "powerless party", MDC-T.
This, of course, is the propagandistic approach to the reality of the political situation in Zimbabwe.
If sharing power is limited to the three or four issues that MDC-T calls outstanding, then we have a real problem.
The reality then would be that all power in Zimbabwe rests with the Reserve Bank, the Attorney General, provincial governors and ambassadors.
This, of course, is ludicrous and laughable, but that is the mirror image created around the GPA today.
We now live under a reality where President Mugabe's opponent in an election withdraws from the race and is applauded as a democrat merely on the grounds of the propaganda mirror image of his Western-loathed opponent.
Karzai has a run-off forced on him by a humiliating and shameful revelation of massive election rigging and his opponent withdraws from the race citing persistent irregularities and cheating mechanisms, and it is him (Karzai's opponent) who is deplored by Tsvangirai's praise singers.
Abdullah Abdullah did a Tsvangirai stunt in Afghanistan and those who applauded the Zimbabwean in 2008 found Abdullah deplorable.
Suddenly the West forgot about the tenets of democracy and about how to deal with election thieves because the thief happened to be a client, never mind how corrupt and dishonest.
These complexities really mean that the only people who should be deciding on the fate of Zimbabwe must be Zimbabweans. We do not need all this unwarranted interference from outside. It all comes down to gross provocation by people who wronged us the most on this planet -- our erstwhile oppressors.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer
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.
