Thursday, October 28, 2010

Gearing for post-GPA Zimbabwe

Zanu-PF’s heroism in seeing to it that the country was not upset by the evil machinations of MDC-T allies in and out of the West, entitles it to morally see through Zimbabwe’s battle to shrug off the cynical sanctions and also better the livelihoods of the people.
Zimbabweans look up to the boon of their rich resources to better their livelihoods and to assert their independence and sovereignty.
These two values have been threatened, and continue to be threatened, by MDC-T with its fawning identification with the West ideologically and materially.

The Herald

By Tichaona Zindoga
TALK about Zimbabwe’s political future has lately tended to stagnate at the point when the country will hold elections some time next year, ending the dalliance of Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations.

Under an agreement called the Global Political Agreement signed in September 2008, the three parties entered into the current outfit dubbed the "inclusive Government", which has been described as a marriage of convenience.

Lately, with this wobbly creature coming to breathe its last, we hear more descriptions: Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has reportedly revealed that it has been one mix of water and oil.

One can have some conjecture as to which part or parts of the inclusive Government have been water or oil in the above image.

Indeed, try as the leaders might have, this immiscibility has been demonstrated by the inclusive Government being a rather delicate, fragile or wobbly something, which condition has not been helped by the proclivity of some elements to carry out boycotts or threats of the same.

Now finally being killed out of its misery, for all the degree of stability that it surely has brought Zimbabwe, the post-GPA period represents considerable prospects.

And it will obviously prove with finality which elements have been floating along (as in lacking weight and significance) the duration of the had-to-be-short life of the GPA.

Significant guesses can be made.

With Zanu-PF successfully selling its ideas to 70 percent of those who participated in the making of a new constitution, whose conclusion sets the stage for elections, it would seem Zimbabwe will be grounded in the revolutionary and nationalist development agenda of the party.

Zanu-PF should be able to commit the momentum it has gained from this people-driven process to push this agenda that luckily has not been so offset by its GPA dalliance.

The other parties, in particular the one led by Tsvangirai who sought vainly to derail the process after finding few takers for his Western-imported ideals such as homosexuality, can only remain immersed in the substance-less, floating alien agendas.

For, what people have heard are references to some quantity called "real change" whose wistful repetition have only tended to amplify the idea’s own irrelevance and the people behind it.

With change being the constant of change itself, the absence of a sound ideological direction to underpin whatever change might come through MDC’s ideas like a "social democratic state", makes the situation worse.

Interestingly, the party’s secretary-general and supposed think-tank of the party, Tendai Biti, dismally failed to articulate, let alone convince anyone of, this idea of the social democratic state in the acres of space that were generously accorded him by this paper.

It will be noted that the said "change", or promise thereof, has certainly not manifested itself beyond attempts to tie Zimbabwe to a Western system that has on every turn, from colonialism to the present day, tried to suppress the material change of black people.

The MDC has fought to restore the unjust system of colonial land tenure, which Zanu-PF rejected, for the benefit of Western capital.

The party has also sought to reverse the indigenisation of the economy through black ownership of the means of production, all for the benefit of the same Western capital that at its most benign provides for the creation of local CEOs to manage its plunder.

And is it not coincidental that just when the people had rejected being CEOs of their economy but owners, as they expressed in the constitution outreach meetings, Tsvangirai sought to rubbish their revolutionary voices and try to negotiate on behalf of Western capital?

Tsvangirai then tried to precipitate a "constitutional crisis" that would allow his Western friends to influence things in Zimbabwe against the country’s interests.

But for an all too typical response that came from the West, nothing came out of it.

Except maybe that they will seek to prolong their ruinous sanctions on Zimbabwe when they meet next year.

That, of course, will tend to mean that MDC-T moves into a new post-GPA with its old treasonous and treacherous hand in calling for the sanctions in the first place and not being interested in their removal as the GPA stipulated.

With the sanctions having caused untold suffering among Zimbabweans in destroying every other productive and social services sectors, it would mean that MDC-T, and the "face" of its not so democratic struggle, Tsvangirai, have zero moral ground.

Sanctions have been a political tool of MDC-T, extending from the West, to coerce the economically terrorised people of Zimbabwe into political behaviour that the West wants.

The behaviour of being deprived.

As such Zanu-PF can, and will continue, to fight the moral battle to have not only these hateful sanctions removed, or if they are not, pursue sanctions-busting initiatives.

After all, the country has rich natural and human resources.

The vast diamond deposits in Chiadzwa, capable of providing for the country’s fiscal and material requirements and which MDC-T friends in the West tried to deny Zimbabwe are one example.

Zanu-PF’s heroism in seeing to it that the country was not upset by the evil machinations of MDC-T allies in and out of the West, entitles it to morally see through Zimbabwe’s battle to shrug off the cynical sanctions and also better the livelihoods of the people.

Zimbabweans look up to the boon of their rich resources to better their livelihoods and to assert their independence and sovereignty.

These two values have been threatened, and continue to be threatened, by MDC-T with its fawning identification with the West ideologically and materially.

At any rate, apart from the pain issuing from sanctions that the ordinary people have felt, nothing has come out of MDC-T's benefactors in the West.

Biti even acknowledges the same, when he speaks of the futility of "the vote of credit".

Or, whatever happened to the US$10 billion that MDC-T was promised on condition that they entered Government?

Zimbabwe’s modest growth has been driven by increased agricultural production, in particular tobacco farming headlined by resettled farmers that Tsvangirai derided as having settled like mushroom.

In essence, post-GPA, Zanu-PF should continue with its winning battle against evil Western machinations.

It can also continue with the dollarised economy, which Biti did not bring, by the way.

No comments:

Post a Comment