The Herald
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| Roy Bennett...a white son of Anglo-Saxon imperialism calling on the metropolitan white community to rally behind the call to squeeze the life out of the un-people of Zimbabwe. |
By Tichaona Zindoga
A couple of weeks ago self-exiled MDC-T treasurer Roy Bennett called for disinvestment in Zimbabwe and specifically vented vitriol on British company Old Mutual for continued investments in the country.
Bennet was speaking before a gathering of business people in Cape Town, South Africa.
He said any companies that continued to do business with Zimbabwe or complied with the Government programme of indeginisation faced backlash if his party accessed power.
For his part, promised he, he would not raise a finger to save them: quite the contrary.
In a fiery speech, which started off with Bennett trying to portray himself as a martyr and one of the ordinary folk of Chimanimani, even feigning that he did not have political ambitions, he made important and telling points.
He described indigenization programme as “destructive and counterproductive strategy (and) a blatant ploy to enrich a politically corrupt elite”.
He said: “It goes without saying that any process of enriching individuals or companies connected to this infamous criminal syndicate WILL be nullified once the MDC are in power.”
He promised that “brave” companies who might fall foul of the current indigenisation laws by refusing to comply or do so under duress “will be restored by an MDC government if they are violated in the interim.”
He dissuaded major mining houses from “unacceptable complicity in Mugabe’s blackmail” pointing out that, for example, “There is no excuse for Impala Platinum, in an effort to placate Zanu-PF and (President Robert) Mugabe, to again offer the state mining rights in Zimplats, a subsidiary it already owns and controls.”
On Old Mutual Bennett said: “To illustrate my criticism of the pursuit of ill-advised opportunism, we need to look no further than the sad and seedy role of Old Mutual in the illicit diamond mining that is occurring in the Marange diamond fields of Manicaland. These fields are controlled by the military junta and were attained over the dead bodies of hundreds of impoverished Zimbabweans. This unacceptable example of corporate greed and willful negligence cannot be swept under the carpet any longer.
“For a respected London-listed financial services company to continue its investment and shareholding in a joint venture with a disreputable scrap metal merchant and—wait for this—an infamous confidante of Robert and Grace Mugabe is simply unbelievable! It is brazen. It is reprehensible and obscene.”
He also blamed Old Mutual for maintaining stake in Zimpapers, publishers of the Herald and other titles.
The bitter Bennett said the paper was “a practitioner of hate-speech and an apostle of vice and violence”, describing it as “dirty little rag”.
He revealed that his party had “urged Old Mutual—quietly behind closed doors—to quit their blood-stained investment” but “the company has not listened.”
Therefore, Old Mutual must face the music, argued Bennett saying his party would use international celebrities from Hollywood and members of the media to mount a Zimbabwean blood diamonds campaign.
He challenged his influential audience to confront the parent company over Zimbabwe.
In all this, Old Mutual stands to lose out.
And he pointed out: “We warned Old Mutual of the danger of substantial contagion to their share price should this campaign get underway.”
He concluded on a sour, menacing and devilish note: “These are but a couple of examples of the companies that have, and continue, to walk the halls of shame in Zimbabwe.
“There is no shortage of them. When the day of judgement comes, I will not lift a finger to save them from the consequences of their actions. Quite the contrary. And I am unreservedly confident that I will have a powerful constituency behind me. If these companies choose to reap the whirlwind, then so be it.”
MDC-T spokesman Nelson Chamisa later tried to dismiss Bennett’s statements saying, according to some sections of the media, it was “Bennett’s view, not the position of the party."
However the statements will not be any easy to wish away, nor the revelations and the implications of the same.
This is largely because Bennett is one of the financiers and policymakers of the MDC-T, being also the representative of the greater goal of undoing the gains of the liberation struggle, the land included.
So there is inherent, however revolting, truth and sincerity in Bennett’s statements.
By calling for disinvestment in Zimbabwe and targeting Old Mutual for its continued interest in the country, Bennett demonstrated how it is his and his party’s philosophy to make the country fall so that his party can gather the pieces.
This is the same thinking that, at the sanitizing of the MDC, led the West to impose sanctions on the country so that an socio-economically terrorized people would revolt against their Government and the West build on that catastrophe.
Was it not Eddie Cross, another senior MDC-T member, who said that Zimbabwe should “crash and burn”?
This is the sadistic love that Bennett harbours for the people of Zimbabwe, including those in his envied Chimanimani.
When Bennett made his call for disinvestment, it did not matter to him that thousands of Zimbabwe had gathered only days before to protest against investment-chasing sanctions which in letter and spirit are supposed to make Zimbabwe crash and burn.
The sanctions-imposing West also wants to see to it that they frustrate Zimbabwe’s recovery and sanctions-busting initiatives.
This is why they have not been allowing Zimbabwe to trade in its “newly-found” diamonds which have the capacity to more than satisfy the country’s fiscal requirements.
Diamond money will make redundant financial constrictions that are spelt in sanctions measures against Zimbabwe which bar extension of credit or debt relief as well as investment in Zimbabwe.
So when Bennett calls for disinvestment in Zimbabwe he is imposing sanctions against the very same people he says he represents.
Bennett and his party have been doing that publicly and clandestinely.
Bennett reveals both dimensions in his revelation of how they blackmailed Old Mutual and then went on a worldwide campaign against the company.
MDC-T and Bennett are prepared to do all the tricks in the book to satisfy their narrow, parochial interests which basically revolve around giving to the erstwhile white colonialist what he lost during the liberation struggle and the subsequent land reform and the current indigenization programme.
That is also why Bennett will seek to dissuade companies from ceding majority stake to the majority blacks as required by the law and will make sure that such deals will be reversed on the day that his party wins power.
In Bennett’s racist and narrow view, Anglo-American companies must be the ones to bring business to Zimbabwe and not be accountable to the people; people who should be perpetually grateful for such “salvation” even if it means pillage and plunder of their God-given resources.
This is why Bennet would revel in a captive rural society in Chimanimani that is grateful for a white man come to their parts.
He tries to rubbish the programme of indigenisation as benefiting only a small clique of “Mugabe’s cronies”.
That is a well-worn racist and political slur.
It happened with the land reform where the 300 000 families that benefited were cast under the shadow of “cronies”.
As it has turned out, as the tobacco auctions would testify today, the same farmers are doing in a decade what the likes of Bennett did for over a century.
In fact, Zimbabwe’s modest recovery in the last couple of years has been hinging on the growth of the agro-industry dominated by the same people that the likes of Bennett pejoratively called “poor black farmers”.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai described them as unwanted mushroom growing all over the place.
There is also an important, racial dimension Bennett’s statements in Cape Town.
Here was a white son of Anglo-Saxon imperialism calling on the metropolitan white community to rally behind the call to squeeze the life out of the un-people of Zimbabwe.
Specifically, Old Mutual and Impala Platinum, representing big interests, should heed this call.
Whatever the consequences for the people of Zimbabwe, there was a greater good for the empire.
Putting pressure on Western governments by employing various tricks including employing Hollywood celebrities thus becomes a means to effect consensus not only in western metropolis’ governments but also the ordinary people.
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