Friday, May 27, 2011

What NATO is Doing to Libya

...the US, France and Britain, and not the Libyan rebels, are now the main players in the struggle for power in Libya
Counterpunch

By Patrick Cockburn
Flames billow up from the hulks of eight Libyan navy vessels destroyed by Nato air attacks as they lay in ports along the Libyan coast. Their destruction shows how Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is being squeezed militarily, but also the degree to which the US, France and Britain, and not the Libyan rebels, are now the main players in the struggle for power in Libya.

Probably Gaddafi will ultimately go down because he is too weak to withstand the forces arrayed against him. Failure to end his regime would be too humiliating and politically damaging for Nato after 2,700 air strikes. But, as with the capture of Baghdad in 2003, the fall of the regime may usher in a new round of a long-running Libyan crisis that continues for years to come.

It has all developed rather differently from what the French and British appear to have imagined when they first intervened in March to save the citizens of Benghazi from Gaddafi's advancing tanks. If this was their sole aim, the air strikes were successful. The roadside from Benghazi to Ajdabiya is still littered with the carcasses of burned-out armored vehicles. But months after William Hague was suggesting that Gaddafi was already en route for Venezuela he is still in Tripoli.

Three months after the start of the Libyan uprising Gaddafi's troops have failed to capture Misrata, but the rebels do not look capable of advancing towards Tripoli. They have broken the siege of Misrata partly because their militiamen now clutch hand radios and can call in Nato air strikes. This close air support is effective and is along the lines of the tactical air support given by the US to the Northern Alliance soldiers in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Kurdish peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq two years later.

The Libyan government and opposition forces are both weak. The fighting forces that have been clashing on the desert road between Brega and Ajdabiya, south of Benghazi, often number no more than a few hundred half-trained fighters. Gaddafi's troops, with which he tries to control this vast country, number only 10,000 to 15,000. This is not always obvious to anybody who is not an eyewitness because the foreign press on the spot is bashful about mentioning that there are sometimes more journalists than fighters at the front.

One dispiriting outcome of the Libyan uprising is that the future of Libya is decreasingly likely to be determined by Libyans. Foreign intervention is turning into an old-style imperial venture. Much the same thing happened in Iraq in 2003 and in Afghanistan in the past few years. In Iraq, the US invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a ruler detested by most Iraqis, soon turned into what many Iraqis saw as a foreign occupation.

As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the weakness of France and Britain is their lack of a local partner who is as powerful and representative as they pretend. In the rebel capital Benghazi there is little sign of the leaders of the transitional national council, which is scarcely surprising, because so much of their time is spent in Paris and London. In Washington, the White House was a little more cautious last week when Mahmoud Jibril, the interim Libyan prime minister, and other council members came to bolster their credibility and hopefully get some financial support. More circumspectly, the Libyan rebel leaders were there to allay American suspicions that the Libyan opposition is not quite as cuddly as it claims and includes al-Qa'ida sympathizers waiting their chance to seize power.

The Libyan opposition may be weak but is not quite so naive or inexperienced as it sometimes appears. Its leaders are quick to play down eastern Libya's tradition of militant Islam. In the town of Al Bayda, on the long road from the Egyptian frontier to Benghazi, I saw a large notice in French addressed to any passing foreigners, denying any link with al-Qa'ida. This is largely but not entirely true. One Libyan observer in Benghazi explained: "The only people in this part of the country who have any recent military experience are those who were fighting the Americans in Afghanistan, so of course we send them to the front."

Wars often widen and deepen existing fissures in a society. The rebel transitional national council likes to play down suggestions that it is primarily a movement from Cyrenaica, the great bulge of eastern Libya where Gaddafi has always been unpopular. But he has held on to most of western Libya. Today these two halves of Libya, separated by hundreds of miles of desert, increasingly feel like separate countries.

Libyans on the ground have fewer inhibitions about discussing these differences. Outside some beach huts in Benghazi used to house refugees, I spoke to oil workers from the oil port of Brega, a town of about 4,000, who had fled when Gaddafi's forces captured it. A manager from the gas fields said: "Gaddafi's people got hold of a book with all our names because they wanted to see who came from east Libya and in their eyes would naturally be a rebel."

Of course, Gaddafi's opponents don't just come from the east. It is fair to assume that most Libyans from all parts of the country want him to go. He clings on because he rules through his family, clan, tribe and allied tribes, combined with his ebbing control of the ramshackle Libyan government and military machine. Everything within the part of Libya he still controls depends on Gaddafi personally. Once he goes there will be a political vacuum that the opposition will scarcely be able to fill.

Could the war be ended earlier by negotiation? Here, again, the problem is the weakness of the organized opposition. If they have the backing of enhanced Nato military involvement they can take power. Without it, they can't. They therefore have every incentive to demand that Gaddafi goes as a precondition for a ceasefire and negotiations. Since only Gaddafi can deliver a ceasefire and meaningful talks, this means the war will be fought to a finish. The departure of Gaddafi should be the aim of negotiations not their starting point.

One surprising aspect of the conflict so far is that there has not been a greater effort to involve Algeria and Egypt, the two most powerful states in North Africa. This would make the departure of Gaddafi easier to negotiate and would make the whole Libyan adventure look less like West European imperialism reborn. The aim of Nato intervention was supposedly to limit civilian casualties, but its leaders have blundered into a political strategy that makes a prolonged conflict and heavy civilian loss of life inevitable.

Kudos for Robert Mugabe on Africa Day

Son of African soil...Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe


AFRICANS across the continent celebrated Africa Day with nostalgia for the continent's great leaders past and present who have stood eyeball to eyeball with the West in defence of their people's right to self-determination.
Among that rare breeed of leaders signled out was Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe whom, the people said was being targetted for refusing to be a western lackey.
South Africa's Limpopo province Premier Cassel Mathale was quoted by News24 warning African leaders to protect themselves from Western politicians "who view the continent as a tool to perpetuate imperialist agendas".
Mathale, who was addressing delegates during the Africa Day celebrations held in Bela Bela on Wednesday, applauded Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi as leaders who fought against Western oppression.
"In this regard, we salute Patrice Lumumba, Samora Machel, Agostinho Neto, Eduardo Mondlane, Ahmed Ban Bela, Modibo Keita, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, Seretse Kgama, Kenneth Kaunda, Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Goven Mbeki, Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Krumah, Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral, Colonel Gaddafi and Kgotsikgolo Moshoeshoe, among others," he said.
Mathale said it was unfortunate that some of these leaders were assassinated by Western-sponsored forces.
The people of Ghana where President Mugabe lived during the first years of the struggle for independence and later married local woman Sarah Heyfron, strongly believe the veteran politician is the best leader in Africa with some tellling local radio station Voice of the People that he was sent by the Almighty to lead Africa.
This came to light when Radio Vop correspondent visited some parts of Ghana a few days before the Africa Day holiday on May 25.
The Ghanaians did not hide their love for Mugabe who turned 87 in February.
Villagers in the Kokbite Village located about 30 kilometres outside the Ghana capital Accra told Radio Vop that Mugabe is misunderstood.
"People don't understand that man," said Annan Bedi, who works at the AB's Royal Hotel in the Kokbite Village.
"He challenges the white man, he is a strong man, just recently he went to Rome and we heard they wanted to block him but they failed."
The villagers said those who say he must go should think twice because Africa still needs him.
"You think we are happy here in Ghana? Look at the poverty that we have here but when you are coming from outside you think everything is alright because you just go to Accra and never visit other areas," said Annas Kuffour, a cook at the AB's Royal Hotel adding that he wishes Mugabe was the President of Africa.
"He is a great man, greater than Gabriel Haile Selassie, I have travelled and worked in many African countries including Libya and I can tell you I know what I am talking about."
Asked why they love Mugabe with such passion. One female villager who works at another beach-side hotel retorted: "He is our son-in-law, he married here in Ghana."
In Cape Coast, a town located in the centre of Ghana, where the late Zimbabwean first lady, Sally Mugabe, was born are of the opinion that Mugabe is a victim of international pressure.
"He is doing what he is doing because he is under pressure from the west.
"They know he is telling the truth about what they did in Africa and would want to silence him with sanctions," said a resident of the Cape Coast.
The Cape Coast is a historic slave trade exit point. This is where Africans who were taken into Europe as slaves were shipped into Europe.
"The whites were cruel and when they come back to Africa they pretend as if they love Africans yet all they want is our resources.
"They killed us and this Cape Coast Castle bears all the evidence," said another resident showing a group of African journalists who were in Ghana for an investigative journalism workshop being run by an international broadcaster whose broadcasts have helped propel uprisings around the world particularly in Egypt, Tunisia and the Arab North.
The Ghanaians are not alone in believing that Mugabe is the best leader in Africa. Many Africans who have refused to be swayed by Western propaganda also hail President Mugabe as the best leader in Africa.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Letter to Barack Obama

 How can you speak of human rights and the dignity of peoples when you perpetually violate them and block those who don’t share your ideology and must endure your abuses?
How can you send military forces to Haiti after a devastating earthquake, instead of humanitarian aid to that suffering people?
How can you speak of freedom if you massacre the peoples in the Middle East and foster endless conflict which bleeds the Palestinians and Israelis?

Pambazuka News

Dear Barack,
In addressing you I do so fraternally, and at the same time, to express my concern and indignation after seeing the destruction and death caused in several nations in the name of ‘freedom and democracy’, two words which have been twisted and stripped of meaning. They end up justifying murder, and is cheered on as if it were a sports event.

Indignation at the attitude of some parts of the US population, of heads of state in Europe and other countries who came out in support of the assassination of bin Laden, and by your complacency in the name of supposed justice. You didn’t look to seize and judge him for his alleged crimes, which generates more doubts. The objective was to assassinate him.

The dead are mute, and the fear of the accused who could disclose inconvenient facts for the USA, was turned into assassination, to ensure that the ‘death of the dog would end the madness’, without considering that you have only increased it.

When you were granted the Nobel Prize, of which we are holders, I sent you a letter which read: ‘Barack, I was very surprised by your having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but now that you have it, you must use it in the service of peace among peoples, you have all the possibilities of doing it, to end the wars and begin correcting the severe crisis in your own country and the world’.

Unfortunately, you have increased hatred and betrayed the principles assumed during your electoral campaign before your people, such as ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, closing the prisons in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. But on the contrary, you decided to start another war against Libya, backed up by NATO, and the shameful resolution of the UN to support you, when this high organisation, diminished and without its own mind, has lost its path and has been subjugated to the whims and interests of the dominant powers.

The foundational premise of the UN is the defence and promotion of peace and dignity among peoples. Its Preamble begins saying: ‘We, the peoples of the world...’ now absent from this organisation.

I would like to recall a mystic and teacher who has had a great influence in my life: Trapist monk Thomas Merton of the Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, who said ‘The greatest necessity of our time is to clean the enormous mass of mental and emotional garbage which blocks our minds and converts all public and social life into a disease of the masses. Without this domestic cleaning we can't begin to see. If we can’t see, we can’t think’.

Barack you were very young during the Vietnam war, perhaps you don’t remember the struggle of North American people to oppose the war. I have shared and accompanied the veterans of the Vietnam war, in particular Brian Wilson and his companions who were victims of this wars and of all wars.

Thomas Merton, analysing a stamp postmark which had just arrived saying ‘The U.S. Army, key to peace’ (‘El ejercito U.S., clave de la paz’) said: ‘No army is the key to peace. No nation has the key to anything which is not war. Power has nothing to do with peace. The more men increase military power, the more they violate peace and destroy it.’
We should protect LIFE to leave future generations a more just and fraternal society, re-establishing equilibrium with Mother Earth. If we don’t react to change the current situation of suicidal arrogance which is dragging peoples down, it will be very hard to come out and see the light. Humanity deserves a better fate.

You know, hope is like the flower which grows in the mud and blossoms in all its splendour, showing its beauty. Leopoldo Marechal, the great Argentine writer, said that: ‘You get out the maze via the top’.

I believe, Barack, that after following your erring way, you find yourself in a maze, unable to find the exit and you are burying yourself more and more in violence, devoured by the domination of power, and you think you possess all the power anyone could have, and that the world is at the feet of the USA. So large are the atrocities committed by different US governments in the world... It is a sad reality, but there is also the resistance of peoples who do not capitulate before the powerful.

Bin Laden, alleged author of the attack of the Twin Towers, has been made the devil incarnate who terrorised the world, identified as the ‘axis of evil’ and this has served you to wage the wars that the military industrial complex needs to place its products of death.

You should not ignore that researchers of the tragedy of September 11 have declared that the attacks were in many ways self-inflicted, such as the crash of a plane into the Pentagon and the prior evacuation of the Towers; an attack which provided a motive to launch the war against Iraq and Afghanistan and now against Libya; arguing based on the lie that all is done to save peoples in the name of ‘freedom and the defence of democracy’. And cynically stating that the deaths of women and children are ‘collateral damage’.

The word is devoid of values and meaning. You dub assassination ‘death’ and finally the US has ‘killed’ bin Laden. I am not in any way defending bin Laden, I am against all terrorism, by both these armed groups and the terrorism of the State which your government exercises in various parts of the world, supporting dictators, imposing military bases and armed intervention, using violence to maintain yourself via terror at the hub of world power. Is there only one ‘axis of evil’?

Peace is a practice of life in relations between persons and among peoples; it is a challenge to humanity's consciousness. Its path is difficult, daily and hopeful; where people build from their own lives and their own history. Peace can't be gifted, it is built. And this is what you're missing lad, courage to assume the historical responsibility with your people and with humanity.

You cannot live in the labyrinth of fear and control, ignoring international treaties, pacts and protocols of governments which are signed and then transgressed once and again. How can you speak of peace if you don’t want to honour anything, except in the interests of your country?

How can you talk about freedom when you keep innocent people in the prisons of Guantanamo, in the USA, in Iraq and in Afghanistan?

How can you speak of human rights and the dignity of peoples when you perpetually violate them and block those who don’t share your ideology and must endure your abuses?

How can you send military forces to Haiti after a devastating earthquake, instead of humanitarian aid to that suffering people?

How can you speak of freedom if you massacre the peoples in the Middle East and foster endless conflict which bleeds the Palestinians and Israelis?

Barack: Try to look at your maze from above; you may find the star that guides you, even knowing you can never reach it, as Eduardo Galeano said so well. Try to be consistent between what you say and do, it's the only way to not lose the path. It's a challenge of life. The Nobel Peace Prize is a tool at the service of the peoples, never for personal vanity.

I wish you much strength and hope, and we hope you will have the courage to correct your path and find wisdom and Peace.

Adolfo PĂ©rez Esquivel

Buenos Aires, 5 May 2011

P.S. On a day like today 34 years ago, I came back to life; I was on a flight to death during the military dictatorship in Argentina supported by the USA… Thanks to God I survived, and had to find my way out of the labyrinth above desperation, and discover in the stars the path to be able to say like the prophet: ‘the darkest hour is when the dawn begins’.

May 25: Africa NEEDS strongmen


...recognizing that the continent is in an ongoing war for self determination and that there is equal to overwhelming opposite reaction from the West; Africa actually needs strongmen.
The vision of founding fathers of the continent like first Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah who charted the way to political and economic independence needed, and still need strong characters to see through.
It is no coincidence that the West plotted his downfall as it did for another visionary, Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, among many others.


By Tichaona Zindoga
There is little to contest that Africa for the last half century of its independence from colonialism, has had more than its fair share of problems, some of them calamities and catastrophes.

It follows therefore that Africa Day, marked on May 25 every year, has been commemorated every other year against a background of some kind of setback or the other.

This year the continent marked the 48th anniversary of Africa Day with events in Libya casting a strong pall on the continent.

In fact, the situation in Libya where United States of America and Nato are bombing the country to unseat colonel Muammar Gaddafi, that country’s legitimate leader, represents the worst that the continent thought was over.

Suffice to say, while neocolonialism could be grudgingly accepted as an evil kick of a dying empire defeated with the demise of colonialism, a brazen military crusade such as the one Nato undertook against Libya was unfathomable.

The military crusade, it must be admitted, was legitimated by a dubious United Nations Resolution 1973.

On the strength of the same, Western powers, America, Britain and France even went further than the discredited resolution and announced that all they needed to see in Libya was the back of Gaddafi.

And perhaps not his back only, and even his head, too, witness Nato’s bombing of his compound which tragically claimed the lives of Gadaffi’s son and three under-six grand children in the process.

There is a lot of significance on the Libyan issue, especially with US’ first black president Barack Obama, in the matrix.

It will be remembered that Obama when he came into office warned against African “strongmen”, saying that Africa needed strong “institutions” instead.

By which, he meant, destroying what the revolution against colonialism had built and supplanting it with new systems.

“Strongmen” like Gaddafi and here at home President Robert Mugabe embodied the continuum of a people’s struggle against the evil West and stood in the way of neo-colonialism.

They had to be replaced by “institutions” of puppetry that do the bidding of the West, and America in particular, without question.

It is a system of politics that is directed from White House and Brussels and the armed rebels in Benghazi and their civilian counterparts in anything in the mould of Zimbabwe’s MDC, are the ideal institutions that the West relishes.

They do not only ensure the defeat of the old liberating order but also the entrenchment of the mutated evil that was defeated over the last 50 years.

This is a strong case for basically two interventions on Africa’s part.

First, recognizing that the continent is in an ongoing war for self determination and that there is equal to overwhelming opposite reaction from the West; Africa actually needs strongmen.

The vision of founding fathers of the continent like first Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah who charted the way to political and economic independence needed, and still need strong characters to see through.

It is no coincidence that the West plotted his downfall as it did for another visionary, Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, among many others.

That the West has threatened, and succeeded in many cases to defeat the quest for self-determination is no secret

Successive Western regimes have held and executed this rogue intent with the efficiency of a grinding machine.

And they have known when to eliminate strong, visionary leaders and in turn install puppet regimes.

Connected with the need for strongmen is Africa’s need for a global “super power”.

By all accounts, Libya, under Muammar Gaddafi qualified to be an African super power buoyed by its oil revenues, the charisma of its leader, and the general welfare of its citizens.

Never mind the lies of the West who ostensibly wanted to protect civilians from Gaddafi.

But for all its clout, which even included giving money to the West which now bombs him and the arrogance that Gaddafi was wont to show at home and abroad, Libya is nowhere a global super power.

That Western forces could have a field day of bombing in one of Africa’s strongest countries speaks just as strong that Africa needs military and even nuclear arsenal to repel enemy forces.

It is hard to imagine the West riding roughshod over Libya, and by extension the continent, had the country or its African peers (in the real sense) had fingers on potent arsenal.

Or could we have seen the resolutions of the African Union on Libya being trashed and ignored the way they did and the West bombed their way into Libya on March 19?

But there is more to defending Africa’s sovereignty by way of possessing the repellants named above.

One is the recognition and consciousness of Africa’s history, which needless to point out has been one that saw its civilizations being raped or set back; the people’s struggles against the same rape and setbacks and the present condition which delicately is balanced between imperialist regression and atavism and a prosperous, self-determining future.

The consciousness of Africa’s history which regulates the present and future is critical.

Anyone who is detached from Africa’s history against Western imperialism and its present struggles against the same cannot be trusted with the continent’s future, or any country thereon.

An example will suffice.

Recently, this writer was part of a group which included fellow journalists and a number of diplomats who gathered at a dialogue forum in the capital.

Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was presenting a paper on “Beyond party politics - Towards a national vision for Zimbabwe” which happened to be the inaugural “Pan-African Series on leadership” conducted by Sapes Trust.

He touched on several issues on the topic, mainly limiting himself to the happenings within the inclusive Government which his party features along with Zanu-PF and another faction of the MDC.

The long and short of Tsvangirai’s presentation was that his Zanu-PF partners prevented the country from having a national vision, which he did not explicitly name, either.

This was because of corruption, securocrats, elections, indigenisation, etc.

And when it was time for him to field questions from the floor, journalists generally went for the sound-bites which would make the next big story.

(Like that he had called journalists from “state media” shallow minded.)

Thus Tsvangirai rambled on with his narrative regarding the inclusive Government.

For anyone who had hoped that the premier would talk of what constituted this nation – the history, the ethos, the values and national interests on which a future and its vision could be predicated; marrying into the Pan-African picture of which he was said to be leader, they were disappointed.

This writer, regretting to take the premier back to the topic, challenged him to situate what constituted the nation of Zimbabwe and thus locate himself in the greater pan-African story.

It was an observation that his presentation had only but started in a particular era, the era of the inclusive Government, itself a party-based arrangement.

Further, questions that focused on the inclusive Government only but made him drift further from a grounding that define a commonality that would see a party-less future.

To which, sandwiched as the question was between to questions that demanded the inclusive Government immediate, the premier briefly and without conviction related how he believed in the dignity of African people.

Unfortunately, he regretted, the last 50 years had seen the dignity of African people being eroded by their own leaders through dictatorship and repression.

He did not mention, of course, West’s history of toppling popular and progressive leaders and installing puppet and often-repressive darlings of the West.

Thus Tsvangirai did not help the misgivings that many well-meaning Africans have of him and his brand of Western-created or funded politician.

Namely, they do not have grounding or claim in the patriotic or nationalist history of the continent.

Rather, they are planted somewhere on the way to heaven by the West to subvert the African will to have total control over resources on the continent.

This might explain why the MDCs have often given us the impression that Zimbabwe’s history started with the formation of the party in 1999.

It is no surprise then that when talking of a “nation”; this nation of Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai starts in the air of the inclusive Government and does not talk of the liberation history that brought Independence.

He is said to have run away from the war.

With that history having borne of and in a continuing culture that craves self-determination, which the West stands opposed to, Tsvangirai does not identify with the ongoing struggle against the imperialism of the West.

Instead, he identifies with the West which happens to have nurtured his own political career.

It is a counter revolution.

It is the bane of Africa.

Thus Africa needs strongmen like President Mugabe to see through the vision of the founding fathers: to have political and economic independence.

Conversely, institutions and people that the West foists upon Africa – even if they have presidential faces, like some remarked cynically of Tsvangirai – should be strongly resisted.

This is simply because the West of the pedigree of slavery and colonialism and now neocolonialism cannot be trusted with furthering the wishes of their perpetual victims.

And on this one former South African President Thabo Mbeki was absolutely right when he found the “revolutions” in North Africa suspect the very moment the West took the side of the protestors.

There ought to have been something fishy – as Libya eventually turned out.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

African presidents, why sit silent?

African Presidents, rise up to save your own pal, Gaddafi, and your sisterly nation, Libya! Rise up!
Mathaba.net

By Apostle Kwamena Ahinful
– Shameless NATO destroys Africa’s Libya
– Why not present ceasefire bid to UN?
For President Muammar Ghaddafi’s Libya to be subjected to incessant air bombings from NATO air planes over a two months’ stretch is something that continues to baffle the minds of all right thinking people.

Why, it must be asked, why this senseless war in Libya? Why should planes of the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which consists of Americans and Europeans Soldiers) continue to rattle over Libyan skies, shooting cruise missiles and bombs to kill President Gaddafi’s soldiers and to raze down some apartments of his house, instantly killing one of his sons and three grandchildren? Why?

And one cannot simply understand why all African Union members, led by their heads of state, continue to look on silently for this mayhem to be visited on their member state Libya, by white people of other continents!

Doesn’t Libya belong to the African Union which presupposes a more compact relationship bordering on consanguinity or blood-kinship such that an affront against one African member state is against all African states which should warrant their immediate response? The days of the OAU (Organisation of African Unity) are over, a period when African States AGREED TO FRATERNISE quite lightly on periodic get-together basis, when talking and talking for closer relationship was the major leitmotif.

It was an organizational period preparing African states to, in future, form a more cohesive union in which each state saw herself to be in family ties with the others, not remaining indifferent to the woes of one another, but reacting appropriately to offer immediate help or relief or peace to the other. This is how the present name, AFRICAN UNION must be seen to connote- a more compact sisterly affinity in which love for, and assistance to one another should be practicalised.

MEANING OF AFRICAN UNION
But this is not what we see now with the so-called AFRICAN UNION. It appears most states consider the UNION to be mere UNITY which envisages a temporary relationship without any deep commitment for the welfare or safety of each other. If this is so, then it’s most unfortunate.

If indeed we have consigned ourselves to an AFRICA UNION construction which is very close to AFRICAN UNITED STATES, then African Presidents must wake up to uphold the ideals of the UNION and stop sleeping over the war being waged on Libya by NATO forces for no justifiable reasons. The basis of the war is childish. Some opposition elements in Libya say that they don’t want Gaddafi and his government to continue to ‘misrule’ Libya, so they must resign and be off the governance scene. They demonstrate.

And that’s permissible in a democratic state. But when the demonstration is: (a) being held every day to cause disturbance of the peace in the locality (b) waxing into violence when missiles (stones, cudgels, cutlasses etc) are hurled against the police who are using teargas to disperse the demonstrators, has the government no mandate or authority to defend itself or to put down the disturbing riots? Will the British, American, Italian or French government sit down unconcerned when some elements (ostensibly trained or organized to cause violence to overthrow that Administration) begin to act to endanger the peace in that country?

Won’t it defend itself by clamping down on such violence? Then why is it that when President Gaddafi rose up to fight the criminal violence against his state, the Europeans and Americans considered it unheard-of, and immediately thought it as their bounden duty to go to Libya to protect the innocent civilians whom Gaddafi ‘was killing through air attacks’? Are the whites political and military ‘protectors’ of revolting blacks? Who made them so?

FORMER USA, ITALIAN ATTACKS
Did the votes in the United Nations Security Council mandate the USA, Britain, Italy and France to quickly invade Libya to ostensibly protect the ‘unarmed civilian revolters’? When did it become justifiable for unapprehended and fighting revolters (openly seeking to overthrow a government) to be protected by the white men? Where is the cited case history morally justifying such protection?

There is absolutely no justification for American, Italian and French forces to, in the name of NATO, send military aircraft to bomb buildings in Tripoli, Mizurata, Benghazzi etc, and to indiscriminately kill Libyans, thus causing further bloodshed. Why did the votes not mandate African countries to intervene diplomatically, and if possible, militarily?

Fact is that Libya has been a victim of these four nations- USA, Italy, Britain and France- for over two centuries, all because of their yearning to exploit her oil wealth, coal and gas. In 1804, the United States invaded Libya, with the view to fighting an ongoing piracy, just it is as being carried on presently at the coast of Somalia in Africa. This turned out to be a medium through which the wealth of Libya was to be exploited.

In 1911, Italy invaded Libya on the pretentious reason of fighting Turkey which had earlier on declared war on the Sanussi Muslim sect formed in Libya and had considered it to be un-Islamic.

The Sanussi sect withstood Italy for 20 years until in 1931 when its leader al-Mukhtar was executed, and that enabled Italy to gain full control over Libya. However, Idris who was also a Sanussi Muslim emerged later, and having helped the British and the French in World War II, invited these two allies to Libya who divided that nation into British and French zones.

Nevertheless, in 1949, the UN declared independence to Libya under Idris who later was sworn in as King. Contrary to expectations, Gaddafi, then a colonel in the army, overthrew King Idris on September 1, 1969 and revolutionized the nation, bringing rapid transformation and development in the country on socialist lines. Gaddafi’s ‘Green Book’ he wrote which brought the ‘popular participation’ concept, quick revolution in agricultural and oil production, soon made Libya a nation with the highest per capita income of over $4000 per year in Africa, thus making her the wealthiest nation on the continent.

FOREIGN RELATIONS
Whilst at home, Gaddafi has been hailed as the most popular and best leader, who has made several workers rich and comfortable (this is confirmed by Ghanaian returnees from Libya), his relations with Arab countries and the Europeans and Americans have gone sour day by day. His interactions with Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Saudi Arabia have not gone well; especially his opposition to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates for not helping him to resist ‘the pressures and maneuvers of transnational corporation’ of the USA and Europe which are making oil prices go higher and higher, has not been taken kindly.

Therefore, one can see why the Arabs initiated in the UN the idea of ‘military protection of Libyan civilians’ which has invited NATO to wage air war against Gaddafi. And one wonders whether Gaddafi will find it comfortable to remain in the Arab League again, whilst his military strength appears to have been betrayed and undercut by fellow Arabs.

Of course, the question of Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya etc indulging in ‘absolute bilateralism’ still remains an important issue to be mooted, a situation in which these aforementioned countries consider themselves as real Africans belonging to the AU and real Arabs belonging to the Arab League of the Middle East! Will Gaddafi want to be in the Arab Circle again, if the current war is over and he remains the President?

In 1986, Gaddafi was subjected to US economic embargo (January) and on April 14 the same year, American war planes invaded Libya and bombed Tripoli, the capital city, and Benghazzi, killing hundreds of people for nothing, except that Gaddafi was to be killed. It is therefore not amazing that under the pretext of saving Libyan civilians, NATO war planes have bombed Gaddafi’s premises, the second attempt killing his relations. African Presidents should quickly meet over this, and issue a strong resolution backing Gaddafi, and calling for cessation of the ongoing war.

The resolution should be presented to the Security Council and the UN General Assembly. And diplomatic discussions should be held with Russia and China to use their ‘veto powers’ to stop the war to enable African nations to bring peace to Libya. African Presidents, rise up to save your own pal, Gaddafi, and your sisterly nation, Libya! Rise up!

Killing Gaddafi's Grandbabies

It would not occur to most Americans that Gaddafi and his family were entitled to feel safe under international law and American law, which bar assassinations of heads of state, and that United Nations resolution 1973 does not authorize NATO to hunt down the Libyan leader or kill those around him. But he’s only a cartoon, and cartoons have no rights. Neither do the countries these cartoons come from, as every American knows. 
Trinicenter


By Glen Ford

“These modern Crusaders require ritual bloodletting before expropriating the lands and goods of their victims.”
The ceremonial slaughter of Moammar Gaddafi and his family lurches forward like some savage white cult ritual. Death to the demon and his seed! shout the priests, banshees and ice-smile oracles of the U.S. corporate media. The American (or “western”) manifest mission must be sanctified in the blood of caricatures. Like the Christ-crazed hordes that surged out of Europe’s far western dankness to annihilate whole cities of strangers – including tens of thousands of fellow Christians that did not speak, eat or smell as the French and English did – these modern Crusaders require ritual bloodletting before expropriating the lands and goods of their victims.

When the Arab world awoke at the beginning of the year, the highly paid presenters and rapid-vapid quippers of CNN and competing reality-creation companies were caught pitifully mission-less. Absent direction from the official scenario-producers at the White House and the State Department, there could be no coherent newsreader script, no simple theme for quipping. But direction would not be forthcoming from the Obama administration until a way could be found to put the U.S. on the “right” side of the Arab Awakening.

“Where was the consummate Arab evil?”
In the first days of the Egyptian rebellion, CNN and its ilk were largely on their own and visibly confused – reflecting the confusion and desperation in Washington. Then, after the White House, having no other choice, pretended to empathize with the young demonstrators at Tahrir Square, the corporate media commenced its love affair with the “new” Arab. But where was the consummate Arab evil, in the battle against which the corporate media could fulfill its role as chronicler of America’s glorious, civilizing saga in the world? Who is the caricature, to be ritually tormented and slain?

Moammar Gaddafi became the foil for the Euro-American military response to the Arab Awakening. Instantaneously, CNN got its mission back. Gaddafi was perfect, having long existed in cartoon form for western consumption. With Gaddafi’s gradual accommodation with the West, in the early 2000s, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein became the Great Cartoon Satan, even appearing as the Devil in Comedy Central’s South Park cartoon show. Gaddafi, the vintage cartoon, inevitably became conflated with Saddam (all Arab strongman cartoons look alike).

A general on CNN’s retainer repeatedly named the long dead Saddam as the ghoul to be obliterated by righteous American firepower. More than once, the general apologized to the audience, but he needn’t have since, to the mass of CNN’s viewers, Gaddafi has no more claim to his own life, history and death than did Saddam Hussein. The are both little voodoo dolls to be stuck with needles and burned and torn to pieces, along with their children.

Vaunted American “compassion” does not extend to the grandbabies of evil Arab cartoon-men.”
Americans, who consume packaged lies like hot dogs, and then revere these items of consumption as sacred culture (as “American” as hot dogs), have been ready to kill Gaddafi’s sons ever since Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay were gunned down in 2003. In American eyes, these Arab strongmen’s sons are no more than satanic versions of Daffy Duck’s cartoon nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. In Gaddafi’s case, two of his sons were named Saif. If Col. Gaddafi didn’t distinguish sufficiently between them, why should NATO bombers? As it turned out, the Saif that died along with three of Gaddafi’s grandchildren, Saif al-Arab, the youngest of the brothers, was also the least political. The grandkids, ages 6 months to two years, were, of course, totally apolitical and, presumably, quite cute. But vaunted American “compassion” does not extend to the grandbabies of evil Arab cartoon-men. CNN and other U.S. corporate outlets, all of which have reporters in Tripoli, chose to quote rebel leaders in Benghazi who cast doubt on whether the children of Gaddifi sons Mohammed and Hannibal and daughter Aisha were really dead. The rebels advised that it was likely a trick, and U.S. corporate media treated the vile slander as simply another competing factoid.

The killer couple in the White House offered no condolences or apologies, presumably on the assumption that the elder Gaddafi had invited his family to his residence to act as human shields, and was therefore responsible for their deaths.

It would not occur to most Americans that Gaddafi and his family were entitled to feel safe under international law and American law, which bar assassinations of heads of state, and that United Nations resolution 1973 does not authorize NATO to hunt down the Libyan leader or kill those around him. But he’s only a cartoon, and cartoons have no rights. Neither do the countries these cartoons come from, as every American knows.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Worthy thugs and unworthy victims - according to the West

As far as the Western media is concerned, the relevance and importance of abuse or violence-caused death is not determined by the mere fact that there is apparent abuse or violation of human rights.
Rather, it is determined by the political perception of the Western elites; whether or not they think the victim is politically correct to be regarded as a victim of human rights abuse. In most cases it is the political correctness of the human rights violator that determines the fate of his victim inasfar as Western media attention is concerned. 

The Herald

By Reason Wafawarova
THE Western propaganda system will consistently portray the rag tag thuggish rebels from eastern Libya and all other pro-West rabble rousers as worthy thugs, otherwise colourfully coded as freedom fighters or fighters for democracy.
This is a tradition that has guided media structures and foreign policy in the West for centuries.
In fact, there is neither shame nor irony when we are told that the Western-armed Benghazi rebels are "innocent civilians" at the mercy of the heartless Muammar Gaddafi.
We are told Gaddafi is a mad man so we can dismiss his side of the story as just the ranting of a lunatic.
This is why his otherwise provable claims that the rebels are Wahhabist Al-Qaeda affiliated extremists fighting Gaddafi for his secular and liberal approach to Islam are not given the attention they deserve by way of investigation or debate.
When there is abuse to report about it, it is always those people abused in enemy states or by opponents of Western hegemony that are treated by mainstream Western media as worthy victims. In the case of Libya, it is always the rag tag Benghazi rebels that are worthy victims - always portrayed as representative of the entire Libyan population, much as there is no evidence whatsoever to support such an assertion. As far as the Western media is concerned, the relevance and importance of abuse or violence-caused death is not determined by the mere fact that there is apparent abuse or violation of human rights.
Rather, it is determined by the political perception of the Western elites; whether or not they think the victim is politically correct to be regarded as a victim of human rights abuse. In most cases it is the political correctness of the human rights violator that determines the fate of his victim inasfar as Western media attention is concerned. This is why the thousands of people that die during each Nigerian election never attract the attention given to a handful of victims of political violence in a country like Zimbabwe.
Perceived Mugabe victims are front page material by definition, while victims of political violence associated with the likes of Goodluck Jonathan can receive fringe attention if they must - otherwise they are unworthy victims from a client state that allows its oil to flow westwards.
Those victims treated with equal or greater severity by Western governments or by clients states will always be treated as unworthy victims - not deserving any meaningful coverage in the mainstream Western media.
This is why we must accept that Afghan and Iraqi civilians ruthlessly murdered by Western invading forces in the past ten years are just part of a war against terrorists -collateral damage as they are called. The dead Bahraini civilian pro-democracy activists do not exactly deserve much media attention in the West. Sympathy is reserved for the armed "civilian rebels" of Libya, or those protesters killed at the hands of such "tyrannical governments" as that of Syria.
And, Saudi Arabia can freely join hands with Bahraini dynastic authorities in stopping the tide towards democracy in that tiny kingdom, and the people they kill in the process do not matter at all in the West's mainstream media. Zimbabwe as a country is today battling to persuade Westerners to lift the ruinous illegal sanctions that have been in place for the last ten years simply because there are thousands and thousands of Zimbabwean exiles and economic refugees that were forced to tell drama stories of gross human rights abuses.
The largely unverified claims made very good politics for Western elites and their immigration authorities were under strict political instructions to speed up the processing of Zimbabwe asylum seekers. Even known Mugabe and Zanu-PF supporters benefitted from this windfall of a chance - telling their new host exactly what they wanted to hear.
Any horror story one could concoct against President Robert Mugabe in particular would earn one the right to stay in most of the Western countries, particularly in Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and to a limited extent in Australia. All that was needed was to masquerade as a victim of Mugabe's unparalleled brutality and one would be treated as a worthy victim deserving to be allowed entry and stay in the West.
Zanu-PF and its own propaganda machine labelled the Zimbabweans who did this a breed of unthinking traitors and sell-outs, but these people largely regard themselves as patriotic Zimbabweans who simply took advantage of the enemy's gullibility to escape the ruthless effect of Western sanctions at home.
It is interesting to see how the MDC-T political activists enjoy the worthy thug tag from the West, when they are not showered with sympathies as worthy victims of the "violent Mugabe regime".
Violence from the MDC-T militias has never really been condemned in Western media, much as that violence is quite apparent and provable.
The evidence of worth may be read from the extent and character of attention and indignation as reported by the media.
There is neither attention nor reporting of the indignation of victims of political violence by the MDC-T, be these victims members of the MDC-T itself or perceived political opponents from the other MDC factions or from Zanu-PF.
Britain's The Guardian must be credited for reporting the near severe assault of Trudy Stevenson at the hands of machete wielding Tsvangirai militias. But, apart from that report, the Western mainstream media did not really want to highlight that Tsvangirai was at the command of machete wielding goons who were on a mission to annihilate the MDC leader's political rivals.
One very sure way of hitting the headlines with the BBC is to beat up someone in the name of Zanu-PF and Robert Mugabe, or more precisely to make a claim that one has been assaulted by a Mugabe agent or by a Zanu- PF supporter. The West's mass media's practical definitions of worth are political in the extreme and fit well the expectations of a propaganda model.
One can imagine the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague declaring that the assassination of Gaddafi's son and his three under 12 grandchildren was a "legitimate attack on a control and command centre". Killing three under 12 children on the basis of them allegedly running a "control and command centre" is just unimaginably horrific and inhumane. Hague must know that.
But the grandchildren of mad man Gaddafi are just little Gaddafis and not really children as would be those of George W Bush or some other real person from the West.
The expectation of the propaganda model is to legitimise the actions of assassination expert Barack Obama. Now he has got the blood of Seif Al-Arab Gaddafi on his hands, as that of the three under 12 grandchildren of Gaddafi, plus reportedly that of Osama bin Laden. What is left is to finish off Gaddafi and his remaining sons and the campaigning for a second presidential term can begin in earnest. This time Obama will simply sign off his campaign speeches by saying "Yes I did."
From the scenes of jingoistic flag-waving and "USA"-chanting Americans we have seen recently, Obama can actually expect some cheering for his assassination skills.
While this differential treatment of victims of abuse occurs on a large scale, the media, intellectuals, and the public are able to remain unconscious of the fact and maintain a high moral and self-righteous tone.
We are told that Col Gaddafi is a heartless dictator who made Libya's peoples the richest on the continent of Africa, transforming a desert into green land, and who invested so much into African resources. This is the man who must be ousted from power by Western drones and other lethal hyper-tech aerial weapons.
Yes, he is a ruthless dictator guilty of providing free health and education for his people, just like that other mindless Cuban dictator by the name Fidel Castro. Or that heartless Zimbabwean dictator by the name Robert Mugabe, so guilty of redistributing colonially stolen lands back to his people.
The AU is dead silent and probably watching in extreme fear of who is next. Jacob Zuma and his team were effectively told to get lost by the Benghazi rebels after they proposed a ceasefire and negotiations between the waring Libyan parties. And the West strongly supported this sentiment with Nato adding its voice in opposition to the AU's proposals, arguing for more firepower and more bloodshed until Gaddafi relinquishes power. That is the kind of peace the West is bringing to Libya.
And all we are told daily by the Western media is that Gaddafi is shelling the city of Misrata and that his forces are shooting at the Benghazi rebels, that they are attacking hospitals and other infrastructure. It is only Nato that has a right to demolish the hard earned infrastructure of Libya as it wishes, and this is understandable because the Salvationist Nato is there to protect hapless Libyan civilians from their monstrous leader. How stupid and gullible we must all be!
The imaginary civilians that we are told Gaddafi is massacring are the worthy victims that must occupy media space in the West, and his murdered three grandchildren are the typical unworthy victims who should be forgotten about as quickly as possible.
As already indicated, the MDC-T has a remarkably terrible culture of internal violence and they recently attacked mourners at a cemetery after mistaking them for Zanu-PF supporters, leaving one of their victims for dead. Morgan Tsvangirai, his deputy Thokozani Khupe and Secretary General Tendai Biti watched, reportedly with one of them chanting cheers at the murderous thugs.
This violence did not attract the attention of Western media, and even that of the pro-MDC private media within Zimbabwe.
In fact it was the MDC-T's Information Department that quickly claimed that their supporters had been attacked by "Zanu-PF militias" and "riot police".
This was a clear fabrication that was dismissed by eye-witnesses and pro-MDC journalists who had covered the event. But there was next to nothing by way of condemning the MDC-T for fabricating falsehoods after engaging in despicable violence.
Those that were attacked by the MDC-T thugs were merely unworthy victims suffering at the hands of worthy thugs, otherwise affectionately known in the West as fighters for democracy.
The provincial elections that preceded the recently held MDC-T Congress were largely no more than fierce battlefields pitting violent rival supporters of various faction leaders within the party.
The Matebeleland provinces were the worst affected, leading to Tsvangirai having to go and quell the murderous violence just before the Congress.
Those that were injured were merely unworthy victims - collateral damage in the noble cause of fighting for democracy and bringing "a new Zimbabwe" - fully decorated with a culture of Western condoned violence. Even the Taliban of Afghanistan enjoyed this kind of support from Westerners when they first came to power. When Jerzy Popieluszko was murdered by Polish police October 1984, the Western media went hysteric.
This was a murder committed in an enemy state, a communist state. The coverage was pitted against 100 religious victims that were similarly murdered in the US client states in Latin America.
Comparisons of these murders were done by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. In the model they provided, Popieluszko was the worthy victim murdered in an enemy state, whereas priests murdered in the US client states in Latin America were the unworthy victims. The trend is that the former will always elicit a propaganda outrage from the Western mass media, while the later will hardly generate any coverage.
The New York Times, Time, Newsweek and CBS News were used as sample media units in this study. The coverage of Popieluszko's murder was compared to that of religious personnel murdered in Latin America by agents of US client states, and also to seventy two individuals in a list of Latin American religious "martyrs" named by Penny Lernoux in her book Cry of the People.
The comparisons extended to the coverage given to twenty three priests, missionaries, and other religious workers murdered in Guatemala between January 1980 and February 1985.
It also included the coverage of the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El-Salvador, shot by an assassin in March 1980, together with that of four US women religious workers, murdered in El-Salvador in December 1980.
While the American public never came to know who all these other victims were and what had happened to them, the coverage of the Popieluszko murder not only dwarfed that of these unworthy victims; it also constituted a major episode of news management and Western propaganda.
The New York Times featured the Popieluszko murder on its front page on ten different occasions, and the intensity of coverage assured that its readers would know who Popieluszko was, that he had been murdered, and that this sordid violence had occurred in a Communist state.
By contrast, the public saw no mention of the likes of Father Augusto Ramirez Monasterio, murdered in Guatemala in November 1983, or Father Miguel Angel Montufar, a Guatemalan priest who disappeared in the same month that Popieluszko was killed in Poland, or literally dozens of other religious murder victims in Latin America, sometimes given prominent coverage in the local press of the countries in which their murders took place.
Herman and Chomsky wrote, "While the coverage of the worthy victim was generous with gory details and quoted expressions of outrage and demands for justice, the coverage of the unworthy victims was always low-keyed, designed to keep the lid on emotions and evoking regretful and philosophical generalities on the omnipresence of violence and the inherent tragedy of human life."
Added to the ten news reports on the Popieluszko murder by The New York Times were three editorials - all denouncing the Poles, and there was no single editorial denunciation for the murders of the unworthy victims from Latin America.
The conclusion made by Chomsky and Herman was that the coverage of the Popieluszko murder exceeded that of the entire set of one hundred unworthy victims taken together.
In fact the coverage of the Popieluszko murder exceeded that of all the many hundreds of religious victims murdered in Latin America since World War 11.
The study concluded that a priest murdered in Latin America was worth less than a hundredth of a priest murdered in Poland, despite that Poland is way farther away from the US than Latin America.
This tradition of injustice and bias by mainstream Western media is not going to go away for as long as the sabre-rattling Western foreign policy is not discredited, resisted and discontinued.
We are likely to see more as the imperial authority shows determination to fight for the control of African resources in the wake of the BRIC and IndoChina influence.
Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on reason@rwafawarova.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or wafawarova@ yahoo.co.uk or visit www.rwafawarova.com

Morgan Tsvangirai's travesty of democracy

Thus the workers' cause that had been stolen by Tsvangirai was in turn pilfered by the West who saw an opportunity to make a go at President Mugabe who, not satisfied with defeating colonialism, sought to challenge the white status quo by redistributing the land.
The Herald
Book Review By Tichaona Zindoga
Title: A travesty of democracy...The untold story
Author: David Muzhuzha
Publisher: Jovid Press (2010).


AFTER Government ill-advisedly adopted the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme at the behest of the Bretton Woods Institutions in 1990, resultant socio-economic problems provided a fertile ground for an agitated working class.
This is one group that bore the brunt of retrenchments, cuts in social service spending and felt, largely justifiably so, that the revolutionary Zanu-PF party which made the Government had abandoned them for a dalliance with former colonisers who make the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
And so, apart from the pent-up emotions that registered themselves as strikes and boycotts, there were other seemingly bona fide "Beyond ESAP" discussions that focused on reclaiming the workers lost glory and humanity.
In all this, the person of Morgan Tsvangirai, the former office orderly at a Mine in Shamva who had risen to the helm of the trade unions mother body, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, rose.
But just as the workers were expecting the improvement of their material being, using the vehicle of labour on the negotiating table with Government and the employers, Tsvangirai had other ideas.
Journalist David Muzhuzha, who was editor at the ZCTU monthly publication, The Worker at the time and saw the launch of the Movement for Democratic Change in 1999 in the belly of the worker body, illustrates how Tsvangirai pilfered the cause of the worker for his own greedy political good.
He relates how the Working People's Conventions in early 1999, tasked with discussing the "Beyond Esap" programmes, were turned by Tsvangirai and his tribal loyalists (we shall discuss this aspect in detail) and a few non-governmental organisations into a vehicle for the creation of the MDC.
A decisive moment came May 8 1999 when ZCTU convened some 100 delegates at the Women's Bureau Centre in Eastlea, Harare, two months after a similar meeting, where the leadership of ZCTU was ostensibly asked by NGOs to form a political party.
Trade unionists are said to have outnumbered all else, including the NGOs that went nowhere in terms of representation beyond their leaders and offices.
Muzhuzha notes: "As it eventually turned out, the labour movement's thinly-veiled pre-convention's desire to form a political party to rival Zanu-PF was endorsed by all participants.
"But the final position was carefully crafted to appear as if the ZCTU had been requested by civil society to facilitate the party formation - and not the other way round!"
Muzhuzha insinuates he even suggested the name "Movement for Democratic Change" which was eventually officially adopted (pp16).
The result of this fraud all but beamed in the face of Tsvangirai - and in his gait too, which Muzhuzha reports that "it was clear from his new-found stride that that the convention had tightened his grip on the promising political outcome".
Tsvangirai would not have had such a prospect at the National Constitutional Assembly where he earlier had been chairman, what with the educated arrogance that abounded there among lawyers and other lettered personalities vis-a-vis his own educational limitations.
Thus begun in earnest Tsvangirai's political journey with the formation of the MDC, its launch, growth and what Tsvangirai is today - the Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe.
But gone also were the pretensions at representing workers, which run to this day when the same workers, informed by his empty promises, have not seen anything tangible from his premiership.
In fact, Tsvangirai's ally, Finance Minister and party secretary general Tendai Biti, has consistently refused to award civil servants pay based on the advice of the IMF who ironically sold the bitter Esap.
The one remarkable observation one can make of this book is that it does not make any reference to Tsvangirai's past labour related activities, including his championing of the crippling strikes in 1998/9.
Is it a deliberate effort by Muzhuzha to delete Tsvangirai's pedigree?
While that could be as true, as it is debatable, the symbolic significance of it is palpable.
And we notice the politics-dabbling Tsvangirai abusing Chester House and using its resources and offices to nurture his newly hatched political party.
This saw Tsvangirai leaving Chester House six months after the formation of the MDC.
Not that he didn't have such blessings.
Apart from his cronies at Chester House who saw an opportunity in Tsvangirai's political adventure, Tsvangirai had the support of European and American trade union bodies that clandestinely funded his political run through ZCTU.
The same also facilitated funding for the MDC by sponsoring dubious lectures and seminars from which guest presenters got funds, as much as US$25 000, a major part of which was channelled to MDC.
The intentions of the Western forces are nowhere clearer than in the conversation Muzhuzha reportedly had with the German Fredrick Ebert Stiftung foundation's Dr Traub Merz.
Muzhuzha asked Traub-Merz "to explain why the international donor community appeared oblivious of Tsvangirai's executive shortcomings . . ."
Said Traub-Merz: "We're aware of Morgan's administrative capacity limitations. But, we don't really care much about it because we need him for the politics. Tsvangirai, so far is our best bargaining chip against (President Robert) Mugabe."
Thus the workers' cause that had been stolen by Tsvangirai was in turn pilfered by the West who saw an opportunity to make a go at President Mugabe who, not satisfied with defeating colonialism, sought to challenge the white status quo by redistributing the land.
That was one of the main subjects of the constitutional deliberations that were going on at the time.
So when MDC and its allies in the civil society including the NCA and students unions ensured a "NO" vote in the referendum in February 2000, it was the ultimate step for Tsvangirai and his gang to be accepted and used by the West. That was the "Yellow Card" moment against President Mugabe who could be shown the stands in the forthcoming general election.
The result was the change in fortunes for the MDC and its becoming the rallying point for retrogressive forces of colonial extraction.
Muzhuzha graphically captures it thus:
"I had witnessed the MDC sputter from May 1999 to end (of) January 2000, so, the immediate aftermath of the referendum meant that Tsvangirai and company had delivered their end of the bargain to foreign and local white masters, for a lot of money began to come their way to commence an elaborate campaign against the aspirations of millions of citizens, disguised as a movement for democratic change in Zimbabwe.
"That positive change in the MDC's coffers meant that foreign money, as well as that of local white farmers and industrialists, had started to flow in towards a single agenda that had not been revealed at the May 1999 conventions that led to the birth of the MDC.
"Desperate for to sustain his political agenda, Tsvangirai had rallied his clique and sold out to the same sinister interests behind the ruinous Esap, the oppressive colonial rule, the continued unfair local white privileges and the devastating economic sanctions.
"Indeed all anti-Zimbabwe interests rolled into one gigantic onslaught against the democratic will of millions of Zimbabweans..."
MDC, breaking from Chester House, the labour centre, says Muzhuzha, showed its true colours: "that it was a local white and Western-driven political party headed by a black man without the required national executive capacity to move forward Zimbabwe's desire for democratic change."
The British government, through then British Minister for Africa Lord Triesman, even weighed in support of MDC saying Britain would not sit back and watch anti-Mugabe forces move on their own.
"Unthinkable," he averred, "Of course not."
And that was years before WikiLeaks.
Tsvangirai and his MDC thus became a Trojan horse in challenging the revolutionary Zanu-PF and President Mugabe which eventually led to the formation of the inclusive Government in 2009 after a hung parliament and inconclusive presidential elections.
But the fact that only two members of his party sit in Cabinet, Thokozani Khupe who is the Deputy Premier and labour Minister Paurina Gwanyanya Mpariwa out of a possible 20, speaks a lot about how Tsvangirai has abandoned the workers in the sweet enjoyment of power.

Tsvangirai the tribal dictator
One of the major highlights of "A travesty of democracy" is its portrayal of Tsvangirai as a tribalist who from his days at the ZCTU surrounded himself with loyalists from his Karanga tribe.
As secretary-general and involved in the daily administration, he faced no threat from the likes of Gibson Sibanda, his president who was domiciled in Bulawayo and came but occassionally to Harare.
Even then, the powerful Bulawayo branch was significantly peopled with Karangas.
It is one of those traits in Tsvangirai, which would shame all those who say the man is a democrat.
In fact, his being a dictator and tribalist is said to have caused the split in the party on October 12, 2005.
Some of the familiar names that Tsvangirai had in the ugly tribal embrace at the ZCTU and later at the inaugural congress in January 2000 include Tapiwa Mashakada, Isaac Matongo, Nelson Chamisa, Lucia Matibenga, Tendai Biti, Sekai Holland, Learnmore Jongwe, and Job Sikhala.
He even diluted another Ndebele tribal force that centred along the likes of Sibanda, Fletcher Dulini-Ncube, Welshman Ncube, among others.
Muzhuzha says of Tsvangirai: "so not only is he whole-heartedly fascinated with men and women of his tribe, but he laso sometimes, willy nilly, manipulates his party's processes to favour persons not of similar origins, as long as such persons serve the main selfish interest: to hold the reigns (sic) of power tightly and undisputedly, whereever he goes."
The configuration of Harare's parliamentary seats speaks volumes about Tsvangirai's ways.
Muzhuzha reports that when the MDC made its debut parliamentary fight, of the 20 seats for a cosmopolitan Harare where there were many tribes and colours, no Asian, Coloured, Ndebele, Manyika, Mutoko person made it into the 20 Parly seats reserved for Harare.
Of these, Muzhuzha reports, one went to Zanu-PF and the others save for two which went to Mike Auret and Trudy Stevenson got, went to Tsvangirai's Karanga henchmen.
There was no similar joy for trade unionists who only had two representatives in the line up.
Some things might have changed but the central tribal dynamic subsists with replacement for incumbents being conveniently replaced by Karanga's.
When the inclusive Government line up on Tsvangirai's side was set up, it was as tribally coloured.
These include: Tendai Biti, Elton Mangoma, Tapiwa Mashakada, Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, Paurina Gwanyanya-Mpariwa, Henry Madzorera, Nelson Chamisa, Fidelis Mhashu, Heneri Dzinotyiwei, Jameson Timba, Sekai Holland, Obert Gutu, Sesel Zvidzai, Tichaona Mudzingwa and Tongai Matutu.
Muzhuzha adds that in late August 2010 a mini-reshuffle produced the promotion of Mashakada, Gutu and Matutu.
Such is the politics of Tsvangirai, a clear travesty of democracy that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth from a beautifully written book, written from an insider's perspective.