Saturday, December 31, 2011

Zimbabwe: Beware of the Google types

Now, we have this Charles Ray busy cultivating a false consciousness within our youth, a consciousness that repudiates preceding generations in the name of a better-to-build-young-people false credo. A false consciousness that attaches heroism to a foreigner who has killed kindred spirits, who seems white and American in spite of himself, a privileged exception to an oppressed clan, to an oppressed colour, an exception to an oppressed and repudiated history, a black man conscripted to fight abroad America’s wars of aggression against Third World peoples.
Our youth call that type a hero? Our youth are instigated to repudiate their forebears by such?
The Herald

By Nathaniel Manheru
Picture this: Charles Ray Honoured by Zimbabwe Organisation for Youth in Politics (ZOYP), a “human rights” organisation working with youth at the grassroots. The award, 2011 Diplomatic Human Rights Defender, was given to the American ambassador for, in the words of ZOYP’s national coordinator, one Nkosilathi Moyo, “critical helping hand that Ambassador Ray gave” ZOYP, for which ZOYP notes “with bounteous gratitude”.


What that help was, we are not told. And Moyo goes further, rather rhapsodically: “Here is a man (Ambassador Ray) who on countless occasions removed his ambassadorial resplendence to the level of the ordinary man in the streets all in the name of meeting the Zimbabwean youths at their point of need.”
Not to be outdone, a ZOYP board member, one Patson Dzamara intoned: “It is better to build young people than to repair old men.” By the way, the youthful duo went to the US Embassy to present this mighty award to the Ambassador. They came all the way from KweKwe.

Bawling heroism
Of course the good Ambassador requited the felicitations: “Receiving an award is always a special occasion, but this is made even more special by the true admiration and respect I have for this particular group, ZOYP”. And in a dash of mock-modesty: “The award carries the word “hero”.
But, I am not a hero. The heroes in a struggle for democracy, human rights, equity, or any attempt to remind government of who it serves, are the people and organisations on the ground. The real heroes today are the leaders at ZOYP and other organisations in Zimbabwe and throughout the world, those who work tirelessly to create a space for young voices. The work you are doing is truly heroic and I am pleased to stand with you today.

Stay put, dear youth!
Ambassador Ray urged the youth to press on in their cause: “As leaders, you know the importance of getting involved. Yet, even more important than this, is staying involved. The causes you have taken up will not be accomplished easily or overnight. This is not a sprint, but a marathon, and victory goes to those who continue to run no matter the obstacles or challenges.
My encouragement to you now is this: be ready to hold fast and stay involved. Obstacles will come, challenges are a guarantee. But if you, as young people, persist in making yourselves heard in a voice that is strong and united, if you remain firm in your commitment to living lives of excellence and value, you will persevere.”

From the heart of the land
For the benefit of those who might not have some background on ZOYP, this is a Kwekwe-based youth organisation created by the American Embassy here through MDC-T structures. It is funded by the American Embassy, and has been used by the American Ambassador to test out the responsiveness of Zimbabwean youth to IT-based tools of mobilisation for social action, akin to what happened in North Africa.
This operation began in May and has been on and off, its most dramatic failure being in Kwekwe where the American Ambassador sought to use this group to try out this same experiment outside of Harare. The intended town hall meeting collapsed after Zanu-PF youths who saw through this mobilisation ruse, disrupted it. Nkosilathi Moyo hit the press headlines, rueful, mournfully.

British Ambassador, Father Nigel and licences
I am sure a picture is beginning to emerge. A little more detail. Western commissioned studies have noted that demographically, the youth are the epicentre of the vote for 2012. Apart from tipping provinces which are already earmarked, the other plank is an all-out drive to get the youth registered, indeed to mobilise them initially to vote for MDC-T and, where this fails to secure victory for the MDC, to mobilise them for action.
The American Ambassador, alongside other western ambassadors, are behind this project which is beginning to be paralysed both by a combination of youth indifference and by more aggressive mobilisation of the youth by Zanu- PF. The going has been quite tough, which is why the American Ambassador is urging perseverance.
The whole project badly needs mutual encouragement, which is why this award is important. What is worse, it is beginning to levy huge outlays on the West’s broken economies. But the stakes are high. That is not my story.
I am sure those responsible for handling such foreign-inspired mischief are hard at work, including checkmating Britain’s “excellent” lady here who has been working through Father Nigel Johnson to rig the next round of radio licences. She promises all applicants full financial cover, including start-up capital for such stations. We shall see.


Sex smitten candidate is all we got
My real objective is to reveal the absurd side of American structures here, and how desperate they become once wrong-footed, and thrust into overdrive prematurely. Obviously the Americans are not too sure when elections are coming.
They are working in remarkable panic, more so when they see their protege here fumbling, dramatically tripping on inane, amorous matters in the season of critical choices. Far from seeing a presidential candidate, they find forlorn character, sex-battered.

Theatre of the absurd
Does it not get a bit absurd when a whole American ambassador asks for an award from an organisation which he himself set up, which his own Government funds to achieve the very same objectives for which he was deployed, namely to cause regime change here?
And to have all that gigantic diplomatic award exertion covered by a paper which his Government again set up, which his mission funds to carry his messages, including this speech?
And Ray and his politically henpecked youth parley for heroic greatness, each calling the other “the real hero”? It gets a bit incestuous, does it not?

Much worse, these little politically empty vessels had called Charles Ray their “hero”? My goodness? I suppose Ambassador Ray liberated the Vietnamese? Is here to liberate Zimbabweans? And you cannot miss the quality of that liberation by the consciousness coming through these two youths.
One superlatively thanks Ray for “the critical helping hand”. Hand helping the youth in which critical direction? Or has America widened its hand-holding beyond the MDC-T leader, to include MDC-T youths? Cry the beloved generation then! The other sees in Ray a figure who “builds young people” rather than “repair old men”. Goodness me!
What age is Ray? Why is it only in America that old men are young? Only from America that we get old Ambassadors with the gift of building young African people, while dismantling “old men”, presumably African ones? Whose old men are these who should not be repaired?

The lesson we cannot learn
Certainly not America’s white old men. Otherwise why would America bother to reissue Ronald Reagan after a double death: of the brain while still in office; of body well after office? Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter trudges on, undiminished in America’s estimate. Each year, America splashes new glory on him, adorns him with fresh plumes of resplendent glory. It is always like that for America, a country at peace with its history, and the personages who presided over that history.
That even-handed view of history extols even those men of staggering foibles and handicaps, all redeemed by the national role thrust upon them, however undeservedly. And America knows that after their foibles comes a great narrative, free of human errors, human frailties, human warts, for the sake of her undiminished greatness.
In its timeless narrative, America knows no low points in its national life. In its narrative, America knows no scoundrels, only men of high honour and higher calling. It fought no inglorious wars, invaded no country, assassinated no leaders, oppressed no blacks, stole no country, massacred no one, committed no genocides, pillaged no oil, infected no Guatemalans with STDs, created no germs, unleashed no imperialism. It is all glory, glory, glory and higher glory as America panegyrizes itself, its history and its leadership, indeed as America scales to dizzy heights, all against a mesmerised human crowd.

Repudiating ourselves
Now, we have this Charles Ray busy cultivating a false consciousness within our youth, a consciousness that repudiates preceding generations in the name of a better-to-build-young-people false credo. A false consciousness that attaches heroism to a foreigner who has killed kindred spirits, who seems white and American in spite of himself, a privileged exception to an oppressed clan, to an oppressed colour, an exception to an oppressed and repudiated history, a black man conscripted to fight abroad America’s wars of aggression against Third World peoples.
Our youth call that type a hero? Our youth are instigated to repudiate their forebears by such? And now that it happens that those “old men” who should not be repaired belong to the generation that created a free Zimbabwe, what now Sir Ray and your depraved youths?
This is a repudiation of history, of our origins, of one’s very being, all to transfer identity and reverence to America? Aaaah? You see it from that angle and you realise why this false award has such grave implications for all of us.

A heresy that stinks all the way to heaven
This is the kind of a-historicity which America preaches abroad, often using mouths that bear our colour. A repudiation of parentage, an overwriting of your history for an American one, indeed a joyous soiling of the heroes of your people, your struggles, your history, all for another sense of history, one so deeply Americanised.
You are incited against that history, sponsored to fight it, to organise against it, all in the name of democracy, human rights, equity. And all those values which are yours by heroic struggles, by huge sacrifices of your own people, you are made to believe you gratefully owe to America which invented them for lesser mankind, indeed you are made to believe you owe them to Ambassador Ray, even though he only came to this country a few days ago, long after Zimbabwe had become free, freed by black Zimbabweans now fashionably referred to as “old men” in disrepair.
How many died? How man perished before Que Que could become Kwekwe? Do these youths know that? And against whom were they fighting? Against white interests, American interests which saw continued white rule as the only guarantee to continued exploitation of chrome over which America repudiated sanctions against Rhodesia. How does a country with such a shameful history vis-a-vis our struggles here, ever produce a representative we can call a hero? For those filthy trinkets? I am disgusted.

Resplendence and sanctions
Lest I get overworked, I need to make a larger point. While these two youths were busy decorating Ray and his country, America was busy de-listing two strategic Zimbabwean companies from trade by adding them on its sanctions list. Ignorant America would never know Mbada, would never know Marange Resources, small companies located in some little, great country called Zimbabwe.
It is America’s mission here — headed by one Charles Ray — who tells America that there is Mbada, that there is Marange Resources, both trading in KPCS-certified diamonds which belong solely to some small but sovereign African country called Zimbabwe. It is America’s mission here — again headed by one Charles Ray — which tells the spiteful American government that unlike Chrome under white Rhodesia, those diamonds are benefiting an African government for an African people under some man called Robert Mugabe: old, black, African and consummately anti-imperialist.
It is Ray, in other words, who counsels the American Government to include our companies on their sanctions, all to disable Zimbabwe. Then you hear some strange youth, drunk by a dollar or two from the American ambassador, radiantly asserting that the same evil ambassador “removes his ambassadorial resplendence . . . to meet the Zimbabwean youths at their point of need”? My goodness. You reward a man who has robbed your country, you, of a prosperous future?

What even Newsday could not support
Not even Newsday, another American funded project here, could agree. Here is their editorial comment only yesterday: “The recent addition of Mbada Diamonds and Marange Resources to the United States sanctions list is the clearest indication yet that Zimbabwe’s erstwhile enemies in the West will do anything to make sure they suffocate the nation’s attempts to extricate itself from the effects of sanctions.
“The latest development, coming barely two months after the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) approved the sale of the country’s gems, is an indication of the double standards that have become the hallmark of countries of the West.” As if to help it’s cousins (ZOYP) in American sponsorship, Newsday adds: “The government anticipates $600m in additional revenue from diamond sales in 2012, which is earmarked to go towards social services that benefit the masses directly. What will become of these programmes if the funds do not come through? Is this not punishing the ordinary people who have been hopeful that their basic needs will be met and their meager salaries improved?”
The editorial clearly questions US’ fatuous assertion to have “the interests of the ordinary people of Zimbabwe at heart as they claim”. Is it not instructive that even this American sponsored organ found American sanctions just too repugnant?
Indeed, could this be the beginning of an awareness that Zimbabwean citizens, corporate ones included, stand to get better rewards from a thriving and therefore advertising Mbada and economy, than from small rolls of newsprint, spasmodic salaries, little T&S from USAID, apart from the vast thought control from USAID and Charles Ray personally? If that is so, then the days of illegal sanctions are clearly numbered.

The day the Pharaohs rebelled
Whichever way, I take great heart from Egypt, the land of the African pyramids. Two days ago, the Supreme Council of the Military, Egypt’s usually pro-American ruling military junta, decided it has had enough of gross American interference, all done in the name of promoting human rights, democracy and all. One morning, the army was mobilized to freeze operations of 17 NGOs, principally National Democratic Institute (NDI), International Republican Institute (IRI) and Freedom House from America. The rest were little Egyptian pretexts Americans had created, pretexts like ZOYP, created and locally staffed and American funded to create an illusion of a national civic society movement through which to influence national politics towards the preservation of America's global interests. All those 17 NGOs were severely quartered, to great American diplomatic howl. But the stubborn generals are unmoved. However wrong they may be politically, on this one matter the generals are correct, and have opened a new chapter in Africa-US relations on the continent. When America's pernicious instruments of intrusion and influence get rejected even in her client states, what more elsewhere? An all those institutes of deadly intrusion have been at work here, playing cat and mouse with the authorities in Zimbabwe.

Buffeting Africa
What is the grand plan? Well, simply to fashion the world after American and western values. To make it quiescent to western interests and whims. To make the world safe for western and American interests and dominance. It is not any human right, any democracy, any equity which America seeks to give us willy nilly, through organizations like ZOYP. Rather, it is America's democracy. Human rights and equity the American way. And today Africa is a battle ground for competing models. America has her own definition, her own models. Europe has hers. Africa has to content with both, willy nilly.


Enter the Google generation
Here is Tony Blair only a few days back, reflecting on the fate of the lesser peoples from the lesser world. Remonstrating with the West for showing reticence in supporting what he termed "liberal and democratic elements" in the Middle East and North Africa, Blair depicted the lesser world as split between two contending forces: "One is what I would call liberal democratic elements, what I would call the sort of Google types who were initially out in Tahrir Square, the up and coming, aspiring kind of middle class people who want the same type of things we want, the freedoms we want. Then you have got this Islamist movement, in the Muslim Brotherhood, which is very well organized, and where frankly, it is not clear that they want the same things as us and it is not clear that the type of democracy they would create would be genuine democracy." And for him, the tragedy was that "the more religious and extreme elements are very well organized and the liberal and democratic types basically aren't". He then called on the West to support the liberal type, the Google type. Like ZOYP? Clearly the democratic touchstone is "the same type of things we [the West] want", the "freedoms we want". Needless to say it cannot be that type of freedom or democracy which allows Robert Mugabe, Tony Blair and George Bush to coexist as equal Presidents of their respective different but equally sovereign nations. This is what the West and rest of us means, the kind of values which Ray is here to promote, here to inculcate in our youth. And he is right: this cannot be a sprint, but a marathon requiring lots of perseverance.

Exit the Google type, enter new history
Yet all is not lost, as Blair' s lamentation clear show. The native is about to return, smashing the Google type. After all the West, having long lost the moral high ground, has since lost its soft power hold over us. And it being an era of resources, a Third World era in other words, these backward Google types shall soon join the terraces as Africa marches forward - unstopped, unstoppable - its old men in tow, well repaired through a new history, through new times. Icho!
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw

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