Ouattara’s Nato demands on Cote d’Ivoire

And from that hotel protected by foreigners, Ouattara wants the population starved to death for refusing to stage an uprising to install him on behalf of Nato. In other words Ouattara, in relation to the people, is no different from that whore who begged Solomon to cut the one living child into two dead halves so that she, as the false “mother”, would reduce the real mother to the “equal” status of childlessness. Unfortunately the AU Commission is also another whore. Instead of looking for a Solomon to mediate, they rushed to ask that Judas, Raila Odinga, knowing very well that he is another client of the US and EU and would happily deliver the head of Gbagbo on a platter.
The Sunday Mail

African Focus with Tafataona Mahoso
As far back as January 22 2006, I pointed out in this column that the story of Cote d’Ivoire was an important Pan-African story begging for a non-existent Pan-African Press to attend to it and therefore terribly mishandled and misunderstood. Indeed Africa continues to allow the clans of Judas to pretend to play the role of Solomon in African affairs.

The latest episode in this story, on January 25 2011, appeared on Page B5 of the Business Section of The Herald, borrowed from Xinhua. Concluding with the line: “Laurent Gbagbo has rejected Raila Odinga as mediator, saying he is biased,” the story is a classic study in African self-denial, in the sense that the local Press failed to recognise its profound, strategic significance in relations between Africa and the North Atlantic Organisation (Nato) and the European Union (EU).

Alassane Ouattara, the man now claiming to be the only legitimate leader and President of Cote d’Ivoire, is demanding a total economic, financial and commercial blockade against the very same people he claims to have liberated through alleged victory in the disputed 2010 election. This latest demand comes after Ouattara had already called upon the security forces and the workers of Cote d’Ivoire to overthrow incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo’s government. The armed forces, the police and workers ignored that demand. The total blockade demanded by Ouattara is supposed to starve the workers and the security forces into submission. This means Ouattara is eating from somewhere separate from the people.
Seeing that he did not have the popular internal support which he thought he commanded, Ouattara has finally revealed where the base of his “power” is: in Nato, outside Cote d’Ivoire.

This is the meaning of the terse announcement that “Cote d’Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara ordered [sic] the suspension of the country’s cocoa and coffee exports, media reports quoted a statement from Ouattara’s government as saying yesterday.”

What is most impressive about the story is Ouattara’s total reliance on external forces and external factors: the absence of a true, popular base for him in the heartland of Cote d’Ivoire. Ouattara “swore himself in as president;” he is holed up in a hotel, surrounded by a dubious UN force sponsored by Nato; and like Raila Odinga of Kenya, he wants to use this external support and economic crisis to negotiate his way into office without an audit or inquiry into the disputed election, because such an audit might show that his claim to popular electoral victory is hollow. His only claim to power is based on the now tedious Press statement that “Ouattara was backed by the international community including the United Nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the United States and France as a winner of the West African country’s presidential elections, although the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refuses to step down”.

Since when did stepping down become the answer to conflict over a dubious and contested election result? It was determined in Nato as far back as 2006.
What the Press claim does not reveal is the fact that this alleged external support has nothing to do with the alleged electoral victory. The pretence of a 2010 election was merely intended to validate an illegal regime change position taken as far back as mid-January 2006.

The evil of that illegal regime change agenda has now been revealed through Ouattara’s demand on behalf of Nato to have Europe and the US impose a total blockade on the people of Ivory Coast similar to the illegal US blockade of Cuba which was also demanded by Cuban sellouts who reside in Miami, Florida. The only difference between Ouattara’s so-called “government” and the Cuban mafia in Miami, USA, is that Ouattara’s exile is internal; he is exiled in a hotel surrounded by foreigners in his own country.

And from that hotel protected by foreigners, Ouattara wants the population starved to death for refusing to stage an uprising to install him on behalf of Nato. In other words Ouattara, in relation to the people, is no different from that whore who begged Solomon to cut the one living child into two dead halves so that she, as the false “mother”, would reduce the real mother to the “equal” status of childlessness. Unfortunately the AU Commission is also another whore. Instead of looking for a Solomon to mediate, they rushed to ask that Judas, Raila Odinga, knowing very well that he is another client of the US and EU and would happily deliver the head of Gbagbo on a platter. As presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Jacob Zuma of South Africa have pointed out: no mediator of integrity would start by telling only one of the parties in a dispute to commit suicide.

Indeed, it is worth revisiting the Ivorian story as, it was already known in 2006, in order to enable readers to understand the context of Ouattara’s shocking demand for sanctions against the people of Cote d’Ivoire.
The role of the United Nations in Cote d’Ivoire, Lebanon, former Yugoslavia and Iraq has been scandalous. It reminds Africans of the abuse of the same UN by Belgium, the US and their allies in the overthrow and assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the legitimate, popularly elected Prime Minister of Congo in 1960-61.

Zimbabwean patriots have come to appreciate more deeply the need to overhaul the UN after the shocking behaviour of the so-called UN special envoys: Anna Kajamulo Tibaijuka and Jan Egeland, during and after the two envoys’ separate visits to this country in 2005.
The same UN was embroiled in a much worse controversy in 2006 in Cote d’Ivoire, which reminded followers of so-called UN peace-keeping missions of what happened in Baghdad in August 2003, when the resistance to the US-UK occupation of Iraq attacked UN headquarters and killed the UN Secretary-General’s representative and many of his staff.

In the capital of Cote d’Ivoire, in January 2006, Ivorian patriots surrounded the headquarters of the UN because they were incensed by that organisation’s complicity in the Euro-American agenda to maintain the country as a neo-colony by supporting unconstitutional regime change. The event which precipitated the blockade of the UN headquarters in Abidjan was the decision of the imperialist powers to use the UN to terminate Cote d’Ivoire’s parliament and open the way for the imposition of an armed opposition leadership sponsored and funded by France and its Nato allies. That decision exposed the UN and the imperialist powers, underlining the need, not only to change the UN and the African Union but also to push for a second phase of the decolonisation of Cote d’Ivoire. The battle cry has been “national sovereignty” and the UN in 2006 was being accused of dictatorially suspending a national sovereign institution, the parliament of Cote d’Ivoire, in the interest of white imperialist powers and Ouattara’s armed insurgency which is favoured by France and the US.

This stand-off raises grave questions which our media have tended to ignore for a long time.
First, we were told for a long time that the Economic Community of West Africa (Ecowas), which is led by Nigeria, was responsible for overseeing the African or Pan-African agenda in all of West Africa. The same Nigeria was chairing the AU in January 2006. On the surface, therefore, it should have been easy to integrate the West African agenda with the AU agenda to bring about a Pan-African solution to the Ivorian impasse. But that did not happen.

Then, from 2004 to 2006, we were told that then President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa had become the key mediator in Cote d’Ivoire. This was confusing because it was not clear who had asked President Mbeki to mediate and what relationship he had with Ecowas and with the Euro-American interests who wanted a foreign-sponsored regime change in Cote d’Ivoire. What appeared in the media was apparent competition for leadership between Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and South African President Thabo Mbeki, raising questions about the authority of the AU as a Pan-African body. And when Obasanjo sold out former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor to the Europeans and North Americans, it became clear that there was no sovereign Pan-African agenda or strategy in the Ecowas region.

Then there were so-called UN-appointed mediators whom the Ivoirians accused of pushing the Euro-American agenda by strengthening the armed rebels in the North while even daring to suspend a parliament!
Like Raila Odinga, the so-called UN mediators were neither viewed nor accepted as mediators. They were viewed as partisan provocateurs seeking to reduce the government to the same status as the rebels. Even in 2006, the likely scenario to come out of this external intervention was that the rebels would continue to receive weapons while the government was deprived of weapons because of the arms embargo imposed on it. In fact, the French airforce by January 2006 had already helped the rebels by destroying the Ivorian airforce.
These developments raise serious questions about African leadership in West Africa. African leaders cannot say they were not warned about Euro-American plans to use the UN to recolonise Africa for its resources.

While violence in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan has compelled Europe and North America to upgrade the strategic value of African energy resources, the targeting of Africa for recolonisation happened before the current Middle East crisis. The North Atlantic powers developed the recolonisation strategy at the end of the Cold War. The main motive was and still is economic rivalry with Asia.
In 1993 The Herald (December 30) published a leader page article called “Open Western plans for the recolonisation of Africa”, written by Karrim Essack.
Essack said both white liberals and white conservatives in the West agreed on their need to make a moral, political and economic case for recolonisation of the world without using that term.

Among the media used to promote the case were The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Spectator, and Foreign Affairs.
Among the most open and racist advocates of recolonisation was one Paul Johnson, who like the late US Senator Jesse Helms, realised the recolonisation of the world needed to start with the colonisation of the United Nations itself. On January 20 2000, Jesse Helms announced the plan as a scheme to reform the UN and change its ideological orientation to suit the neo-liberal agenda. Paul Johnson said:
“I foresee the UN Security Council using its advanced powers moving into the business of government (as opposed to mere intervention) taking countries into trusteeship for various periods and becoming itself an architect of honest and efficient administration. It will restore the good name of colonialism it once enjoyed.”

In view of this new imperialist function, it means the so-called UN mediators in Cote d’Ivoire had Nato instructions to disband the country’s parliament!
So, according to Johnson, white reactionaries have adopted the UN as an instrument for the rehabilitation of white supremacy.
Then in 1994, Robert Kaplan published a long article in The Atlantic Monthly which, without openly advocating recolonisation as the solution for the problems he outlined, however, provided the data which the recolonisation lobby would need to make its case. The article was entitled “The Coming Anarchy.” This “anarchy” template is the same one being used by CNN, BBC, E-TV, Euro News and other Western media to explain Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Sudan, Darfur and other African situations today.
For example, this is what Kaplan wrote about Cote d’Ivoire:

“Although Sierra Leone is widely regarded as beyond salvage, the Ivory Coast has been considered an African success story, and Abidjan has been called the Paris of West Africa. Success, however, was built on two artificial factors: the high price of cocoa . . . and the talents of a French expatriate community . . . In Abidjan . . . restaurants (now) have stick- and gun- wielding guards who walk you 15 feet or so between your car and the entrance, giving you an eerie taste of what American cities might be like in the future. An Italian ambassador was tied up and robbed at gunpoint in the ambassador’s residence . . . In one instance Ivorian policemen stood by and watched the necklacing (of bandits), afraid to intervene. Each time I went to the Abidjan bus terminus, groups of young men with restless, scanning eyes surrounded my taxi, putting their hands all over the windows, demanding tips for carrying my luggage, even though I had only a rucksack.”

So Africans were guilty of ruining the former Paris of Africa. In other words, for Europe and North America, the issue in Cote d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe is not sovereignty: It is the disappearance of the white settler economy which white visitors used to relish.

This sort of narrative means that white conservatives and liberals are alike in their perception of other countries, other peoples and other cultures. They look at them in terms of how far they go to accommodate white people, make them comfortable, make them rich and treat them as special. The UN is therefore expected to help make the whole world comfortable and enriching for the white man.
Kaplan concluded the section of his article on Cote d’Ivoire:

“The economy has been shrinking since the mid-1980s. Though the French are working assiduously to preserve stability, the Ivory Coast faces a possibility worse than a coup: an anarchic implosion of criminal violence — an urbanised version of what has already happened in Somalia.”
That is why the Western media will never portray Laurent Gbagbo’s demand for sovereignty as legitimate. Then in 2000, John Peck came close to revealing some of the underlying causes of the destabilisation of Africa. In Foreign Policy magazine, Peck authored a piece called “Remilitarising Africa for Corporate Profit: The Pentagon will receive US$15 to US$20 million per year to ensure commercial diplomacy”.

In other words, the US military were given a budget to serve US arms manufacturers as their salesmen. He pointed out that on the so-called “aid” side, the US had a programme called Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA), which had been subjected to some debate. But the military and security equivalent of AGOA was secret. It was called the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI). ACRI is the means by which the US pumps weapons into Africa and helps to train soldiers who become African presidents, such as Paul Kagame of Rwanda. ACRI has since been expanded and renamed Africom under George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

By 2002, it had become clear that the US and its allies were openly pursuing an imperialist agenda without apology. This needed some rationalisation among those people in the West who continued to frown upon imperialism. So one Sebastian Mallaby wrote a piece called “The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States and the Case for Empire”.

The purpose of the article was not only to justify imperialism and recolonisation but also to hide the fact that the US is the biggest contributor to international destabilisation. Mallaby tried to argue that it is unacceptable chaos which forces the US to intervene in the internal affairs of other states. Unfortunately, there is too much evidence to show that the US and its allies hate and destabilise strong and stable governments which try to exercise their sovereignty and autonomy. Iran today is a good example.

SEE ALSO:

Cote d'Ivoire the worst case scenario

Cote d'Ivoire: The worst-case scenario

‘Can democracy be imposed from abroad, and moreover through foreign armed forces? And what would be the cost for the populations, the country, and our region?’ That is ‘the challenge for African leaders and intellectuals alike’, writes Pierre Sane.
Pambazuka News

Mr President,
On the 7th of August 2010 in Abidjan, the Republic of Cote d’Ivoire commemorated the 50th anniversary of its independence with the reserve appropriate to a nation destabilised by the crisis born out of the failed coup and armed rebellion of 2002. President Laurent Gbagbo did reach out to the rebels to initiate a process of reconciliation and engage the country on the road to peace and development. A presidential election organised by the political parties under the supervision of the United Nations was expected to seal this reconciliation, reunite the country and put it back to work. Unfortunately, the meticulously prepared election ended in an impasse, which will have to be one day investigated dispassionately in order to provide unbiased information to the African and international public opinions. But for now the country is threatened with military intervention to ‘dislodge’ Laurent Gbagbo from office. And so, for the first time ever in Africa, one would resort to external forces to ‘restore democracy’ following a polling dispute!

Such a scenario reminds me of Iraq eight years ago.

In Iraq, it all started with a systematic media campaign of disinformation, aiming at conditioning public opinion (the legendary weapons of mass destruction!), together with an abortive attempt to manipulate the UN system, extreme pressures on regional organisations and neighbouring countries, all relayed by local allies who were calling for a war against their own country. The latter had managed to convince the Americans that they would be welcomed ‘with flowers’. However, what was due to be a ‘surgical operation’ became, as time unfolded, a deadly occupation condemned by Senator Barack Obama at the time. There were no weapons of mass destruction, but the civil war than ensued led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, to massive population displacements and colossal destruction, the consequences of which will continue to be felt over the oncoming decades.

Hence, the worst that could happen eventually did.

Comparison is not reason. Cote d’Ivoire is not Iraq; neither can anyone pretend that Laurent Gbagbo is Saddam Hussein, or Alassane Ouattara Ahmed Chalabi. Nevertheless, the threat of intervention is being held up by the French government, supported by some Africans, including a few intellectuals. What is therefore challenging us – African leaders and intellectuals alike – can be worded as follows: Can democracy be imposed from abroad, and moreover through foreign armed forces? And what would be the cost for the populations, the country, and our region? Are those governments pushing neighbouring countries towards intervention suddenly driven by a quest for universal justice for the Ivorian people, and the Africans in general? Would they from now on intervene whenever democracy would be under threat anywhere in Africa? Would they over the oncoming years interfere in any election dispute in Africa (and elsewhere or only in Africa?), and impose the candidate they will have chosen as the winner, and forcibly if necessary?

Should we believe, as French President Jacques Chirac said in January 1990 in Abidjan (already!), that we are unquestionably ‘not mature for democracy’, and that time has come to impose it on us? Just as was imposed on us ‘freewheel liberalism’ through the violence of structural adjustment programmes, or dictatorships through the support to putschists or to the proponents of single party rule. President Chirac was happy to abandon us on the platform of the single party watching the train of history and democracy go by, but his successor, as a little Bush playing in his pré carré, wants us to ‘enter history’ using the most primitive of all rights: Force.

The polling process in Cote d’Ivoire definitely led to a cul-de-sac, but who in Africa can believe for one moment that governments which, from outside the continent, are trying to convince neighbouring countries to commit to the dangerous path of a deadly conflict, are really concerned with scrupulous compliance with the electoral wishes of Ivorian people? In the event of a war, would these governments open their borders to refugees fleeing the conflict? Or more likely establish camps in neighbouring countries and park them there, albeit making ‘generous’ donations to international NGOs who would exhibit their dedication before tearful television cameras? Once peace has returned, will they not embark again in those typical ‘post-conflict’ international conferences with the traditional pledges and never fulfilled commitments, while collecting the benefits of reconstruction deals? Not forgetting, of course, to secure offshore oil platforms, and even to may be find at last the appropriate location for Africom in a new ‘friendly’ country…

Meanwhile, this ‘return to democracy’ will cost the lives of populations in Cote d’Ivoire and in the whole region. The best way to turn them away forever from democracy!

Mr President,

Let us try to consider this worst-case scenario, based on recent historical facts in the region.

First of all, it should be emphasised that any intervention would require clearance by the Security Council, whether under the terms outlined in chapter VII of the United Nations Charter or under the Genocide Convention. Since there is presently in Cote d’Ivoire no threat to regional peace, or even less a threat of genocide, neither Russia nor China would be likely to give their agreement at this time.

So, what sort of intervention? Mr Alassane Ouattara stated on 5 January 2011 before a French television channel that it was a simple matter of ‘removing Laurent Gbagbo from the presidential palace, and taking him away’. To the journalist who then asked him if he did not fear that it would trigger a civil war, he replied: ‘Oh! No… the Ivorians will be dancing in the streets of Abidjan on the following day’! To summarise, removing Laurent Gbagbo and replacing him by Alassane Ouattara would be enough to return to ‘normality’, and peace would be preserved. Alassane Ouattara then added that ‘it has already been done elsewhere’.

Without emphasising the unlawfulness of such an operation, the doubtful legitimacy of a president forcefully brought to office by a foreign power and his future independence from those who will have in fine done so, one can question the plausibility of such a scenario. Or even that of the assassination of Laurent Gbagbo as a prelude to ‘normality’, as was the case for another reluctant character, Laurent Désiré Kabila, murdered exactly ten years ago inside his presidential palace. Otherwise why would such an operation not have been carried out since?

Various sources have mentioned that Nigerian soldiers were already in Bouaké, and that rebels from the Forces Nouvelles had by now infiltrated Abidjan, as well as French members of the Special Forces, that Liberian militia had been deployed, that Angolan fighters, allies of Laurent Gbagbo, were present, not to mention the Ivorian army itself, despised by the major powers, but whose reaction in the event of an intervention remains unpredictable, and the ‘Young Patriots’, whose anti-foreigner exasperation may be pushed to the limits. We have here are all the ingredients for a huge disaster, and this whether the ‘surgical operation’ turns out to be successful or not. And moreover in the presence of the U.N. forces, …who will do what by the way in front of such a blatant aggression?

Mr President,

The worst-case scenario – civil war pursuant to such an operation – should not be wished because the Africans are tired of these deadly conflicts, but would it not be the most plausible? In such an event, how would it be possible to ‘secure’ all the European populations, embassies, businesses and schools? How would we avoid the inter-ethnic carnages, considering the blend of populations in Abidjan and elsewhere in the Centre, West and North of the country? How would anyone coming forward holding a ‘flower’ be distinguished from another approaching with a machine-gun in his back? How to make the difference between a pro-Gbagbo and a pro-Ouattara, a rebel from the Forces Nouvelles and a Liberian militiaman? Just by shooting everyone? (i.e. the traditional collateral damages)? And what about those 7 million or so Ecowas community citizens, whose security would probably not be part of the ‘surgical’ plans of the army commanders? How to prevent the involvement of the armed gangs of the region, from Senegal (Casamance) to Liberia, on the lookout for any conflict or sponsors?

Then, and only then would it be possible to obtain a clearance from the Security Council under the terms of Chapter VII or the Genocide Convention, hence opening the way to a massive foreign intervention and a long lasting occupation in order to ‘maintain regional peace and prevent a genocide’.

Is that the purpose of the ‘surgical operation’?

May be some Ivorians will be dancing on the day after the intervention, but they will all weep a few days later. So will the whole region.

Reason should prevail. War is not the solution for the Ivorians, neither is it for the populations of West Africa, and even less in the interest of democracy. Whether Gbagbo or Ouattara are in office, the Ivorians essentially want to live in peace. And as far as democracy is concerned, it is a right and a forbearing conquest pursuant to the genius of each and every nation. It is built through education, through the evolution and outcome of internal contradictions, and power relations of the moment. Its progress in Africa will not be plain sailing, and will depend on the sincere and perennial attachment of the various actors to the democratic ideal, to the peaceful resolution of conflicts, and to the common engagement to keep foreign powers away from internal political processes. It requires a slow and often chaotic establishment of the rule of law, and respect for the national institutions, however imperfect. Fifty years after African countries regained independence, and after all the soothing speeches made during the commemoration ceremonies, will we accept that a brother country be invaded, occupied and destroyed just because democracy has stumbled? What then is the point of celebrating 50 years?

In my modest opinion, the only way out is direct political dialogue. Let us not be told that an intervention would be the unavoidable consequence of the confiscation of power by Laurent Gbagbo. There is nothing unavoidable here, because peace is not under threat and the populations are not in danger. On the contrary, it is intervention, which would put the populations and regional peace under threat. Once again, the solution can only be found through political dialogue, not a dialogue involving triumph over an opponent without resorting to violence, but a straightforward dialogue leading towards reason, truth, and the superior interest of Cote d’Ivoire. Laurent Gbagbo has already suggested that an international body be set up to assess the electoral process and that the votes be counted again, as has been the case in Haiti. Alassane Ouattara has suggested that a national unity government be set up. Why not take these proposals seriously, and sit around a table, involving members of the Ivoirian civil society? Resorting to such a national dialogue is the only way Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara can forever leave their mark on the African people’s conscience, by refusing that war is brought to their country in order to remain in or access office over the bodies of their fellow countrymen and women. Also, an international community really concerned about the well being of the African populations should support this way of solving the crisis instead of preaching warfare.

As far as ECOWAS is concerned, it should not fight the wrong war. If it genuinely wants to confront the real threats facing our region, it must swiftly tackle the criminal endeavours of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, of the drug dealers attempting to take control of the state in some countries, and of the armed rebels who surf on the development blockages and on the crying inequalities that wreck our societies. The priority for ECOWAS should be to resolutely hasten and deepen the regional integration processes in West Africa, since it is the best way forward to development, democracy, and hence peace.

In 2011, there will be nearly 40 ballots in Africa! Will we be confronted again to foreign powers displaying the traditional and hypocritical ‘two sets of rules’?

You bet!

Yours faithfully,

Pierre SANE
President
Imagine Africa Institute
Paris, 23 January 2011

Industrial democracy and the developing world

The US is notorious for its traditional resort to violence when destroying popular organisations that threaten to offer the majority of the population an opportunity to enter the political arena in general, or to have a say on matters related to the wealth of their respective nations.

Wafawarova Writes

By Reason Wafafwarova
NEIL LEWIS, who was the New York Times diplomatic correspondent in the early 1990s, was once quoted as saying: "The yearning to see American-style democracy duplicated throughout the world has been a persistent theme in American foreign policy."

No belief concerning US foreign policy is more entrenched than what Lewis expressed, and the same is true for Western foreign policy in general, often so sabre rattling in a way that can only be described as appalling.

In fact, the thesis of duplicating US values across the world is hardly ever contested, and it is commonly not even expressed, merely presupposed as the given basis for reasonable discourse on the role of the US in world affairs.

It is the usual what we say goes philosophy.

It is amazing to encounter the amount of faith placed in this doctrine across the world, and the US in this regard considers itself obligated to pass its opinion on whatever happens in each nation state on this planet.

As noted so many times by Noam Chomsky and other progressive writers, it only takes a cursory inspection of the historical record to confirm that the persistent theme in American foreign policy has been the subversion and overthrow of parliamentary regimes.

The US is notorious for its traditional resort to violence when destroying popular organisations that threaten to offer the majority of the population an opportunity to enter the political arena in general, or to have a say on matters related to the wealth of their respective nations.

One such popular organisation that has been targeted for destruction by Washington is Zanu-PF and its leader Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

Nothing was ever the matter with this Zimbabwean political party until they introduced sweeping changes to land ownership in the country, ousting a vast empire of white commercial farmers whose privilege to occupy 75 percent of Zimbabwe’s arable land was based on nothing more than colonial privilege and the colour of their skin.

Since 2000, there is undoubtable determination from the US, the EU and other Western outposts to end the life within Zanu-PF, to criminalise the legacy of that revolutionary party, and indeed to condemn whatever Zanu-PF stands for — even hunting down and persecuting its membership to the last man.

This writer was once served with draft charges based on alleged contraventions of the Rome Statute 1998, and the spurious allegations were all centred on establishing a link between this writer and Zanu-PF, a link supposedly meant to be criminal by its mere definition.

Despite the clear fact that the puerile allegations had no legs to stand on, it was revealing to see that there are some officials in the Australian administration system who baselessly define Zanu-PF as an illegal and criminal entity.

The Zanu-PF leadership seems to be aware of what the West is planning and the party seems ready to save its legacy and to thwart all forms of external meddling in the affairs of Zimbabwe.

While the ideological resolve within Zanu-PF is undoubtable, the economic strategy to sustain the subsequent ideological warfare seems to be dangerously elusive, exposing the party as somewhat an easy punch-bag where even dwarfs like New Zealand with its 4 million people and 65 million sheep can boast of a powerful sting on Zimbabwe.

Zanu-PF largely took Western economic punches without reply for close to a decade, and the only notable reaction has been the plea for a stop to the attacks — expressed so well in the numerous calls for the West to "remove all forms of sanctions on Zimbabwe".

With a massive Chinese and Indian market ready to do business, and with a massive agricultural and mineral resource base across the country, there are no logical bases for the illegal Western economic sanctions to have been allowed to be as ruinous as they became in the last decade.

It is true that credit lines were blocked by Western countries, but instead of waiting for these lines to be reopened as what clearly was the case, Zimbabwe needed to show more initiative by way of policies that would have lured alternative players in the investment sector of the economy.

Efforts to make the Look East Policy work seemed to be louder verbally than they were in practice, and the West only seemed to panic in the beginning, before they convinced themselves that there was no point panicking over what clearly looked like harmless rhetoric.

This argument about Zanu-PF’s shortcomings on matters to do with busting the Western economic sanctions that were illegally imposed on the country is for another day, in its full context with various other factors like corruption and lack of initiative.

What is important for now is to note that the West is trying its best to kill Zanu-PF by economic strangulation because the imperial crusaders have hopelessly lost the ideological war against this revolutionary party.

Zanu-PF has scored countless diplomatic victories against the West at the UN, at the EU-Africa summit, at Sadc, at the AU, at NAM and at many other forums.

Even the most powerful propaganda model executed by Western media has failed to alienate Zanu-PF from other African liberation movements, totally failing to bury the party as a tyrannical organisation.

There is a sense in which the conventional doctrine of Western democracy is somehow tenable and this is what Morgan Tsvangirai is pinning his hopes on.

Western-style democracy effectively means a political system with regular elections but no serious challenge to business rule, or to the rule of Western capitalist corporations.

Western policymakers doubtless yearn to see this system established throughout the world, and Zimbabwe is by no means an exception.

The doctrine is somehow not undermined by the fact that it is routinely violated under a different interpretation of the concept of democracy: as a system in which citizens do not only supposedly enjoy glorious freedoms and rights, but also supposedly play a meaningful part in the management of public affairs.

This facade is maintained by the propaganda model; a powerful machinery that sidelines the majority of the people so that they will be contented with ratifying the decisions of a few elites.

Noam Chomsky once said, "All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume."

The US has conditions and strategic interests they want met before they endorse any political system as a democracy.

These conditions and strategic interests have everything to do with Washington needs and rarely do they ever have anything to do with the aspirations and needs of the people within the affected countries.

In the client states established by the US across the developing world, the so-called Third World, the preference for democratic forms is often largely a matter of public relations, except in a few cases where the society might be stable and privilege for capital is secure.

Corporations want developing states to subsidise research and development, production and export, to rely on foreign aid programmes, to have their markets regulated regulate by the likes of the IMF, to ensure a favourable climate for business operations abroad, and in many ways to serve as welfare states for the wealthy investors within them.

What the Western elites do not want is for the state to have the power to interfere with the prerogatives of owners and managers of corporations. That is defined as "tyrannical policies".

The concerns about the security of corporations lead to support for democratic forms, as long as business dominance over the political system is secure.

There cannot be any democratic forms in Zimbabwe by Western standards for as long as the people-based economic empowerment policies introduced by Zanu-PF are in place.

If a country satisfies certain basic conditions required by the West, then, the US and its allies are tolerant on that country’s democratic forms.

This tolerance is barely predictable in African countries, where a proper outcome is hard to guarantee, mainly because of the unpredictable political characters that occasionally arise and fall within the African political system.

Relations by the US to the industrialised world show clearly that the US is not opposed to democratic forms as such.

In the stable business-dominated Western democracies we do not see the US carrying out programmes of subversion, terror, or military assault as we see the US doing in developing countries.

There are a few exceptions, and a good example of that was noted by Noam Chomsky when he wrote about "the abundant evidence that the CIA was fully involved in a virtual coup that overturned the Whitlam Labour government in Australia in 1975, when it was feared that Whitlam was likely to interfere with Washington’s military and intelligence bases in Australia".

Perhaps the WikiLeaks document revealing that the US regarded Kevin Rudd as "a control freak" who had "an overriding hand" over foreign affairs when he was Australian Prime Minister may be indicating that the US could have done another Whitlam on Rudd, especially when one considers that Rudd was going for 40 percent taxation on mining corporations that are making super profits in Australia.

He was downed by a backstabbing coup led by his then Deputy, Julia Gillard, who is now Prime Minister.

Other examples include the large scale CIA interference in Italian politics once.

The congressional Pike Report was leaked in 1976, citing a subsidy of over US$65 million to approved political parties and affiliates from 1948 through the early 1970s.

In 1976, the Aldo Moro government fell in Italy after revelations that the CIA had spent US$6 million to support anti-communist candidates.

This was the time European Communist parties were moving towards independent pluralistic democratic tendencies.

Close links between Washington and the Italian ultra-right can be traced back to the strong US support for Mussolini’s Fascist takeover in 1922.

Then the US strategic interests were centred on the fight against the "evil" communists.

After the Cold War, the general trend has been that of the US support for industrial democracies, with all acts of hostilities and subversion now targeted at developing countries like North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela or Zimbabwe — countries ordinarily persecuted for putting the interests of their own people ahead of those of Western corporations.

When we evaluate historical evidence, due care must always be taken.

It is one thing to overthrow the democratic government of Guatemala as what happened to Jacobo Arbenzi Guzman, before the US maintained the rule of an array of murderous gangsters for over three decades.

Or as what happened when the US helped lay the groundwork for a coup and successful mass slaughter in Indonesia.

It is a totally different thing to duplicate these brutal successes in well-established societies.

It is not only the lack of means that stops the US from establishing military dictatorships and death squads in industrial societies.

Largely these societies do comply with the demands of White House in terms of US strategic interests.

And most, if not all of these industrial democracies do follow the US in all of Washington’s murderous aggressions on countries considered to be of lesser peoples, the Iraqs and Afghanistans of this world.

The US does not have enough power to overthrow the Chinese Government but will try to curtail Chinese influence by spreading American-style democracy in as many of the smaller states as possible, and this explains why the US wants to have a say over about each and every government that gets into power across the world.

There is always a comment from the White House after each election and this is by imperial design.

For Zanu-PF, the only democracy that will be acknowledged by the US and her Western allies is a democracy that will allow Western capital to dominate all industry in Zimbabwe; short of that there cannot be any democracy in the country. In the absence of a background of Western economic dominance, the West will never respect whatever form of government may come up in Zimbabwe.

When MDC-T talks of bringing change, what they mean is a change to compliance with Western dictates and direction — all in line with the sabre-rattling goals of US foreign policy.

The leaked diplomatic cables are very clear about these goals and about the role of MDC-T in trying to achieve them.

It is incumbent upon Zimbabweans to choose for themselves a democracy that suits the needs and aspirations of the Zimbabwean people, needs as was the land before it was redistributed to the masses.

MDC-T claims each day that what the people of Zimbabwe want are not resources and wealth but "freedom and democracy", and Zanu-PF’s ideology is always based on the economic empowerment of the indigenous person.

The people of Zimbabwe have a choice to make.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawarova.com or visit www.rwafawarova.com

MDC: when posts matter more than policy

In a word, Ncube and his MDC should prove to us that it is more than a case of "handing power to the next generation", or fighting "pseudo-democrats and hypocrites" with "herd mentality", as Ncube said in his acceptance speech after the congress.

The Herald

Power Play...Arthur Mutambara (R) and Welshman Ncube

By Tichaona Zindoga
MANY observers might have been left surprised that Professor Welshman Ncube, the new frontman of the "smaller" faction of the MDC, wants so much to be one of Zimbabwe’s two deputy prime ministers even if means it is "just for a day".

He revealed this recently after the party’s National Standing Committee, whose feeling, he modestly told the world, strongly effected to him replacing Professor Arthur Mutambara in Government.


Understandably, he is opposed to the idea of having elections this year, as largely expected. By the way, Mutambara, the same man Ncube invited out of his robotics career abroad, has fallen foul of the politics of his party and already knew his fate was sealed even before the congress on January 8-9.

This was after the majority of the provinces had made known their intentions to back Ncube for the presidency.

The politics of the party to which Mutambara fell foul might be the politics of tribalism, which is quite conspicuous given the regional vibes it is, or has been portrayed as, carrying; or that Mutambara was not quite the radical anti-nationalist he was supposed or hoped to be.

In the former case, his very leadership slighted those that had sent their children abroad to be leaders of and from the region rather than play second fiddle of other ethnicity.

In which case, after January 8 and 9, even the dead might be having some modicum of appeasement that their learned children and grandchildren are well on course for the so-called and much hoped for "Ndebele presidency".

On the other hand, as the saying about pointing fingers goes, those elements in the party alleging tribalism have only shown to be the other side of the coin.

And if truth be told, there is precious little to suggest that they are tribally-accommodating, witness their very own composition.

In the latter case, Mutambara proved to be his own man, much of an eccentric and enigma by, for example, suggesting at one point that he would want to visit Cuba to see how the people there have heroically endured half a century of United States embargo.

In another breath he would exhort President Robert Mugabe’s "generational results" in the land reform and education in the country.

Now that is all sacrilege for someone tasked to trash the revolutionary history of the country.

Even the United States saw this "danger" in Mutambara with former diplomat here Christopher Dell fearing that Mutambara was "attracted to anti-Western rhetoric".

Dell even dismissed Mutambara as a political "lightweight".

Contrast that with leader of the other faction, Morgan Tsvangirai, whose heavyweight status he earned in the eyes of the West by calling for the ruinous illegal embargo and seeing to it that they are maintained, albeit occasionally calling for their removal with a forked tongue.

Tsvangirai, it will be noted, cannot even bring himself to call the word "sanctions" and instead uses euphemisms and denials like "‘targeted" or "restrictive measures".

Whatever it is that claimed the scalp of Mutambara, if one can say that of the hired gun he arguably was, what has followed his ouster is something not inspiring.

Far from pronouncing matters of policy that the people would want to hear, which would make Ncube and company better leaders and politicians, and less of tribal agitators as has been claimed in some circles, the party has become a battleground for power games.

And Ncube has increasingly been shown to be of a Machiavellian character, one aspect of him that that leaked Charles Dell cable seemed to highlight.

First, it was the former party chair Joubert Mudzumwe who vainly sought to block the congress, citing alleged irregularities, including misuse of party finances, improper selection of delegates to the congress, selective application of discipline and shambolic structures in Bulawayo and Chitungwiza.

Mudzumwe, deputy national organising secretary Morgan Changamire, education secretary Tsitsi Dangarembga and youth chair Costa Chipadza boycotted the congress, accusing Ncube of violating the party’s constitution.

They said they would continue to regard Mutambara as president.

The matter has since spilled into the courts as Mudzumwe along 12 other members seeking to nullify the party’s congress.

Mudzumwe and company, it has emerged, have also written to the other principals, namely President Mugabe and PM Tsvangirai not to accord thhe same respect to the newly-elected Ncube.

On the other hand, four Copac members affiliated to Mudzumwe are fighting to retain their positions as rappoteurs after Ncube cracked the whip and sidelined them from the ongoing process, introducing his own loyalists instead.

The matter is also before the courts.

Whatever comes out of the courts, one cannot help the feeling that not much is bound to come from the decidedly cynical "even-for-one-day" man or his adversaries.

For all that is known, they are mainly a group of unelected somebodies who are trying to ensconce themselves in party structures for their own selfish ends.

As for Ncube, it might be worthwhile for him to dispel this notion by pointing exactly what he has done as industry and commerce minister, which post he has set up for his comrade Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga.

Surely, he has to add some value as a principal?

And the said comrade, Misihairabwi-Mushonga, an unelected somebody as well, should also surely have something to offer for her designated post.

It is to be wondered what value she brings from the regional integration brief she has been holding.

In a word, Ncube and his MDC should prove to us that it is more than a case of "handing power to the next generation", or fighting "pseudo-democrats and hypocrites" with "herd mentality", as Ncube said in his acceptance speech after the congress.

The trick lies in deliverables to the people which, for example, Zanu-PF has promised in indigenisation and economic empowerment among its other revolutionary thrusts, while even the MDC-T, curiously calling the leader "the Head of Government" has promised accountability.

With hindsight, it has been shown that talk is rather cheap.

When Mutambara was "elected" in February 2006, he said: "I, Arthur Oliver Guseni Mutambara, and other democratic forces in Zimbabwe, riding on the shoulders of Sekuru Kaguvi and Mbuya Nehanda today tell (President) Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai that they should shape up or ship out.

"The time has come now for us to take Zimbabweans to the Promised Land. We will not allow Mugabe to ruin this country anymore. It is time that Zimbabwe regained its status among other countries as the breadbasket of the region and not a basket case as it has become through Mugabe's policies."

Ironically, Mutambara was never able to take anyone to the Promised Land (which we take to be some good place and order), in his capacity as MDC-M chief and even when he got into Government "through the back door" as some of his opponents would say.

He could not shape up as he would have wanted his opponents to, and instead, he shipped out of the presidential race in 2008 and ultimately out of his party’s largely unsuccessful if not controversial leadership tenure.

And whatever happened to his favoured "rebranding of Zimbabwe"?

2011 and we are back!!

Compliments of the new year to readers of this blog.
The new year in Zimbabwe promises to be a great one with so many issues on the plate, the biggest of which are impending elections which we are told may come any time this year, which should be preceded by a vote on the new constitution of the land.
So the mood is decidedly, well more or less, in that direction, as stakes are always high in such events and processes.
The reason: on one hand is the revolutionary Zanu-PF, which so far has clearly spelt out the indigenisation and economic empowerment agenda on top of its other revolutionary pursuits such as the land question.
Zanu-Pf looks set to win any election, being grounded in its revolutionary principles and philosophy.
On the other are Western created and sponsored outfits who are only set to follow the agenda already set, vainly seeking to derail a people's march from Western servitude and deprivation.
Already there has been movement in one of these outfits, which development though might not have so much of a bearing in terms of  the body politic.
If anything the one outfit in question is much of a lesser evil for its want of foreign trust or a purchased following.
Zanu-PF can be looked upon to continue fighting the illegal and racist sanctions the West has imposed on the country, at the behest of some politicians, to foment a humanitarian disaster that would force an abdication of Zanu-PF and President Robert Mugabe.
Which point is likely to be another agenda for the party as it not only highlights the treason and treachery of those who called for the sanctions but also strives to help people out of the sanctions-induced quagmire the country has faced.
Continuing with the fight that asserts Zimbabwe's political sovereignty and permanent sovereignty over its resources is one such way.
in Africa, we would also strive to bring to the spotlight the raging questions of the day.
Already, it's been South Sudan and also Tunisia.
It remains to be seen what unravels here and elsewhere and this blog will follow with keen and unapologetic Pan-African and Zimbabwean interest..