Tsvangirai’s letters: the shame, danger

One is repelled by Tsvangirai’s sycophantic exhortation of Bush’s “characteristic determination” when the man evidently expended the same determination for evil ends like invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

    The grovelling Tsvangirai even forgot the history that the US itself had been actively involved in busting UN sanctions against Smith.

He did forget too, that the Bush regime was violating people’s rights at Guantanamo and could never be trusted to lay a healing hand on anybody.

Bush even left his people to perish in Hurricane Katrina.

But the unctuous Tsvangirai, far from thoroughly discrediting himself for his smarmy activities, represents a present and continuing threat to the national security of Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans.

If the country could count itself lucky to have survived a Chapter VII, as calls for the same were made as lately as 2008, sanctions that the US maintains, as conducted by Tsvangirai, represent a real danger.

It is clear that the “leverage” that Tsvangirai talks about is the suffering or screaming of people which amounts at best to threatening the power of President Mugabe and worst fomenting a humanitarian disaster or civil strife in the country.

By Tichaona Zindoga
It is hardly news to know, as the world recently did through a batch of Wikileaks on Zimbabwe, that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai works with hostile outsiders to achieve regime change in the country.

Such revelations only serve to confirm that which is already known in Zimbabwe and outside that the MDC-T leader is what some would pointedly call a Western puppet.

Where that description seems unpalatable, there is a wish that the former trade union leader would divest of the manifest Western influence which only serves to provide fodder to his detractors.

On the other hand, Tsvangirai’s actions lead to the recognition that he is a national security threat, the same actions being basically what would pass for treason.

But there is something fundamentally dangerous about the MDC leader, as revealed in what The Sunday Mail dubbed “Tsvangirai’s letters of shame.”

Consider for example his October 16, 2002 letter to the then US President George W Bush.

Similar text of this letter were sent to former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter; then US ambassador to the UN Ambassador John Negroponte; Representatives Ed Royce and Donald Payne; Senators Thomas Daschle and Chester Trent Lott; Reverend Jesse Jackson and Chester Crocker.

A cursory look at this list shows men of dangerous imperialist credentials like Negroponte, former intelligence director and US ambassador to Iraq, while the likes of Donald Payne and Chester Crocker were heavily involved with sanctions against Zimbabwe.

 Lott is credited for pushing for US military expansion, as he worked with Pentagon.

Jackson, a well-known civil rights activist, provided wolf in sheepskins, just as the missionary of yore did to colonialism.

In this shameful letter Tsvangirai invited the United Nations Security Council to institute a war against Zimbabwe based on Article 39 (Chapter VII Powers) of the United Nations Charter.

Using the well-worn criminalisation catchword, Tsvangirai claimed that the “Mugabe regime” was “carrying out crimes against humanity as a means of subjugating the people of Zimbabwe and denying them the right to freely determine their own destiny.”

Wrote Tsvangirai: “Crimes that rival fascism and Nazism in scale and wickedness are being committed daily, not by an occupying force, but by a supposedly sovereign government of the country.”

He then called on for investigation into “the gross human rights abuses and crimes against humanity”; “state-sponsored violence and the breakdown of the rule of law”; and “the denial of food relief to suspected political opponents and the consequent mass starvation”.

Tsvangirai also likened the “Mugabe regime” with that of Rhodesian strongman Ian Smith who fashioned a rogue regime out of what was termed the Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

The UNSC slapped Smith with sanctions
in 1966, which Tsvangirai wanted replicated in Zimbabwe.

Tsvangirai then beseeched Bush: “We therefore urgently appeal to you, Mr President, as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, to act with your characteristic determination to put a stop to the violent abuse of human rights and the carnage that is going on and assist in the process of laying a healing hand on the country and its tortured people.”

It is important to read this letter of shame with the other one that Tsvangirai wrote to Bush’s successor, Barack Obama.

One of the key highlights of the December 21, 2009 letter is Tsvangirai’s call for the US to maintain its sanctions regime – the Zimbabwe democracy and Economic Recovery Act – “striking a careful balance between retaining leverage and rewarding progress.”

 Characteristically, Tsvangirai thanks Obama for working behind the scenes with another foreign power, South Africa and its leader Jacob Zuma to influence events here.

Tsvangirai’s “letters of shame” – and one can sense a pun here – demonstrate that he is a shameless politician who will go to great lengths to access power.

It is hard to reconcile Tsvangirai’s claims of “crimes against humanity” as supposedly committed in Zimbabwe without him providing the slightest evidence to back that.

In fact, at the time he wrote to Bush, his party had claimed no more than 100 deaths of his supporters in the previous elections.

The number was as liberal as could be given the propensity of Tsvangirai’s party to overstate such numbers just to play the victim.

This has led observers to remark upon MDC’s “morbid” preoccupation with dead bodies to the extent of claiming those who died naturally to have been their own killed in political violence.

  It is surprising that Tsvangirai could call on for an investigation into “crimes that rival fascism and Nazism in scale and wickedness” that were “being committed daily” when it is known that these crimes as the world saw them being committed in the West, could well speak for themselves.

It is little wonder then that the leaders that Tsvangirai appealed to did not heed the call, certainly not because of their goodness but because the allegations did not hold any water at all.

As for Bush, he chose to invade Iraq the following year where “better” lies on weapons of mass destruction had been spun to pave way for the invasion of that country.

He went on to do just what Tsvangirai falsely accused President Mugabe of doing here, namely violent abuse of human rights and carnage and torture of innocent people.

 One is repelled by Tsvangirai’s sycophantic exhortation of Bush’s “characteristic determination” when the man evidently expended the same determination for evil ends like invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

    The grovelling Tsvangirai even forgot the history that the US itself had been actively involved in busting UN sanctions against Smith.

He did forget too, that the Bush regime was violating people’s rights at Guantanamo and could never be trusted to lay a healing hand on anybody.

Bush even left his people to perish in Hurricane Katrina.

But the unctuous Tsvangirai, far from thoroughly discrediting himself for his smarmy activities, represents a present and continuing threat to the national security of Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans.

If the country could count itself lucky to have survived a Chapter VII, as calls for the same were made as lately as 2008, sanctions that the US maintains, as conducted by Tsvangirai, represent a real danger.

It is clear that the “leverage” that Tsvangirai talks about is the suffering or screaming of people which amounts at best to threatening the power of President Mugabe and worst fomenting a humanitarian disaster or civil strife in the country.

 A politician that behaves in such a Machiavellian manner is clearly a threat to national security.

Tsvangirai and his party have thrived on the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe which Tsvangirai and his party contrive to attribute to President Mugabe and Zanu-PF.

Tsvangirai, in the real fashion of the devil, goes even further to taunt his victims saying they will suffer even more.

 “Muchasaisisa!” promises the sadistic Tsvangirai.

 If this is not a threat to national security, which in any sane world should be appropriately censored, then nothing is.

One other thing that makes Tsvangirai a national security threat is his working with foreign powers to effect regime change in Zimbabwe.

 It is reprehensible that a politician can be grateful that foreign powers meet in the shadows to discuss how to influence events in his country.

Tsvangirai could be criminally naive, but the regularity with which he acts in a manner that prejudices Zimbabwe’s security points to his being a present and continuing danger.

It would not be very fair on President Zuma to point to what Tsvangirai’s letter without affording him a hearing, but it would not be out of order to express fears over his role on Zimbabwe especially in light of his mediation.

One is bound to think of the likes of Lindiwe Zulu, President Zuma’s international relations advisor and spokesperson of his facilitation team here.

Zulu has conducted herself in a manner that has found question in Zanu-PF, whom she has blatantly and undiplomatically described as daydreaming on the issue of elections which the party is demanding, while she has found favour with the MDC formations.

The favour she has also found with Western-sponsored media here also seems to speak of how she resonates with the foreign agenda of the MDC in which the media has mutual funding.

   

West on recolonisation of Africa: Thabo Mbeki

Led specifically by the ‘post-modern countries’ of France, the UK and the US, the UN Security Council authorised the current NATO military operation against Libya, which has absolutely nothing to do with helping the Libyan people peacefully to resolve the crisis afflicting their country. Rather, it has everything to do with regime change and the assertion of the ‘new kind of imperialism’ which Robert Cooper called for, which was echoed by Bruce Anderson when he wrote of the need for ‘a form of neo-imperialism.’The African Executive

By Thabo Mbeki

There has issued especially, but not accidentally, from various circles in the UK, a call for a ‘new imperialism’ and therefore the ‘recolonisation’ of Africa! Because we considered this to be an obviously preposterous proposition, as a Continent we ignored this voice.

However, the agenda for the ‘recolonisation of Africa’ is a present and actual part of the reality to which we must respond in the context of the uncertain global order which, inevitably, shapes and will continue to shape the future of our Continent.

The argument has been advanced that the process of globalisation has created such interdependence among all nations that the “post-modern world” (Western countries) has a responsibility to ensure the integrity and proper functioning of the global system.

The British diplomat, Robert Cooper, in a 2002 article on “The Post-Modern State” said that one of the “main characteristics of the post-modern world” is achieving “security (that) is based on transparency, mutual openness, interdependence and mutual vulnerability.”
These ‘academic’ views have also been echoed by the media, and have therefore helped to prepare opinion in the ‘post-modern world’ in favour especially of the ‘recolonisation’ of Africa. For instance, in a June 2, 2003 article, Bruce Anderson, columnist of The Independent (London), wrote:

"Africa is a beautiful continent, full of potential and attractive people who deserve so much more than the way in which they are forced to live, and die. Yet it is not clear that the continent can generate its own salvation. It may be necessary to devise a form of neo-imperialism, in which Britain, the U.S. and the other beneficent nations would recruit local leaders and give them guidance to move towards free markets, the rule of law and - ultimately - some viable local version of democracy, while removing them from office in the event of backsliding."

On April 19, 2008 The Times (London) published an article by Matthew Parris entitled ‘The new scramble for Africa begins’ in which he said:
“Fifty years ago the decolonisation of Africa began. The next half-century may see the continent recolonised. But the new imperialism will be less benign. Great powers aren't interested in administering wild places any more, still less in settling them: just raping them. Black gangster governments sponsored by self-interested Asian or Western powers could become the central story in 21st-century African history.”
Another British commentator, Richard Gott, wrote in the New Statesman magazine published on 15 January 2001:

“There is a growing belief, not least within the ranks of latter-day new Labour missionaries, that appears to favour the reconquest of Africa. No one really suggests how this would come about, nor is there a "plan" available for discussion. Yet the implicit suggestion of recent reporting from Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, sometimes echoed in London, is that imperial intervention might indeed be welcomed by peoples threatened with mayhem, anarchy and civil war…

 “What Africa really needs, Maier, (in his book This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis), seems to suggest, is the advice of a new generation of foreign missionaries, imbued with the new, secular religion of good governance and human rights. Men such as Maier himself and R W Johnson would fit the bill admirably. Other contemporary witnesses, the innumerable representatives of the non-governmental and humanitarian organisations that clog the airwaves and pollute the outside world's coverage of African affairs with their endless one-sided accounts of tragedy and disaster, echo the same message.

“With the reporting and analysis of today's Africa in the hands of such people, it is not surprising that public opinion is often confused and disarmed when governments embark on neo-colonial interventions. The new missionaries are much like the old ones, an advance guard preparing the way for military and economic conquest.”

What Richard Gott reported is the setting of a political agenda in the UK, which observation also applies to the rest of the ‘post-modern world’ which would help to create the conditions for Western governments to “embark on neo-colonial interventions.”

The NATO bombardment of Libya is the ultimate outcome and practical expression of the theories advanced by intellectuals such as Robert Cooper and popularised through the Western media by commentators such as Bruce Anderson.

Led specifically by the ‘post-modern countries’ of France, the UK and the US, the UN Security Council authorised the current NATO military operation against Libya, which has absolutely nothing to do with helping the Libyan people peacefully to resolve the crisis afflicting their country. Rather, it has everything to do with regime change and the assertion of the ‘new kind of imperialism’ which Robert Cooper called for, which was echoed by Bruce Anderson when he wrote of the need for ‘a form of neo-imperialism.’

This means that we must understand the role of the proposition of “the Right to Protect”, which has been used to justify military interventions allegedly to protect civilians and advance human rights. Similarly we must put in its proper context the elevation of “international justice,” as represented by the ICC, even above the search for peace to save human lives.

All this fits in perfectly with ‘the new world order’ which Robert Cooper visualised when he wrote: “What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its outline: an imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle.”
This point is emphasised by the reality that many organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group have challenged the arguments used to justify the NATO military action against Libya. In this regard, in an April 14, 2011 article in the Boston Globe newspaper, under the heading, “False pretense for war in Libya?” Alan K. Kuperman said:

“Evidence is now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold…
"Obama insisted that prospects were grim without intervention… Thus, the president concluded, “preventing genocide’’ justified US military action.

“But intervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents…

“Nor did Khadafy ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The “no mercy’’ warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya’s leader promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.’’ Khadafy even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight “to the bitter end.”
All this means that as Africans we must understand the true meaning of the NATO assault against Libya, authorised by the UN Security Council. It is neither an aberration nor a mistake. It constitutes a concrete expression of the systemic ‘neo-imperialist’ resolve to impose on Africa the “world in which the efficient and well governed export stability and liberty, and which is open for investment and growth,” for which Robert Cooper argued.

If the NATO military intervention in Libya succeeds, this will open the way for these countries to use the Libyan experience as a precedent which would encourage them to intervene everywhere else in Africa.   

Thus whatever we do to ‘reposition Africa sustainably in a shifting and uncertain global order,’ we must take on board the present and concrete reality that the Western powers, presenting themselves as ‘the post-modern world,’ are resolved to ensure that they determine the destiny of Africa. They are convinced that they have to act to ensure the integrity of the ‘new world order’ of globalisation whose essence they have defined, and that as Africans, we are incapable of ensuring that our Continent conducts itself in a way that is consistent with the requirement to guarantee this integrity. The Western powers are acting even through military means, to ensure that Africa is governed according to their wishes.

One of the consequences of ‘the new world order’ is the transformation of the vitally important Office of the UN Secretary General into an institution which would systematically ‘(support) initiatives that coincide with American interests,’ rather than those which coincide with the interests of the world community of nations as a whole.

Two of our most urgent and current tasks are to take all necessary steps:

• to mount a united offensive for the defence of the independence of the peoples of Africa and our right to determine our destiny; and,

• to evolve a minimum programme to mobilise the billion Africans into united action to advance our shared interests.

An important part of our response must focus on the implementation of existing Continental decisions including those relating to such matters as democracy and human rights, peace and security and the prevention of genocide and other crimes against humanity.

The challenge we face is seriously to internalise the reality that nobody but ourselves can and should take responsibility for the renaissance of Africa towards which the billion Africans aspire. We have to act together to make our future and think together about what that future will be. When H.E. Ben Mkapa, former President of Tanzania, delivered The Thabo Mbeki Africa Day Lecture at the University of South Africa on Africa Day this year, he said:

“I consider these three freedoms – from food insecurity, from ignorance and from disease – as the fundamental and priority measure of the dignity of African Independence. More emphasis should be given to the war against them. The terrain to fight them must be of our own demarcation. The weapons and terms of their deployment must be of our own determination. The indices of success must be established by us. External support groups whether civil or State, must be selected by us; their deployment too must be monitored by us. The war is fundamentally our own and we can win if we set our sights objectively. This is the first challenge and imperative facing the second generation of African Leaders.”
I could not agree more!

President Mkapa went on to quote what the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere said when he addressed the South African Parliament on 16 October 1997:

“We have to depend upon ourselves, both at national level and at the collective level. Each of our countries will have to rely upon its own human resources and natural material resources for development. But that is not enough. The next area to look at is our collectivity, our working together. We all enhance our capacity to develop if we work together.” 

As Africans we must mobilise ourselves to respond to the challenge starkly posed to us by ‘the new world order’ which demands that we should not merely proclaim our right to self-determination, but indeed act to determine our destiny! - The African Executive

• Writer is former South African President.

Libya: Zim gets it right

While the likes of South Africa have blundered and regretted, as the country now appears to be doing, Zimbabwe has been consistent in its opposition to Western interference.

By Tichaona Zindoga
Zimbawe has sent the Libyan envoy who defected to the rebel  National Transitional Council, packing in a show of Zimbabwe's disregard of the Western-backed movement that overtook Tripoli recently and claimed power.
Taher Elmagrahi who was accredited to Zimbabwe under the Col Muammar Gaddafi government, joined the rebel bandwagon two weeks ago and announced that he recognised the authority of the NTC whose flag he subsequently raised at the Libyan embassy in Harare.
Elmagrahi also took down the official potrait of Col Gaddafi and burned the  country's all-green flag.
However, the Zimbabwe Government, which along with the majority of Afica do not recognise NTC, put its foot down and declared the Libyan envoy persona non grata.
Zimbabwe also withdrew its diplomatic mission in Tripoli.
If leadership and inspiration against the imperialist West, the power behind the rebels, was what lacked the day three African countries South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon, voted for United Nations Security
Council Resolution 1973, Zimbabwe certainly has provided it.
Since the March 19 start of the bombardment of Libya by Nato to ostensibly effect a no fly zone to protect civilians from Col Gaddafi, which no sooner assumed an outlook of regime change, Zimbabwe has been one of the most vocal critics of Westen interference in that country.
Last month, President Mugabe came clear and described Nato as a "terrorist organisation".
He said: President Mugabe said Nato was involved in terrorism as it continued to ignore international law.

"Look at what they are doing in Libya. Nato, against international law, is attacking Libya under the pretext that they are protecting civilians...Now when they do that deliberately and it is exactly what Al Qaeda and the Talibans do. What is the difference in terrorism between what they are doing and what the other states condemn?"

"If it defies international law. It has no rules and those out blatantly wanting to kill, that is terrorism. That's murderous, brazen murder, assassination and who then can set it as a law-abiding organisation? It has lost its legitimacy, it has become terrorism," he said.
President Mugabe added: "And beware, this they can do on any other African country than Libya. We must always be in a state of preparedness."
And when Zimbabwe expelled the Libyan mission, he was merely making clear the statement that he would not support a regime that is born out of terrorism - more so terrorism coming from erstwhile colonisers on a recolonistaion mission.
But there is even more significance in Zimbabwe's actions.
Having stood up against a decade of Western coercion in form of European Union and US sanctions, Zimbabwe increasingly shows how it champions the rights of African people against Western crusaders.
Zimbabwe has refused to support or endorse the West by proxy.
Zimbabwe has refused to sell her soul.
It is little doubt that as the black gold of Libya - oil - is at stake, any country would stand a chance to tap into the well simply by recognising the NTC.
Already other countries in and out of Africa are anticipating deals that would ensconce them within Libya's apparent next regime.
While the likes of South Africa have blundered and regretted, as the country now appears to be doing, Zimbabwe has been consistent in its opposition to Western interference.
Not much has been heard of Nigeria in the aftermath of the death certificate it signed against the Gaddafi government nor from little Gabon.
But an Africa that has long been looking for a super power to go on the global stage is disappointed in South Africa and Nigeria, either of whom many people tipped would get a UN permanent seat for Africa.
The acquiescence of the two countries to Nato's Libyan crusade while two other global powers China and Russia abstained from voting on UNSC
1973 mortified and disquieted Africa and the progressive world.
Yet no matter how profusely they might justify, or for that matter, apologise the damage has been done.

From now, it would be impossible to trust the fate of Africa in the hands of Africa's preeminent states even if the two countries manage to convince - and even apologise - that they had trusted in the sincerity of the west.

This is not only to the infrastructure of Libya and the African lives in it, but also the trust in the so-called big boys of the continent.
While Africa licks its wounds, the west rubs its hands in glee for another Marshal Plan.
Libya, which has a danger of slipping into instability, will also be taxed for the damage it suffered.
Africa will be counting on another step towards recolonisation.
As President Mugabe said, which resonates with many observers, it could be Libya today, but tomorrow it can be any other country in Africa.