MDC's existence is based on a distorted and corrupt view of history whose defining claim is scandalously that the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe started in 2000 when the naked fact is that the year 2000 saw the first fully blown neo-colonial opposition to our independence as a reaction to the historic land reform program.
Besides, all this business about the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe starting with the formation of the MDC is utter nonsense not least because everyone knows that the liberation struggle started in 1890 with the colonisation of our country leading to the First, Second and Third Chimurengas none of which is part of the MDC's milestones.
The Herald
By Professor Jonathan Moyo
IS it true that the Cabinet of the Republic of Zimbabwe has abandoned its constitutional and legal obligations to all Zimbabweans?
And has allowed itself to be compromised by some specific political interests that are hostile to the history and revolutionary legacy of our country to the point of sinking to the trivial and unacceptable level of deciding which song or jingle ZBC will play or not play in the false and temporary name of inclusive politics whose intended essence is in fact dangerously exclusive?
The dynamics of these questions have come to the fore over the last three or so weeks which have seen the embattled MDC-T and its desperate media hacks trying but thankfully failing to brew a neo-colonial storm in a beer scud over what they have been alleging are Zanu-PF jingles, when in fact they are talking about revolutionary songs performed by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir, being aired on ZBC television and radio.
A critical examination of this episode readily reveals the following seven issues which explain not only why Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's party and its media henchmen have been trying to cause a false storm, but also explain why their misplaced objective is doomed to end in grief.
The first issue is that MDC's attack on the revolutionary songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir has mischievously sought to abuse and compromise the Cabinet, which the MDC by reducing it from a serious constitutional body to a political platform.
Hopefully the MDC is not, for whatever reason, now feeling it can move from using the Cabinet as a listening post for Western interests to abusing it as a platform for pushing its nefarious political agenda.
It is totally unacceptable and indeed unconstitutional for political parties whose members are in the highest echelon of the Government to abuse the Cabinet as a platform for deliberating on political issues.
Cabinet is there for public policies and not partisan politics.
Members of political parties that are in Cabinet have no business abusing their presence in that highest policy making body, whose purpose is defined in our Constitution, to make self-serving political decisions.
There is nothing in the GPA, which says that Cabinet should be transformed into a political platform as an expression of the so-called inclusive politics of the current government.
Cabinet is a constitutional body, which is there for everyone including some who may not belong to any of the parties that make up the current government.
In terms of the GPA political issues of the parties to the government are supposed to be handled by JOMIC or the Organ for National Healing and not by Cabinet.
It is laughable that reports of a Cabinet directive against the broadcasting of the revolutionary songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir have thus far been peddled in an underhanded manner as rumours.
Cabinet does not and should not function that way through leaked rumours. Interestingly, the rumours have been published by some cash-strapped newspapers that are distinguishing themselves by seeking to sell news that nobody can trust as a desperate strategy to secure funding from Western donors that founded and fund the MDC.
People can say whatever they want but the bottom line is that Cabinet should not dirty its hands in the music playlist of any broadcaster, whether public or private.
Only banana republics sink that low and Zimbabwe is far better than that.
The second issue is that, despite pretending to be standing on high moral ground with bombastic self-confidence, the MDC and its media hacks have shown nauseating ignorance about the difference between a song and a jingle.
Because this is dictionary stuff which high school students readily find in their student companion, there is no need to waste time pointing out that neither of ZBC's television nor radio has played any jingle featuring the Mbare Chimurenga Choir.
ZBC has aired songs not jingles from the choir.
Ask any fool and they will tell you that, the difference between a song and a jingle is like that of night and day.
A song is a song and a jingle is an audio or audio-visual commercial or advertisement not longer than 90 seconds.
Therefore the fuss from the MDC and its media mouthpieces about jingles that are in fact not there boggles the mind.
If they don't like the songs from the Mbare Chimurenga Choir they should simply say so and that is okay in a democracy but to seek to silence the songs under the false pretext that they are jingles or hateful is not on.
Third, and this is very important to understand, the MDC's existence is based on a distorted and corrupt view of history whose defining claim is scandalously that the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe started in 2000 when the naked fact is that the year 2000 saw the first fully blown neo-colonial opposition to our independence as a reaction to the historic land reform program.
Besides, all this business about the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe starting with the formation of the MDC is utter nonsense not least because everyone knows that the liberation struggle started in 1890 with the colonisation of our country leading to the First, Second and Third Chimurengas none of which is part of the MDC's milestones.
Whereas Zanu-PF represents the articulation of Zimbabwe's history at least since 1890 against colonialism, the MDC represents the negation of that history since 2000 in support of neo-colonialism.
As such the MDC's furore over the broadcasting of the revolutionary songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir, and the resistance to that furore by the nationalist movement, are entirely predictable because the songs fundamentally speak to Zimbabwe's true history which the MDC was specifically formed to challenge as part of a neo-colonial regime-change bid to create a new false history in Zimbabwe to oppose, derail and replace the legacy of our liberation struggle and its achievements since 1890.
In the circumstances, Zimbabweans have a fundamental duty not to allow the temporary spirit of the inclusive government to destroy the permanent spirit of our history and nationhood. An example of the clear and present danger we face was shown two weeks ago when Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who is also the MDC-T's secretary general, shamelessly asserted that his 2010 midterm fiscal policy review presented in Parliament on July 14 was based on "Jeffersonian Principles on agreed inalienable rights -- a counter cyclical political vision that would remain intact irrespective of changes in the political landscape."
What kind of history is this?
That the inclusive government is about implementing and entrenching the principles of Thomas Jefferson in our political system so they remain intact, meaning they stay permanent, regardless of who is in power in our country?
And this is in reference to the same Thomas Jefferson who was a slave owner and who abused his female slaves for sexual gratification with the result of impregnating some of them who ended up with so called illegitimate children?
In any case, who needs Thomas Jefferson to know about inalienable rights since such rights are natural and thus flow from natural justice and not from fornicating imperialists and brutal slave owners?
The point is clear. While the MDC can claim a false history rooted in imperialists and slave owners like Thomas Jefferson, Zimbabwe's history which the Mbare Chimurenga Choir sing about is anti-imperialists and is rooted in our liberation struggle which was against slavery, imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism.
Fourth, the revolutionary songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir are but just one example of the rich legacy of our liberation struggle which Zimbabweans will never ever give up come rain or shine.
It should go without saying that song and dance rank very high among the best media for celebrating and telling the story of our liberation struggle and the trials and tribulations of our independence.
Other relevant media in this regard include literature, film, theatre and educational textbooks.
Although the independence of the United States was declared centuries ago, to this day Hollywood produces movies, television dramas and pop songs about American Independence Day which is July 4.
No politician in the US, let alone the American Cabinet, can have the audacity to attack things or songs connected to July 4 and expect to be taken seriously.
In this vein, who do MDC and its media hacks think they are fooling when they attack ZBC's broadcasting of revolutionary songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir?
Their masters in America and Europe are neither fooled nor impressed because they surely should know better based on what happens in their countries.
Fifth, it is telling that, despite claiming to be in favour of tolerance for diverse views in our country, the mindless attack on the broadcasting of the revolutionary songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir exposes the naked hypocrisy of the MDC and its media hacks on the issue of tolerance and demonstrates with ringing finality that they have a corrupt view of tolerance not least because they routinely label as "hateful" anything they either disagree with or that is based on Zimbabwe's true revolutionary history.
The claim by the MDC and its media hacks that any of the songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir are "hateful" is preposterous to its core.
The preposterous claims have become so reckless that Andrew Moyse's Western donor created and funded Media Monitoring Project (MMPZ), which ironically is supposed to defend free expression as part of its moto and mission, published an editorial comment last week against the songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir carried by all media sell-outs entitled "ZBC displays its slavish loyalty to Zanu-PF" whose total rubbish included the following patently false line: "It can be no coincidence that Nyatsoterera [the album by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir] was produced by the Mahendere Brothers, who participated in [Jonathan] Moyo's notorious 2002 Pax Afro publicity campaign that did so much to damage Zimbabwean society by its promotion of political intolerance, division and hatred."
Well, if this is not sponsored idiocy then nothing is.
Consider the facts.
In the first place it is false that Nyatsoterera was produced by the Mahendere Brothers.
The truth is that it was produced by Amos Mahendere and he is not his brothers but an individual fully entitled to live his life and music profession as an individual.
Tolerance means acknowledging and respecting this fact but of course the MMPZ does not do that. In the second place, there is not a single hateful lyric in Nyatsoterera unless the point is that the truth hurts.
As for the claim that Pax Afro songs, which were released in July 2004 and not in 2002 as alleged by MMPZ, were full of political intolerance, division and hatred, only a racist or ignoramus who is not familiar with the project would say that.
Otherwise who does not know that Pax Afro's project was a compendium of love songs, such as "Let it Play", "I Love You", "Sweet Love", "Uthanda Bani", "Luba Lami", "Happy Anniversary" and "Shine on African Sun"?
Anyone who thinks these and other songs in Pax Afro's 2004 project "did so much to divide Zimbabwean society by [their] promotion of political intolerance, division and hatred" is a plain idiot who has no business telling us anything about Nyatsoterera by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir or anything else for that matter.
Sixth, and to the extent that the MDC and its media hacks are apparently offended by the respect given to President Mugabe in the rendition of the revolutionary songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir in their Nyatsoterera project, it's about time that everyone understood and appreciated that, after everything has been said and done, nobody will ever take away the fact that President Mugabe is the founding leader of the Republic of Zimbabwe after having led the Zanla forces which liberated this country along with Zipra forces led by the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo.
All countries in the world treat their founding leaders with respect and that includes acknowledging their contributions through a variety of media including song and dance.
President Mugabe is to Zimbabwe what George Washington is to the United States.
This is a fact that cannot be wished away and there is nothing about the inclusive government which can take precedent over the fact.
Seventh, the way some media interests have joined the attack on the revolutionary songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir with unprecedented frenzy seals the conclusion that these media are either run by foolish charlatans or treacherous ignoramuses.
This is because of their silence over the partisan broadcasting content, which includes songs and jingles, aired by the American controlled pirate radio station, Studio 7, which illegally broadcasts in Zimbabwe on medium wave with the facilitation of Botswana.
The relevant and far reaching point that should be emphasised here is that under the auspices of the Voice of America, Studio 7 is illegally broadcasting on a medium wave frequency which the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has allocated to the sovereign Republic of Zimbabwe in accordance with the applicable international treaties and protocols. In other words, the Voice of America which broadcasts Studio 7 is squatting on a frequency that the ITU has set aside for Zimbabwe's national use.
The fact that Studio 7 uses a medium wave frequency reserved for Zimbabwe via medium wave transmitters in Botswana means it has illegal national coverage within our territorial boundaries.
This is why it is a pirate station; it is broadcasting in blatant violation of both Zimbabwean law and international law as governed by the ITU.
Now, while the MDC and its media henchmen have been quick to attack ZBC's broadcasting of the revolutionary songs by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir, they have said nothing about the illegal use of the medium wave frequency allocated to Zimbabwe by ITU by Studio 7 on behalf of the MDC.
They have also been silent about the partisan songs and jingles that are aired by that pirate station on a daily basis exclusively for the MDC.
Pirate radio stations remain an unresolved GPA issue along with the evil and illegal economic sanctions.
Given the foregoing, the MDC and its media mouthpieces should forget about ZBC content unless and until there are no pirate radio stations, such as Studio 7, violating our statutes and international law by illegally squatting on our national broadcasting frequencies to churn out hostile propaganda.
For the same reasons Cabinet has a constitutional obligation to uphold Zimbabwean laws.
It would be a gross violation of those laws for the Cabinet to stoop low and ban our revolutionary songs through a misplaced political directive at the behest of the MDC while doing nothing about the MDC's Studio 7.
What is good for the goose should be good for the gander.
In any case, apart from being political nonsense, any Cabinet directive banning our revolutionary songs from ZBC would be unlawful and challengeable in the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, let the permanent spirit of Nyatsoterera rhythms ring loud and true on our national airwaves and well done to ZBC
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Understanding power: Africa’s only hope
There is need for Africans to begin neutralising the traditional strategies and tactics used by dominant imperial Western elites to order, re-order and disorder African consciousness and behaviour. We have to unapologetically and resolutely embark on African-centred strategic and tactical counterattacks.
Wafawarova Writes
By Reason Wafawarova
THE ability of the dominant imperial West to socially manufacture or markedly influence the state of consciousness and conduct in Africans and other non-white communities — to perpetuate white supremacy, is both the source and product of the power relations and inequalities which inhere between races.
The only time white social manufacturing of black consciousness and behaviour will ever come to an end is when the power differentials which make this process possible are equalised or reversed, and that only by black empowerment.
However, the African cannot come to this point unless and until that day is realised when Africa will come to understand the nature of power, and only then will this necessary equation or reversal of power relations begin.
There is a compelling need to understand the social origins and applications of power, and Africans must come to realise that they are as capable of acquiring power and disposing it as are their counterparts from any other race.
We must come to a point as Africans when we can consciously and deliberately choose to acquire and dispose power in our own interests, and in the defence of our own liberty. We need a very pragmatic understanding and application of power as was outlined once by Foucault.
He wrote: "Power is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy, that its effects of domination are attributed not to ‘appropriation’, but to dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, techniques, functions; that one should decipher in it a network of relations, constantly in tension, in activity, rather than a privilege that one might possess; that one should take as its model a perpetual battle rather than a contract regulating a transaction or the conquest of a territory."
In short, Foucault says power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the privilege, acquired or preserved; of the dominant elite. Power is the overall effect of its total strategic positions.
There is need for Africans to begin neutralising the traditional strategies and tactics used by dominant imperial Western elites to order, re-order and disorder African consciousness and behaviour. We have to unapologetically and resolutely embark on African-centred strategic and tactical counterattacks.
There is a metaphysical preparation needed for Africa before we can undertake such countermoves.
We may want to look at specific actions that may need to be embarked on if Africa is to win the power games that disadvantage our people today.
The Reintegration of African History
Many writers have pointed to the need for Africans to rediscover, re-examine and reintegrate the culture and history of our continent. The approaches to African history must in and of themselves conjointly become the vehicles, which facilitate the collective and co-operative action of African peoples in the pursuit of their total liberation.
It is only an appropriate reclamation of African history and culture that will provide Africans with a realistic and supportive vision of reality; with self-knowledge, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-acceptance and self-control.
We need a leadership in Africa that seeks to form empowering affectionate relationships between our people and other races — a leadership that hunts after ability for Africa to engage in proactive, self-interested productive activity. We need a self-enhancing sense of purpose and existential meaningfulness. We have to terminate this assimilationist African leadership that believes that the role of Africa in world economics is to provide natural resources and cheap labour.
Even Finance Minister Tendai Biti seems to be clearly caught up in the racially-created illusion that says white owned ACR will add value to the perception of Zimbabwe’s diamonds than black owned Mbada and Canadile.
When Africa gets to that point of an appropriate understanding of its own history and culture, we then can be assured of an honest and accurate appraisal of our own strengths and needs, as well as those of our counterparts from other races, especially those of Europeans.
It is only this kind of understanding that will provide Africa with the strategic and tactical means to liberate itself from white supremacy.
Managing African Resources
The vulnerability of the economic organisation of the African community to the stresses placed on it by the dominant white supremacist establishment is principally caused by the repression of African centred consciousness and identity.
We are even made to believe that this cruel reality is part of world freedoms and a civilised realisation of property rights. This is purely why Zimbabwe’s reclamation of its colonially stolen farmlands is regarded by Westerners as a violation of property rights.
Post independent Africa is still to achieve the ability to finance and construct the necessary social institutions to educate, train and generally socialise its constituents and provide them with the personal and social competencies which together could successfully mediate, resist, and finally overcome the hegemonic intentions of white supremacy.
It is important for Africans to foster a spirit of African nationalism and in that regard control their internal markets and resources. We need to utilise the resulting proceeds to remediate and finance our entry into international markets.
For this to happen, it is important for Africa to simultaneously pursue control of markets with the rapid and effective African centred education and socialisation of all its constituents, young and old. The scepticism from some Zimbabweans over the viability of the recently proposed indigenisation policies is basically a result of a lack of confidence in African ability, and that in itself is a result of a lack of education and socialisation in self-belief.
Neutralising Western induced pressures
The coping mechanism of African people is stressed by the effects of institutionalised racism and an international relations system driven by inherent injustices. The situation is not made any better by the amplification of an orientation towards dependency and the donor syndrome.
Africa is home to the multi-billion donor run charity industry and that is not in any way a measure of blessing. It is in fact Africa’s greatest curse after slavery and colonialism. Dependency is as crippling and ruinous as any known form of subjugation and oppression.
When a continent emerging from hundreds of years of colonial oppression has a virtual absence of a robust and independent movement that seeks to move away from subjugation, what you end up with is such vulnerability as we have seen through the exploitation we have seen Africa suffer at the hands of predatory aliens hailing from Europe.
The injurious effects of the oppression we have suffered at the hands of whites can only be attenuated if Africa unites in creating an effective economic-cultural bloc that will advance the interests of black people across the world in a way that will see them treated as equals with all other people of this world. We must come to a point where we view oppression-related problems as challenges to be positively solved, and as a heroic opportunity rather than an overpowering and onerous burden.
Africa can today overthrow the weight of white supremacy if we choose to engage in a thorough, honest and revolutionary self-critical analysis of the cognitive, emotional, social, informational, linguistic, economical, physical and environmental barriers which help to maintain the political-economic subordination of our people.
It is within the power of the African community to assert our will to total power and independence.
Reversing Reactionary Forces
We have a worrying problem with the African body politic. Our political leadership is littered with reactionary characters operating entirely on Eurocentric values and dictates, and even openly proud of it all.
We need the African body politic to immerse itself in the centre of an African centred political and cultural force field. This is the only way we can repel the sustained hold on our political leadership by white supremacy.
The energy of the African political being must be redirected from its exhaustive expenditure in the construction and maintenance of reactionary psychological defences and damage control devices to the construction and maintenance of an African centred problem-solving consciousness and identity driven by an indomitable sense of mission.
The enormous energy hosted by the African body politic must be directed toward growth and the creation of opportunities for Africa’s positive expression. This idea of Africans being manipulated by Eurocentric donors in a way that results in our people pursuing the values and interests of aliens must just be discredited and abandoned.
Coping Strategies and Tactics
The consumerist culture of the African today is driven by eurocentrically-induced lacks, deprivations, needs, anxieties and appetites. Our people have an addictive and obsessive pursuit for compulsive consumption of Western vanity and this kills positive African-centred practices, pursuits and pleasures.
We must begin to teach our young people power relations. Our liberation can only come from a deep study and teaching of power-knowledge relations; a teaching of imaginative, creative, strategic and tactical organisation as the keys to power and self-defence.
It takes action to change the status quo of the African. The kind of action that is needed is based on an ability to discern the real issues and causes of the trials and tribulations from within and from outside the African body politic.
Our economists, politicians, business people and the generality of our people must develop an ability to solve African problems based on sound knowledge; on objective appraisals of its situation, and on its intuitive and well-developed ability to undertake conscious, rational, and constructive course of action.
Control of labelling and treatment processes
The interests of oppressors lie in changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them. The more the oppressed can be led to adapt to the ways of the oppressor; the more easily they can be dominated. Oppressors produce a consciousness in the oppressed not only by manipulating their ecological and sociological lifestyles and possibilities but also by naming the world in which both they and the oppressed exist. To name, to label, is to bring into consciousness and therefore to transform consciousness. This is why the Westerner will use every meddling tactic imaginable to dictate the lifestyles of people in other countries.
This the only way the oppressor can control the lives of these people. The Westerner wants to name and label for the African what human rights are, what democracy is, what property rights are, and what rule of law is.
This is done so that he can position himself as the controller of the lives of those for whom he labels things.
The only way Africa can transform the oppressive situation under which we live, and overcome white domination; is to deny and revoke the oppressor’s right to the licence to name the world, to categorise, to classify, or otherwise demarcate the world and people’s behaviour.
Africans must assert their right and power of self-definition — of categorising and classifying the world and the nature of their being in it.
We must come to a point where we can prescribe treatments for our own behaviour and establish the conditions of our lives. African power is defined by liberation, and liberation itself is defined by independent thought and total control of resources and the means of production.
There must be no apologies for independent nationalism and economic empowerment policies. Zimbabwe owes no apology to any single displaced white settler farmer that lost colonially acquired farmland during the Third Chimurenga.
Liberation is no cause for guilt or apologies.
African interests must be centred on African needs and aspirations and there is no
There is no time to empathise with the misfortunes of beneficiaries of oppression and colonial imbalances, especially if such misfortune is in the context of the correction of these injustices.
Our interests as Africans must define our relations with the Westerner and only this attitude will sustain our resolve to regain full control of our continent and its resources.
Wafawarova Writes
By Reason Wafawarova
THE ability of the dominant imperial West to socially manufacture or markedly influence the state of consciousness and conduct in Africans and other non-white communities — to perpetuate white supremacy, is both the source and product of the power relations and inequalities which inhere between races.
The only time white social manufacturing of black consciousness and behaviour will ever come to an end is when the power differentials which make this process possible are equalised or reversed, and that only by black empowerment.
However, the African cannot come to this point unless and until that day is realised when Africa will come to understand the nature of power, and only then will this necessary equation or reversal of power relations begin.
There is a compelling need to understand the social origins and applications of power, and Africans must come to realise that they are as capable of acquiring power and disposing it as are their counterparts from any other race.
We must come to a point as Africans when we can consciously and deliberately choose to acquire and dispose power in our own interests, and in the defence of our own liberty. We need a very pragmatic understanding and application of power as was outlined once by Foucault.
He wrote: "Power is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy, that its effects of domination are attributed not to ‘appropriation’, but to dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, techniques, functions; that one should decipher in it a network of relations, constantly in tension, in activity, rather than a privilege that one might possess; that one should take as its model a perpetual battle rather than a contract regulating a transaction or the conquest of a territory."
In short, Foucault says power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the privilege, acquired or preserved; of the dominant elite. Power is the overall effect of its total strategic positions.
There is need for Africans to begin neutralising the traditional strategies and tactics used by dominant imperial Western elites to order, re-order and disorder African consciousness and behaviour. We have to unapologetically and resolutely embark on African-centred strategic and tactical counterattacks.
There is a metaphysical preparation needed for Africa before we can undertake such countermoves.
Firstly, we need a thorough decolonising of African consciousness and behaviour, and secondly we have to come up with a comprehensive method of organising the African community. We must come to a point when we can count on African capability in creating a collective intelligence and adaptational talent, which in turn will make it possible for Africa to overthrow white supremacy.
We may want to look at specific actions that may need to be embarked on if Africa is to win the power games that disadvantage our people today.
The Reintegration of African History
Many writers have pointed to the need for Africans to rediscover, re-examine and reintegrate the culture and history of our continent. The approaches to African history must in and of themselves conjointly become the vehicles, which facilitate the collective and co-operative action of African peoples in the pursuit of their total liberation.
It is only an appropriate reclamation of African history and culture that will provide Africans with a realistic and supportive vision of reality; with self-knowledge, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-acceptance and self-control.
We need a leadership in Africa that seeks to form empowering affectionate relationships between our people and other races — a leadership that hunts after ability for Africa to engage in proactive, self-interested productive activity. We need a self-enhancing sense of purpose and existential meaningfulness. We have to terminate this assimilationist African leadership that believes that the role of Africa in world economics is to provide natural resources and cheap labour.
The scepticism by Westerners and their black lapdogs over the capacity of black-owned companies to successfully mine Zimbabwe’s diamonds is simply a sad reflection of the African portrait of an unthinking labourer dependant on the ingenuity of his white master.
Even Finance Minister Tendai Biti seems to be clearly caught up in the racially-created illusion that says white owned ACR will add value to the perception of Zimbabwe’s diamonds than black owned Mbada and Canadile.
When Africa gets to that point of an appropriate understanding of its own history and culture, we then can be assured of an honest and accurate appraisal of our own strengths and needs, as well as those of our counterparts from other races, especially those of Europeans.
It is only this kind of understanding that will provide Africa with the strategic and tactical means to liberate itself from white supremacy.
Managing African Resources
The vulnerability of the economic organisation of the African community to the stresses placed on it by the dominant white supremacist establishment is principally caused by the repression of African centred consciousness and identity.
We have a situation where African economic institutions and resources are primarily owned, controlled, and exploited by aliens.
We are even made to believe that this cruel reality is part of world freedoms and a civilised realisation of property rights. This is purely why Zimbabwe’s reclamation of its colonially stolen farmlands is regarded by Westerners as a violation of property rights.
Post independent Africa is still to achieve the ability to finance and construct the necessary social institutions to educate, train and generally socialise its constituents and provide them with the personal and social competencies which together could successfully mediate, resist, and finally overcome the hegemonic intentions of white supremacy.
It is important for Africans to foster a spirit of African nationalism and in that regard control their internal markets and resources. We need to utilise the resulting proceeds to remediate and finance our entry into international markets.
For this to happen, it is important for Africa to simultaneously pursue control of markets with the rapid and effective African centred education and socialisation of all its constituents, young and old. The scepticism from some Zimbabweans over the viability of the recently proposed indigenisation policies is basically a result of a lack of confidence in African ability, and that in itself is a result of a lack of education and socialisation in self-belief.
We need to move as a people towards relative economic independence, towards power and prestige; towards African centred cultural organisation and identity, high levels of personal and social competence. This is the only way we can engage on the forward march towards total liberation.
Neutralising Western induced pressures
The coping mechanism of African people is stressed by the effects of institutionalised racism and an international relations system driven by inherent injustices. The situation is not made any better by the amplification of an orientation towards dependency and the donor syndrome.
Africa is home to the multi-billion donor run charity industry and that is not in any way a measure of blessing. It is in fact Africa’s greatest curse after slavery and colonialism. Dependency is as crippling and ruinous as any known form of subjugation and oppression.
When a continent emerging from hundreds of years of colonial oppression has a virtual absence of a robust and independent movement that seeks to move away from subjugation, what you end up with is such vulnerability as we have seen through the exploitation we have seen Africa suffer at the hands of predatory aliens hailing from Europe.
The injurious effects of the oppression we have suffered at the hands of whites can only be attenuated if Africa unites in creating an effective economic-cultural bloc that will advance the interests of black people across the world in a way that will see them treated as equals with all other people of this world. We must come to a point where we view oppression-related problems as challenges to be positively solved, and as a heroic opportunity rather than an overpowering and onerous burden.
Africa can today overthrow the weight of white supremacy if we choose to engage in a thorough, honest and revolutionary self-critical analysis of the cognitive, emotional, social, informational, linguistic, economical, physical and environmental barriers which help to maintain the political-economic subordination of our people.
It is within the power of the African community to assert our will to total power and independence.
Reversing Reactionary Forces
We have a worrying problem with the African body politic. Our political leadership is littered with reactionary characters operating entirely on Eurocentric values and dictates, and even openly proud of it all.
We need the African body politic to immerse itself in the centre of an African centred political and cultural force field. This is the only way we can repel the sustained hold on our political leadership by white supremacy.
It is time we ensure that we invest in the African body politic the natural African-centred knowledge, consciousness and identity. We have to immediately free the African body politic from its Eurocentric prison, and our political leadership must be denuded of its Western markings, sensibilities, tastes and appetites. We have a duty to restore our mental and physical mechanisms so that we can train ourselves to do and to produce for self.
The energy of the African political being must be redirected from its exhaustive expenditure in the construction and maintenance of reactionary psychological defences and damage control devices to the construction and maintenance of an African centred problem-solving consciousness and identity driven by an indomitable sense of mission.
The enormous energy hosted by the African body politic must be directed toward growth and the creation of opportunities for Africa’s positive expression. This idea of Africans being manipulated by Eurocentric donors in a way that results in our people pursuing the values and interests of aliens must just be discredited and abandoned.
It does not make any sense for a Zimbabwean to be at the forefront of blocking the trading of the country’s diamonds just because they are paid by white supremacists to spend their energy doing so. Neither does it make any sense that the Zimbabwean journalists at The Standard newspaper and its sister papers, the Zimbabwe Independent and NewsDay are paid for fronting the voice of white supremacists of Rhodesian background.
Coping Strategies and Tactics
The consumerist culture of the African today is driven by eurocentrically-induced lacks, deprivations, needs, anxieties and appetites. Our people have an addictive and obsessive pursuit for compulsive consumption of Western vanity and this kills positive African-centred practices, pursuits and pleasures.
We must begin to teach our young people power relations. Our liberation can only come from a deep study and teaching of power-knowledge relations; a teaching of imaginative, creative, strategic and tactical organisation as the keys to power and self-defence.
It takes action to change the status quo of the African. The kind of action that is needed is based on an ability to discern the real issues and causes of the trials and tribulations from within and from outside the African body politic.
Our economists, politicians, business people and the generality of our people must develop an ability to solve African problems based on sound knowledge; on objective appraisals of its situation, and on its intuitive and well-developed ability to undertake conscious, rational, and constructive course of action.
Control of labelling and treatment processes
The interests of oppressors lie in changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them. The more the oppressed can be led to adapt to the ways of the oppressor; the more easily they can be dominated. Oppressors produce a consciousness in the oppressed not only by manipulating their ecological and sociological lifestyles and possibilities but also by naming the world in which both they and the oppressed exist. To name, to label, is to bring into consciousness and therefore to transform consciousness. This is why the Westerner will use every meddling tactic imaginable to dictate the lifestyles of people in other countries.
This the only way the oppressor can control the lives of these people. The Westerner wants to name and label for the African what human rights are, what democracy is, what property rights are, and what rule of law is.
This is done so that he can position himself as the controller of the lives of those for whom he labels things.
The only way Africa can transform the oppressive situation under which we live, and overcome white domination; is to deny and revoke the oppressor’s right to the licence to name the world, to categorise, to classify, or otherwise demarcate the world and people’s behaviour.
Africans must assert their right and power of self-definition — of categorising and classifying the world and the nature of their being in it.
We must come to a point where we can prescribe treatments for our own behaviour and establish the conditions of our lives. African power is defined by liberation, and liberation itself is defined by independent thought and total control of resources and the means of production.
There must be no apologies for independent nationalism and economic empowerment policies. Zimbabwe owes no apology to any single displaced white settler farmer that lost colonially acquired farmland during the Third Chimurenga.
Liberation is no cause for guilt or apologies.
African interests must be centred on African needs and aspirations and there is no
reason to feel bad when Africa reclaims what belongs to it.
Whites did not feel bad when they plundered our wealth and enslaved us and the only morality that must guide African policy is the morality of reclamation and equality.
That is what understanding and utilising power is all about and the guide must be the self-interest of Africa.
There is no time to empathise with the misfortunes of beneficiaries of oppression and colonial imbalances, especially if such misfortune is in the context of the correction of these injustices.
Our interests as Africans must define our relations with the Westerner and only this attitude will sustain our resolve to regain full control of our continent and its resources.
taking "inclusivity" story too far...
i have noticed the indignation of some quarters of the zimbabwean society over the playing of Zanu-PF/president mugabe "praise" songs.
that appears all so bad at face value.
singing for supper, we understand all too well, is quite bad.
then the story has its reverse side: morgan tsavngirai praise songs should also be played.
it is the story of inclusivity, in the name of the current inclusive government forced between zanu pf and the two mdc's.
So while we celebrate zanupf/mugabe historical achievements and standing up to the evil west what exactly are we supposed to celebrate and praise tsvangirai and mdc for?
for their collective betrayal of the revolution championed by zanupf and mugabe, which brought independence, land and now diamonds?
Mugabe is much a heroic persona as an institution and phenomenon in African historical, economic and political justice.
Morgan apparently is none of the above, at worst, and best as an antithesis to the same.
Maybe he is culpable only to the extent of being guilty by association with the West.
But then the West represents all the worst that can happen to Africa.
Slavery, colonialism, capitalism, neocolonialism.
No, there is nothing to celebrate in Morgan Tsvangirai.
His friends are our enemies.
he is feted there, because that is where he is most useful.
there is no reason for us to do the same here.
Morgan tsvangirai's orientation is such that he may undo all the achievements of this our country that certain gallant people delivered from evil.
he was rather timid, or too busy, to do the same.
such is the short history of ours we are supposed to forget.
My foot!
that appears all so bad at face value.
singing for supper, we understand all too well, is quite bad.
then the story has its reverse side: morgan tsavngirai praise songs should also be played.
it is the story of inclusivity, in the name of the current inclusive government forced between zanu pf and the two mdc's.
So while we celebrate zanupf/mugabe historical achievements and standing up to the evil west what exactly are we supposed to celebrate and praise tsvangirai and mdc for?
for their collective betrayal of the revolution championed by zanupf and mugabe, which brought independence, land and now diamonds?
Mugabe is much a heroic persona as an institution and phenomenon in African historical, economic and political justice.
Morgan apparently is none of the above, at worst, and best as an antithesis to the same.
Maybe he is culpable only to the extent of being guilty by association with the West.
But then the West represents all the worst that can happen to Africa.
Slavery, colonialism, capitalism, neocolonialism.
No, there is nothing to celebrate in Morgan Tsvangirai.
His friends are our enemies.
he is feted there, because that is where he is most useful.
there is no reason for us to do the same here.
Morgan tsvangirai's orientation is such that he may undo all the achievements of this our country that certain gallant people delivered from evil.
he was rather timid, or too busy, to do the same.
such is the short history of ours we are supposed to forget.
My foot!
Monday, July 19, 2010
Good prevails over evil...
following on the diamond saga.
Good, zim to sell its diamonds, albeit under the somewhat cynical conditions.
World Diamond Council and all the good people across the world knew diamonds were clean.
Whither Farai Maguwu?
I hear someone says he must be shot, yet another says he is one to be pitied.
I think he is stupid and myopic.
He lines up for the phoney awards, and all the dirty money.
Filthy lucre.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Zim, the general kind of us are in for our clean diamonds.
Maybe Maguwu will, too.
Or perhaps his brother, or his child, or the child of his child.
What was the point after all.
I feel sick.
Mmental slavery is running so deep.
I strongly feel Maguwu should quickly go to the obscurity he came from.
he does not add any value to society.
The bane of African politics.
Zimbabwe politics of regime change.
Good, zim to sell its diamonds, albeit under the somewhat cynical conditions.
World Diamond Council and all the good people across the world knew diamonds were clean.
Whither Farai Maguwu?
I hear someone says he must be shot, yet another says he is one to be pitied.
I think he is stupid and myopic.
He lines up for the phoney awards, and all the dirty money.
Filthy lucre.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Zim, the general kind of us are in for our clean diamonds.
Maybe Maguwu will, too.
Or perhaps his brother, or his child, or the child of his child.
What was the point after all.
I feel sick.
Mmental slavery is running so deep.
I strongly feel Maguwu should quickly go to the obscurity he came from.
he does not add any value to society.
The bane of African politics.
Zimbabwe politics of regime change.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Out of Africa: Confronting West
So the campaign to silence the voice of this writer after the BBC debate was based on the view that it did not meet the criteria of the "normal" African consciousness and behaviour under the various regimes of white supremacy and Western domination.
The Herald
By Reason Wafawarova
THE concept of progressive thinking in international relations today is measured not by the amount of progress it brings to the thinker, but by the degree of its conformity to the domination of Western influence in international power relations.
To be counted among the so-called pro-democracy groups, to be considered civilised, to be regarded as normal, to be regarded as progressive, and to be part of what the West often calls the "family of nations" — depends not on the merits of one’s personal commitment to these values, but is a product of historic inter-group, intra-group, and interpersonal relations.
The character and behaviour of African individuals being labelled "normal" or "abnormal", "progressive" or "regressive", "democratic" or "authoritarian", can only be fully and accurately comprehended, along with the process and purpose of the labelling itself, in terms of the historical power relations between dominant Western forces and subordinate African groups.
Western domination and African subordination involve special types of social power relations constructed predominantly by the West in order that they might receive certain material and non-material benefits thereby.
We are here talking about social power relations that safeguard practices and processes that mediate the Western socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-psychological manipulation and construction of African consciousness and behaviour.
Under the doctrine of white supremacy and Western domination, African consciousness and behaviour are socially manufactured, labelled, and judged by Westerners in ways consonant with their socio-political control and expropriation of African natural and acquired human resources.
The "normality" and "abnormality" of African consciousness and behaviour are so classified with reference to the degree to which they support or oppose the continuity of Western supremacy.
On October 16 2008, the BBC’s Nick Ericsson featured this writer against Keith Richburg, an ex-correspondent for The Washington Post and author of "Out of America: A Blackman Confronts Africa" in a Focus on Africa Magazine debate on whether Africa should be held to Western Standards of Democracy or not.
Richburg stood for the YES position while this writer debated from the NO position, and Nick Ericsson must be commended for fair conduct as a facilitator and moderator.
It was only after the magazine was published that this writer faced unprecedented hostilities from some Australian readers, particularly those linked with an MDC-T sponsoring project that calls itself the Zimbabwe Information Centre, an outfit whose secretary, one Peter Murphy, has worked tirelessly to discredit this writer since 2007; together with some political activists linked to Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T.
Not only did these people consider the input from this writer "unacceptable" and "abnormal", but they launched an online campaign to confront the BBC for allowing publicity space to "someone who openly supports Mugabe’s regime".
Keith Richburg was viewed as having been unfairly pitted against someone from the unacceptable world of tyranny and the BBC duly got reminded to know how to select "acceptable critics" on such topics as Western democracy — not this "Goebbels of Zimbabwe".
To their credit the BBC defended their decision in finding someone they thought would represent the NO voice best in the debate in question. In his contribution, Richburg asserted that "certain people are not capable of responsibly exercising their right to vote", and this was hindsight justification for rightwinger William F. Buckely’s 1957 statement, when he said, "The question as far as the white community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilisation supersede those of universal suffrage".
This was Ian Smith’s argument in Rhodesia as well — that black people were not ready for sovereign and independent democracy, at least not in another thousand years: so declared Smith in 1965.
Richburg argued that the West needed to play a central role in shaping democracy in Africa because, according to him; the continent was being run on the concept of "Big man Rule". He directly attacked Presidents Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, as well as Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi.
He argued that these leaders were using the "Big man Rule" doctrine to stifle democracy in Africa, and he urged Western leaders not "to feel guilty" when President Mugabe narrates the West’s colonial past in Africa. He argued that the West had a role to establish democracy and accountability through Western aid, blaming Africa for "negligible development" and "rampant corruption".
This writer basically dismissed Richburg’s line of thought as "dangerous" and "puerile" and raised issues to do with Africa’s political right to self-determination, its socio-cultural uniqueness, and the incompatibility of Western style democracy to the African way of life.
This week this writer had opportunity to listen to a public forum debate featuring Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa, deputy minister Jessie Majome, and NCA chairperson Lovemore Madhuku. The topic in question was whether the Zimbabwean public is participating in the writing of a new constitution or they are simply being made to vote for the views of those in power.
Minister Chinamasa’s position was that people are writing the constitution, or at least that they are participating in the process. Jessie Majome thought as much, but added that it did not really matter if the people were simply endorsing the views sold to them by their respective political parties because in her opinion that process is democratic enough since it carries an element of choice. Madhuku thought Copac is no more than a very unfortunate and expensively executed joke and claimed that the current constitutional making process will face "a natural death".
This writer asked Majome why her party now disowns the Kariba draft despite Tendai Biti and Elton Mangoma having helped draft it and also signed the draft alongside four other representatives from Zanu-PF and the MDC. The reply was that they only signed the draft because they wanted that constitution specifically and only for the implementation of the 2008 election.
Pressed to confirm if that was MDC-T policy; that the party could afford to trivialise the essence of a whole constitution by reducing an entire supreme law document of a country to a mere election implementation document, she stood by her position and even reminded this writer that elections were so important that they had made Barrack Obama president of the United States — something she openly said was and must be universally fascinating.
This writer knows about the celebrity status of Obama’s election into the White House but has no illusions that Obama is a political miracle of whatever proportions in as far as world affairs and the ruinous effect of the US foreign policy are concerned. In fact, Obama is a pending disaster waiting to happen, perhaps one that has already started happening.
The point is that Majome hails the election of Obama as so important and inspiring that it makes her think that we needed to do whatever it takes here to do an Obama victory in 2008. She is an assimilationist politician aspiring to disappear into Westernisation by any means necessary and that is the problem of the African politician today. We have leaders who aspire to be like whites to the point of disappearing into the white system — a system that has swallowed Obama from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.
So the campaign to silence the voice of this writer after the BBC debate was based on the view that it did not meet the criteria of the "normal" African consciousness and behaviour under the various regimes of white supremacy and Western domination.
Such consciousness and behaviour are characterised by habitual thought patterns and behavioural tendencies which render them pliable to Western authoritarian/authoritative socio-political control with minimal resistance.
The expectation is to induce Africans to accept their subordinate status as natural, or to even misperceive their oppression as freedom.
This writer belongs to the "abnormal" version of African consciousness and behaviour in as far as the doctrine of white supremacy is concerned. People like this writer are accused of habitual thought patterns and behavioural tendencies which the socio-political control of blacks by whites finds intolerably difficult or ineffective. We are accused of hate speech, hostility to Western interests, and of inducing blacks to protest, resist and reject their subordinate status as destined or natural; of informing blacks not to perceive their oppression as freedom.
When you do this "from the comfort of Sydney, Australia", you are not only labelled an abnormal creature with many other derogatory names, but also a hypocrite of the highest order — an unrepentant and unthankful stupid African who bites the hand that feeds him; who messes recklessly the glorious glamour of Western civilisation.
From the vantage point of the continuity of Western supremacy, the basis for labelling African consciousness and behaviour as normal or abnormal depends not on the discovery by whites of discreet states of consciousness and their correlated behavioural tendencies in Africans. It is based on the discovery of the degree to which African consciousness and behavioural tendencies are perceived as serving or dis-serving Western hegemonic interests.
Largely, the issues of instability, conflicts, dependency and skewed value priorities in Africans are unavoidable outcomes of oppression by Westerners.
Oppression by definition is to have one’s thought processes disturbed, emotions impaired, values and motives inverted, and one’s body functions imbalanced.
The normality of the African under Western hegemony is merely a socially manufactured phenomenon designed to be serviceable and beneficial to the needs of the oppressor.
We have an imperial system in place that requires that Africans involuntarily and obsessively deceive themselves.
The collective self-deception, which is the benchmark of oppressed African consciousness, is the main product of West-Africa socio-political power relations — a relationship founded on the denial and distortion of reality; motivated by anxiety and ignorance.
The unfortunate predicament of the African is that both the one considered to be normal and the other considered to be abnormal are products of a skewed West-Africa socio-political power relationship, and that white supremacy seeks from both that they operate against their own interests.
The idea is always to create self-denial, self-defeat, self-destruction and a conviction that the opposite of our own values and identity is the truth.
What is considered normal and acceptable in the West is just a political-economic concept and is largely a result of the interplay of power relations between the West and Africa.
Behaviour that is considered abnormal is punished and this is why this writer has been hunted down in various workplaces so that employers could give him the sack. Even friends and relatives get targeted so that they can disown you.
Macquarie University in Sydney was inundated with calls for the expulsion of this writer in 2007, and the Australian Immigration and Foreign Affairs Departments were also pressured to disregard the law in order to get rid of this writer because his views are considered unacceptably abnormal.
Normality is born of a fairly systematic method of rewarding and punishing behaviour, be it ritual practices and indoctrination, training, correction, supervision, or constraint.
So those considered normal are rewarded with the "pro-democracy" label; they are awarded various prizes of honour and are showered with honorary degrees for their inspiring commitment to be exceptionally normal to the system that dominates and oppresses them. Lovemore Madhuku brags a lot about his belonging to what he calls the "pro-democracy movement" and he is an award-winning member of this club.
Michel Foucault described normality, which inhabits a person and brings him into existence as in and of itself a factor in the mastery that those in power exercise over that person’s consciousness and behaviour.
So we all know how to impress the Americans. We know who to criticise in Zimbabwe if we want to impress the Westerners. We know who to praise and we know when to say yes to government policy and when to say no if we want to make the Westerners happy.
All Zanu-PF initiated policies must be derided and ridiculed while all MDC-T initiated policies must be lauded with open mouths and shut minds. That way we play our role as unthinking Africans, and for that the West is happy to periodically drop in donor funding.
Farai Maguwu of the Centre for Research Development recently occupied himself with the role of blocking the sale of diamonds from his own country, and the only traceable logic for his actions was the reward of donor funding by the West. He wanted the honour of going down in history as having succeeded in the ban of Zimbabwean diamonds.
For landing himself in legal trouble for his efforts he is now in strong standing for a US award on "bravery" and "commitment to democracy" and this is how the system works.
Maguwu knows that he will soon be lining up behind the likes of Jestina Mukoko, Magodonga Mahlangu, Lovemore Madhuku and Morgan Tsvangirai, characters whose cabinets are already shining with US awards for causing excessive trouble in their own country.
Those of us who are unfortunate enough to be considered abnormal must count ourselves in the same line with the so-called "Mugabe cronies" who are found on the US/EU and Western sanction lists. Such is the reward for "abnormality".
One online publication recently suggested that the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray had hinted that the "United States might forgive Mugabe and his cronies" by lifting sanctions if they started behaving.
That was with no sense of irony at all. Yes, forgive.
So the so-called norm is in essence a principle of coercion; a constraint on behaviour, a rule to be followed.
The very people who preach to the world the gospel of freedom of thought, speech, and expression are the authors and finishers of draconian intolerance and barbaric persecution of people who today stand vindicated among the masses in the fight against white supremacy and Western hegemony. Such is the world we live in.
The Herald
By Reason Wafawarova
THE concept of progressive thinking in international relations today is measured not by the amount of progress it brings to the thinker, but by the degree of its conformity to the domination of Western influence in international power relations.
To be counted among the so-called pro-democracy groups, to be considered civilised, to be regarded as normal, to be regarded as progressive, and to be part of what the West often calls the "family of nations" — depends not on the merits of one’s personal commitment to these values, but is a product of historic inter-group, intra-group, and interpersonal relations.
The character and behaviour of African individuals being labelled "normal" or "abnormal", "progressive" or "regressive", "democratic" or "authoritarian", can only be fully and accurately comprehended, along with the process and purpose of the labelling itself, in terms of the historical power relations between dominant Western forces and subordinate African groups.
Western domination and African subordination involve special types of social power relations constructed predominantly by the West in order that they might receive certain material and non-material benefits thereby.
We are here talking about social power relations that safeguard practices and processes that mediate the Western socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-psychological manipulation and construction of African consciousness and behaviour.
Under the doctrine of white supremacy and Western domination, African consciousness and behaviour are socially manufactured, labelled, and judged by Westerners in ways consonant with their socio-political control and expropriation of African natural and acquired human resources.
The "normality" and "abnormality" of African consciousness and behaviour are so classified with reference to the degree to which they support or oppose the continuity of Western supremacy.
On October 16 2008, the BBC’s Nick Ericsson featured this writer against Keith Richburg, an ex-correspondent for The Washington Post and author of "Out of America: A Blackman Confronts Africa" in a Focus on Africa Magazine debate on whether Africa should be held to Western Standards of Democracy or not.
Richburg stood for the YES position while this writer debated from the NO position, and Nick Ericsson must be commended for fair conduct as a facilitator and moderator.
It was only after the magazine was published that this writer faced unprecedented hostilities from some Australian readers, particularly those linked with an MDC-T sponsoring project that calls itself the Zimbabwe Information Centre, an outfit whose secretary, one Peter Murphy, has worked tirelessly to discredit this writer since 2007; together with some political activists linked to Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T.
Not only did these people consider the input from this writer "unacceptable" and "abnormal", but they launched an online campaign to confront the BBC for allowing publicity space to "someone who openly supports Mugabe’s regime".
Keith Richburg was viewed as having been unfairly pitted against someone from the unacceptable world of tyranny and the BBC duly got reminded to know how to select "acceptable critics" on such topics as Western democracy — not this "Goebbels of Zimbabwe".
To their credit the BBC defended their decision in finding someone they thought would represent the NO voice best in the debate in question. In his contribution, Richburg asserted that "certain people are not capable of responsibly exercising their right to vote", and this was hindsight justification for rightwinger William F. Buckely’s 1957 statement, when he said, "The question as far as the white community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilisation supersede those of universal suffrage".
This was Ian Smith’s argument in Rhodesia as well — that black people were not ready for sovereign and independent democracy, at least not in another thousand years: so declared Smith in 1965.
Richburg argued that the West needed to play a central role in shaping democracy in Africa because, according to him; the continent was being run on the concept of "Big man Rule". He directly attacked Presidents Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, as well as Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi.
He argued that these leaders were using the "Big man Rule" doctrine to stifle democracy in Africa, and he urged Western leaders not "to feel guilty" when President Mugabe narrates the West’s colonial past in Africa. He argued that the West had a role to establish democracy and accountability through Western aid, blaming Africa for "negligible development" and "rampant corruption".
This writer basically dismissed Richburg’s line of thought as "dangerous" and "puerile" and raised issues to do with Africa’s political right to self-determination, its socio-cultural uniqueness, and the incompatibility of Western style democracy to the African way of life.
This week this writer had opportunity to listen to a public forum debate featuring Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa, deputy minister Jessie Majome, and NCA chairperson Lovemore Madhuku. The topic in question was whether the Zimbabwean public is participating in the writing of a new constitution or they are simply being made to vote for the views of those in power.
Minister Chinamasa’s position was that people are writing the constitution, or at least that they are participating in the process. Jessie Majome thought as much, but added that it did not really matter if the people were simply endorsing the views sold to them by their respective political parties because in her opinion that process is democratic enough since it carries an element of choice. Madhuku thought Copac is no more than a very unfortunate and expensively executed joke and claimed that the current constitutional making process will face "a natural death".
This writer asked Majome why her party now disowns the Kariba draft despite Tendai Biti and Elton Mangoma having helped draft it and also signed the draft alongside four other representatives from Zanu-PF and the MDC. The reply was that they only signed the draft because they wanted that constitution specifically and only for the implementation of the 2008 election.
Pressed to confirm if that was MDC-T policy; that the party could afford to trivialise the essence of a whole constitution by reducing an entire supreme law document of a country to a mere election implementation document, she stood by her position and even reminded this writer that elections were so important that they had made Barrack Obama president of the United States — something she openly said was and must be universally fascinating.
This writer knows about the celebrity status of Obama’s election into the White House but has no illusions that Obama is a political miracle of whatever proportions in as far as world affairs and the ruinous effect of the US foreign policy are concerned. In fact, Obama is a pending disaster waiting to happen, perhaps one that has already started happening.
The point is that Majome hails the election of Obama as so important and inspiring that it makes her think that we needed to do whatever it takes here to do an Obama victory in 2008. She is an assimilationist politician aspiring to disappear into Westernisation by any means necessary and that is the problem of the African politician today. We have leaders who aspire to be like whites to the point of disappearing into the white system — a system that has swallowed Obama from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.
So the campaign to silence the voice of this writer after the BBC debate was based on the view that it did not meet the criteria of the "normal" African consciousness and behaviour under the various regimes of white supremacy and Western domination.
Such consciousness and behaviour are characterised by habitual thought patterns and behavioural tendencies which render them pliable to Western authoritarian/authoritative socio-political control with minimal resistance.
The expectation is to induce Africans to accept their subordinate status as natural, or to even misperceive their oppression as freedom.
This writer belongs to the "abnormal" version of African consciousness and behaviour in as far as the doctrine of white supremacy is concerned. People like this writer are accused of habitual thought patterns and behavioural tendencies which the socio-political control of blacks by whites finds intolerably difficult or ineffective. We are accused of hate speech, hostility to Western interests, and of inducing blacks to protest, resist and reject their subordinate status as destined or natural; of informing blacks not to perceive their oppression as freedom.
When you do this "from the comfort of Sydney, Australia", you are not only labelled an abnormal creature with many other derogatory names, but also a hypocrite of the highest order — an unrepentant and unthankful stupid African who bites the hand that feeds him; who messes recklessly the glorious glamour of Western civilisation.
From the vantage point of the continuity of Western supremacy, the basis for labelling African consciousness and behaviour as normal or abnormal depends not on the discovery by whites of discreet states of consciousness and their correlated behavioural tendencies in Africans. It is based on the discovery of the degree to which African consciousness and behavioural tendencies are perceived as serving or dis-serving Western hegemonic interests.
Largely, the issues of instability, conflicts, dependency and skewed value priorities in Africans are unavoidable outcomes of oppression by Westerners.
Oppression by definition is to have one’s thought processes disturbed, emotions impaired, values and motives inverted, and one’s body functions imbalanced.
The normality of the African under Western hegemony is merely a socially manufactured phenomenon designed to be serviceable and beneficial to the needs of the oppressor.
We have an imperial system in place that requires that Africans involuntarily and obsessively deceive themselves.
The collective self-deception, which is the benchmark of oppressed African consciousness, is the main product of West-Africa socio-political power relations — a relationship founded on the denial and distortion of reality; motivated by anxiety and ignorance.
The unfortunate predicament of the African is that both the one considered to be normal and the other considered to be abnormal are products of a skewed West-Africa socio-political power relationship, and that white supremacy seeks from both that they operate against their own interests.
The idea is always to create self-denial, self-defeat, self-destruction and a conviction that the opposite of our own values and identity is the truth.
What is considered normal and acceptable in the West is just a political-economic concept and is largely a result of the interplay of power relations between the West and Africa.
Behaviour that is considered abnormal is punished and this is why this writer has been hunted down in various workplaces so that employers could give him the sack. Even friends and relatives get targeted so that they can disown you.
Macquarie University in Sydney was inundated with calls for the expulsion of this writer in 2007, and the Australian Immigration and Foreign Affairs Departments were also pressured to disregard the law in order to get rid of this writer because his views are considered unacceptably abnormal.
Normality is born of a fairly systematic method of rewarding and punishing behaviour, be it ritual practices and indoctrination, training, correction, supervision, or constraint.
So those considered normal are rewarded with the "pro-democracy" label; they are awarded various prizes of honour and are showered with honorary degrees for their inspiring commitment to be exceptionally normal to the system that dominates and oppresses them. Lovemore Madhuku brags a lot about his belonging to what he calls the "pro-democracy movement" and he is an award-winning member of this club.
Michel Foucault described normality, which inhabits a person and brings him into existence as in and of itself a factor in the mastery that those in power exercise over that person’s consciousness and behaviour.
So we all know how to impress the Americans. We know who to criticise in Zimbabwe if we want to impress the Westerners. We know who to praise and we know when to say yes to government policy and when to say no if we want to make the Westerners happy.
All Zanu-PF initiated policies must be derided and ridiculed while all MDC-T initiated policies must be lauded with open mouths and shut minds. That way we play our role as unthinking Africans, and for that the West is happy to periodically drop in donor funding.
Farai Maguwu of the Centre for Research Development recently occupied himself with the role of blocking the sale of diamonds from his own country, and the only traceable logic for his actions was the reward of donor funding by the West. He wanted the honour of going down in history as having succeeded in the ban of Zimbabwean diamonds.
For landing himself in legal trouble for his efforts he is now in strong standing for a US award on "bravery" and "commitment to democracy" and this is how the system works.
Maguwu knows that he will soon be lining up behind the likes of Jestina Mukoko, Magodonga Mahlangu, Lovemore Madhuku and Morgan Tsvangirai, characters whose cabinets are already shining with US awards for causing excessive trouble in their own country.
Those of us who are unfortunate enough to be considered abnormal must count ourselves in the same line with the so-called "Mugabe cronies" who are found on the US/EU and Western sanction lists. Such is the reward for "abnormality".
One online publication recently suggested that the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray had hinted that the "United States might forgive Mugabe and his cronies" by lifting sanctions if they started behaving.
That was with no sense of irony at all. Yes, forgive.
So the so-called norm is in essence a principle of coercion; a constraint on behaviour, a rule to be followed.
The very people who preach to the world the gospel of freedom of thought, speech, and expression are the authors and finishers of draconian intolerance and barbaric persecution of people who today stand vindicated among the masses in the fight against white supremacy and Western hegemony. Such is the world we live in.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
No blood on these gems, Albion
Zimbabwe has had a functional government since Independence in 1980 when the majority black people defeated the white racist minority regime of Ian Smith, himself a product of Britain’s colonial debauchery.
The Herald
By Tichaona Zindoga
ZIMBABWE, this (immeasurably) resource-rich southern African country of about 13 million, this week became the preoccupation of the whole world.
The preoccupation is more to do with the former attribute than Zimbabwe’s demography or the "power" embodied in "super powers" like the United States of America or the 27-member European Union bloc.
But buoyed by the power in its belly, Zimbabwe becomes a match for these huge but largely natural resource-famished countries.
The war concerns diamonds mined in the eastern district of Marange, which can account for a quarter of the world’s gems.
The battle is taking place in the Russian city of St Petersburg where the unholy alliance of US, Canada, Australia and the EU try to wrest Zimbabwe’s right to exploit its diamonds with the blessing of the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme.
A couple of weeks ago, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Zimbabwe plus the common sense of the other members of the 75-party body prevailed over this axis of evil, necessitating the Russian meeting, which is but a face-saver for these "big boys" in the consensus-seeking body.
Against the backdrop of this unprecedented development, the battle in Russia becomes interesting, with all the subplots, the complots and the stakes which form the grander plot of Zimbabwe’s battle for sovereignty which took a decisive turn with the land reform programme in 2000.
Readers of African literature might recall the poignant lamentation of things falling apart because "the centre cannot hold", quoted from W B Yeats in Chinua Achebe’s novel Things fall Apart.
Others, privy with the tumultuous epoch of European history when there lived a certain man called Napoleon Bonaparte, might bring to mind images of the Battle of Waterloo, which heralded the fall of the great man in question.
The two situations illustrate the quandary in which the US-led axis finds itself in, as there are no reasonable grounds to deny Zimbabwe a chance to trade in its gems legitimately.
First, there is desperation to prostitute the term "blood diamonds", which term was aptly made for conflict situations, to apply to a peaceful Zimbabwe that has a legitimate, internationally recognised government.
Zimbabwe has had a functional government since Independence in 1980 when the majority black people defeated the white racist minority regime of Ian Smith, himself a product of Britain’s colonial debauchery.
The so-called "inclusive" Government of Zimbabwe, which whatever the prefix or suffix is a government all the same, was formed last year and even got the grudging recognition of US and its allies whose sensibilities were not exactly reconciled with part of the same.
On the other hand, it is a government that not only enjoys legitimacy in the eyes of its own population, but also that of regional governments whose lobbying and diplomacy made it possible.
It is this government that duly does not deserve the curse of being called a "rebel" government warranting international isolation including a ban on dealing with diamonds.
Because Zimbabwe’s detractors only know as much, they have tried to redefine "blood diamonds" to include diamonds from "areas where human rights are violated".
Critically, they also continuously try to whip on claims of a military influence on Government, to give the closest semblance of a rebel movement.
A Western-controlled "human rights" organisation Partnership Africa Canada says smuggling operations have led to numerous human rights violations in the Chiadzwa mining fields.
In addition to numerous other claims, PAC accuses President Mugabe of using the military to intimidate, manipulate and murder citizens.
PAC then argues that the current definition of blood diamonds is outdated and too narrow in scope saying the definition "erroneously assumes all governments are legitimate and does not recognise that such governments in whole or part could engage in acts of terror or criminality as egregious as any rebel movement".
Global Witness, another anti-Zimbabwe lobby took a similar stance.
"Over the past three years," says Global Witness campaigner Elly Harrowell, "the national army has visited appalling abuses on civilians in Marange’s diamond fields. Nobody has been held to account for these crimes, and now it turns out that the joint venture companies nominally brought in to improve conditions are directly linked to the Zanu-PF and military elite.
"Thanks to the impunity and violence in Zimbabwe, blood diamonds are back on the international market," Harrowell concludes.
These claims are meant to marry with those emanating from supposedly Zimbabwean organisations and individuals for the condemnation of the country.
But it will be recorded that this mischief did not hold water in Tel Aviv, and will not likely to do in St Petersburg.
However, it is the character of one Farai Maguwu whom the world has come to know as a "diamond activist" — whatever that means — that kind of salved the day for the anti-Zimbabwe lobby in Israel.
Maguwu is none other than that hitherto virtually unknown man who allegedly wanted to give prejudicial falsehoods to diamond monitor Abbey Chikane and was arrested for it.
At the time of the meeting in Israel, he was in police custody and this gave the anti-Zimbabwe lobby something to talk about.
Said Rona Peligal, acting Africa director for Human Rights Watch: "If Zimbabwe is jailing activists for writing about abuses connected to diamond mining, then it’s hardly meeting the minimum standards for KP membership."
The "watchdog" had also published a report asserting that the Zimbabwean army continues to engage in forced labour, torture, beatings and harassment in the Marange area.
Kucaca Phulu, a lawyer and chairman of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association weighed in: "It will be tragic for the diamond sale ban to be lifted now, especially if someone who wrote about human rights violations is in jail and his life is under threat."
Maguwu thus was portrayed as a martyr being persecuted by the Government leading to the jockeying for his release in the Western metropolitan.
But then just as coining new definitions to suit an evil agenda against Zimbabwe, outside of the KP plenary, has been rejected, it would seem the stuffing has been taken out of the Maguwu case and the anti-Zimbabwe lobby’s centre cannot hold.
Just as the KP meets for the Petersburg intercessionary, Maguwu is a free man.
On Monday, the High Court released Maguwu on bail.
This should make the case very interesting.
As the claims by the anti-Zimbabwe lobby are continuously exposed, the country, which is on the verge of its sanctions-busting Canaan in its diamonds waits with bated breath.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said Zimbabwe cannot suffer from kwashiokor when it has the resources.
Any right thinking world citizen knows there is no blood in Zimbabwe’s diamonds.
Zimbabwe is all to ready to give the evil West its Waterloo.
But the last kicks of a dying horse are to be expected
The Herald
By Tichaona Zindoga
ZIMBABWE, this (immeasurably) resource-rich southern African country of about 13 million, this week became the preoccupation of the whole world.
The preoccupation is more to do with the former attribute than Zimbabwe’s demography or the "power" embodied in "super powers" like the United States of America or the 27-member European Union bloc.
But buoyed by the power in its belly, Zimbabwe becomes a match for these huge but largely natural resource-famished countries.
The war concerns diamonds mined in the eastern district of Marange, which can account for a quarter of the world’s gems.
The battle is taking place in the Russian city of St Petersburg where the unholy alliance of US, Canada, Australia and the EU try to wrest Zimbabwe’s right to exploit its diamonds with the blessing of the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme.
A couple of weeks ago, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Zimbabwe plus the common sense of the other members of the 75-party body prevailed over this axis of evil, necessitating the Russian meeting, which is but a face-saver for these "big boys" in the consensus-seeking body.
Against the backdrop of this unprecedented development, the battle in Russia becomes interesting, with all the subplots, the complots and the stakes which form the grander plot of Zimbabwe’s battle for sovereignty which took a decisive turn with the land reform programme in 2000.
Readers of African literature might recall the poignant lamentation of things falling apart because "the centre cannot hold", quoted from W B Yeats in Chinua Achebe’s novel Things fall Apart.
Others, privy with the tumultuous epoch of European history when there lived a certain man called Napoleon Bonaparte, might bring to mind images of the Battle of Waterloo, which heralded the fall of the great man in question.
The two situations illustrate the quandary in which the US-led axis finds itself in, as there are no reasonable grounds to deny Zimbabwe a chance to trade in its gems legitimately.
First, there is desperation to prostitute the term "blood diamonds", which term was aptly made for conflict situations, to apply to a peaceful Zimbabwe that has a legitimate, internationally recognised government.
Zimbabwe has had a functional government since Independence in 1980 when the majority black people defeated the white racist minority regime of Ian Smith, himself a product of Britain’s colonial debauchery.
The so-called "inclusive" Government of Zimbabwe, which whatever the prefix or suffix is a government all the same, was formed last year and even got the grudging recognition of US and its allies whose sensibilities were not exactly reconciled with part of the same.
On the other hand, it is a government that not only enjoys legitimacy in the eyes of its own population, but also that of regional governments whose lobbying and diplomacy made it possible.
It is this government that duly does not deserve the curse of being called a "rebel" government warranting international isolation including a ban on dealing with diamonds.
Because Zimbabwe’s detractors only know as much, they have tried to redefine "blood diamonds" to include diamonds from "areas where human rights are violated".
Critically, they also continuously try to whip on claims of a military influence on Government, to give the closest semblance of a rebel movement.
A Western-controlled "human rights" organisation Partnership Africa Canada says smuggling operations have led to numerous human rights violations in the Chiadzwa mining fields.
In addition to numerous other claims, PAC accuses President Mugabe of using the military to intimidate, manipulate and murder citizens.
PAC then argues that the current definition of blood diamonds is outdated and too narrow in scope saying the definition "erroneously assumes all governments are legitimate and does not recognise that such governments in whole or part could engage in acts of terror or criminality as egregious as any rebel movement".
Global Witness, another anti-Zimbabwe lobby took a similar stance.
"Over the past three years," says Global Witness campaigner Elly Harrowell, "the national army has visited appalling abuses on civilians in Marange’s diamond fields. Nobody has been held to account for these crimes, and now it turns out that the joint venture companies nominally brought in to improve conditions are directly linked to the Zanu-PF and military elite.
"Thanks to the impunity and violence in Zimbabwe, blood diamonds are back on the international market," Harrowell concludes.
These claims are meant to marry with those emanating from supposedly Zimbabwean organisations and individuals for the condemnation of the country.
But it will be recorded that this mischief did not hold water in Tel Aviv, and will not likely to do in St Petersburg.
However, it is the character of one Farai Maguwu whom the world has come to know as a "diamond activist" — whatever that means — that kind of salved the day for the anti-Zimbabwe lobby in Israel.
Maguwu is none other than that hitherto virtually unknown man who allegedly wanted to give prejudicial falsehoods to diamond monitor Abbey Chikane and was arrested for it.
At the time of the meeting in Israel, he was in police custody and this gave the anti-Zimbabwe lobby something to talk about.
Said Rona Peligal, acting Africa director for Human Rights Watch: "If Zimbabwe is jailing activists for writing about abuses connected to diamond mining, then it’s hardly meeting the minimum standards for KP membership."
The "watchdog" had also published a report asserting that the Zimbabwean army continues to engage in forced labour, torture, beatings and harassment in the Marange area.
Kucaca Phulu, a lawyer and chairman of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association weighed in: "It will be tragic for the diamond sale ban to be lifted now, especially if someone who wrote about human rights violations is in jail and his life is under threat."
Maguwu thus was portrayed as a martyr being persecuted by the Government leading to the jockeying for his release in the Western metropolitan.
But then just as coining new definitions to suit an evil agenda against Zimbabwe, outside of the KP plenary, has been rejected, it would seem the stuffing has been taken out of the Maguwu case and the anti-Zimbabwe lobby’s centre cannot hold.
Just as the KP meets for the Petersburg intercessionary, Maguwu is a free man.
On Monday, the High Court released Maguwu on bail.
This should make the case very interesting.
As the claims by the anti-Zimbabwe lobby are continuously exposed, the country, which is on the verge of its sanctions-busting Canaan in its diamonds waits with bated breath.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said Zimbabwe cannot suffer from kwashiokor when it has the resources.
Any right thinking world citizen knows there is no blood in Zimbabwe’s diamonds.
Zimbabwe is all to ready to give the evil West its Waterloo.
But the last kicks of a dying horse are to be expected
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Politics of a sick society
Wafawarova Writes
By Reason Wafawarova
THERE is growing consensus in political commentary that corruption is endemic in Africa, that Africa has a somewhat hedonistic political leadership, that black people in the United States breed the criminal type of youth; that the Aboriginal-Australian is lazy, alcoholic and criminal in nature, and all this diagnosis is made in the name of research and the expertise of the so-called helping professionals.
The diagnosis of crime, corruption, alcoholism and laziness is often limited to academic theory and scientific work — never venturing into exploring the relationship between these problems and socio-political causalities.
Social workers and psychologists are often obsessed with diagnostic procedures and they rarely begin with the political system. When they do, it is often an adopted line from the prevailing propaganda pitch.
Mental health is about interpreting and predicting behaviour; about determining so much the characteristics and symptomatologies of various mental illnesses. The procedures that one learns in a school of social work and in a psychology lecture room are so deceptive that the so-called helping professionals who learn them genuinely believe that they do great scientific work, and that they are politically neutral or apolitical in their approach to duty.
Amos Wilson asserts that mental problems not only denote a disturbed psyche, or that an individual is disturbed, but that the individual in question actually disturbs the psyche of those making diagnosis of his problem. It is always a two-way process.
When a psychologist says an individual is mentally disturbed, the real point is that society is having a problem with that individual — that the individual actually disturbs society. Diagnosis in this regard must be a sort of dualistic relationship between the person being diagnosed and others around him, including the one making the diagnosis.
Inherently, diagnosis must be social in nature and as such diagnosis of social problems and mental illnesses must be viewed as a political affair. Crime, corruption, drug abuse, alcoholism and all such ills are inherently part of the political system, and they are not matters exclusively attributable to personality failures by individuals.
These problems are a reflection of how society’s values are threatened, how our way of doing things gets disturbed. The behaviour of the person we define as a sick individual is in fact an exposure of society’s own failures; of society’s own hypocrisies, and all we do as a society is collude to bring about a definition of the state of the mind of the person who is confronting our way of doing things.
When we talk of diagnosing prostitution, crime, corruption, violence and the so-called general misbehaviour by our people, what we are in reality doing is looking at the behaviour of these people in relation to the behaviour of society as a whole.
We cannot therefore limit diagnosis of a people to procedure and neutrality. It is all centred in politics. It is politics that set policies and laws, and it is politics that implement and enforce these policies and laws.
What happens is that a ruling class applies its ideological measures to the recalcitrant members of society — measures that often maintain a status quo that rationalises and justifies repression and injustice.
So we have in an unjust and unequal society the labelling of a group of people or individuals, and that labelling is carried out by the very people who maintain the injustice and inequality. So the very labels attached to the victims of that society become the means by which repression is carried out.
So society looks at its victims straight in their faces. It sees the corrupt, the prostitutes, the violent, the muggers, the thieves, the rapists and the face of this madness strikes terror in the soul of society.
Barrack Obama’s maternal grandmother used to cringe with fear at the mere sight of a bunch of young black people, and this was by Obama’s own confession during his election campaign. Even black parents in the United States will largely concur that merely seeing black teenagers on the streets or on the subways can be quite intimidating.
Elderly Zimbabweans are intimidated by the sight of certain groups of youngsters at Mbare Musika, or at such public gatherings like soccer matches. We are more frightened by our own children and people than we are by say, a bunch of Indian or White teenagers. We look at these so-called thugs and hoodlums and rarely do we ever look back at the society that has created them.
When we see these problems we demand that the Government should deploy more police officers, that the police should have zero tolerance to crime, that they should adopt a shoot to kill policy on dangerous criminals. The system tells us that there is no room or time to deal with social or political causalities. It says the menace of criminals and nuisances like prostitutes is so rampant and bad that it must be removed swiftly and ruthlessly.
At a global level we have a somewhat amusing scenario where the Western elite somehow believe that after robbing the world, after killing and destroying, after building weapons of mass destruction capable of killing each of us on Earth 10 times over, after so much capitalist profiteering and plunder, and after aggression towards so many nationalities — that the same Westerners still think they have a right to sleep peacefully at night.
They still feel they have a right to walk down the streets of Johannesburg, New York or Nairobi and feel absolutely safe, and that they have a right to be treated civilly.
Equally, the African elites expect the same to happen to them after plundering public funds and after corruptly giving away the continent’s wealth to unscrupulous investors and other crooks.
They get filthy rich by pillaging and plundering what should belong to African nations, and somehow they expect to sleep peacefully at night. They strangely feel they have a right to walk down the streets and be treated like heroes.
The world is not inhabited by such a legion of fools that plunderers and murderers should just get away with impunity. The victims of rape, deceit, plunder and looting will protest in one way or the other, be that protest self-destructive or otherwise. This is why repression and revolutions are quintessential partners whose sequel is absolutely predictable.
To maintain itself, the imperial system employs civic organisations to convert the behaviour of its victims and to pacify these people by every means possible. In some cases, they employ military force or they may create a dependency syndrome.
The idea is always to keep the victims away, to make them invisible, to convert their behaviour, to make them adjust to the imperial system, or to just keep them fighting each other.
The diagnosis of corruption in Africa by African leaders themselves is actually part of the problem, as opposed to it being a solution. It has become the means by which the leadership denies its own culpability.
The anti-corruption commissions across Africa have become a defence mechanism by which the leadership denies its guilt and defends its self-image and prerogatives. This is why the observation of the law only catching up with smaller fish and petty offenders; rarely bringing to book the grand offenders — is a common interpretation of how anti-corruption commissions are working across the continent.
Diagnosis and punishment of lesser offenders becomes the means by which the leadership projects its own criminality and its own insanity onto its victims.
The common actions of corrupt roadside police officers are simply a mirror image of how sick the system that employs them has become. The lowly public service clerk demanding a bribe before offering a service for which he was hired to do is just an expression of how sick the environment under which he works has become.
The Australian establishment makes a diagnosis of its "criminal" Aboriginal people for example. It finds such evidence as broken homes, uncaring, rejecting or permissive parents, alcoholic, absent fathers, disorganised, ghetto neighbourhoods, moral laxities and skewed values. These are findings resulting from research targeted at the victim and conducted by the system that creates the same victim.
So the system establishes a criminal type, a terrorist type, and so forth. So the criminal is profiled as under the age of 30, male, coming from a broken home, smokes, drinks heavily, and comes from a disorganised community.
Sometimes the system says the terrorist must be from a certain ethnic grouping; and this is why David Hicks was so much of news for his alleged involvement with terrorist groups in Afghanistan. If he was of Middle East origin, and not Caucasian; no Western journalist would single him out as news material.
Even when any of these descriptions may be deemed to be true; the question still remains if indeed there is a criminal nature existent in these people. Is it the criminal nature of the described criminal or is it a criminal nature that has been created by a system?
Society’s diagnosis of the individual rationalises repression just like ideology rationalises the repression of many people across the world.
Criminologists define career criminals, classify crimes into grades, and provide fantastic statics such as the assertion that it’s only 25 percent of the criminals that produce 75 percent of the crime. This, however, does not answer the question of who commits more crime in terms of crime against property.
In his book, "The Falsification of African Consciousness" Amos Wilson writes that muggers, thieves, robbers and pick pockets only commit 25 percent of crime against property; and almost all the offenders find their way to prison.
The other 75 percent is committed by white-collar fraudsters, corrupt politicians and public officials, as well as shady corporate criminals. These rarely ever get arrested, and when they get arrested, they often get away with paying ridiculous fines, or simply being forced to resign. Rarely do they ever find their way to prison.
The analysis often provided by criminologists does not deal with the root cause of the problem. It is the system that creates the criminal; it is the system that creates corruption — and then it is the very same system that identifies the crime and the corruption. The system then punishes its victims by throwing them in jail.
Ever wondered why jails create criminals that are harder and tougher than they were before arrest? Prisons are simply part of the criminal assault against victims of a criminal system to begin with. This is why prisons have become renowned crime universities — not for the study of crime, but for perfecting the art of committing more egregious crime.
So what is our preached remedy for corruption and crime? More policemen and more prisons is the normal route often chosen. Does that work?
The band-aid approach where the so-called helping professionals are trained and employed in thousands and more thousands cannot take away social ills and so-called deviant behaviour. What is needed is a fundamental restructuring of society itself.
What is needed is societal self-examination, fundamental social reconstruction, and a radical re-organisation of social relations.
When we see the increasing number of police officers, social workers and psychologists we are quick to say that more and more people are getting off the rails, that they are developing sick minds, and we even say they no longer fear God — that they have lost respect for our values and culture.
Yet no one dares say society is sick. We believe society is sacrosanct and cannot be sick. Only individual people can be sick. So we have a society which refuses to adjust itself and to seek its own healing — choosing instead to train and employ more and more of the so-called helping professionals.
Power relations in the global society as well as in regional and domestic societies are the key to the health status of those societies. Democracy is about power relations between the peoples within various societies, not necessarily between groups of political elites.
Balanced power relations will result in fairly equal opportunities for economic development and achievement, equal opportunities for social development, and equal opportunity for political say and achievement.
Where there is no balance these resultant indicators will in turn reflect the imbalances.
At the end there is dissent, rebellion, protests — and all leading to a revolution.
Global capitalism and state capitalism will always run this cycle leading to a revolution, and this is not because the revolting masses are made up of individuals with sick minds, but precisely because it is the society in which they live that would have become so sick that some remedy has to be found, one way or the other.
By Reason Wafawarova
THERE is growing consensus in political commentary that corruption is endemic in Africa, that Africa has a somewhat hedonistic political leadership, that black people in the United States breed the criminal type of youth; that the Aboriginal-Australian is lazy, alcoholic and criminal in nature, and all this diagnosis is made in the name of research and the expertise of the so-called helping professionals.
The diagnosis of crime, corruption, alcoholism and laziness is often limited to academic theory and scientific work — never venturing into exploring the relationship between these problems and socio-political causalities.
Social workers and psychologists are often obsessed with diagnostic procedures and they rarely begin with the political system. When they do, it is often an adopted line from the prevailing propaganda pitch.
Mental health is about interpreting and predicting behaviour; about determining so much the characteristics and symptomatologies of various mental illnesses. The procedures that one learns in a school of social work and in a psychology lecture room are so deceptive that the so-called helping professionals who learn them genuinely believe that they do great scientific work, and that they are politically neutral or apolitical in their approach to duty.
Amos Wilson asserts that mental problems not only denote a disturbed psyche, or that an individual is disturbed, but that the individual in question actually disturbs the psyche of those making diagnosis of his problem. It is always a two-way process.
When a psychologist says an individual is mentally disturbed, the real point is that society is having a problem with that individual — that the individual actually disturbs society. Diagnosis in this regard must be a sort of dualistic relationship between the person being diagnosed and others around him, including the one making the diagnosis.
Inherently, diagnosis must be social in nature and as such diagnosis of social problems and mental illnesses must be viewed as a political affair. Crime, corruption, drug abuse, alcoholism and all such ills are inherently part of the political system, and they are not matters exclusively attributable to personality failures by individuals.
These problems are a reflection of how society’s values are threatened, how our way of doing things gets disturbed. The behaviour of the person we define as a sick individual is in fact an exposure of society’s own failures; of society’s own hypocrisies, and all we do as a society is collude to bring about a definition of the state of the mind of the person who is confronting our way of doing things.
When we talk of diagnosing prostitution, crime, corruption, violence and the so-called general misbehaviour by our people, what we are in reality doing is looking at the behaviour of these people in relation to the behaviour of society as a whole.
We cannot therefore limit diagnosis of a people to procedure and neutrality. It is all centred in politics. It is politics that set policies and laws, and it is politics that implement and enforce these policies and laws.
What happens is that a ruling class applies its ideological measures to the recalcitrant members of society — measures that often maintain a status quo that rationalises and justifies repression and injustice.
So we have in an unjust and unequal society the labelling of a group of people or individuals, and that labelling is carried out by the very people who maintain the injustice and inequality. So the very labels attached to the victims of that society become the means by which repression is carried out.
So society looks at its victims straight in their faces. It sees the corrupt, the prostitutes, the violent, the muggers, the thieves, the rapists and the face of this madness strikes terror in the soul of society.
Barrack Obama’s maternal grandmother used to cringe with fear at the mere sight of a bunch of young black people, and this was by Obama’s own confession during his election campaign. Even black parents in the United States will largely concur that merely seeing black teenagers on the streets or on the subways can be quite intimidating.
Elderly Zimbabweans are intimidated by the sight of certain groups of youngsters at Mbare Musika, or at such public gatherings like soccer matches. We are more frightened by our own children and people than we are by say, a bunch of Indian or White teenagers. We look at these so-called thugs and hoodlums and rarely do we ever look back at the society that has created them.
When we see these problems we demand that the Government should deploy more police officers, that the police should have zero tolerance to crime, that they should adopt a shoot to kill policy on dangerous criminals. The system tells us that there is no room or time to deal with social or political causalities. It says the menace of criminals and nuisances like prostitutes is so rampant and bad that it must be removed swiftly and ruthlessly.
At a global level we have a somewhat amusing scenario where the Western elite somehow believe that after robbing the world, after killing and destroying, after building weapons of mass destruction capable of killing each of us on Earth 10 times over, after so much capitalist profiteering and plunder, and after aggression towards so many nationalities — that the same Westerners still think they have a right to sleep peacefully at night.
They still feel they have a right to walk down the streets of Johannesburg, New York or Nairobi and feel absolutely safe, and that they have a right to be treated civilly.
Equally, the African elites expect the same to happen to them after plundering public funds and after corruptly giving away the continent’s wealth to unscrupulous investors and other crooks.
They get filthy rich by pillaging and plundering what should belong to African nations, and somehow they expect to sleep peacefully at night. They strangely feel they have a right to walk down the streets and be treated like heroes.
The world is not inhabited by such a legion of fools that plunderers and murderers should just get away with impunity. The victims of rape, deceit, plunder and looting will protest in one way or the other, be that protest self-destructive or otherwise. This is why repression and revolutions are quintessential partners whose sequel is absolutely predictable.
To maintain itself, the imperial system employs civic organisations to convert the behaviour of its victims and to pacify these people by every means possible. In some cases, they employ military force or they may create a dependency syndrome.
The idea is always to keep the victims away, to make them invisible, to convert their behaviour, to make them adjust to the imperial system, or to just keep them fighting each other.
The diagnosis of corruption in Africa by African leaders themselves is actually part of the problem, as opposed to it being a solution. It has become the means by which the leadership denies its own culpability.
The anti-corruption commissions across Africa have become a defence mechanism by which the leadership denies its guilt and defends its self-image and prerogatives. This is why the observation of the law only catching up with smaller fish and petty offenders; rarely bringing to book the grand offenders — is a common interpretation of how anti-corruption commissions are working across the continent.
Diagnosis and punishment of lesser offenders becomes the means by which the leadership projects its own criminality and its own insanity onto its victims.
The common actions of corrupt roadside police officers are simply a mirror image of how sick the system that employs them has become. The lowly public service clerk demanding a bribe before offering a service for which he was hired to do is just an expression of how sick the environment under which he works has become.
The Australian establishment makes a diagnosis of its "criminal" Aboriginal people for example. It finds such evidence as broken homes, uncaring, rejecting or permissive parents, alcoholic, absent fathers, disorganised, ghetto neighbourhoods, moral laxities and skewed values. These are findings resulting from research targeted at the victim and conducted by the system that creates the same victim.
So the system establishes a criminal type, a terrorist type, and so forth. So the criminal is profiled as under the age of 30, male, coming from a broken home, smokes, drinks heavily, and comes from a disorganised community.
Sometimes the system says the terrorist must be from a certain ethnic grouping; and this is why David Hicks was so much of news for his alleged involvement with terrorist groups in Afghanistan. If he was of Middle East origin, and not Caucasian; no Western journalist would single him out as news material.
Even when any of these descriptions may be deemed to be true; the question still remains if indeed there is a criminal nature existent in these people. Is it the criminal nature of the described criminal or is it a criminal nature that has been created by a system?
Society’s diagnosis of the individual rationalises repression just like ideology rationalises the repression of many people across the world.
Criminologists define career criminals, classify crimes into grades, and provide fantastic statics such as the assertion that it’s only 25 percent of the criminals that produce 75 percent of the crime. This, however, does not answer the question of who commits more crime in terms of crime against property.
In his book, "The Falsification of African Consciousness" Amos Wilson writes that muggers, thieves, robbers and pick pockets only commit 25 percent of crime against property; and almost all the offenders find their way to prison.
The other 75 percent is committed by white-collar fraudsters, corrupt politicians and public officials, as well as shady corporate criminals. These rarely ever get arrested, and when they get arrested, they often get away with paying ridiculous fines, or simply being forced to resign. Rarely do they ever find their way to prison.
The analysis often provided by criminologists does not deal with the root cause of the problem. It is the system that creates the criminal; it is the system that creates corruption — and then it is the very same system that identifies the crime and the corruption. The system then punishes its victims by throwing them in jail.
Ever wondered why jails create criminals that are harder and tougher than they were before arrest? Prisons are simply part of the criminal assault against victims of a criminal system to begin with. This is why prisons have become renowned crime universities — not for the study of crime, but for perfecting the art of committing more egregious crime.
So what is our preached remedy for corruption and crime? More policemen and more prisons is the normal route often chosen. Does that work?
The band-aid approach where the so-called helping professionals are trained and employed in thousands and more thousands cannot take away social ills and so-called deviant behaviour. What is needed is a fundamental restructuring of society itself.
What is needed is societal self-examination, fundamental social reconstruction, and a radical re-organisation of social relations.
When we see the increasing number of police officers, social workers and psychologists we are quick to say that more and more people are getting off the rails, that they are developing sick minds, and we even say they no longer fear God — that they have lost respect for our values and culture.
Yet no one dares say society is sick. We believe society is sacrosanct and cannot be sick. Only individual people can be sick. So we have a society which refuses to adjust itself and to seek its own healing — choosing instead to train and employ more and more of the so-called helping professionals.
Power relations in the global society as well as in regional and domestic societies are the key to the health status of those societies. Democracy is about power relations between the peoples within various societies, not necessarily between groups of political elites.
Balanced power relations will result in fairly equal opportunities for economic development and achievement, equal opportunities for social development, and equal opportunity for political say and achievement.
Where there is no balance these resultant indicators will in turn reflect the imbalances.
At the end there is dissent, rebellion, protests — and all leading to a revolution.
Global capitalism and state capitalism will always run this cycle leading to a revolution, and this is not because the revolting masses are made up of individuals with sick minds, but precisely because it is the society in which they live that would have become so sick that some remedy has to be found, one way or the other.
Zim and terror laundering
Illegal sanctions have produced a pervasive and paralysing effect on the whole society: One effect is the laundering of economic terror through euphemisms which excuse those responsible and prevent us from finding our way out.
The Sunday Mail
AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso.
The longest section in the US anti-terrorism law, called The Patriot Act, is the section on money laundering. It is called Title III: International Money Laundering Abatement and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act 2001.
Money laundering refers to the process of converting illegal funds, tainted funds, forbidden assets, into clean-looking, legitimate-looking funds or assets. The banks are targeted as the key mediating filters capable of laundering money.
Terror-laundering is the act or process of converting immoral acts or processing evil acts capable of causing terror into innocent-looking, benign-looking, moral-sounding acts or human rights-like processes.
The whole campaign by imperialist powers to rely more and more on “soft power” and the “war of ideas” — instead of overt aggression, military presence and belligerent intrusion — in fact means a great deal of reliance on terror-laundering to deceive people.
The discourse on illegal Anglo-Saxon sanctions against Zimbabwe has been characterised by this terror-laundering in which even the victims participate without knowing, just as victims of money laundering may also not know the source of the tainted money once it has been channelled through the banks.
Let me cite a few examples:
l The Financial Gazette for July 8 2010 carried a story by Professor Ken Mufuka, who is from Masvingo but writes from the US. It was entitled “Primitive mind cannot rise beyond parochial parameters” and it was based on an antiquated and racist binary theory by Levy Bruhl in his 1922 book called The Primitive Mind.
The professor’s white North American sister-in-law by the name of Jean Mufuka recently returned from Zimbabwe where she experienced with the local elites all the apparent effects of illegal sanctions. In addition to the breakdown of water and electricity supply systems, sanctions also affect daily human relations, as can be seen from the current panic being generated in South Africa against Zimbabweans who left their own country due to the sanctions-induced economic stagnation at home.
But Ken Mufuka and his Auntie Jean conclude, for instance, that: “The reason we have no electricity and water (in Zimbabwe) is the electricity and water authorities were organised for the sole purpose of providing a large pool of nepotistic sinecures for the party stalwarts.”
In other words, the daily effects of illegal sanctions as terror in Zimbabwe have been laundered and cleansed through the lenses of an antiquated white racist theory published in 1922! According to Mufuka’s application of that theory, Auntie Jean Mufuka failed to enjoy her holiday in Zimbabwe because the whole Government and the utility and tourist companies are run by Africans who are yet to become civilised, to leave behind the primitive mind. Never mind that most of the technicians and engineers in Zesa and Zinwa were driven away by illegal sanctions or killed by HIV and Aids.
Mufuka’s article and Auntie Jean’s itinerary in Zimbabwe are so totally cleansed of the realities of sanctions that the word does not appear anywhere in the half-page piece!
l On the same day, NewsDay published an editorial called “Bitter sweet truth of Zim industry”. The editorial records, in terms of apparent symptoms only, the very same things this column said were bound to happen as far back as two years ago. But unlike this column the editorial refuses to relate the apparently separate events, the apparently separate symptoms, to any systemic cause or process.
Two years ago, I said in this column that with continuing sanctions and without the Zimbabwe dollar, the economy of Zimbabwe would not recover at the rate which both industrialists and Government officials were forecasting. I said that, by refusing to confront and denounce the illegal sanctions for what they are, the CZI, ZNCC and other business associations were bound to downplay or even ignore the devastating and far-reaching impact of the same sanctions even on the business people’s own strategies and calculations.
I said restricting the entire population and all sectors to the foreign currency basket, with no local currency, meant that the costing threshold for Zimbabwean producers and manufacturers would always be higher than anywhere else in the region. It was not only the challenge of a small population. Even Zambia, Malawi and Namibia were likely to remain more competitive than Zimbabwe for a long time because of sanctions and because of lack of a national currency. The NewsDay editorial recognises the events and the symptoms which I said would be the effects of continuing illegal sanctions and the lack of a local currency. But the editorial is as completely silent on causes as it is on remedies, precisely because it is taboo to acknowledge the terror of illegal sanctions which also destroyed the Zimbabwe dollar.
NewsDay acknowledges that manufacturing capacity will not be anywhere near the once predicted 60 per cent by the end of 2010; that the skills deficit persists; that locally manufactured goods are more expensive and of poorer quality than those produced in the region; that manufacturing and mining machinery needs replacement; and that such replacement requires huge capital investments; and that the agricultural sector also remains depressed and under-skilled.
But instead of calling for national mobilisation and unity against illegal sanctions and for policies premised on the severity and pervasiveness of sanctions, the editorial concludes thus:
“The challenge for Government and the private sector is to review the industrial policy to ensure that the country becomes competitive again. At the moment we are not; we are fast losing our sweetness.” What good is a review which ignores illegal sanctions and the forces responsible for them?
l On July 4 2010, The Standard also carried a story called “Anticipated economic growth a mirage”. Much of the story is based on the views of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, which was involved in asking for sanctions in 2000 and is still on record as believing that sanctions should continue. So it is not surprising that the ZCTU also restricts itself to describing the symptoms. For instance, we are told that:
“Of the projected US$810 million vote of credit from co-operating partners, only US$2,9 million has trickled in to be used for capital expenditure projects.
“Our expectation (as ZCTU) was that at least employment levels would increase and standards of living improve.
“The disposable income was supposed to increase to show the difference between the past and the present,” because of sanctions or despite sanctions?
This is incredible discourse. The effect of this is to cleanse the terror which has been inflicted on the people. Elites in Zimbabwe are engaging in terror-laundering through the use of English language euphemisms. Without going all the way to admit that the mass shock experienced by Zimbabweans from 2000 to 2005 was a result of illegal sanctions, former US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell had this to say to Africa University students and faculty on November 2 2005: “The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 is the cornerstone of US policy toward Zimbabwe. Under the Act, the United States conditions aid and financing for Zimbabwe . . . Ladies and gentlemen, no issue today is more important to the future of Zimbabwe nor has the potential to harm the (Sadc) region than the growing collapse of the Zimbabwe economy . . . It was more than dismaying to read a paper published in July by the Centre for Global Development in Washington on the Costs and Causes of Zimbabwe’s Crisis. It is estimated that Zimbabwe’s economic crisis has set the country back more than half a century. The paper calculated that the purchasing power of the average Zimbabwean in 2005 had fallen back to the same level as in 1953 . . . That’s an astonishing reversal of 52 years (at 2005) of progress in only half a dozen years.”
The theory behind the diabolic use of economic terrorism is well established in the neoliberal capitalist doctrine which Naomi Klein called “the shock doctrine”. The sanctions-induced economic and social crisis in Zimbabwe had the effect of taking the country and the people back to 1953 in a short period of six years, according to former US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell’s speech on November 2 2005. Such a disastrous situation has the effect of recycling the country back to a “frontier” state, a colonial state. It is unfortunate that journalists did not ask Dell what the significance of 1953 was for the forces of illegal regime change. But the education statistics coming out now show what the US ambassador was celebrating in his 2005 speech.
In 1953, colonial Rhodesia was an open frontier of fresh opportunities for white racists from all over Europe and North America; it was an open “frontier” economically speaking, territorially speaking, ideologically speaking, culturally and morally speaking. African nationalism was still in its infancy.
In 1953 colonial Rhodesia was an open frontier society where Britain resettled its white veterans of the Hitler wars with the assistance of the US Marshall Plan, the World Bank and the Rhodesian piece of racist legislation called the Native Land Husbandry Act which helped to clear African prime farmland of natives. Indeed a new “frontier” colony is always characterised by a creeping, universalised corruption, whatever name the coloniser may give it. Sanctions brought back mass corruption and the school system was not spared. We heard of teachers who needed to be “juiced” in order to teach!
The year 1953 was the frontier year of the start of the white Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Our education system was brought, through sanctions, back to the Rhodesian frontier, with teachers abandoning their classes to go and prospect for diamonds; teachers abandoning pupils to go and work on farms in South Africa and elsewhere. Those who stayed behind often demanded illegal cash payments from pupils in order to replace salaries destroyed by hyperinflation.
At the moment in Zimbabwe the location of the frontier mentality has moved to the makeshift structure called the inclusive Government and the swarming army of more than 2 500 NGOs besieging the IG.
The country has therefore undergone mass shock and there are things which those who have suffered mass shock should and should not do.
So the real purpose of terror is not just the bodily pain which victims feel from injury, hunger or deprivation. The biggest harm is the shock and “terror by forgetting” which produces “the gap between fast-moving events and the information that exists to explain them”.
“Terror by forgetting” means that people begin to experience their lives in isolation and as isolated events which are disjointed. “Terror by forgetting” first and foremost destroys relationships among people and relationships which connect events affecting people. In this sense, the ancient Greeks were like Africans. They understood “terror by forgetting” when their author Sophocles wrote the tragedies of Oedipus at Colonus and Oedipus Tyrannus. The source of the script is the legend of Oedipus who was saved and raised by foreigners. When he was fully grown up, he began to travel and in his travels he came to the land of his ancestors without recognising it. There he fought and killed his own father Laius during a quarrel. His father's people saw him as hero, the same way some Africans may see US President Barack Obama or his ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mr Charles Ray, or even former US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
So Oedipus was offered his own father's crown as king, which meant that he also took over the queen, his real biological mother Jocasta, as wife!
After his own mother had borne him four children, the truth was revealed to him. In anguish, Oedipus put out his own eyes and became a wanderer in foreign lands. Anglo-Saxon powers have brought a curse (chikwambo) upon our children, the way Sophocles' Oedipus was cursed. Illegal sanctions have produced a pervasive and paralysing effect on the whole society: One effect is the laundering of economic terror through euphemisms which excuse those responsible and prevent us from finding our way out.
The Sunday Mail
AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso.
The longest section in the US anti-terrorism law, called The Patriot Act, is the section on money laundering. It is called Title III: International Money Laundering Abatement and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act 2001.
Money laundering refers to the process of converting illegal funds, tainted funds, forbidden assets, into clean-looking, legitimate-looking funds or assets. The banks are targeted as the key mediating filters capable of laundering money.
Terror-laundering is the act or process of converting immoral acts or processing evil acts capable of causing terror into innocent-looking, benign-looking, moral-sounding acts or human rights-like processes.
The whole campaign by imperialist powers to rely more and more on “soft power” and the “war of ideas” — instead of overt aggression, military presence and belligerent intrusion — in fact means a great deal of reliance on terror-laundering to deceive people.
The discourse on illegal Anglo-Saxon sanctions against Zimbabwe has been characterised by this terror-laundering in which even the victims participate without knowing, just as victims of money laundering may also not know the source of the tainted money once it has been channelled through the banks.
Let me cite a few examples:
l The Financial Gazette for July 8 2010 carried a story by Professor Ken Mufuka, who is from Masvingo but writes from the US. It was entitled “Primitive mind cannot rise beyond parochial parameters” and it was based on an antiquated and racist binary theory by Levy Bruhl in his 1922 book called The Primitive Mind.
The professor’s white North American sister-in-law by the name of Jean Mufuka recently returned from Zimbabwe where she experienced with the local elites all the apparent effects of illegal sanctions. In addition to the breakdown of water and electricity supply systems, sanctions also affect daily human relations, as can be seen from the current panic being generated in South Africa against Zimbabweans who left their own country due to the sanctions-induced economic stagnation at home.
But Ken Mufuka and his Auntie Jean conclude, for instance, that: “The reason we have no electricity and water (in Zimbabwe) is the electricity and water authorities were organised for the sole purpose of providing a large pool of nepotistic sinecures for the party stalwarts.”
In other words, the daily effects of illegal sanctions as terror in Zimbabwe have been laundered and cleansed through the lenses of an antiquated white racist theory published in 1922! According to Mufuka’s application of that theory, Auntie Jean Mufuka failed to enjoy her holiday in Zimbabwe because the whole Government and the utility and tourist companies are run by Africans who are yet to become civilised, to leave behind the primitive mind. Never mind that most of the technicians and engineers in Zesa and Zinwa were driven away by illegal sanctions or killed by HIV and Aids.
Mufuka’s article and Auntie Jean’s itinerary in Zimbabwe are so totally cleansed of the realities of sanctions that the word does not appear anywhere in the half-page piece!
l On the same day, NewsDay published an editorial called “Bitter sweet truth of Zim industry”. The editorial records, in terms of apparent symptoms only, the very same things this column said were bound to happen as far back as two years ago. But unlike this column the editorial refuses to relate the apparently separate events, the apparently separate symptoms, to any systemic cause or process.
Two years ago, I said in this column that with continuing sanctions and without the Zimbabwe dollar, the economy of Zimbabwe would not recover at the rate which both industrialists and Government officials were forecasting. I said that, by refusing to confront and denounce the illegal sanctions for what they are, the CZI, ZNCC and other business associations were bound to downplay or even ignore the devastating and far-reaching impact of the same sanctions even on the business people’s own strategies and calculations.
I said restricting the entire population and all sectors to the foreign currency basket, with no local currency, meant that the costing threshold for Zimbabwean producers and manufacturers would always be higher than anywhere else in the region. It was not only the challenge of a small population. Even Zambia, Malawi and Namibia were likely to remain more competitive than Zimbabwe for a long time because of sanctions and because of lack of a national currency. The NewsDay editorial recognises the events and the symptoms which I said would be the effects of continuing illegal sanctions and the lack of a local currency. But the editorial is as completely silent on causes as it is on remedies, precisely because it is taboo to acknowledge the terror of illegal sanctions which also destroyed the Zimbabwe dollar.
NewsDay acknowledges that manufacturing capacity will not be anywhere near the once predicted 60 per cent by the end of 2010; that the skills deficit persists; that locally manufactured goods are more expensive and of poorer quality than those produced in the region; that manufacturing and mining machinery needs replacement; and that such replacement requires huge capital investments; and that the agricultural sector also remains depressed and under-skilled.
But instead of calling for national mobilisation and unity against illegal sanctions and for policies premised on the severity and pervasiveness of sanctions, the editorial concludes thus:
“The challenge for Government and the private sector is to review the industrial policy to ensure that the country becomes competitive again. At the moment we are not; we are fast losing our sweetness.” What good is a review which ignores illegal sanctions and the forces responsible for them?
l On July 4 2010, The Standard also carried a story called “Anticipated economic growth a mirage”. Much of the story is based on the views of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, which was involved in asking for sanctions in 2000 and is still on record as believing that sanctions should continue. So it is not surprising that the ZCTU also restricts itself to describing the symptoms. For instance, we are told that:
“Of the projected US$810 million vote of credit from co-operating partners, only US$2,9 million has trickled in to be used for capital expenditure projects.
“Our expectation (as ZCTU) was that at least employment levels would increase and standards of living improve.
“The disposable income was supposed to increase to show the difference between the past and the present,” because of sanctions or despite sanctions?
This is incredible discourse. The effect of this is to cleanse the terror which has been inflicted on the people. Elites in Zimbabwe are engaging in terror-laundering through the use of English language euphemisms. Without going all the way to admit that the mass shock experienced by Zimbabweans from 2000 to 2005 was a result of illegal sanctions, former US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell had this to say to Africa University students and faculty on November 2 2005: “The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 is the cornerstone of US policy toward Zimbabwe. Under the Act, the United States conditions aid and financing for Zimbabwe . . . Ladies and gentlemen, no issue today is more important to the future of Zimbabwe nor has the potential to harm the (Sadc) region than the growing collapse of the Zimbabwe economy . . . It was more than dismaying to read a paper published in July by the Centre for Global Development in Washington on the Costs and Causes of Zimbabwe’s Crisis. It is estimated that Zimbabwe’s economic crisis has set the country back more than half a century. The paper calculated that the purchasing power of the average Zimbabwean in 2005 had fallen back to the same level as in 1953 . . . That’s an astonishing reversal of 52 years (at 2005) of progress in only half a dozen years.”
The theory behind the diabolic use of economic terrorism is well established in the neoliberal capitalist doctrine which Naomi Klein called “the shock doctrine”. The sanctions-induced economic and social crisis in Zimbabwe had the effect of taking the country and the people back to 1953 in a short period of six years, according to former US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell’s speech on November 2 2005. Such a disastrous situation has the effect of recycling the country back to a “frontier” state, a colonial state. It is unfortunate that journalists did not ask Dell what the significance of 1953 was for the forces of illegal regime change. But the education statistics coming out now show what the US ambassador was celebrating in his 2005 speech.
In 1953, colonial Rhodesia was an open frontier of fresh opportunities for white racists from all over Europe and North America; it was an open “frontier” economically speaking, territorially speaking, ideologically speaking, culturally and morally speaking. African nationalism was still in its infancy.
In 1953 colonial Rhodesia was an open frontier society where Britain resettled its white veterans of the Hitler wars with the assistance of the US Marshall Plan, the World Bank and the Rhodesian piece of racist legislation called the Native Land Husbandry Act which helped to clear African prime farmland of natives. Indeed a new “frontier” colony is always characterised by a creeping, universalised corruption, whatever name the coloniser may give it. Sanctions brought back mass corruption and the school system was not spared. We heard of teachers who needed to be “juiced” in order to teach!
The year 1953 was the frontier year of the start of the white Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Our education system was brought, through sanctions, back to the Rhodesian frontier, with teachers abandoning their classes to go and prospect for diamonds; teachers abandoning pupils to go and work on farms in South Africa and elsewhere. Those who stayed behind often demanded illegal cash payments from pupils in order to replace salaries destroyed by hyperinflation.
At the moment in Zimbabwe the location of the frontier mentality has moved to the makeshift structure called the inclusive Government and the swarming army of more than 2 500 NGOs besieging the IG.
The country has therefore undergone mass shock and there are things which those who have suffered mass shock should and should not do.
So the real purpose of terror is not just the bodily pain which victims feel from injury, hunger or deprivation. The biggest harm is the shock and “terror by forgetting” which produces “the gap between fast-moving events and the information that exists to explain them”.
“Terror by forgetting” means that people begin to experience their lives in isolation and as isolated events which are disjointed. “Terror by forgetting” first and foremost destroys relationships among people and relationships which connect events affecting people. In this sense, the ancient Greeks were like Africans. They understood “terror by forgetting” when their author Sophocles wrote the tragedies of Oedipus at Colonus and Oedipus Tyrannus. The source of the script is the legend of Oedipus who was saved and raised by foreigners. When he was fully grown up, he began to travel and in his travels he came to the land of his ancestors without recognising it. There he fought and killed his own father Laius during a quarrel. His father's people saw him as hero, the same way some Africans may see US President Barack Obama or his ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mr Charles Ray, or even former US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
So Oedipus was offered his own father's crown as king, which meant that he also took over the queen, his real biological mother Jocasta, as wife!
After his own mother had borne him four children, the truth was revealed to him. In anguish, Oedipus put out his own eyes and became a wanderer in foreign lands. Anglo-Saxon powers have brought a curse (chikwambo) upon our children, the way Sophocles' Oedipus was cursed. Illegal sanctions have produced a pervasive and paralysing effect on the whole society: One effect is the laundering of economic terror through euphemisms which excuse those responsible and prevent us from finding our way out.
zim must sell its diamonds now!!!
just a few personal reflections on zim diaonds.
i think zim should sell its diamonds to anyone who needs them now, just like it sells its gold, nickel, copper et al.
sensitivity of diamonds? Ok that's an issue, we do not want to sell diamonds to rebel movements.
As a mmatter of fact zim will never do, being generally a sensible and legitimmate and prudent government.
I think Kimberly Process is a hypocritical bunch, or have turned so because the evil forces in there didn't quite imagine Zim would be around.
Immagine the body - well rotten part of - rejecting the wisdom of founding chair Abbey chikane!
so KP has just become a bastardised movement, so by some elements who created or helped create it.
KP is bogged by resource-famished and diamond free countries like britain and US who are political thick heads at best and evil at worst.
The evil persue Zim.
KP must not allow it - or go to hell.
Zim having met KP optimum requirements must get KP stamp - or throw the whole issue out of the window, for better or worse.
Zim is proud owner of its God-given resource in diamonds, and has the moral, political and social obligation to exploit.
It also has the technical and economic expertise. You go Zim!
i think zim should sell its diamonds to anyone who needs them now, just like it sells its gold, nickel, copper et al.
sensitivity of diamonds? Ok that's an issue, we do not want to sell diamonds to rebel movements.
As a mmatter of fact zim will never do, being generally a sensible and legitimmate and prudent government.
I think Kimberly Process is a hypocritical bunch, or have turned so because the evil forces in there didn't quite imagine Zim would be around.
Immagine the body - well rotten part of - rejecting the wisdom of founding chair Abbey chikane!
so KP has just become a bastardised movement, so by some elements who created or helped create it.
KP is bogged by resource-famished and diamond free countries like britain and US who are political thick heads at best and evil at worst.
The evil persue Zim.
KP must not allow it - or go to hell.
Zim having met KP optimum requirements must get KP stamp - or throw the whole issue out of the window, for better or worse.
Zim is proud owner of its God-given resource in diamonds, and has the moral, political and social obligation to exploit.
It also has the technical and economic expertise. You go Zim!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Zim and the final lap to its Canaan
In 2003 Zimbabweans were told they could not survive as a country outside the Commonwealth. But today the British are using the Commonwealth to entice us back, so that they can also get our diamonds. But the people have forgotten the Commonwealth precisely because it has no wealth to give them. The wealth is here.
The Sunday Mail
AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso
There is a global frenzy over the addition of Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa diamonds to Murowa and River Ranch diamonds. One of the reasons for this frenzy is that a country and a people which have been pictured for the last 15 years as cursed and doomed now appear to be clearly blessed.
Likewise, the leadership of Zimbabwe, which has been demonised as a curse upon their country and their people, have been granted long life so that the God of Chaminuka and Nehanda can bless the nation under that very same leadership.
Indeed, the story of the revelation of a new diamond-endowed Zimbabwe and the extent of its mineral wealth is the story of the fulfilment of one prophecy and the shaming of so many false prophecies.
At the turn of this century there were two types of false prophecy. One was the vindictive prophecy of the descendants of Cecil John Rhodes, which told us that the African liberation movement in Government was a curse and the country was therefore doomed as long as that movement and its leader remained.
In 2000 the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) predicted a critical turning point by December, saying that President Robert Mugabe and the Government would be out of power by Christmas. This prediction was amplified in the November issue of Megabuck magazine in a feature interview entitled “Zimbabwe doomed as long as Mugabe remains in power — Tsvangirai”. The MDC leader was asked: “Do you still stand by your prediction that Mugabe will be out of office by end of year?” Tsvangirai answered: “Yes!”
The other prophecy was a bit more sophisticated. It came in the name of “globalisation” and the need for countries of the South, including Zimbabwe, to embrace neo-liberalism and economic structural adjustment which was to be dictated by the Anglo-Saxon powers. Africa was portrayed as stagnant and paralysed, unless it agreed to be adjusted. Anglo-American Corporation led the way very early on, in the late 1980s, and commissioned experts to look at South Africa and the region beyond the 1990s. Part of that research appeared as a book, The World and South Africa in the 1990s, by Clem Sunter.
Chapter 1 was entitled Rules of the Game and it included a chart called Future “Rules of the Game” in which the world was put into three categories.
The first category was called the dominant Triad nations, who were mostly rich and old, and numbering “millions” in terms of population. The three main actors in the Triad were North America, Japan and Western Europe.
The second group was called the Non-Triad nations who constituted the Poor Young Billions. It was made up of the rest of the world without Africa. Africa was put in its own category as The Swamp or The Pit.
Based on these scenarios, De Beers moved its headquarters from South Africa to Switzerland. Anglo-American Corporation, the creators and owners of De Beers, moved their headquarters from South Africa to London. So did Old Mutual.
Now, by 2000, Zimbabwe, as part of the African “swamp” and “pit”, was being portrayed as clearly doomed, destined for a fate far worse than Somalia.
The reasons for such a fate were given by the very same organisations who now seek to bar Zimbabwe from certifying and selling its Chiadzwa diamonds. Zimbabwe was doomed because it embarked on a land revolution in fulfilment of the goals of the liberation struggle. Zimbabwe was doomed because it dared to lead Sadc into the DRC to stop genocide and looting sponsored by the Anglo-Saxon powers. Zimbabwe was doomed because it dared to leave the British Commonwealth. Zimbabwe was doomed because it abandoned structural adjustment.
In a letter entitled “Enjoy it while it lasts, comrades”, one Alistair Hull told the editor of the Zimbabwe Independent:
“The New World Order advocates (seen here as Anglo-Saxons) will ultimately implement a one-world political system which will operate from a major city somewhere in Europe where there will be a global economy and a one-world religious system, that is, the much-talked-about ecumenical church . . . Elements of our paranoid (Zimbabwean) leadership keep babbling on about sovereignty and the fact that we will never be a colony again. They keep on accusing the World Bank and the IMF of having ulterior motives for Zimbabwe.
“The IMF and the World Bank are just one of the ‘1 000 points of light’ President (George) Bush (Senior) spoke about at the same time he announced the coming new world order.
“The ‘1 000 points of light’ he mentioned are the various organisations and institutions that are slowly and insidiously doing the groundwork for a new world order.
“Any country whose government does not conform to this will ultimately be brought down by whatever means the new world order (Anglo-Saxons) sees fit.
“President Mugabe and Zanu-PF are bucking the new world order and will ultimately be brought down by these people whether they like it or not as was Ian Smith and Rhodesia. We are all pawns in a game — they had better believe it.”
What the False Prophecy Could Not Prophesy
Both types of prophecy missed the following developments and factors:
l The African land reclamation and revolution, even under illegal sanctions, succeeded enough to convince even the opposition to accept that it should not and it cannot be reversed.
l The African majority soon realised that hondo yeminda was the wrong name for the revolutionary land reclamation, since it was not limited to taking farms. The dream of Cecil John Rhodes’s British South Africa Company to get rich on minerals was not realised in Rhodesia; but it can be realised in Zimbabwe under the leadership of Robert Gabriel Mugabe because the God of Chaminuka and Nehanda chose to reveal Zimbabwe’s heart of minerals fully at the very time the world was being told that the country was doomed as long as Mugabe and his liberation movement were still around. The revelations began with new platinum discoveries along the Great Dyke and spread to new coal deposits in Hwange, Gokwe and Chiredzi, as well as methane gas in Lupane.
Diamonds have come as the crowning discovery which has shaken Anglo-American and its diamond subsidiaries in Dee Beers and Consolidated Diamond Mines.
l Clem Sunter’s “poor billions” of China and India emerged as economic giants of the near future, accompanied by Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran and Venezuela. And it is no coincidence that the support for Zimbabwe to certify and sell its diamonds is coming from the very same group, against the so-called Triad.
Above all, the false prophets did not know that neo- liberalism and structural adjustment were the real curses which would be condemned even by those who pushed them on the South. The chaos unleashed by the so-called global financial tsunami or toxic debt can be matched only by the disaster unleashed by the same Triad when it illegally invaded and occupied Iraq on top of Afghanistan.
The result is that the people of Zimbabwe have now forgotten about their departure from the British Commonwealth in 2003. They no longer worry about restoring the white settler farmers. They are, instead, preoccupied with extending African ownership from farms to mines and trade. Diamonds occupy the centre of these concerns because the earnings from their cutting and marketing can finance the farming industry and the infrastructure which has been decimated by illegal sanctions.
Zimbabwe’s diamonds have become an international issue because they have the potential to produce fundamental changes. Before the emergence of Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa diamonds, Anglo-American Corporation, through De Beers, controlled about 70 percent of the international diamond market. The mechanism for control is De Beers’s Central Selling Organisation (CSO) whose strategies are daily run by a small unit called Diamond Services.
Diamond Services monitors the daily relationship between the global supply of diamonds and the global demand. Diamond Services intervenes in the market, by finding ways of keeping new players and new mines out, by delaying production by competitors or offering to buy them out. It is widely believed that the US companies who were offering very high prices for Chiadzwa diamonds, despite the demonisation, may have been trying to trap Zimbabwe. The diamonds would be shipped to the US and the importing companies would plead that they cannot transfer the funds to Zimbabwe because of illegal sanctions against the country.
At any rate, Zimbabwe’s new diamonds have the potential to cause the following important changes:
l Provide a way out of the financial blockade and sanctions by the Anglo-Saxon powers;
l Reduce the dominance of De Beers in the diamond market;
l Split the 75-member club called Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) between cutters and retailers on one hand and producers who may also acquire the capacity to cut and market their own diamonds;
l Rescue the land revolution from the grip of illegal sanctions by providing the much-needed financing for farm inputs and infrastructure; and
l Secure Zimbabwe’s independence and sovereignty by making it possible to avoid debt traps set by the IMF, the World Bank and other Western-dominated financial institutions.
But for these things to happen, the people of Zimbabwe need also to adjust their thinking.
As a result of Anglo-Saxon interference in the politics of Zimbabwe in pursuit of illegal regime change, a tension which has existed between two strands of Zimbabwe’s nationalist politics has grown into a full-blown crisis. One of the two strands can be defined as the home-coming politics which has produced the First Chimurenga, the Second Chimurenga and the Third Chimurenga; this is the strand which is represented by the song:
Mauya, mauya, Comrade
Zvamauya, Hamuchadzoki
Mauya, mauya, Comrade
Zvamauya, Tongai Zimbabwe.
This home-coming is not about a geographical return home alone. It is about our awakening and coming to ourselves, to our God-given wealth, to our history, our memory, our unhu — after slavery, after apartheid, after colonialism and after UDI.
The second tendency in African nationalist politics is the escapist and potentially narcissistic politics which has always been based on the contradictory notion of freedom through Western guidance or imperialist intervention in response to good begging or lobbying by a select, white-groomed, African elite.
The conflict between the two tendencies or strands has been worsened by the globalisation of Western media and their continuing dominance in Africa. This conflict means that we are caught between two types of African leadership. The white-groomed, white-worshipping and potentially narcissistic African leader is the one who sought liberation through lobbying the Queen of England, the British House of Commons, the British House of Lords, the Commonwealth and, occasionally, the UN General Assembly, while minimising or ignoring the role of the povo. In 2003 Zimbabweans were told they could not survive as a country outside the Commonwealth. But today the British are using the Commonwealth to entice us back, so that they can also get our diamonds. But the people have forgotten the Commonwealth precisely because it has no wealth to give them. The wealth is here.
The Sunday Mail
AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso
There is a global frenzy over the addition of Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa diamonds to Murowa and River Ranch diamonds. One of the reasons for this frenzy is that a country and a people which have been pictured for the last 15 years as cursed and doomed now appear to be clearly blessed.
Likewise, the leadership of Zimbabwe, which has been demonised as a curse upon their country and their people, have been granted long life so that the God of Chaminuka and Nehanda can bless the nation under that very same leadership.
Indeed, the story of the revelation of a new diamond-endowed Zimbabwe and the extent of its mineral wealth is the story of the fulfilment of one prophecy and the shaming of so many false prophecies.
At the turn of this century there were two types of false prophecy. One was the vindictive prophecy of the descendants of Cecil John Rhodes, which told us that the African liberation movement in Government was a curse and the country was therefore doomed as long as that movement and its leader remained.
In 2000 the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) predicted a critical turning point by December, saying that President Robert Mugabe and the Government would be out of power by Christmas. This prediction was amplified in the November issue of Megabuck magazine in a feature interview entitled “Zimbabwe doomed as long as Mugabe remains in power — Tsvangirai”. The MDC leader was asked: “Do you still stand by your prediction that Mugabe will be out of office by end of year?” Tsvangirai answered: “Yes!”
The other prophecy was a bit more sophisticated. It came in the name of “globalisation” and the need for countries of the South, including Zimbabwe, to embrace neo-liberalism and economic structural adjustment which was to be dictated by the Anglo-Saxon powers. Africa was portrayed as stagnant and paralysed, unless it agreed to be adjusted. Anglo-American Corporation led the way very early on, in the late 1980s, and commissioned experts to look at South Africa and the region beyond the 1990s. Part of that research appeared as a book, The World and South Africa in the 1990s, by Clem Sunter.
Chapter 1 was entitled Rules of the Game and it included a chart called Future “Rules of the Game” in which the world was put into three categories.
The first category was called the dominant Triad nations, who were mostly rich and old, and numbering “millions” in terms of population. The three main actors in the Triad were North America, Japan and Western Europe.
The second group was called the Non-Triad nations who constituted the Poor Young Billions. It was made up of the rest of the world without Africa. Africa was put in its own category as The Swamp or The Pit.
Based on these scenarios, De Beers moved its headquarters from South Africa to Switzerland. Anglo-American Corporation, the creators and owners of De Beers, moved their headquarters from South Africa to London. So did Old Mutual.
Now, by 2000, Zimbabwe, as part of the African “swamp” and “pit”, was being portrayed as clearly doomed, destined for a fate far worse than Somalia.
The reasons for such a fate were given by the very same organisations who now seek to bar Zimbabwe from certifying and selling its Chiadzwa diamonds. Zimbabwe was doomed because it embarked on a land revolution in fulfilment of the goals of the liberation struggle. Zimbabwe was doomed because it dared to lead Sadc into the DRC to stop genocide and looting sponsored by the Anglo-Saxon powers. Zimbabwe was doomed because it dared to leave the British Commonwealth. Zimbabwe was doomed because it abandoned structural adjustment.
In a letter entitled “Enjoy it while it lasts, comrades”, one Alistair Hull told the editor of the Zimbabwe Independent:
“The New World Order advocates (seen here as Anglo-Saxons) will ultimately implement a one-world political system which will operate from a major city somewhere in Europe where there will be a global economy and a one-world religious system, that is, the much-talked-about ecumenical church . . . Elements of our paranoid (Zimbabwean) leadership keep babbling on about sovereignty and the fact that we will never be a colony again. They keep on accusing the World Bank and the IMF of having ulterior motives for Zimbabwe.
“The IMF and the World Bank are just one of the ‘1 000 points of light’ President (George) Bush (Senior) spoke about at the same time he announced the coming new world order.
“The ‘1 000 points of light’ he mentioned are the various organisations and institutions that are slowly and insidiously doing the groundwork for a new world order.
“Any country whose government does not conform to this will ultimately be brought down by whatever means the new world order (Anglo-Saxons) sees fit.
“President Mugabe and Zanu-PF are bucking the new world order and will ultimately be brought down by these people whether they like it or not as was Ian Smith and Rhodesia. We are all pawns in a game — they had better believe it.”
What the False Prophecy Could Not Prophesy
Both types of prophecy missed the following developments and factors:
l The African land reclamation and revolution, even under illegal sanctions, succeeded enough to convince even the opposition to accept that it should not and it cannot be reversed.
l The African majority soon realised that hondo yeminda was the wrong name for the revolutionary land reclamation, since it was not limited to taking farms. The dream of Cecil John Rhodes’s British South Africa Company to get rich on minerals was not realised in Rhodesia; but it can be realised in Zimbabwe under the leadership of Robert Gabriel Mugabe because the God of Chaminuka and Nehanda chose to reveal Zimbabwe’s heart of minerals fully at the very time the world was being told that the country was doomed as long as Mugabe and his liberation movement were still around. The revelations began with new platinum discoveries along the Great Dyke and spread to new coal deposits in Hwange, Gokwe and Chiredzi, as well as methane gas in Lupane.
Diamonds have come as the crowning discovery which has shaken Anglo-American and its diamond subsidiaries in Dee Beers and Consolidated Diamond Mines.
l Clem Sunter’s “poor billions” of China and India emerged as economic giants of the near future, accompanied by Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran and Venezuela. And it is no coincidence that the support for Zimbabwe to certify and sell its diamonds is coming from the very same group, against the so-called Triad.
Above all, the false prophets did not know that neo- liberalism and structural adjustment were the real curses which would be condemned even by those who pushed them on the South. The chaos unleashed by the so-called global financial tsunami or toxic debt can be matched only by the disaster unleashed by the same Triad when it illegally invaded and occupied Iraq on top of Afghanistan.
The result is that the people of Zimbabwe have now forgotten about their departure from the British Commonwealth in 2003. They no longer worry about restoring the white settler farmers. They are, instead, preoccupied with extending African ownership from farms to mines and trade. Diamonds occupy the centre of these concerns because the earnings from their cutting and marketing can finance the farming industry and the infrastructure which has been decimated by illegal sanctions.
Zimbabwe’s diamonds have become an international issue because they have the potential to produce fundamental changes. Before the emergence of Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa diamonds, Anglo-American Corporation, through De Beers, controlled about 70 percent of the international diamond market. The mechanism for control is De Beers’s Central Selling Organisation (CSO) whose strategies are daily run by a small unit called Diamond Services.
Diamond Services monitors the daily relationship between the global supply of diamonds and the global demand. Diamond Services intervenes in the market, by finding ways of keeping new players and new mines out, by delaying production by competitors or offering to buy them out. It is widely believed that the US companies who were offering very high prices for Chiadzwa diamonds, despite the demonisation, may have been trying to trap Zimbabwe. The diamonds would be shipped to the US and the importing companies would plead that they cannot transfer the funds to Zimbabwe because of illegal sanctions against the country.
At any rate, Zimbabwe’s new diamonds have the potential to cause the following important changes:
l Provide a way out of the financial blockade and sanctions by the Anglo-Saxon powers;
l Reduce the dominance of De Beers in the diamond market;
l Split the 75-member club called Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) between cutters and retailers on one hand and producers who may also acquire the capacity to cut and market their own diamonds;
l Rescue the land revolution from the grip of illegal sanctions by providing the much-needed financing for farm inputs and infrastructure; and
l Secure Zimbabwe’s independence and sovereignty by making it possible to avoid debt traps set by the IMF, the World Bank and other Western-dominated financial institutions.
But for these things to happen, the people of Zimbabwe need also to adjust their thinking.
As a result of Anglo-Saxon interference in the politics of Zimbabwe in pursuit of illegal regime change, a tension which has existed between two strands of Zimbabwe’s nationalist politics has grown into a full-blown crisis. One of the two strands can be defined as the home-coming politics which has produced the First Chimurenga, the Second Chimurenga and the Third Chimurenga; this is the strand which is represented by the song:
Mauya, mauya, Comrade
Zvamauya, Hamuchadzoki
Mauya, mauya, Comrade
Zvamauya, Tongai Zimbabwe.
This home-coming is not about a geographical return home alone. It is about our awakening and coming to ourselves, to our God-given wealth, to our history, our memory, our unhu — after slavery, after apartheid, after colonialism and after UDI.
The second tendency in African nationalist politics is the escapist and potentially narcissistic politics which has always been based on the contradictory notion of freedom through Western guidance or imperialist intervention in response to good begging or lobbying by a select, white-groomed, African elite.
The conflict between the two tendencies or strands has been worsened by the globalisation of Western media and their continuing dominance in Africa. This conflict means that we are caught between two types of African leadership. The white-groomed, white-worshipping and potentially narcissistic African leader is the one who sought liberation through lobbying the Queen of England, the British House of Commons, the British House of Lords, the Commonwealth and, occasionally, the UN General Assembly, while minimising or ignoring the role of the povo. In 2003 Zimbabweans were told they could not survive as a country outside the Commonwealth. But today the British are using the Commonwealth to entice us back, so that they can also get our diamonds. But the people have forgotten the Commonwealth precisely because it has no wealth to give them. The wealth is here.
MDC-T: the supremacy of intrigue
As for PM Tsvangirai, he could count himself lucky that nobody is bringing up his poor performance on the issue of Western sanctions against Zimbabwe, which his party called for.
The Global Political Agreement was explicit on his mandate on the issue, and it is there for him to be assessed.
Whether it is leadership carte blanche or dictatorship or even evidence of a house on shaky ground, recent developments in MDC-T leave a confounding sense of intrigue.
Three events - the recent Cabinet "reshuffle" in which Elias Mudzuri, Fidelis Mhashu and Giles Mutsekwa were the biggest victims, the dismissal of Chitungwiza councillors two months ago have particularly pointed to this undercurrent.
In April, MDC-T arbitrarily fired 24 councillors in the Chitungwiza Municipality ostensibly for failing to deliver, alleged corruption and defying party directives.
"They are no longer MDC councillors. They have been fired for lack of good governance, accountability, failure to deliver and to live up to the mandate given them by the people," charged party spokesperson Nelson Chamisa.
"A whole litany" of complaints from residents and the party had necessitated the dismissal, we were told.
In this statement that was quoted by the media, Chamisa added, perhaps denoting it as a lesser evil, that they had been dismissed for "defying the party".
The mass dismissal, is a major issue considering that the populous Chitungwiza is a key party constituency and that the councillors were elected by the people, later unravelled a number of key issues.
First, was that the party leadership acted on impulse and dismissed the councillors en masse on blanket charges of corruption, lack of good governance, and failure to live up to some mandate of the people without meticulous attention to individual details and issues.
As it turned out, the charges were all but hot air, as all but one of the councillors were this month cleared of corruption charges and any wrongdoing.
One could also doubt the measurability or authenticity of the so-called "whole litany" of complaints or the "mandate" as it obviously was not shown just how each offending individual had fared in this.
What then stood out, though, was the victimisation of the councillors for not having partaken of the imposition of top party functionary Dr Vincent Gwaradzimba as mayor.
The councillors instead chose Alderman Philemon Chipiyo, along with whom the councillors were dismissed.
For that reason, the party rode roughshod over its own constitutional provisions making it clear that offenders be advised of their offences in writing, summoned for hearings in the same manner and if found guilty, advised accordingly and accorded automatic right of appeal.
The reaction of former Energy Minister Elias Mudzuri and former National Housing and Social Amenities Minister Fidelis Mhashu upon their dismissal from Government trains an observing eye to the fact that the actions of the MDC leadership personalised by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is more than providential or prudential carte blanche.
Engineer Mudzuri queried the criteria his boss used to measure the performance of the ministers.
He was convinced he had worked well within a constraining environment in a ministry saddled with colossal challenges such as Zesa, Hwange and Noczim.
No doubt a technocrat, Eng Mudzuri also failed to understand the logic of replacing him with Elton Mangoma, ex-Economic Planning and Investment Promotion, whose accounting background, can not be put to much use in his new brief.
The man who once said that his electoral popularity was only bettered by President Mugabe said he was not bitter and intimated the public was the final adjudicator of all in political office.
That of course, had a whiff of his 2000 "second most popularly elected" statement, in challenging his leader which he might still hold as he concentrates on his party duties as organising secretary.
But Mhashu wasn't circumspect.
Relegated back to Chitungwiza - Chitungwiza again - to "rejuvenate party structures", Mhashu said he had been cut out just as he was about to showcase his achievements to the world.
Said he: "I was not fired because of incompetence. Being moved from a fully fledged minister to a junior position in the party is a demotion."
Thus the two were obviously not smitten by talk of the so-called "real change" or "excellence" supposed to characterise the party and on whose basis they were reassigned - or demoted as the case might be.
What stood out then was, with a striking similarity to the case of Chitungwiza, that the duo became victims of some Nicodemous if not mercurial performance test of which they were not aware.
As in the Chitungwiza case, the extraneous conditions to deliver, assuming delivery was an issue at all and one to be measured transparently and convincingly, did not allow for success.
In an economy reeling from a hyperinflationary environment that was only stemmed by the introduction of the multi-currency regime last year, Mudzuri scored his modest successes with a struggling State apparatus, and as he said, was never told that he under-performed.
Even Mhashu told us that on July 8, he was supposed to showcase a big something, whatever it was.
But, he bitterly complained that he had been denied the opportunity implying his boss had not bothered to look at what his charges were doing.
Yet he was supposed to deliver some "real change", which nobody could be so sure of, for this "party of excellence" called MDC-Tsvangirai.
Rope in one Theresa Makone, who has had more distinction in controversy and power struggles than anything and intrigue very much becomes the coefficient of MDC-T, in particular the developments in question.
The wife of Ian, a senior staffer and some say kingmaker in PM Tsvangirai's office, she is remembered for elbowing out the party-popular Lucia Matibenga to get to the helm of the women's wing of the party.
"She is one person who can get whatever she wants because of her husband," wrote one analyst to the effect.
Interestingly, the self-same husband was as in 2005 reportedly in a complot involving Elias Mudzuri in a race for positions in the executive.
Arguably, the biggest gainer in the recent shake-up - Mrs Makone - could have been seen to waste precious talents in the Public Works Ministry where she did so precious little.
Except if Tsvangirai's strange performance rating says otherwise.
She now becomes Home Affairs co-Minister, making some history, whether deserved or not, as the first woman in such a position.
Although he might not have been vocal about it, Mutsekwa could be as at sea to be reassigned to National Housing and Social Amenities - on Mhashu's way out - just as he was when some elements wanted him on Western sanctions list a while ago.
Coincidentally, Mudzuri was also on the hit list, on accusations of corruption, which nobody could tell where they went to.
But one could not help but notice this aspect of Mrs Makone's appointment: one of her two main duties concerned the "citizenship database".
Mutsekwa was not doing enough or did not have capacity enough for this, apparently.
And she the wife of spin doctor and director of elections, the man who may have or have not been fingered in some electoral mischief in recent years, is the right woman for the job.
Such is the intrigue, draped nicely in glittering - if not empty - generalities of "excellence" and "real change".
As for PM Tsvangirai, he could count himself lucky that nobody is bringing up his poor performance on the issue of Western sanctions against Zimbabwe, which his party called for.
The Global Political Agreement was explicit on his mandate on the issue, and it is there for him to be assessed.
The Global Political Agreement was explicit on his mandate on the issue, and it is there for him to be assessed.
Whether it is leadership carte blanche or dictatorship or even evidence of a house on shaky ground, recent developments in MDC-T leave a confounding sense of intrigue.
Three events - the recent Cabinet "reshuffle" in which Elias Mudzuri, Fidelis Mhashu and Giles Mutsekwa were the biggest victims, the dismissal of Chitungwiza councillors two months ago have particularly pointed to this undercurrent.
In April, MDC-T arbitrarily fired 24 councillors in the Chitungwiza Municipality ostensibly for failing to deliver, alleged corruption and defying party directives.
"They are no longer MDC councillors. They have been fired for lack of good governance, accountability, failure to deliver and to live up to the mandate given them by the people," charged party spokesperson Nelson Chamisa.
"A whole litany" of complaints from residents and the party had necessitated the dismissal, we were told.
In this statement that was quoted by the media, Chamisa added, perhaps denoting it as a lesser evil, that they had been dismissed for "defying the party".
The mass dismissal, is a major issue considering that the populous Chitungwiza is a key party constituency and that the councillors were elected by the people, later unravelled a number of key issues.
First, was that the party leadership acted on impulse and dismissed the councillors en masse on blanket charges of corruption, lack of good governance, and failure to live up to some mandate of the people without meticulous attention to individual details and issues.
As it turned out, the charges were all but hot air, as all but one of the councillors were this month cleared of corruption charges and any wrongdoing.
One could also doubt the measurability or authenticity of the so-called "whole litany" of complaints or the "mandate" as it obviously was not shown just how each offending individual had fared in this.
What then stood out, though, was the victimisation of the councillors for not having partaken of the imposition of top party functionary Dr Vincent Gwaradzimba as mayor.
The councillors instead chose Alderman Philemon Chipiyo, along with whom the councillors were dismissed.
For that reason, the party rode roughshod over its own constitutional provisions making it clear that offenders be advised of their offences in writing, summoned for hearings in the same manner and if found guilty, advised accordingly and accorded automatic right of appeal.
The reaction of former Energy Minister Elias Mudzuri and former National Housing and Social Amenities Minister Fidelis Mhashu upon their dismissal from Government trains an observing eye to the fact that the actions of the MDC leadership personalised by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is more than providential or prudential carte blanche.
Engineer Mudzuri queried the criteria his boss used to measure the performance of the ministers.
He was convinced he had worked well within a constraining environment in a ministry saddled with colossal challenges such as Zesa, Hwange and Noczim.
No doubt a technocrat, Eng Mudzuri also failed to understand the logic of replacing him with Elton Mangoma, ex-Economic Planning and Investment Promotion, whose accounting background, can not be put to much use in his new brief.
The man who once said that his electoral popularity was only bettered by President Mugabe said he was not bitter and intimated the public was the final adjudicator of all in political office.
That of course, had a whiff of his 2000 "second most popularly elected" statement, in challenging his leader which he might still hold as he concentrates on his party duties as organising secretary.
But Mhashu wasn't circumspect.
Relegated back to Chitungwiza - Chitungwiza again - to "rejuvenate party structures", Mhashu said he had been cut out just as he was about to showcase his achievements to the world.
Said he: "I was not fired because of incompetence. Being moved from a fully fledged minister to a junior position in the party is a demotion."
Thus the two were obviously not smitten by talk of the so-called "real change" or "excellence" supposed to characterise the party and on whose basis they were reassigned - or demoted as the case might be.
What stood out then was, with a striking similarity to the case of Chitungwiza, that the duo became victims of some Nicodemous if not mercurial performance test of which they were not aware.
As in the Chitungwiza case, the extraneous conditions to deliver, assuming delivery was an issue at all and one to be measured transparently and convincingly, did not allow for success.
In an economy reeling from a hyperinflationary environment that was only stemmed by the introduction of the multi-currency regime last year, Mudzuri scored his modest successes with a struggling State apparatus, and as he said, was never told that he under-performed.
Even Mhashu told us that on July 8, he was supposed to showcase a big something, whatever it was.
But, he bitterly complained that he had been denied the opportunity implying his boss had not bothered to look at what his charges were doing.
Yet he was supposed to deliver some "real change", which nobody could be so sure of, for this "party of excellence" called MDC-Tsvangirai.
Rope in one Theresa Makone, who has had more distinction in controversy and power struggles than anything and intrigue very much becomes the coefficient of MDC-T, in particular the developments in question.
The wife of Ian, a senior staffer and some say kingmaker in PM Tsvangirai's office, she is remembered for elbowing out the party-popular Lucia Matibenga to get to the helm of the women's wing of the party.
"She is one person who can get whatever she wants because of her husband," wrote one analyst to the effect.
Interestingly, the self-same husband was as in 2005 reportedly in a complot involving Elias Mudzuri in a race for positions in the executive.
Arguably, the biggest gainer in the recent shake-up - Mrs Makone - could have been seen to waste precious talents in the Public Works Ministry where she did so precious little.
Except if Tsvangirai's strange performance rating says otherwise.
She now becomes Home Affairs co-Minister, making some history, whether deserved or not, as the first woman in such a position.
Although he might not have been vocal about it, Mutsekwa could be as at sea to be reassigned to National Housing and Social Amenities - on Mhashu's way out - just as he was when some elements wanted him on Western sanctions list a while ago.
Coincidentally, Mudzuri was also on the hit list, on accusations of corruption, which nobody could tell where they went to.
But one could not help but notice this aspect of Mrs Makone's appointment: one of her two main duties concerned the "citizenship database".
Mutsekwa was not doing enough or did not have capacity enough for this, apparently.
And she the wife of spin doctor and director of elections, the man who may have or have not been fingered in some electoral mischief in recent years, is the right woman for the job.
Such is the intrigue, draped nicely in glittering - if not empty - generalities of "excellence" and "real change".
As for PM Tsvangirai, he could count himself lucky that nobody is bringing up his poor performance on the issue of Western sanctions against Zimbabwe, which his party called for.
The Global Political Agreement was explicit on his mandate on the issue, and it is there for him to be assessed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)