Parties to the power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe. Morgan Tsvangirai of MDC-T, President Robert Mugabe of ZANU-PF and Arthur Mutambara of the MDC-M. Despite the accord the imperialists will maintain sanctions.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
By Sydney Kawadza
Zimbabwe Herald
THE MDC-T national council yesterday unanimously endorsed leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to join the inclusive Government as recommended by the Sadc Extraordinary Summit held in South Africa on Monday this week.
The decision comes after serious divisions threatened to rock the opposition party over its participation in the inclusive Government.
The opposition leadership was said to have had a stormy meeting on Thursday night ahead of the national council meeting yesterday.
Addressing the media after the meeting, MDC-T leader Mr Tsvangirai reiterated his party’s commitment to the agreement saying "outstanding issues" should be addressed by February 11.
"The national council has restated the party’s commitment to the Global Political Agreement and to be part of this inclusive Government," he said.
Mr Tsvangirai, however, called for the settlement of issues raised by his party by February 11 when he is expected to be sworn in as Prime Minister together with his deputies, Ms Thokozani Khupe and MDC leader Professor Arthur Mutambara.
He said his party also took note of the Sadc communiqué released after the extraordinary summit that referred the issues of the National Security Council Bill and the allocation of provincial governors to the three parties.
Mr Tsvangirai, however, said the party’s national executive would write a letter to Sadc over the distribution of ministerial portfolios before February 11.
He said the letter to be written to the regional body would affect the formation of the inclusive Government by February 13.
"Let’s not be confused. Writing to Sadc has nothing to do with our commitment to joining the inclusive Government. We go into this Government because that is what the council has resolved.
"Sadc itself has said the issue of provincial governors and National Security Council legislation must be dealt within this week (and) we are bound by this institutional body," he said.
Mr Tsvangirai also called for the release of opposition activists who have been arraigned before the courts on charges of recruiting people to undergo military training to destabilise the country.
He expressed hope that Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment Number 19 Bill, which gives effect to the power-sharing agreement, would be passed into law before the swearing-in ceremonies.
"We also want to play our part to resolve these issues," he said.
In a brief address to party supporters at Harvest House, his party headquarters, Mr Tsvangirai said the people of Zimbabwe should move on for the development of the country.
"Let’s move with hope and be united to save the country from its problems," he said.
Sadc on Monday called on for the implementation of the political settlement signed in September last year and issued a time-frame that would see the formation of the inclusive Government by February 13.
The regional bloc said Parliament must pass Constitutional Amendment Number 19 by February 5, while the Prime Minister and his deputies should be sworn in by February 11 followed by Cabinet ministers and deputy ministers
on February 13.
Sadc also endorsed the allocation of ministerial portfolios as was endorsed by an extraordinary summit held on November 9 last year but would be reviewed after six months.
The appointments of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor and the Attorney-General, which had been queried by the MDC-T, will be dealt with by the inclusive Government.
Interestingly, MDC-T treasurer-general Roy Bennett was present at yesterday’s national council proceedings.
Bennett fled the country in April 2006 as security agents closed in on him after he was linked to the discovery of an arms cache in Mutare that authorities believe was tied to attempts to instigate civil strife in the country.
Observers said Bennett’s presence indicated how strongly he and his associates felt about certain aspects of the inclusive Government.
In the recent past, MDC-T insiders have revealed that Bennett — as one of the opposition’s prime fund-raisers — demanded agriculture, lands, security and mining portfolios for white members of the party.
The insiders said Bennett threatened that if these portfolios were not delivered he would see to it that MDC-T’s sources of funding dried up.
It is believed that Bennett’s return was closely tied to furthering these demands.
MDC-T spokesperson Mr Nelson Chamisa yesterday referred all questions to Bennet saying he was not qualified to comment on the matter.
Last night, security agents declined to comment on Bennett’s presence in the country and whether or not they would take him in for questioning in connection with the 2006 discovery of the arms cache.
Government officials were equally mum on what — if any — action would be taken against Bennett.
The Secretary for Information and Publicity, Cde George Charamba, said: "Since when have we discussed security issues with the media?"
The cache, found at a house belonging to Peter Hitschmann, included an AK-47 rifle, four FN rifles, seven Uzis, 19 pistols and revolvers, 11 shotguns and an assortment of ammunition.
Annan backs inclusive Govt
AFP
CAPE TOWN--High-profile statesmen including Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter yesterday called for international donors to support Zimbabwe as President Robert Mugabe and his rivals prepare to share power.
The group of prominent former leaders, known as the Elders, were positive about opposition leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to join the Government after months of political deadlock.
However, they warned there was still a long way to go to ease suffering in the nation.
"This is an important step towards ending the political impasse in Zimbabwe," said former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "but it is not a guarantee that Zimbabwe’s distress is over.
"Rebuilding the economy and ending the people’s suffering will take much more work on the part of all Zimbabweans, regional leaders and the international community."
While South Africa has called for all sanctions to be lifted immediately, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said the people of Zimbabwe could "no longer be held hostage by politics. Their urgent needs must be met."
Former US president Jimmy Carter was guarded in his optimism, but said the international community should do all it can to give the agreement its best chance of success.
"This political agreement is far from perfect — but political life involves taking risks. Talking it down will not improve the situation for Zimbabweans — it will only prolong their agony."
Mr Tsvangirai acceded to a decision by the Southern African Development Community regional bloc that Zimbabwe’s inclusive government be formed according to a strict timeline which would see him sworn in as prime minister on February 11.
His reticence over the formation of a unity government saw the deal — signed in September — stalled as rivals battled over the allocation of key ministries and other details of the pact.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe and Gaza have both been chosen to each receive a grant of £75 000 from Jersey’s Overseas Aid Commission (OAC).
Sanitation packs, rehydration and food parcels will be sent to Zimbabwe where more than 60 000 have cholera.
Food and medicines will be distributed to civilian victims in Gaza of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
The OAC said there had been long discussions with authorities in Zimbabwe and Gaza to make sure the aid would get to the people who needed it.
Meanwhile, South Africa, called yesterday for the United States and Europe to lift sanctions against President Mugabe’s government as he prepares to share power with his rivals in Zimbabwe.
"Now that (Morgan Tsvangirai) has decided to be part of the inclusive government ... it requires them to call for the end of sanctions," said director-general in the presidency Reverend Frank Chikane. "So we expect Europe and the US and other countries to stop the sanctions," he told South African public radio station SAfm.
He said regional countries should also "mobilise resources to assist" in the reconstruction of the crisis-wrecked nation, battling economic collapse and a devastating cholera epidemic which has killed over 3 000.
After months of deadlock and political wrangling over a power-sharing deal which ran into trouble over the allocation of key ministry posts, Mr Tsvangirai on Friday agreed to regional demands to be sworn in as Prime Minister on February 11.
Western denial, industry and the fate of Zimbabwe
AFRICAN FOCUS by Tafataona P. Mahoso
WHAT the Western imperialist powers market and often impose as "the free Press" or the free flow of information is in fact a carefully constructed and orchestrated denial industry whose key objective was spelt out by the British imperial state as "to direct the thought of the rest of the world" in the interest of the imperialist power.
The impact of this foreign thought direction has been so significant and so devastating that it had to be recognised even in Zimbabwe’s inter-party agreement signed on September 15 2008. Article 19 of that agreement, among other things, recognises that many Zimbabwean journalists inside and outside the country have become imbedded in the Western denial industry in order to sanitise the evils of illegal regime change and the effects of illegal and racist sanctions imposed on the people.
The British articulated their need for a denial industry to help them direct the thought of most of the world as far back as the First World War, 1914-1918.
Article 19 of the Zimbabwe inter-party agreement says that those who have been working for the more than 100 hate channels and media outlets directed against Zimbabwe in the name of illegal regime change must stop and come home (if they are outside the country) and apply for registration or accreditation.
The hate channels have not stopped nor have the Zimbabwean journalists operating them heeded the call to stop. Many of them are not only embedded in the Western denial industry (Studio Seven for instance), but they also belong to one or the other of the MDC formations who signed the September 15 inter-party agreement with Zanu-PF.
In other words, as the country braces itself for the formation of a coalition government for Zimbabwe, at least two issues remain unresolved in the media and information sector.
The first issue is that the hate channels helping Britain, the US and EU in their regime change onslaught on Zimbabwe have not stopped broadcasting illegally into Zimbabwe or distributing various products of regime change propaganda aimed at directing the thought of most Zimbabweans against the people’s interests as outlined in Article 19 of the interparty agreement.
The second issue is that members of two of the three parties to the inter-party agreement have served and continue to serve as proxies of the same Western denial industry.
This fact was demonstrated graphically in the Zimbabwe House of Assembly on January 29 2009, when acting Minister of Finance Senator Patrick Chinamasa was presenting his Budget 2009 speech. A careful perusal of the reactions of Members of Parliament from the two MDC formations reveals that too many of them are proxies of the same Western denial industry intended to direct the thought of most Zimbabweans in the interest of the British government and its allies.
What we mean must be clear: The 2009 budget is supposed to be an emergency budget to roll back the genocide-like living conditions of the people caused by illegal and racist sanctions. But that same budget must be debated and approved by Parliament, half of which is made up of persons whose political parties or factions invited the very same sanctions upon the people.
The problem is not only that these parties asked for the sanctions. The biggest problem is that these MPs, as part of the Western denial industry, must continue to deny the concrete genocide-like effects of these same sanctions. Their nervous interjections and awkward laughter throughout the budget speech demonstrated that they feel that any attack on the illegal sanctions is an attack on themselves and on their imperialist sponsors.
At the core of their denial is the question and meaning of sanctions which Dr Gideon Gono tackles on Page 97 of his book Zimbabwe’s Casino Economy: Extraordinary Measures for Extraordinary Challenges.
The same MDC formations who are in denial over sanctions, the same MPs who demonstrated their denial through jeering or nervous laughter during the 2009 budget speech, have also voiced irrational opposition to Dr Gono’s reappointment as Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.
This is because Dr Gono is one of the custodians of the information, the data and knowledge, which is needed to demonstrate the far-reaching effects of the same illegal and racist sanctions which the two MDC formations seek to deny or to downplay. This is what Dr Gono says on Page 97 of his book and this is what makes the MPs from the MDC formations hostile and nervous. This is Dr Gono’s view of illegal sanctions:
"I believe that, if properly scrutinised in diplomacy, politics and ethics, it should not be very difficult to appreciate that illegal economic sanctions are not different from sanitised terrorism. As instruments of foreign policy, the objectives of terror and illegal economic sanctions are the same: terror, which is generally described as a state of fear or an overwhelming sense of imminent danger.
The individuals, institutions and companies in Zimbabwe that have been targeted for sanctions from the powerful Western countries are supposed to be terrorised by a continuing sense of imminent danger. The same is true of ordinary people who are being made to understand that economic sanctions would not be lifted "as long as Zanu-PF and President Mugabe remain in power".
The denial of sanctions is dangerous when it comes from the very same people who are supposed to approve the policies and instruments to be used to defeat those sanctions. So the issue of sanctions is not a blame game. It is a strategic issue of life and death for our people.
But there is another dimension to this denial.
If the US, which maintains sanctions on Zimbabwe and a comprehensive blockade on Cuba, has lost three million jobs to the current financial crisis, what scale of human suffering and loss should a reasonable person expect Zimbabwe and Cuba to sustain as a result of the aggressive and illegal sanctions or blockade imposed on them? And why is it that such suffering and loss is caused by "toxic debt" in the US while in Zimbabwe it is caused only by "mismanagement" and "poor governance?"
There are countless connections between the current discussions involving Zanu-PF and the MDC formations over the future of Zimbabwe, on one hand, and the economic crisis facing Britain, North America and Europe at the same time. However, the media, inside and outside Zimbabwe, are reluctant to explain the connections.
The basis of the Western-sponsored regime change politics in Zimbabwe was that the MDC formations, with the assistance of the Western illegal sanctions, would destroy the economy and the national liberation legacy of Zimbabwe first and then rebuild the economy and create a new "democratic society" based on financial aid and ideological tutoring from the British, the North Americans and the Europeans. In the last elections in March and June 2008, Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T boasted that it expected the financial assistance to amount to more than US$10 billion!
A devastated Zimbabwe was supposed to be reconstructed with Anglo-Saxon donations, to the liking of the MDC formations and their sponsors and mentors. Indeed, since June 1998, the Anglo-Saxon axis and its regime change cohorts in our midst had been predicting the final collapse of Zimbabwe and the overthrow of our social order. Some of the dates of the supposed final collapse included: June 1998; December 2000; July 2001; January 2003; June 2003 and several others.
In September and October 2008, 10 years after the first predicted collapse of Zimbabwe, Europe and North America (particularly the United States and Britain) suffered their greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression of the 193 0s. They variously refer to this economic catastrophe as a market crisis, an international financial meltdown, a global credit crunch, global financial turmoil, a capitalist tsunami, and a global credit crunch caused by toxic debt. If the same tsunami had happened here there would be only two explanations: mismanagement and poor governance!
At the time the MDC formations were stealing poor people’s votes by promising massive Western donations for reconstruction, we did our best to point out that the opposition parties were lying to voters. But it was difficult for the ordinary citizen to see that he or she was being lied to.
So one of the connections between what is going on in Britain, Europe and North America and what is happening here is that the opposition lie now lies open for all to see. It was immoral and corrupt to ask for sanctions to destroy a country and then boast that the regime change sponsors would donate US$10 billion to rebuild it.
But the opposition promised reconstruction money for Zimbabwe is not the most important connection between the capitalist market tsunami and the talks between Zanu-PF and the MDC formations.
The most important connection is that the Anglo-Saxon axis sponsored the regime change forces here (including the MDCs and their NGO allies) precisely in order to avoid or at least delay the neoliberal capitalist collapse which has now happened. The imposition on Zimbabwe of an Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) followed by the sponsorship of a pro-imperialist opposition which is wedded to neoliberalism was meant to transfer the capitalist crisis from the North to the South. It did work and it bought the North a grace period which has now ended.
This is the context within which the people of Zimbabwe must understand the current talks between Zanu-PF as a liberation movement and the two MDC formations as regime change projects of imperialism. This explains the strange behaviour of opposition MPs during the budget speech. This context produces the following implications for the nation of Zimbabwe.
First, the current capitalist tsunami sweeping the imperialist countries will make it much easier for our people to defeat the illegal economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the UK, the US and the EU at the request of the opposition.
Unfortunately the MDC formations have reneged on the MOU and on the agreement on inclusive government by refusing to join the people and Zanu-PF in condemning the sanctions and reversing their effects on the people. The 2009 budget is one of the means to be used to fight the illegal sanctions.
Condemning and defeating illegal sanctions is one of those agreed areas in the inter-party talks which do not require any changes in the law to be implemented. The MDC formations deny the reality of sanctions and refuse to condemn the sanctions because they still hope for a US$10 billion rescue package to come from their Western sponsors who are now struggling to survive their own financial tsunami!
But the economic tsunami should make it easier for the people of Zimbabwe to defeat sanctions, provided there is unity throughout the society. The MDC formations are the main obstacle to that unity.
No comments:
Post a Comment