Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe shake hands, after addressing a press conference after signing a memorandum of understanding between Iran and Zimbabwe at State House in Harare, Thursday, April 22, 2010.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona Mahoso
Reprinted From the Zimbabwe Sunday Mail
One of the effects of the recent visit to Zimbabwe by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in April 2010 was the deepening of the people’s experience of imperialism as “evil” and the realisation that the psychological objective of imperialism is to be at full liberty to manipulate the dominated other.
The Iranian President kept referring to this capacity of imperialism to deceive, confuse, shock and manipulate targeted people as truly “satanic”.
During that same period of the visit of the Iranian President and its aftermath, the people of Zimbabwe experienced their full share of events where the feeling of being manipulated was palpable.
The case of African Consolidated Resources against Mbada Diamonds and Canadile over Zimbabwe’s diamonds at Chiadzwa: The case had been in the courts for more than a year and, even after the High Court decision on April 26 which paved the way for the disputed diamonds to be sold, the matter still remains in the courts. ACR has appealed to the Supreme Court.
There are several reasons why this case qualifies as one of imperialist manipulation. The first is that the Government of Zimbabwe and the people had already agreed at the height of the African land reclamation movement that land policy in this country could not be decided in the courts precisely because it had caused at least two major wars in our country.
And experts in international relations also agree that matters that are so fundamental as to have caused wars, matters that are likely to cause future wars, should not be decided by the courts. Rather the policies resulting from the settlement of the wars should determine the emerging law. Diamonds were indeed one of the fruits of land reclamation which reclamation we had decided could not be decided by the courts.
The second reason was that Zimbabweans knew that diamonds had also caused wars in Angola, DRC and Sierra Leone.
The third reason for believing that there was massive manipulation was the global and local media campaign feeding on the various local court decisions in order to incite the Zimbabwean population around the diamond fields to rise against the national interest in the resource and in order to label our diamonds blood diamonds. It was revealed, for instance, that the white Rhodesians in ACR were also part of the anti-Zimbabwe campaign Australia. But even more shocking was the conduct of the United States of America.
The US State Department was busy escalating its anti-Zimbabwe policies, manipulating the Kimberley Process through Belgium and other European countries, and seeking to tarnish the Zimbabwean diamonds as “blood diamonds”. And yet, the same US government had already instigated its state-related companies to pretend to have no ties to the state and approach the Minister of Mines in Zimbabwe with offers to buy all the diamonds at a price many times higher than the current price!
Then at the time of going to press, the second case of imperialist manipulation was unfolding: Johny Isaacson, Russel Feingold and John Kerry are co-sponsoring a new US anti-Zimbabwe law to replace the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (Zidera).
Called the Zimbabwe Transition to Democracy and Economic Recovery Bill, the new proposal represents the worst form of white racist and imperialist manipulation of an African country because:
l It is an admission that Zidera represented really harsh economic warfare against Zimbabweans which, however, failed to achieve its objective.
It recognises that the people of Zimbabwe were not fooled by imperialist propaganda denying the reality of sanctions under Zidera.
It recognises that the availability of Chiadzwa diamonds and the failure of imperialist proxies here to block the diamonds through the courts (so far) really mean that the people and the Government will defeat Zidera on their own and come out even stronger because of diamonds and other minerals.
Therefore the new Bill seeks to limit the illegal sanctions to diamonds only in order to deny Zimbabwe a self-reliant path to economic recovery.
In the place of such an autonomous path to recovery, the Bill offers Zimbabwe a trap which has been decorated and sweetened so that it looks like an alternative to Chiadzwa diamonds. If Zimbabwe shelves its diamonds, it can be offered financial assistance. Zimbabwe is also being offered the conditional forgiveness of debts in the form of the so-called Highly Indebted and Poor Country status, which we have already debated and rejected before.
The third manifestation of imperialist manipulation again involved the courts. This is the case of white racist-sponsored attacks on Archbishop Nolbert Kunonga and Anglican Diocese of Harare. As in the case of the diamonds, this case has also been in the courts for years. Manipulation of Zimbabwe in this case became regionalised and globalised. For example, the Venerable Reverend Archford Musodza of the Anglican Diocese of Botswana wrote on June 5 2008, that:
“Once MDC-T’s Tsvangirai takes reign in Zimbabwe, then all former (white settler) farmers are assured of a return to their farms. The (white-run) church will be restored and we can mobilise all Anglicans to now vote for a bishop from Britain who is not polluted. The (British) bishop will be mandated to return the church back to correct (white) hands, the English Church with proper British ethos.”
Musodza was campaigning not only for the so-called Church of the Province of Central Africa against Archbishop Kunonga; he was also campaigning against President Robert Mugabe and the African liberation movement in Zanu-PF; he was also campaigning for gays and lesbians to be allowed to consecrate gay marriages in the church. Indeed the attacks on Kunonga were first triggered by the debate over gay marriages and by the Western sponsorship of political parties in Zimbabwe.
The Herald reported on May 4 2010 that the Supreme Court finally ruled against the Church of the Province of Central Africa and in favour of Archbishop Kunonga and the Diocese of Harare. But as in the diamonds case, the several years of court disputes and running battles had been fully milked and squeezed for their last drop of satanic propaganda against Zimbabwe.
--A fourth case is also still going on. Readers may have seen the story in The Sunday Times of South Africa on May 2 2010 called “Mbete in Zim to fix Malema mess: ANC chairperson on damage-control mission after MDC complaint”. The Herald of May 7 2010 also carried a story about the Youth League of Zanu-PF complaining that the president of the Youth League of the African National Congress of South Africa is being victimised by certain reactionary forces in South Africa for his recognition of the lingering and pervasive power of imperialism to continue manipulating Africans long after the latter are supposed to be independent.
The Sunday Times story of May 2 2010 sums up the nature of the evil campaign. It treats this politically conscious African youth (Malema) as if he were a plague after whom all that can be expected is “damage” control. But The Sunday Times actually lied. During her visit here in the first week of May, Cde Baleka Mbete did not attack or even dissociate herself from Cde Malema. Her mission was to co-operate with Zanu-PF on critical issues to be discussed at a summit of all Southern African liberation movements which was going to be held in Tanzania the following week.
The fear shown in this fourth exhibit of imperialist manipulation arises from the fact that Sadc governments are rediscovering the spirit of the Frontline States of the 1970s and 1980s and that this time the results will not be limited to new constitutions and new flags. The results will involve real economics and real national assets: land, minerals, industries and the appropriate policies to govern them.
How should patriots deal with such manipulations?
For the purpose of framing our strategy, we recognise the inter-party agreement between Zanu-PF and the MDC formations as well as the inclusive Government as representing a new objective political reality comparable in some ways to the first period of inclusive politics and reconciliation in 1980.
But there is a big difference. The Sadc-brokered inter-party agreement is unlike the Lancaster House agreement. The current inter-party agreement is different from Lancaster in the sense that it represents a great milestone, a breakthrough, in the development of Sadc, AU and South-to-South diplomacy.
It represents the South’s capacity and Sadc’s victory: to broker and guarantee a national political agreement which has neutralised the forces which were once dominant at Lancaster. This agreement is an arrangement which has blunted the intrusive machinations of imperialism in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs. It is up to Zimbabwe and its allies to deal with the internal proxies of imperialism without taking instructions from the Anglo-Saxon sponsors of the same proxies, and to defeat the same proxies through peaceful non-violent means, which means through ideas that resonate with the people’s daily experience.
This possibility is what the new US Bill is meant to frustrate.
The people and their progressive allies must relish and exploit the significance of this South-to-South achievement in view of imperialism’s proxy wars against the people’s of former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Darfur, Liberia, Sierra Leone, DRC, Angola, and Mozambique.
The disappearance or absence of a Zimbabwean equivalent for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), Unita or Renamo means that the security forces of the Sadc region, together with Sadc leaders and diplomats, have made it impossible for the Anglo-Saxon axis to continue to sponsor low-intensity wars or to pursue any military options against Zimbabwe. The Sadc Organ on Politics, Security and Defence, together with the national security forces of the Sadc member states, have closed that option and Zimbabwe’s inter-party agreement is a product of that achievement.
A typical example of the contradictions arising from the success of Sadc diplomacy in neutralising physical conflict in Zimbabwe through the inter-party agreement can be demonstrated through the story of South African President Jacob Zuma and ANC Youth League president Julius Malema as told by the white-dominated media in South Africa and the Anglo-Saxon media abroad.
The mediators and guarantors of the inter-party agreement in Zimbabwe are the Southern African Development Community, the South African government, and the African Union as represented by the governments. The ANC Youth League as an entity has never been a mediator nor a guarantor of Zimbabwe’s GPA.
And yet the white-dominated media in our region and abroad almost succeeded in using that Sadc-brokered agreement in Zimbabwe to silence Julius Malema and the ANC Youth League by claiming that Malema can no longer express any meaningful critical views about Zimbabwe and the political parties in the inclusive Government because any such critical views would mean that President Jacob Zuma, the South African government and even Sadc were not honest and genuine brokers and guarantors of the GPA!
In other words, from September 15 2008 onwards, anyone remotely associated with Sadc and the South African government was permanently forbidden to criticise the MDC formations or any parties in Zimbabwe. Otherwise his or her critical views should be read to mean that President Zuma, the South African government and even Sadc have never been honest brokers or guarantors of the GPA.
This imperialist and racist manipulation is meant to make our people believe that ending political violence must also mean ending political debate, that is, the end of physical violence must also mean the end of distinctions in terms of values and policies. Accepting such manipulations would lead to political and ideological suicide.
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