Does West Want to Be Second In Zimbabwe?

Republic of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe greets former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young. He was in the country as an envoy of the State Department., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Does West want to be second best in Zim?

Thursday, 06 June 2013 00:00
Zimbabwe Herald

Recent news brought by friends from the United States of America has ignited hope but only just for better relations to develop between Zimbabwe and America. The news signalled a thaw in the political

impasse caused by the West’s imposition of illegal economic sanctions on this country as a reprisal for the introduction of land reform by the Government in 2000 to correct imbalances in the ownership of that vital national asset.

During a visit to Harare earlier this week, Reverend Jesse Jackson, America’s civil rights icon, pledged after a meeting with President Mugabe to work for the removal of the economic embargo which has stood as a barrier to amicable relations between Zimbabwe and his native country.

He told journalists in Harare: “Just as we worked hard to bring down barriers within our own country, most of those barriers are down. We worked hard in bringing down barriers in apartheid South Africa.

Those barriers are down. We will work to bring barriers down on sanctions because it is the right thing to do and it is mutually beneficial.

Does the West want to be second best in Zimbabwe?

We are anxious for sanctions to end, we will not be satisfied until the barriers are removed between our two great nations.”

Rev Jackson came to Harare hot on the heels of another powerful American and former ambassador to the United Nations, Mr Andrew Young, who delivered to President Mugabe a message of reconciliation from US President Barrack Obama.

Rev Jackson said American businesses were raring to invest in Zimbabwe, especially in the mining sector where God unveiled lots of diamonds, among other minerals, that the Lord appeared to have hidden underground while whites ruled this country for the benefit of our people.

However, the behaviour of the US radio station, the Voice of America, appears somehow to dampen hope for better things to come between Zimbabwe and the US. VOA’s pirate station Studio 7 is on a vilification campaign against Zanu-PF in the inclusive Government as well as against the Registrar-General’s Office, vis-à-vis preparations for the harmonised elections later this year.

Almost every evening, Studio 7 has been feeding its listeners with information concerning voter registration, blaming the RG’s Office for inadequate registration centres which it says are deliberately made inadequate to disadvantage MDC-T followers, allegedly in favour of Zanu-PF.

Every evening, Studio 7 peddles unverified reports from a plethora of callers in Zimbabwe claiming Zanu-PF leaders did things to disadvantage MDC supporters.

One caller went so far as to urge the two MDC formations to unite against Zanu-PF, thereby creating a potentially conflictual situation in the country, when other leaders have been making impassioned pleas for peace across the political divide ahead for the polls.

Ironically, broadcasters on Studio 7 are Zimbabweans and so one wonders whose agenda they are pushing from Washington, at whose behest, and to achieve what precisely with those divisive political antics?

Moreover, Studio 7 seems to have Zimbabwean callers, most of whom clearly support MDC-T, properly organised in various parts of the country with their views coinciding against Zanu-PF. It certainly sounds as though those callers possess radio receivers even out in the rural areas through which they co-ordinate, or are made to co-ordinate, their viewpoints before marshalling them to Washington.

If a foreign radio station can with such a great measure attract such a wide range of views in Zimbabwe from opposition individuals and institutions in the country, what will stop a hostile nation organising an insurrection by politically disaffected people against the Government in Zimbabwe?

The powers that be might wish to investigate, for the sake of thwarting any infiltration into this country by foreign forces, how Zimbabweans have been remotely organised by the American radio station to the extent that they appear to co-ordinate their views so well against those that they censure.

American investors and business leaders and their institutions should be warned that if they continue to act at cross-purposes, speaking with forked tongues in the process, they might wake up one morning to discover that other nations with policies friendly to Zimbabwe have seized all lucrative investment opportunities.

Should that happen they will only have themselves to blame and pointing fingers will be to no avail indeed.

The unfortunate thing in this unsavoury situation is that responses by Zanu-PF leaders to charges levelled against them or their party carry less weight because an early bird catches the fattest worm.

However, if voting patterns in the referendum in March are to be taken as proof that most Zimbabweans now have prudently laid out the right vision of their lives into the future, the silent majority will in the forthcoming elections cast their ballots where their hearts are and Zimbabwe will be on the roll again without non-believers in the journey riding on her back for the second time.

Stephen Mpofu is former editor of The Chronicle and The Sunday Mail.