Zanu-PF has oscillated wildly in its choice of political
position, veering from the quasi-Trotskyist to the Maoist and ending up
as Mugabeism. Since gaining independence in 1980, Zanu-PF have had well
over twenty years to do something about real land re-distribution (the
Lancaster House ‘agreement’ notwithstanding), and whilst recognizing
the conniving and hypocritical role of the Brits in the process (what
else is new?), Mugabe, who cares not a whit about what the rest of the
world thinks about his policies, has his sights firmly fixed on the
Zimbabweans themselves and staying in power at all costs.
And
as long as Mugabe left Britain’s ‘kith and kin’ alone (the settler
farmers), it was quite happy to let Zanu-PF spout all kinds of
socialist rhetoric, as long as he didn’t actually implement any of it.
Thus all the statements out of the West about the ‘miracle’ of
Zimbabwe, the “bread basket” of Southern Africa.
Zimbabwe, like
its neighbor, South Africa, has (or at least had) a highly mechanized
agricultural economy geared for export, with over 80% of the most
productive land owned by a handful of white farmers. But here the
parallel ends, for unlike South Africa, Zimbabwe’s rural population are
largely peasant, subsistence farmers and importantly Zanu-PF’s power
base. The divide between urban and rural could not be starker with the
majority of the MDC’s supporters members of Zimbabwe’s small, urban
working class.
And this is what it’s all about — land and the
political power that goes with those who control it. Unfortunately,
since independence, Zanu-PF has done little to actually deal with this
issue failing, until recently to return the land to its rightful owners
and then making a right mess of it because it did it for all the wrong
reasons.
Ever since independence was gained in 1980, Zimbabwe
has been a one-party state with Mugabe long proclaiming an allegedly
socialist, anti-Western message without a single bleat of protest from
the UK, even knighting the guy (just this week withdrawn by the
‘Queen’). So what changed? Why has Mugabe become the man the West loves
to hate?
Basically, it’s sheer convenience together with a
deeply ingrained racism that has propelled Mugabe into the media meat
grinder and for no other purpose than to rationalize its own illegal
actions of intervention and mass murder in the name of human rights and
democracy.
We saw the same demonization of Myanmar (or Burma as
the West chooses to continue calling it) even as major Western oil
cartels continue to suck oil from the ground.
The pattern is
plain for all to see: keep diverting attention away from the actions of
the pirates by making a big song and dance about other countries’ when
the reality is that the West doesn’t give a damn about the people of
Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Venezuela, Cuba, or
any country that fits the profile—allegedly anti-democratic, trashing
human rights, this is after all, the current propaganda line of the
West, a case of do as I say but don’t do as I do.
I think the
following sums up one of the the results of interfering so blatantly in
what are the internal affairs of the sovereign state of Zimbabwe
regardless of what you think of the Zanu-PF,
- “And yet the
effective cancellation of the election [after the MDC’s withdrawal from
the presidential runoff], followed by Tsvangirai’s calls for the United
Nations, the African Union and South Africa to intervene in order to
prevent a ‘genocide’, also shows up the dangers of internationalising
local conflicts. The events of the past 24 hours demonstrate that
Western governments’ relentless exploitation of the Zimbabwe crisis has
helped to disenfranchise the Zimbabwean people. Literally. The logic of
Western pressure has made the MDC reliant on the favour and flattery of
external forces, rather than on the grit and the votes of its own mass
support base.” — ‘Disenfranchising the people of Zimbabwe’ By Brendan
O’Neill, Spiked, 23 June, 2008
But then this is the entire point
of the exercise, to back Mugabe into a corner, make Mugabe the centre
of attention. Had the UK really wanted to solve the land issue in
Zimbabwe, it could have assisted the Zimbabwean government in
compensating the settlers and helped the government in the development
process (as it promised to do), for example in training and education
to assist Zimbabwean peasant farmers in making the transition to
mechanized farming.
As for the MDC, I think their leader Morgan
Tsvangirai is a political half-wit, he should have stuck to running the
trade unions. He has so compromised himself with his choice of
‘friends’, let alone his judgement, or lack of it, that he has really
screwed up what was, in the early days at least, a real opportunity to
create a viable alternative to Mugabeism, which as a political (let
alone economic) solution to post-colonial Zimbabwe, has clearly failed.
Accusations
that Tsvangirai is in the pay of foreign agents, may or may not be
true, I have no way of knowing but regardless, it’s his political
cowardice that undermines him and finally calling for foreign
intervention reveals his complete lack of political courage.
The
land question, something that is at the core of existence in every
agrarian society, has been used by Mugabe to win votes and by so doing
he has played right into the hands of the Western powers. Contrast
Zimbabwe’s Mugabe with Venezuela’s Chavez. Sure, they’ve tried their
damnest to demonize him too, but because his real power resides in the
people, Western propaganda campaigns have not achieved the desired
result, to isolate and present him as an ‘extremist’.
Mugabe for
his part, has been very astute at exploiting the ‘Pan Africanist’
position viz a vis the black-white issue, again this is all for
domestic consumption but still it’s up to the Zimbabwean people to
decide what happens. More’s the pity that Tsvangarai is an inept and
totally compromised politician.
As usual it’s the role of the
Western media that is central to the process. Without its active
complicity in covering up the crimes of the West and its participation
in the Mugabe diversion, the USUK axis could not get away with its own
anti-democratic and illegal actions around the planet.
The BBC
are the worst culprits, conducting an endless diatribe against Mugabe,
even accusing him of genocide. It’s reached the point where I just
can’t watch the BBC news anymore, nearly every news broadcast opens
with a story about Mugabe in what has to be a government-inspired
propaganda blitz. The last BBC diatribe I watched found the reporter
calling for military intervention.
But the UK, as the original
‘broker’ between Ian Smith’s pre-independence regime and the liberation
movements of that time (1979-80) puts it in a difficult position, thus
we read in a BBC Today story, the following:
- “Long after his
name ceased to resonate in British politics it is still possible to go
to Zanu-PF rallies in Harare and hear a blood-curdling denunciation of
Harold Wilson, and the pernicious treacheries of the 1960s and 70s.
- “This
is of course understood in the British government, which wants the
conflict to be between Robert Mugabe and the world in general.” —
‘Zimbabwe awaits day of reckoning’ By Allan Little, 24 June, 2008. BBC
Today Programme
You betcha! No flies on whoever wrote this. The
last thing the UK wants is the history of successive British
governments’ (both Labour and Tory) double-dealings in Zimbabwe being
exposed as it connived to protect its investments and the white
settlers (the majority of which are of British ‘stock’).
In
part, it explains why, unlike its sanctions drives against other
countries, with Zimbabwe they have targeted individuals (could it be
because Barclays Bank is a major investor in Zimbabwe?).
Whatever
one thinks of Zanu-PF’s policies, demonizing the country, because this
is the end-product of the vicious propaganda campaign being conducted,
we have to remember that the propaganda blitz is aimed not at Mugabe or
the Zimbabwean people but at our domestic population (just as Mugabe’s
propaganda about the evil Brits is aimed at his support base).
Mugabe’s
shenanagins are insignificant when set against the USUK murder in Iraq
and Afghanistan or the actions of the settler government of Israel in
its genocidal activities in the Occupied Territories, thus by focusing
in on an individual, by making it personal, masks the political reality
of imperial intervention wherever it chooses to.
The propaganda
blitz has two objectives: 1) to divert attention away from the crisis
of capital and the loss of legitimacy in the West and, 2) to justify
its interventionist policies around the world, based as they are on the
fiction of spreading human rights and democracy.
Some of us on
the left seem to be defending Mugabe for all the wrong reasons in a
perverse version of ‘if you’re not for us you must be against us’, but
unless as socialists we adopt a principled position and expose the
underlying reasons for the media blitz, we are doomed to be caught
between a rock and a hard place, for it’s not a case of defending or
attacking Mugabe but of exposing the phony human rights message being
peddled by the pirates.
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