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Zimbabwe Power-Sharing: A Second Liberation?
There is an air of sinister glee emanating from the Western
press as it announces the ‘historic’ power-sharing agreement
between Tsvangirai and Mugabe. It is as if the West after years
of battering has managed to get a toe in the doorway and is
determined to choreograph by stealth the dance that is to come.
Ostensibly, the agreement is being hailed as a 'cautious
breakthrough,' in the press. But "Can Mugabe be 'trusted'?" They
ask.
By whom and for what? Tsvangirai is still the West’s point-man
in Zimbabwe. We would be naïve if we refuse to accept that on
several levels, the MDC is receiving instructions and aid from
Washington and London to de-mythologize and discredit Mugabe’s
type of independent politics in the eyes of Africans. Tsvangirai,
alas, is the perfect straw man for the external forces as
witnessed by his scripted responses to Mugabe, turns of phrases
and clichés that are directly lifted from the mouths of Western
critics and his penchant for running to the West and excoriating
his country and government from a distance.
He has on more than one occasion called for foreign intervention
to replace the government in his country. [His handlers seem to
have reined him in somewhat.] Tsvangirai, despite the praise
heaped on him by the Western press, is in a better position to
torpedo the agreement than Mugabe, since he has never
articulated any concrete plans to re-animate the economy or
unite the country – his only constant has been an unreasoning
zeal to dismantle Mugabe’s government and restore ‘the rule of
law,’ which properly translated means the dismantling of the
agrarian reform. Should he even suggest such a course of action
publicly now, he would be signing his own political death
warrant.
The other thing to watch for are the disgruntled ex-Rhodies,
[who have never been able to accept that Africans have booted
them out and reclaimed their land] attempting to sneak back
under the shield of the MDC and intriguing to regain some kind
of influence. We know the mind-set of these unregenerate
racists, we have seen the negative pressure their type is
exerting in South Africa through the press, disparaging
everything Africans do or attempt to do, even to wishing and
praying for South Africa to fail at hosting the World Cup. They
desire and intrigue for failure in Africa and that is no
exaggeration.
They have criticized Mbeki in the most disparaging and
disrespectful terms and the amazing thing is that Africans have
tolerated this vitriol for so long, tolerated snakes within
their midst. The role of post-liberation whites in Southern
Africa has unfailingly been that of spoilers, worms in the
apple, forever crying for the ‘good old days’ of white rule,
mounting insidious campaigns of disinformation in and out of
Africa against the Continent and its people. These are the
creatures lurking in Tsvangirai’s shadow, looking for a rat-hole
back into Zimbabwe’s economic and political infrastructure.
Given Tsvangirai’s track record of running to the West anytime
he disagreed with Mugabe and his repeated calls for sanctions
against his own people, it should come as no surprise that in
the background [or even the foreground] his Western advisers
will be manipulating him to use promises of Western aid as
blackmail. We have seen previously in Libya and North Korea and
even Afghanistan that Western promises are not trustworthy.
Mugabe knows from bitter experience that Western promises of aid
for the land reform offered at Lancaster House were nothing more
than a convenient ploy to end the guerrilla war. The thing is,
Mugabe has been so skillfully demonized by the West that any
complaint or action he takes against Tsvangirai’s inevitable
collusion with the West will be decried as proof of his
intransigence.
The only true guarantee of Zimbabwe’s so-called power-sharing
agreement is the solidarity of Africa’s leaders. We have seen
that Africa’s closing ranks behind Sudan effectively stalemated
attempts to arrest and try Omar el-Bashir on political charges
created by the West. We have seen Latin America working
increasingly together frustrating US interventionist tactics in
the region. Africa needs to circle the wagons and appropriate
the principles of cooperation and self-reliance so effectively
applied during the Liberation War period.
Collectively, SADC must make it clear to the West and aid donors
that any attempt to exert influence and insert their agenda in
the affairs of the Zimbabwe government would be viewed as
hostile and provocative acts, and would jeopardize the West’s
relations with the region if not the entire Continent.
The power-sharing agreement, so-called, is the culmination of a
relentless Western effort to undermine and discredit Mugabe and
by association the Liberation Struggle which engulfed Southern
Africa two decades past and invalidate its principles of
sacrifice and regional solidarity which encouraged Africans to
work together for a common goal against a common enemy and
triumph. The myth that is being mooted in these times of chronic
African crisis is that the Liberation Struggle is of the past,
obsolete and unnecessary. All that is needed, affirm Western
donors and powers, is for Africa to fall in line with the West’s
economic and social policies, submit to ‘good governance’ and
transparency, especially countries that do not toe the Western
line.
A ruthless dictator runs Chad, leaders of questionable integrity
and democratic credentials rule in Gabon, Ethiopia, the CAR, and
a leader who actually lost an election in Kenya managed with
Western help to co-op his way back into government and so on.
The bottom line is that these examples are of leaders and
governments in the pockets of Western political and economic
forces, yet Zimbabwe is singled out for especially vicious
retribution because it dared to reclaim land that was stolen
from Africans by Europeans who abode by no ‘rule of law’ except
their own pirate’s code.
Now that the Trojan Horse is within the gates, will the
Zimbabweans allow their hard-won liberation to be compromised by
collaborators and power-hungry politicians who are more of
creations of Downing Street and Washington than they are of the
bloody fields of combat and sacrifice which lifted the foreign
yoke from the region’s neck? Who can forget the bloody battles
of the Independence Period, the lives lost, economies shattered,
terror sanctioned and covertly aided by the West? Who can forget
NATO’s arming of the Portuguese as they burned and killed in
East and West Africa? Africans, by their willingness to believe
in the better nature of their enemies, have been fooled and
exploited time and again.
Can we truly believe that the West has our best interests at
heart when repeatedly their aid has been unhelpful, their
political advice detrimental and divisive? Can we be so naïve as
to believe that with their own economies in severe crisis, with
banks and airlines failing, the West will front the necessary
funds to assist the Zimbabwe economy, unless they have a
majority share in how the country will be run and that every
vestige of progressive, independent thought and action is
uprooted? Surely we are not as stupid as they are trying to
convince themselves that we are. The economies of SADC are not
so weak and inefficient that they cannot, with will and creative
cooperation, genuine cooperation, help the Zimbabwe economy back
on its feet.
We must not forget that Western sanctions and pressure by the
West on investors have largely contributed to the economic
crisis in Zimbabwe. If we do our homework and read behind the
lines, ignoring BBC and CNN propaganda, we will find that the
West has blocked loans and investors from Zimbabwe, hoping to
provoke a crisis that would have brought anti-government mobs
into the streets. It is a tried and true destabilization
technique, in action right now in Bolivia. Unfortunately, that
trick did not work so behind the scenes the Kenya Plan was
dusted off and primed for Zimbabwe. The game plan is not to
restore Zimbabwe to a functioning economy, but to punish Mugabe
who dared stand on his feet and take back the people’s land that
rightfully belongs to them.
Morgan Tsvangirai will now be ‘invited’ to Western capitals,
feted and given Freedom medals and built up in the European and
American press as this great ‘democrat’ while behind the
curtains, the strings will be pulled. We are facing the second
phase of the Liberation Period.
By Amengeo Amengeo
Specialist in Spanish, Latin American, Caribbean as well as
African History. He has also been a journalist, civil servant
and graphic artist
First published in
The African Executive
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