adminwho suspect that they might be infected with the HIV virus go and hope to come out with a piece of paper certifying that they do not have the virus.
The “new start centre” concept promises some kind of cleansing process which suggests taking there one’s baggage of doubts, suspicious, stigma, fear and guilt and coming out clear, self-assured, innocent, hopeful and negative.
But not all who go there come out the way the actors appear to come out in the donor-funded TV adverts.
Some come out shattered, terrified and angry, forgetting that the “new start centre” cannot give the visitor new blood and a new identity.
It only confirms what is already in the blood.
In the same way, Zimbabweans must continue to ask: What is in the MDC blood?
What is the MDC’s DNA?
Being the prodigal sons and daughters of Zimbabwe who invited illegal sanctions, who invited demonisation at the hands of the white world and who took part in attempts at illegal regime change against the people — the MDC formations treated Copac as a “new start centre” which would somehow cleanse them of their sellout status and prodigality.
Through legal gymnastics and English language manipulations, Copac was going to transform these sellout parties into the First Parliament, the First Executive, and the New Nation with a new conscience and a new culture as clean as Iraq after the US-UK invasion and occupation.
That is indeed the meaning of the delusional requirements displayed in part 3 of Schedule Seven of the Copac draft Constitution published by The Herald on 2 May 2012.
There we are told that as a result of the people’s unquestioning acceptance of the draft, Zimbabwe will have a New National Flag, a New National Anthem, a New Court of Arms, the First National Elections, the First Executive, the First Parliament and the First Delimitation which will lead to the creation of the First 10 Provincial Governments!
Copac is God the creator!
Even treasonous secession will be enshrined in the new Constitution as a new philosophy of devolution.
This latest Copac draft therefore shows the depth of selfishness and self-centredness among the new breed of foreign-sponsored politicians dominating the post-outreach Copac process.
The Copac politicians went out to all the wards in the 50 districts of the country and invited the people to contribute their ideas for a new law of the land.
The people told Copac that they wanted a new law of the land which would safeguard their independence and sovereignty; consolidate their national identity and all the gains of the Second and Third Chimurenga; confirm and entrench their ownership of the once stolen land and its minerals; honour and respect the founders and liberators of Zimbabwe; and project their Pan-African solidarity and pride as an original African nation among nations of the world.
But what Copac has given back to the same people is a self-indulgent, self-centred and self-cleansing document pretending that the MDCs’ foreign sponsored onslaught upon the country and the people has wiped the national slate clean, enabling the MDCs and their white Anglo-Saxon funders to pretend that the century of struggle against the British and the Rhodesians, (since 1893), together with the 32 years of sovereign independence (since 1980) have all counted for nought.
They have been cleansed, wiped out, by a UNDP-funded document; they have been wiped out together with Morgan Tsvangirai’s identity as a 21st century Tshombe,
because Copac has indeed served as his “new start centre” for the laundering of treasonous acts and prodigal excesses.
How should Zimbabweans explain Copac’s donor-funded delusions and provocations this time?
The emotional and spiritual predisposition which makes the population extremely prone to conflict in a neo-colonial situation such as that of Rwanda or Zimbabwe is narcissism which, in terms of the need for knowledge, produces solipsism.
The Western imperialist communications strategy which maximises the exploitation of narcissism and solipsism is post-modernism.
In The Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism, Richard Sennet defines narcissism as the collapse of the public sphere as the space for the peaceful conduct of citizen relations because of its overloading with private sphere concerns or personal concerns.
Copac became an arena for self-indulgence and self justification for the clique of individual politicians concerned.
In the Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lasch agrees with Sennet that narcissism on a social scale causes the breakdown of the public sphere as the space for the peaceful conduct of citizen relations.
But he does not agree that the cause is the overburdening of public life with private matters.
The breakdown is therefore in both the private sphere (the space of love, friendship, intimacy) and the public sphere (the space of citizen relations).
This collapse is clear in the Copac draft.
The small elite concerned became fixated on their own interests and those of their donors.
The cause for both breakdowns is the collapse of moral fibre and memory, the destruction of unhu, under post-modern capitalism.
What causes this breakdown is “the incorporation of grandiose object images as a defence against anxiety and guilt” or a “psychic formation in which love rejected turns back to the self as hatred.”
This clique hates Zimbabwe so much that it has written a Constitution wiping out 32 years of independence in order to start afresh.
In simple language, post-modern capitalism has created an alienated middle class whose children (the equivalent of our lost generation in Copac) feel unloved and abandoned by their “parents” and therefore hate them.
In addition to hating their parents intensely, these children also feel extremely insecure and guilty.
They feel insecure because they have no confidence in relating to others and to the world with competence; and they turn their hatred of their unresponsive parents against themselves and against the world in general.
But all these feelings cannot be expressed directly, either because society and the work place do not allow direct expressions of such negative feelings or, even if they do so allow, the consequences of openly expressing hate and rage are catastrophic for the individual.
So feelings about past experiences and past relations have to be deflected and disguised to avoid pain and open conflict.
This is where media come in. And Copac has been obsessed with the media, especially deceptive adverts.
This is where the post-modern strategy of communicating and the narcissistic character and way of relating come together.
The most important common feature between the two is fantasy.
The narcissistic character fails to separate “images of self” from “objects” and persons outside the self.
“These images fuse to form a defence” against bad memories and bad experiences of the past. Therefore, it is not only the 32 years of independence which have been wiped out; the real history of imperialism and destabilisation has also been wiped out.
From two opposite ends of the world, two types of narcissists find each other.
The neo-colonial narcissist copes with self-hatred, insecurity, anger and anxiety by adopting an attitude of “blind optimism” about the generosity of the western imperialist and his agents, UNDP and the NGOs.
The neo-colonial narcissist “has little capacity for sublimation [or creative originality and autonomy]. He or she yearns for sponsorship and rescue by the donor as super-parent. He therefore depends on others [foreign sponsors and patrons] for constant infusions of approval and admiration.
“He must attach [himself] to someone, living an almost parasitic existence. At the same time, his fear of emotional dependence, together with his manipulative, exploitative approach to relations, makes these relations bland, superficial, and deeply unsatisfying.”
He or she cannot maintain deep, organic relationships which require loyalty and commitment.
So, even Zanu-PF members of Parliament involved in
Copac allowed 32 years of achievements by their movement to be wiped out.
The imperialist mass media and cultural projects (designed for the South only) help to sustain the dependence of the neo-colonial narcissist.
In other words, the narcissist in Europe and North America needs the neo-colonial middle class narcissist in the South. According to British writer Mick Hume: “ . . . the crisis that has brought all this [grand posturing in 2005 in Britain] about is not in Africa, but in Britain. There is a crisis of authority afflicting the political class, and a crisis of common values in our society.”
This means the elites in imperialist society, just like the elites in Zimbabwe, have raised a generation of narcissists afflicted by feelings of emptiness, purposelessness, self-doubt, self-hatred and moral bankruptcy which require massaging through mediated and post-modern fantasies and spectacles. So, Morgan Tsvangirai and the clans of Judas around him can imagine (through) Copac) that history does not matter. The First Chimurenga, Second Chimurenga and Third
Chimurenga call all to be buried and forgotten.
“There is a poverty of leadership [among the new generation] at every level, and a dearth of any sense of purpose that is bigger than oneself. Against this background in British life, Africa has become an all purpose [post-modernist] stage on which everybody from a pop star [such as Madonna or Geldorf] to a politician [such as Tony Blair] can try to show off their moral worth and sincerity. Everybody is keen to emphasise that the primary purpose of this summer’s events [in 2005] is to raise, not cash but ‘awareness’ — in particular, a self-awareness that we are on the side of angles in Africa.”
In other words the massive Anglo-Saxon investment in an African opposition to the liberation movement in Zimbabwe in the last 12 years is meant to secure access to the mineral and energy resources of this land as well as to create a fawning, grovelling class of African leaders who will also supply the needed propagandistic, emotional and moral assurances required by Anglo-Saxon leaders to make them feel human and civilised in spite of their self-hatred, hatred of the world and their inheritance of global holocausts going back 500 years.
Online Reporter