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extend of national independence for these countries.
Zimbabwe could be heading for a general election in about 12 weeks time and given the country’s rich mineral resources and well known agricultural capacity, the interest from those countries that have traditionally benefited from exploiting the riches of the Southern African country is unmistakable and for countries like Britain it is almost obsessive.
States that are considered to be friendly by the imperial authority are not considered so on the basis of alliances anchored on mutually balanced relations, but mainly on the basis of the weaker country’s compliance with the imperial goals. When a weaker country is considered a client state, elections in that country serve a purpose to perpetuate and legitimise the rulership of the pliant regimes.
When elections are held in disfavoured states like Zimbabwe, the imperial propaganda model considers such elections as a “roadmap to democracy,” and this is precisely why it has become common lexicon in Western political circles to refer to Zimbabwe’s elections pitting Zanu-PF and the Western-backed MDC formations as the way “to democratise the country.”
Zanu-PF has competed with political parties like PF-Zapu, UANC, Zanu-Ndonga, ZDP, NFZ, NDU, UNFP, UP, Zum, Zud and even Ian Smith’s RF and elections have been held largely under very peaceful conditions every five years since 1980.
The interest of the Western imperial authority in Zimbabwe’s elections was quite high in 1980 as fears of the communist influence during the Cold War era were then quite fervent. After Zanu-PF swept to power, the country declared its socialist intentions more in the rhetoric than in any meaningful action. The inherited capitalist economic model established by British colonialists was so rooted in the minds of the new leadership that it became virtually impossible to implement any major socialist economic models, especially in the area of ownership of the means of production.
The rhetoric on socialism was more political than it was economic and pro-people welfare policies like mass education, health for all and the expansion of the road network were extensively used as massive indicators of the road to socialism. While the new leadership used part of the national revenue to implement these pro-popular policies there was a heavy reliance on grants, foreign aid and loans from international financial institutions.
The economic means of production remained almost solidly in the hands of the colonially established ownership, just like has been the case in South Africa and is the case in most of the former colonies in Africa.
The mining sector remained entirely in the control of Western conglomerates like Rio Tinto, Anglo-American Corporation and so on, while commercial agriculture remained in the control of 4 000 white commercial farmers, who 20 years after Zimbabwe’s independence still controlled 75 percent of the country’s arable land.
For all imperial intents and purposes, Zimbabwe under this set up qualified as a Western client state regardless of its Non-Aligned Movement membership, and the then vociferous rhetoric about the country’s socialist status and sovereignty. The Western establishment was all aware that there could be no such thing as a socialist state with an economy controlled and run by the capitalist international arms of investment and essentially the imperial powers simply let the children play.
Post-independence elections up to 1996 served to legitimise a compliant regime in as far as the Western imperial powers were concerned and they also served to legitimise the political system that kept Zanu-PF in power over that period, for the interests of its own leadership.
Western countries were quite happy to be involved in the funding and management of elections that resulted in the perpetuation of the rule of a government that left the Western economic rulership unabated. The political euphoria and the fervent singing about political independence could go on almost unnoticed and in fact the hoopla about political independence seemed to be good enough an anaesthetic to pacify the deprived masses.
We spent a good 20 years enjoying the narrations of our heroic war acts in attaining political independence and we portrayed an indisputable resolve to defend our newly acquired political privileges — largely limited to our leadership and heavily reliant on the economic efforts of the colonial establishment.
From the year 2000 elections in Zimbabwe assumed a different meaning altogether for the imperial establishment.
his was precisely because of the sudden turn of events when the masses of Zimbabwe started the popular land reclamation move, forcing the Zanu-PF Government to tow the popular line
Landless peasants and veterans of the liberation struggle got fed up with the emptiness of political independence and they began forceful land occupations, much to the shock of Western hegemony.
The affected white commercial farmers moved swiftly to find a political home in the then newly formed labour party, the MDC. The leadership of the labour movement led by Morgan Tsvangirai simply could not resist the Western moneybags that came with the new partnership and the leadership was literally bought out in broad daylight. The United States, Britain, Australia and other Western countries poured in millions of dollars into the MDC project and they still do.
Elections from the year 2000 suddenly became a tool “to establish democracy” in Zimbabwe; and by democracy the West refers to the restoration of a client state that does not temper with the imperial economic interests.
The primary goal of Western funding is to give us “demonstration elections,” whose primary function is to convince the home population that Western intervention is well-intentioned, that the populace of Zimbabwe welcomes the Western meddling and above all that they are being afforded a democratic choice.
When Zanu-PF won the 2000 general election the West naturally treated that election as a disfavoured one. Disfavoured elections have their place in the Western propaganda model. They are always found deficient, farcical and failing to legitimise — regardless of the facts.
Unsurprisingly, a Zanu-PF win based on the popularity of the land reclamation exercise in 2000 was defined as fraudulent and many Western media units baselessly claimed that President Mugabe had “stolen the election.”
The 2002 presidential election was sensitively handled by the Western media and when Morgan Tsvangirai was defeated the election was endorsed as inherently fraudulent, a huge robbery committed by Mugabe the person and gone were the good old days when Mugabe could defeat his political rivals with the nod from the imperial establishment.
With white commercial famers controlling 75 percent of the country’s commercial agriculture the MDC and its presidential candidate could as well be defeated unnoticed in the West and their defeat would be treated as one of Zanu-PF’s routine wins — as had happened every five years since 1980. It would not really matter what methods Zanu-PF would use to defeat its political opponents, the victory would still be legitimate and routine. That is how the propaganda model works.
In 1982, El-Salvador and Guatemala held elections under conditions of severe state terror against the civilian population and only the Western countries endorsed those elections as legitimate and there was a repeat of this endorsement from the same source in 1984 and 1985.
During the same period the pro-people Nicaraguan Sandinistas won a globally endorsed free and fair election only discredited by the United States and its imperial allies. That was in 1984. That election was extensively covered in an unfavourable light by the Western mass media establishment.
When the divided MDC got defeated in the 2005 general election it was somewhat a natural expectation from many neutral observers.
The main faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai won a paltry 41 seats in Parliament and the party evidently conceded defeat, if the silence that followed the election result can be counted for consent.
However, the Western propaganda model was completely silent on the infighting within the MDC movement, going to great lengths demonising Zanu-PF through doctored documentaries that portrayed the party as using youthful militias to win elections — again regardless of the facts on the ground.
Today the MDC heads for elections totally discredited. Firstly, the party is nursing self-inflicted harm caused by its disastrous show in Government since it became part of a co-governing structure with Zanu-PF in 2009. Literally every MDC-T run urban council has messed up local governance to catastrophic levels. In Masvingo the city council has lost virtually everything the city ever owned because of a court order authorising unpaid workers to auction the properties.
The party had to expel from its ranks all members of its Chitungwiza city council because of the reported egregious acts of corruption within that council.
In Bulawayo, the MDC-T city council meets to agree that buying luxury cars for its members is a higher priority than providing water for the residents and they go ahead to blatantly implement that order of things. No sense of shame whatsoever!
In Senate, the MDC-T has senators that propose to deal with the scourge of Aids by forcing women to bath less and to be shabby so they are a less attraction for marauding males. In Parliament the party has members that are more conversant with protest singing than debate and thousands of debating hours are lost maintaining order than debating national affairs.
The MDC-T Finance Minister is so stranded with the affairs of the national coffers that he is now sparring with little nobodies like prophet Eubert Angel whom he has reportedly challenged to provide “miracle money” for the nation. Of course Angel only pretends to be a miracle man the same way Biti pretends to be a Finance Minister.
To cap it all the scandalously sex-obsessed Morgan Tsvangirai seems to have inflicted irreparable harm on his own image. A 60-year aspiring national leader who impregnates girls in their early 20s and tells them to abort the pregnancies is hardly a good example of a state president.
Neither is an indecisive man who promises to marry three women at the same time, and actually proceeds to try and marry two of them simultaneously. Not many of an electorate out there would take seriously a man that uses money acquired from public office to publicly silence women he goes around hurting in his indiscriminate sexual exploits.
Essentially the MDC-T stands more discredited today than it was in 2005 and by every indication the party is heading for a heavy electoral defeat and even Freedom House acknowledges that fact, if the 2012 electoral survey they did is anything to go by.
Zanu-PF has meanwhile, embarked on another popular policy — the economic empowerment venture that gives 51 percent share control of all major businesses to indigenous people. The principle itself is strong enough to carry the party through an election — regardless of the party’s questionable history in successfully implementing its policies.
What is not in dispute is that the 2013 election in Zimbabwe will be treated as unfavourable and discredited for as long as it does not produce an MDC-T victory — whose sole essence would be to halt the economic policies that have harmed the interests of the Western imperial set.
The MDC-T is already preparing for its post defeat propaganda by asserting that there hasn’t been “electoral reforms” enough to create an environment of “free and fair elections.”
The good thing about Zimbabwe’s election is that it is an economic election, a stage higher than many of Africa’s elections that are still stuck at a political level. We are voting to either win or cede our economy and that is an election with honour.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.
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