adminFor the first time in over a decade, Zanu-PF is enjoying significant amounts of smiles from regional and international friends and colleagues, at least at open forums — thanks to the collapse of just about all Western-inspired vilifications that seem to be losing meaning with the demise of Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC, the man for whose cause it seems most of the vilification was premised.
Land reform came with all kinds of different pressures, in different forms, by different people, foes and friends. But could Zanu-PF allow the white commercial farmers to win the land war at a time they were sponsoring a political party of puppet black politicians?
To many that would have been tantamount to losing two wars — the land and sovereignty wars.
The liberation legacy was facing demise, and there is no way the prevailing of either Western opinion or the MDC could be allowed to happen — not in the name of any nobility the human mind could ever come up with. The stakes were too high.
In all fairness, Zanu-PF must be credited for thwarting the abating of the land reclamation process and the emergence of a Western controlled stooge government in Zimbabwe.
Political expediency on the global scale demanded a lot of compromises on the part of Zanu-PF — more concessions than justice, and many of Africa’s compromised leadership was quite complicit in pressuring Zimbabwe to give in to the demands of a Western world so immersed in historical intransigence.
Only first generation nationalists like Sam Nujoma and Kenneth Kaunda openly encouraged Zimbabwe to pursue the land reform programme undeterred.
The rest of the second-generation leaders camouflaged their mousey cowardice in the fallacious human rights rhetoric, all for the expediency of not frustrating the foreign aid economies they preside over in their own countries.
But Zanu-PF had its own expediency to pursue, the need for political survival, albeit in the name of waging a war on behalf of the trusting masses and all those who saw in the land reform programme the image of a raging justice revolution. So Zanu-PF took the position the party had to take — with unpalatable consequences in many ways. The land reform programme brought back Zanu-PF to international limelight, perhaps in a more vigorous way than the war for independence did before 1980. The party made itself a good many enemies, with both the left and the right seemingly feeling attacked by the policies of Zimbabwe’s revolutionary party, especially in the wake of many judgments having to be made on the basis of media opinion.
Some in Zanu-PF bickered internally as questions started to rise over the wisdom of opening so many war fronts at once, and the tactfulness of making so many powerful enemies. Those raising these questions are dubbed “moderates” in Western circles, while those waging the independent nationalism war are called the “hardliners.”
No doubt what is called economic sanctions against Zimbabwe today is largely nothing much more than an aid-freeze by the Western powers, and of course there is also a significant minimisation of trade and investment. That cannot be denied. The MDC-T MP who recently tried to deny the existence of sanctions can only be described by one word — muttonhead.
That the freezing of aid by powerful Western countries destabilised Zimbabwe’s economy can hardly be questioned, just like the economic decline caused by trade isolation cannot be overlooked, but Zanu-PF must do a little more than just crying foul over the sanctions. You do not rebel against the excesses of your donor and investor at the same time keep expecting a smooth flow of his donations and investment.
Aid economies are precisely the reason Zanu-PF must fight against imperialism and all its other manifestations. It is easier in today’s world for imperialism to dominate Africa economically and culturally than militarily, and that is why the West is heavily investing in the aid industry.
Foreign aid provides a lot of flexibility to cultural imperialism, and it gives the domination a great aura of morality. It is more effective and less costly, although it appears the West is currently counting its losses after the larruping of its sponsored party in the July 31 election. But the losses are not entirely devastating when one considers the flexibility of imperialism. Manoeuvres can still be made and that is why Madhuku thinks he stands a chance of replacing Morgan Tsvangirai on the opposition political scene.
Already Zanu-PF has voluntarily sent its Finance Minister to go and collect IMF benchmarks and instructions — all in the hope that whatever it is the imperialist institution wanted to give to the Tsvangirai government can be extended to Zanu-PF. Frankly that is pathetic. Soon Patrick Chinamasa will be explaining in detail some austerity program he has already indicated we need “to complete” before the IMF can renew its domination-inspired funding in our direction.
The West was once convinced that overcoming the Zimbabwe Government was remarkably easy. If you want Harareans to totally rebel against their government you just need to forbid the importation of whiskies and champagne, nail polish, lip sticks, beer, cigarettes, Internet access, and English premier league matches. These are products a typical middle class city dweller is convinced cannot live without.
Leading the pack in glorifying these essentials of life are some of the families and mistresses of Zanu-PF politicians themselves — these torch-bearers of the vicious anti-imperialism war we are told we are winning at election campaign rallies.
Revolution time is not time to go and borrow money from the IMF so we can replenish the stocks of lipstick and nail polish, or buy luxury cars as trophies for winning Members of Parliament and their luckier colleagues lucky enough to be appointed into Cabinet.
Rather revolution time is time to choose between champagne and water, to choose between luxury and necessity, to choose between self and the rest.
But we live in a revolution that gives US$50 000 as a developmental fund to a constituency represented by an MP visiting the same constituency behind the wheel of a Mercedes Benz worth no less than US$100 000.
When the former Finance Minister Tendai Biti was asked to acquit himself on the whereabouts of the development fund he scoffed at the implication that he could have misappropriated the “peanuts”.
It is not normal that the civil service and the executive account for over 80 percent of the national budget in salaries and allowances, while we face the sad reality that the only tax payer asset a villager in Bikita West will ever see is the ballot box brought over during election times.
How many of our people are lucky enough to be in the civil service, in parliament or in the executive? Certainly no more than 300 000 in a country of no less than 13 million people; yet in our view it makes sense for this minority to have an 80 percent monopoly of the national budget.
As if the economic privileges are not enough it is those from the urban areas who believe they are entitled to set the opinion tone in the country, saying an election won only in towns and lost in the rural areas has no legitimacy at all. It has to be annulled and a re-run ordered. Urban people believe the rural vote is from a lesser people and can never carry more weight than the opinion of the city people.
It is our Harare people who want to shape world opinion over what is happening in our country. Our city people want to lecture the world about human rights, about economic hardships faced by the city dweller, about a climate of terror all over the place, about an uneven political playing field.
Fair enough.
But who is going to talk about our condemned children dying of preventable childhood diseases deep in our rural areas? Who will talk about the forgotten small-scale farmer whose idea of victory is a 10-kilogram pack of maize seed? Who will talk about the child denied access to the basic necessity of education? Who will talk about the empty clinic giving villagers a sorry fake state of hope when all an ailing patient can ever see is a hopeless nurse explaining about the absence of drugs?
Our urban people will cry hoarse about their violated human rights, especially the right to cause trouble for their incumbent political opponents, and the right to read newspapers of their choice, or the right to march around town whenever they feel like, for whatever cause they may feel like pursuing, and with whomever they want to do so.
But who is going to stir up international public opinion against the kind of scandal that is killing about 20 000 children per day globally? Who is going to arouse international public opinion that we in Zimbabwe renovate individual houses for $3 million dollars ahead of providing boreholes for villagers walking kilometres in search of water to drink?
Zanu-PF has to dare look reality in the face and take an introspective look at some of the longstanding privileges enjoyed by its own leaders. Some of the privileges are so longstanding that they have become immune to scrutiny, and they are now normal and simply unquestionable. Or so it appears.
A Permanent Secretary driving one government car to work while having five others parked under fruit trees at home is no cause for alerting international opinion, just like it is not important to tell anyone that the hospital in the rural area from which the secretary hails has no ambulance. That is unacceptable.
Zanu-PF can relax because their opposition is led by a man who is reportedly looking for close to $4 million from his party for the purchase of a mere house at a time his party is failing to settle salary arrears for its workers amounting to half a million dollars.
Our politicians are opposed to each other purely on the basis of political affiliation and belonging, but they are totally at one when it comes to priorities, especially over matters of personal privileges. With corruption one is at home across the political divide.
Zanu-PF has to shape up to the reality of the revolution the party so much wants to play custodian over. That reality is about bringing development to the masses, cutting on personal privileges so that rural clinics can have basic medicines for common ailments.
Zanu-PF cannot in the same breath vow to dislodge imperial hegemony and hope to run a foreign-aid-funded economy, or hope to be accommodated in imperialistic IMF policies.
Cuba never did that, Chavez’s Venezuela did not do that, Iran did not do that, and Gaddafi’s Libya did not do that.
While it is fact that some of these countries busted Western isolation using petrodollars, it is equally true that Zimbabwe has diamond dollars that could go a long way in building economic sustainability, only if short sighted policies are abandoned and discredited for what they are — ludicrous posturing by a people far removed from the long term needs of the country.
We like Cuba and all other countries sanctioned by the unthinking and arrogant Western leadership can wage a committed moral onslaught calling for the lifting of the illegally imposed sanctions and that is absolutely acceptable and understandable, but crediting the illegal sanctions with responsibility for every one of our leadership failures is just unctuous, if not outright villainous.
The illegally imposed economic sanctions must be an inspiration for employment creation rather than a deterrent, an inspiration towards independent nationalism, and not towards a donor-reliant economy.
The leadership of a country going through what Zimbabwe is facing cannot be like the desperate mistresses of Harare who give goofy claims that it is possible to have an affair with a rich old man for the sole purposes of fleecing his money while denying the sexually unpalatable man sexual access.
There is only one word to describe such empty mouthing. Nonsense.
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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