adminThe one thing we should never allow an outsider to do in this country is to insult us or our institutions. We own ourselves, together with our imperfections and hey, outsiders should just keep off, well off.
It gets worse when the outsider uses monstrosities spawned by his history, by his country, by the failures of his or her people, failures of his systems.
This is what one Albrecht Conze (whatever that name means!) must be told, and told in plain, straightforward language. We have enough German speakers in the country to have that stark message translated for him. Asade kutitsika conze, sorry, konzi, sezita rake.
Zimbabwe is no land for the archetypal supple African of colonial lore. We are a very proud, self-believing people, and that he must be told in stark language, that man. That is the language Germans understand. They are not well known for any aristocratic graces, whether by deed or by tongue. You talk to them on their rough terms, and they understand you, respect you even.
Trading ingratiation
This man – apparently his country’s ambassador to Zimbabwe – posted in the obliging Newsday a piece in which he abuses The Herald for running a story where he is telling readers his country no longer believes in sanctions. By any count, that was not a new story from Germany. For a long time we have known that many states in EU – Germany included – are just being polite and neighbourly to Britain. In that game of civility, Zimbabwe has been the prize, the trophy for reciprocal or traded ingratiation.
What cements the European Union together is less common policies, less common interests. It is common enemies, coinciding pursuits for competing ends. And we know that Germany – much like the French and the Danes – would quickly recede to calculated silence the day Zimbabwe secures her two or so nationals’ investments in the conservancies. We all know that.
Massacres in Namibia
What is the GPA to Germany?
What is Tsvangirai or MDC to Deutschland? Does commercial Germany deploy its ambassador to Africa to worry about black natives and their little GPAs? Or to worry about their human rights assuming she regards Africans as humans.
We did not see much of such regard as she hunted and killed Hosea Kutako’s people, massacred thousands of Hereros in Namibia? Where is the Germany so concerned, so full of the “milk of human kindness”, to use Shakespeare’s phrase?
Would she have provided the lethal Bren Gun that equipped the Rhodesian army in its fight against Zanla and Zipra, in propping UN-sanctioned UDI? Would she have continually traded with the pariah UDI, all against our liberation aspirations? When did we become a real people to Germany?
Why make the extraneous and the peripheral appear like the core concern of the German mission here, Mr Ambassador?
Pravda and the world that has moved on
What I find irksome, in fact completely insufferable, is when this ambassador throws away caution and polish, to dare write: “In Zimbabwe, I find it helpful for my analysis to have grown up in Berlin during the Cold War. Understanding the Pravda or its fellow propaganda media meant learning to read between the lines. Twenty years after the fall of communism, certain media in a handful of countries still function in the old totalitarian way. They have become rare specimens in a modern world that has moved on. We should cherish them for being so old-fashioned. At least as long as there are normal newspapers around to inform us about the real world.”
What the German Press would never do
What greater insult can a nation swallow from an outsider representing a system that has carrions all over the African veld?
I called Newsday “obliging”. That it is. Maybe the editor printed the piece without realising that the ambassador’s attack encompassed Newsday too? He lamented absence of “normal newspapers around to inform us about the real world”.
It was a wholesale dismissal of the Zimbabwe media. Beyond that, why allow an outsider to use your paper to insult a compatriot, a fellow publisher? Would the German media be that helpful in similar circumstances? But all that is by the by. Let us get to the nub of what the ambassador is saying.
Knowing the gnawing pathogen
The import of his piece is that we are a backward country, a leftover from old totalitarian times which, thankfully fall within the ambassador’s living memory. He is thus a blessing to have in our midst. We belong to pre-united Germany, to Cold War Europe from which the “modern world” has long moved.
Like Pravda – itself an old Soviet Union paper which some Israeli entrepreneur still find attractive enough to buy after the fall of the Berlin wall – we are an old site, a ruin emitting odours of ancient primitivism. And what better diagnosis of the gnawing pathogens than from a man who grew up in Berlin, during the Cold War?
Reading between his lines
But the substance of the ambassador’s response is itself quite revealing. He writes: “In explaining the European Council’s decision, I have stated that the EU has taken a first step by reducing the number of listed persons; that further steps will be considered as further progress in Zimbabwe allows the EU to move forward; and that this will not necessarily take the EU another full year. I then added that it is always a complex process to bring together the views of 27 member states who need to find a common position.”
So, Mr Ambassador, what makes it “complex” to bring together 27 member states who have “a common position on restrictive measures against 163 Zimbabweans”? Is Germany part of the complicating factors? Does that imply receding unanimity, much akin to what you told The Herald in the story you now seek to disavow? Much worse, what does the fact of an ambassador of Europe’s strongest economy leading an investment team in Zimbabwe on the day of extension of those same sanctions against Zimbabwe, say about the “common” position?
A team that promises 500 million euros to a country under European sanctions, a country led by one of the 163 Zimbabweans on the list? What meaning do we attach to the revelation that Europe “will not necessarily take another full year” to revise its position on sanctions?
Thank you ambassador for extending The Herald story to a wider readership, only in your own words and style. Indeed yours was a return – joyous return – to old Berlin where truth hangs tenuously and precariously “between the lines”. Thank God Zimbabweans can read between your teeth, between your lips.
Through my cleaner rib . . .
I notice Aldo Dell’Aricca, the bloc’s EU man here is having a real hard time selling the grotesquery from Brussels, which he is enjoined to defend in his official capacity.
He wants accent to fall on the EU’s readiness to review its position on sanctions sooner than a year, thereby validating Chan’s notion of shifting mores in Europe, indeed what the don terms Europe and Britain’s quest for “a grand symbol” to enable a retreat from the ruinous policy of sanctions.
Well, I don’t know. But he wades right into the shifting and slippery, when he tackles the issue of de-listed spouses. Curiously, he admits these are individuals who could act “in their own capacities and could do their own business as they were seen not to be undermining the rule of law” . . . blah blah, blah!
He means they can do business in Europe, with Europe, these spouses of listed husbands? If Manheru was among the listed – as indeed he should, could be – he would straightaway take this as a clear invitation from the mighty EU to be an investor in their bloc, one only posted via my softer, and in the eyes of the Europeans, cleaner rib! But my rib all the same.
Straightaway, I would lodge an application – via my wife of course – for a retail licence for somewhere in the Strand, bearing the catchy “Minda Takatora Investments”, emblazoned on its peeping forehead. Just some little shop trading in produce exported by new farmers, including mapodzi neruninga!
Here is a great gesture by Europe, one superficially meant to placate the 163, but fundamentally meant to convey the sheer moral bankruptcy of these illegal sanctions.
Let Ambassador Aldo Dell’Aricca enjoy his European travails. He collects a monthly cheque for such agonies, does he not?
No African at Nuremberg
I can’t leave this without a few more words for the German Ambassador. It is a great insult to a people to use excesses from your country and your history to berate another people.
On two momentous occasions, Germany and its systems have let through its own excesses, to very bloody outcomes for the world. Between 1914 and 1918, Germany gave us a Kaiser who created the First World War, the bloodiest war in history to date. The world thought Germany had learnt something, indeed would prevent the recurrence of such stupendous carnage.
But no, the world was wrong. Between 1939 and 1945, Germany gave us another terrible infant – one Adolf Hitler – who gave the world another big war – the Second World War.
The subsequent division of Germany, creating the Berlin which the ambassador talks about so fondly, comes from that war which harvested many millions of lives across the battle divide.
These are Germany excesses for which, strictly speaking, every German must atone. At least that is what the European sense of justice – with its accent on vindictiveness and repair – teaches us.
After all Nuremberg repaid Europe and America. It never compensated Africa which also sacrificed for the defeat of the Reich. There was no African at Nuremberg. Or was there?
The story of mudhara Simbi
What a great insult when a country, a nation, a people, a man who must say “I am sorry”, struts about pasting on innocent foreheads condemnatory metaphors drawn from his and his people’s past bloody mis-behaviours?
Who else can Hitler be except Germany that bore him, raised him before finally unleashing him upon the rest of mankind? Yet he is now made a metaphor of imagined evils on other continents.
My own uncle – Mudhara Simbi, now late – fought against Hitler in Burma. He fought that war on behalf of the British Queen. After that war, no one in the village remembered his real name – Tazvishaya – which his father had composed to record the family’s concussed state after their defeat by the BSA Company.
He had new names, new identities from that German war. One was Simbi or “Iron”, to celebrate his toughness against the invading German army. The other one was Mudhibisi, the Dipper, to capture his retirement profession and package after that war.
The Rhodesians had rewarded him by making him a charge-hand of a local communal dip tank, ensuring the “Rhodesian” communal herd never had ticks, and that the Rhodesia Exchequer had enough revenue by way of stock tax.
But his most prized package was the round big pocket clock whose trade name was ZOBA, to which was affixed a chain, making it oscillate gracefully like another pendant from the cosmos. It gave him fame throughout neighbouring villages, but hardly any food, hardly any gratuities for serving the empire in that very brutal war.
What the Cold War was not
Mr Ambassador, your country has given the world many problems already. On your way to Mbare, you see a cemetery full of Germans, Italians – all prisoners in that great war of ignoble motives.
That way, Germany is known here. Many here do not recall the Cold War, let alone begrudge it. It never colonised Africa. Europe did. Europe still does. It never imposed sanctions against us. Europe did. Europe still does.
Do not give us your little evils, your little hates, turning them into world abominations. Europe created the Cold War; Africa suffered it. We know the evil that has hurt us over a century; we recognise it, including its imperious behaviours.
That evil has been around since the 19th Century; it is thus much older than the Cold War, older than your Kaiser, your Hitler.
That evil is imperialism, an old vice which your country sought to start also in Europe, sought to make planetary, through the two world wars your people have fought and lost. That evil exists today and pretends it is the “modern world”, that is “moving on”, that it is progress, civilisation.
I can assure you that Zimbabwe would be infinitely more modern, richer, stronger, its media more thrustful, if Germany, both directly and through her ubiquitous and meddlesome foundations, had stayed in Europe, would only leave her alone today.
Poor at home, riches from abroad
Writing sometime towards the end of the eighteenth century, Jean-Bernard Abbe Le Blanc wrote: “It must be owned that the natural productions of the country (England) do not, at most, amount to a fourth part of her riches: the rest she owes to her colonies, and the industry of her inhabitants who, by the transportation and exchange of the riches of other countries continually augment their own.”
Abbe Le Blanc was himself a compelling voice of the French literati whom an English nobleman had invited to tour England for a year and half. From that tour emerged two seminal social commentaries: Letters on the English and French Nations and A Tour through England, Wales and part of Ireland
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LSE: When the widower cradles the widow’s baby
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made during the summer of 1791.
Putting guns where the mouth is
Abbe Le Blanc was referring to England as a nation of merchants and traders, well before the industrial revolution, although of course pointers for that revolution were already beginning to show. Of course Abbe Le Blanc deliberately swept under his un-batting eyelids England’s fame as a slave trader. Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow – all these dashing port cities – had grown from roaring trade in slaves and colonial products such as sugar, tea, tobacco and cotton. As the historian Eric Hobsbawn would later show, ship and navy building industry did not fall on England like manna. It derived directly from the sheer fact that England’s survival – her heart and blood – was located outside her body, somewhere in her overseas colonies. A nation of merchants and shopkeepers of necessity needs maritime technologies, indeed keeps its arms at sea. “Britain,” wrote Hobsbawn, “then struck the foreign visitor…as a powerful and formidable state, but one whose power rested chiefly on that most commercially-based and trade-minded weapon, a Navy….” Britain thus put her guns where her mouth was. It still does, although these guns are more hesitant now.
A week of frantic courtship
Two weeks ago, the British “armada” careered into the eaves of landlocked Zimbabwe, apparently for a great selling effort. Marketing has become the weapon of modern warfare, has it not? The British had dropped anchor to for a tightly packaged sell of LSE, the London Stock Exchange. It was a lucky week for this great lass called Zimbabwe. The sexless British were here for courtship. So, too, were the Germans, through their Commerzbank, whatever their ambassadors here now wants us to hear. The deep-trawling Chinese had been here days before, and had done enough to raise European anomie. If the lass’ conduct could be judged by her media, then Zimbabwe would have been found on the loose and coquettish, all too eager for a courtship that took too long, used too many euphemisms for the real thing. Thank God the local media played the proverbial village gossiper, so given to stretching single consonants to long hyperboles. Ko, vaMarunjeya imi hamuvazivi here, is how the gossiper is collectively dismissed in the village.
The great fondle that followed
“LSE offers Zim hope”, ran the Business Herald headline. Three days later, Business Herald came back with another: “Bank offers 500m euros”, a reference to an offer from the Germans. The Financial Gazette weighed in: “LSE presents irresistible opportunities for Zim firms”. Clearly the Zimbabwe media across the editorial divide were in ecstasy, busy fondling the nubial news from the effort. Nothing surprising. The British effort was led by one Ibukun Adebayor – an African – who heads LSE’s business development in three regions, including Africa. LSE has a market capitalization of US$3,6 trillion, the fourth largest stock exchange in the world, the largest in Europe. To a cash-starved market like Zimbabwe, with its midget and anemic ZSE, this well-heeled amounted to a juicy plum dropped by kind gods following a prayer from the desert. On top of that add the tantalizing offer of 500m euros, and you understand why the press can be forgiven for forgetting the small print. And here is the small print, starting with the German offer.
Selling a fat German balloon
Commerzbank vice president made the generous 500m euro offer to Zimbabwe, but adding it was only available over the next twelve – yes one-two-three-four-five…ten-eleven-twelve – years! That works to about 40m euros each year, on average. Significant for a small, anemic economy that we now are, hardly mind-blowing for the infrastructural sector we are told it is earmarked for, let alone one in a parlous state such as ours. It gets worse when you read this loan offer – yes it is a loan! – against what we have lost by way of illegal sanctions. But there was worse coming, all wrapped in beautiful German cloth: details of the deal would follow much later from pending meetings with ministers! After 13 February, the media had nothing more to write about on the matter, to celebrate to this day. They now realize they were sold a fat German balloon! As for the Herald, the only thing German that came afterwards, was the Ambassador’s castigating letter in Newsday!
Your resources please!
But the Germans were very clear about what they are angling for in this country, which did not have to wait for subsequent meetings: “We want Zimbabwe to supply our industries with raw materials to ensure their survival, while Zimbabwe will benefit in terms of funding for key infrastructural projects,” which are energy, transport, water and housing. It is about the survival of German industries, itself hardly an overstatement given the global seismic shift of manufacturing power to Asia, well away from the Rhine. And, as Zimbabweans might soon learn, assuming anything comes our way in those 12 slow and long years, the so-called infrastructure developments will strictly follow the geography of German’s raw material needs. Little Zimbabwe’s benefit is incidental. Let us turn to the British offer, scrutinizing its “smalls”.
Beneath the sells language
LSE is cheap; it is awash with money; it can go anywhere, including in riskiest of markets. If in doubt, check Pakistan! Then there is an important line, nicely tucked behind a welter of details: by listing on LSE, shareholders would need to contend with being susceptible to market conditions, “and losing control of the business.” Uuu-uh! The other small print was deferred until much later in the week when a local participant – Shingi Mutasa – let out his sob-tales on the many sanctions-related impediments he faced in a bourse whose reputation as home to bold, adventurous capital, could not wilt even in Pakistan’s ever soaring temperatures. Still more came, this time three days ago when a Canadian firm – Whetstone Minerals – indicated it was calling off plans for a secondary listing on the ZSE, citing worries related to indigenisation and economic empowerment regulations. You really have to be more than a-story-a-day reporter to get what all these seemingly unrelated matters add up to. This is the one faculty we lack in our newsrooms where the impulse to be sorely grateful surpasses needful skepticism.
Bulls and Bears on rampage
The background to all this is that the present crisis of capitalism has ushered in a stage of vicious cutthroat competition all-round, including on stock exchanges. The bulls and bears are running amok. As LSE was busy enticing businesses in Zimbabwe, it was busy warding off competition for its bid to merge with the Toronto-based TMX Group, the owners of the Toronto Stock Exchange. The consummation of this marriage may very well have been completed by now. The other day, it had to ward off a derisory take-over bid from New York. You are either a shark or a little pirannah! The bourses of America, Europe and Asia are wreaking havoc in their quest for survival, and then dominance. LSE must survive and how else save by mopping up all markets in Britain’s “dominions”, including refractory ones such as Zimbabwe?
The whore of British mercantilism
Let it not be forgotten that the origins of the LSE lay in the need to finance two voyages: one to reach China led by the Muscovy Company; another to reach India and the east led by East India Company. From the 17th Century right up to the 20th Century – 1970 to be specific – all members of the LSE had to be British as per Rule 21. This background connects with Abbe Le Blanc’s social commentary, does it not? Apart from ships, the LSE was one other mopping vehicle serving a sprawling empire. We are back to mercantilism, modern mercantilism implemented through modernized vehicles, but involving same powers, same hinterlands, serving same interests, vested in history. The venture capital remains the same, seemingly apolitical and averse to political geography, but quick to raise the nation’s colours once a deal is struck. Of course it has a new navy that does not need waters and seas to float.
The Mobutus in business
It does not always meet hostile natives, but often moulds partners out of them, even penetrating in their name and interests. Some day I shall pick enough pluck to tell you why some local businessmen stand to benefit from the local presence of LSE, well beyond raising capital in its markets. We have sons and daughters who made money here, often from supplying Government and other public entities. But unlike British cargo ships whose backhaul brought in gold, silver and other minerals plundered overseas to home vaults, the boats of our sons and daughters have always enjoyed outbound voyages, carting monies earned here to overseas institutions of thrift, thereby giving us one of the biggest paradoxes of post-independence African history: In Zimbabwe, externalization is a vice of private black business elites, never of princes of power who run Government. That is why the so-called assets freeze has been so frustrating to America and Britain. The Mobutus of Zimbabwe are in business, not in the political realm, which is why asked to tour the Zimbabwe of today, Abbe Coyer – another French man of letters – would bemoan the absence in Zimbabwe of “the honest middle class, that precious portion of nations” which he so admired in England. These elites are not on sanctions and have enriched Europe by stashing our deserved earnings abroad. They now need the money back but fear questions.
Cleaning a widow’s baby.
A few great questions the media could have asked with very little research. One, if LSE offers Zim hope, what becomes of Zim’s ZSE? Two, if LSE channels London’s hot money for shareholding activity in Zimbabwe’s businesses, how does this relate to indigenisation and economic empowerment, itself a law predicated on a 51/49% shareholding structure? Three, just why is the London widower so keen to wipe clean the clogged nostrils of the baby of a beautiful widow whose husband’s funeral was held in the village only the other Surely February is Europe’s sanctions review month – British sanctions? Why is London being so kind enough to suture the grave wound it has caused? Or is that precisely why? A country attacks our economy, thereby placing all our assets in complete turmoil. It destroys their real value, only to turn around to make rich pickings? And we oblige? Four, why only a week after the Chinese are here? Why in the wake of successes in respect of the Look East Policy: with China, with India, with Iran and even with Brazil, well away from the East? Five, why after the huge minerals find, including uranium and diamonds? Why after the huge global scramble for natural resources?
The sad story of Special Grants
As I write, it has just come to light that those Special Grants by which we sign away strategic minerals like coal, have become hot business in London, New York, Canada and South Africa. WE sign away our valuable deposits for a mere US$100 000, which is the face value of the Special Grant (SG) for say coal. The haver takes that piece of paper which he acquires for a mere US$100 000, and trades it in Cape Town, New York, Toronto or some such place, to get upward of US$20m, US$100m, US$250m or more. Our coal reserves change hands that way, all the time spawning offshore millionaires, fat offshore accounts, to no mining activity here! A-ah, that beats me. Who guards this great House of Stone? Who? Icho!
Online Reporter