adminMDC rhetoric into the policy, chancing on making the budget or part of it, sound like a party manifesto. In turn, Biti, like he did last week when he presented the 2012 budget, points out that politics affects macroeconomic situation.
Which is true, and any elementary learner of economics will say yes to that fundamental fact.
So the world heard him last Thursday saying something about “monetising the peace process” by which he meant giving money for the constitution-making process and the Organ on National Healing and so forth. The word to watch here is “peace”, which if one looks at the grander scheme of things in Zimbabwe and world politics, is pregnant with meaning.
It is in the public domain, admittedly, that Zimbabwe has experienced some challenges over the last decade relating to its politics. This has led to some clashes among various players but principally between politicians and activists from the country’s two main parties, Zanu-PF and the MDC-T.
These clashes, which perhaps reflect the seriousness with which Zimbabweans treat their politics, for better or worse, and the emotion some people attach thereto, have at times been bloody. Zanu-PF and MDC-T have admitted culpability in the violence.
While it is recognised that every life is precious and deserving not of being lost, it must be pointed out that Zimbabwe’s political violence, at worst, did not reach the endemic levels that are experienced in other countries today. Some of these countries are regarded as virtual paradises. At worst, and this is coming from the MDC-T party which often plays victim and has been accused of having a morbid obsession with death, 200 people lost their lives during an election campaign period.
Although the country encounters very sporadic violence, especially in Harare and its surrounds, Zimbabwe remains largely a very peaceful country.
Yet, somehow, some people have contrived to portray the country as having been, or still in the throes of war, selectively ignoring the peaceful nature of Zimbabwe and the tranquillity Zimbabweans enjoy, outside of, and despite sporadic acts of violence which are highly publicised. Zimbabweans, at their angriest and most criminal have never indulged in senseless killing of each other, white farmers or foreigners, for example, as happens in its neighbour to the south.
This is why talk of a “peace” process is very mischievous. But Biti’s reference is not in a vacuum.
There have been attempts by some quarters to rechristen the Global Political Agreement, as the “Global Peace Agreement”. Lindiwe Zulu, South African President Jacob Zuma’s envoy in facilitating the fulfillment of the GPA (as we know it) is one of the people who have been pushing for such rechristening.
The former South African diplomat to the EU obviously knows what she implied. It dovetails into attempts to paint Zimbabwe as being in a “post-conflict” situation which, can you believe it, bundles the country along with such countries that have known real conflict as Somalia and Rwanda, among others.
Still, Zimbabwe is then regarded as a country in “transition”, much in anticipation of a nationalist-free dispensation as a self-fulfilling prophecy of conflict in Zimbabwe.
All this is driven by conflict-mongers at country level and organisations these countries support. Ironically, as in the case of Zimbabwe with its little conflicts, such countries would have fuelled crises in the first place.
The promotion of “peace” and “transitional” processes paves way for the entrenchment of activities by Western-sponsored organisations that seek the greater good, for them, of neo-imperialism.
This has happened in eastern and central Europe.
These sanctions are crafted to make the people suffer so that they rise up against President Mugabe, which protest benefits Biti himself and his party.
Online Reporter