Andrew
Oftentimes, money is like a drug that blocks reason and accentuates the basest instincts in both men and women.
It is like the sun around which all evil and debauchery revolves.
At the beginning of this month, the country hosted a curious tourist from East Africa, Robison Mwinuka, who had journeyed for more than 2 000 kilometres from Dar es Salaam to Harare on a fortune-hunting expedition.
As a victim of a very tall tale that he could become fabulously rich by selling a toe or two, Mwinuka came prepared to shed even more parts of his anatomy.
After realising his buffoonery of being the victim of an outlandish yarn spun by idle miscreants that oil Harare’s rumour mill, he inconsolably wept. Kikikiki.
Argh! People can do anything — anything! — for money!
As long as you can pay the piper, you can call the tune.
Perhaps this is why 1 Timothy 6:10 is the most used and abused verse: “For the love of money is the root of all evil which while coveted after they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
Matthew 6:24 is even damning: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
As Bishop Lazi said before, over the past couple of years, a tsunami of cash has been flowing in from outside to the men and women in our non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
After pocketing a tidy US$647 million in 2020, last year they received a staggering US$975 million — close to a billion.
In the first three months of this year, an additional US$242 million had found its way into Zimbabwe, and the results are beginning to show.
Mischief
The piper, therefore, has been handsomely paid and is now dutifully playing the master’s tune.
There are a series of separate but related ominous events since the beginning of the year that are tell-tale signs of what to expect in the near future.
On January 20, 26 local civil society organisations jointly issued a statement purportedly to register “our deep concern with the behaviour of Chinese business operations in Zimbabwe”.
“We expect the Zimbabwe government and the media to engage China from the vantage point of advancing Zimbabwe,” they said.
It would be laughable if it was not tragic.
On May 18, in Namibia, members of the Affirmative Repositioning Movement and Namibia Economic Fighters invaded the streets to ostensibly protest against Chinese shop owners, who were variously accused for money laundering, tax evasion and sexual harassment.
Five days later, in Cameroon, people in the small coastal village of Lolabe took to the streets to protest instigated by an opposition lawmaker and some civil society groups against a Chinese mining company, Sinosteel, that recently signed a US$676 million deal with government.
The following month, the University of Malawi Child Rights Legal Clinic and other civil society organisations also protested after a Chinese national Lu Ke was arrested purportedly for filming a racist video involving local children.
It gets interesting: Apparently, Lu had been ‘outed’ by a BBC journalist.
Not to be outdone, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CiZC), which recently had the good fortune of having US$160 000 funnelled into its bank accounts in Botswana by the US-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED), was rattling its sabers last week, claiming it will “pursue all avenues necessary to resist entrenchment of authoritarian rule and this includes strengthening advocacy initiatives at the regional and international level”.
Good luck!
There is method in this madness.
The shameless actors and theatre might be different but the script remains the same.
There is clearly a targeted and coordinated Sinophobic campaign that is meant to racially profile and degrade the Chinese motivated by the sinister objective to conveniently create an avenue for Western interests.
Rank Madness
We should budget for more rank madness and mischief as the cash continues to roll in.
A curious piece of legislation, the United States Innovation and Competition (USICA) Act of 2021, created a “Countering Chinese Influence Fund” amounting to US$1,5 billion over a five-year period, of which a third, or US$500 million, will to channelled to media outlets through a creature called the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
Well, the USAGM, under which outlets such as the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia (RFA), and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) fall, is an instrument and weapon for wielding soft power through the subtler approach of swaying public opinion and conditioning targeted populations to align with Western interests.
To dislodge China, we are told the media will be used to “raise awareness of and increase transparency regarding the negative impact of activities related to the Belt and Road Initiative”, which essentially is a euphemism to describe the toxic maligning of Chinese investments.
It is not fortuitous that we are increasingly waking up to screaming headlines that scandalise Chinese investments with obscene regularity.
Not many people took notice of the statement issued by the Chinese Embassy on July 11, which took exception to a number of perfidious articles published in a so-called private newspaper that attacked and smeared the Chinese Embassy and companies.
Eerily similar to cases in Cameroon, Malawi and Namibia, Chinese companies were lavishly accused of polluting the environment, looting resources, abusing workers and bribing Government officials.
We are told the published stories were a product of commissariat work funded through some NGOs such as the Information Development Trust (IDT).
In their no-holds-barred statement, the embassy, which described the practice as “opinion bullying and scoundrelism”, was not taking any prisoners.
“Funded by the US Embassy in Zimbabwe, which is publicly acknowledges, IDT has long fabricated false information and published anti-China news, whose despicable operations include instigating a few journalists at a marked price to make up stories attacking Chinese government and companies,” it said.
“Following the exposure of this sponsored mission, the centre and its gang of hired guns have earned themselves the moniker ‘Mr 1K’, which have engaged in the despicable deal in which each fabricated article attacking the Chinese government or Chinese company is promised US$1 000 paid by a certain embassy since last year.”
Folks, these are the shenanigans happening in broad daylight right under our noses in our teapot-shaped Republic.
Medicine
What we have always known is that the system that supports such scoundrelism is not limited or targeted at the Chinese only, but it extends to broader objectives of trying to influence and drive political outcomes desired by the West.
What the recent patterns really reveal, is the use of some NGOs as surrogates and Trojan Horses of hostile foreign agents and States that are doggedly working against the nation’s interests.
Over the years, we have seen some foreign States funding political party campaigns and candidates through laundering funds under the guise of magnanimously sponsoring local communities.
It is exactly such mischief that the PVO Amendment Bill intends to cure.
Shining a light on the movement of dirty money and roping in the Finance Intelligent Unit (FIU) will help a great deal.
No wonder why the usual suspects are stridently complaining and lobbying to weaken Government resolve to enact the proposed amendments.
Not this time!
As the Bishop once said, such medicine has not only been prescribed in Zimbabwe only, but in other jurisdictions.
As recent as 2017, Hungary, a member of the European Union that had previously accused George Soros of using NGOs to push foreign interests in Budapest, passed a law that requires organisations receiving 23 000 euros per year from outside the country to register as foreign-funded organisations and report personal details of each donor.
Failure to do so results in dissolution of the organisation.
And earlier in October 2013, Poland, another member of the bloc, established a National Freedom Institute, which took over the responsibility of administering national funds for NGOs.
This was envisaged to ensure that they couldn’t stray from their mandate by dabbling in politics and being used to systematically undermine the government.
As we approach the 2023 elections, the desperation will begin to show.
But such nonsense will not be entertained.
Not this time.
Bishop out!
Online Reporter