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Stephen Mpofu
The next two years running up to the general elections in 2018 will be a litmus test of whether Zimbabweans desire to cross the Rubicon, the polls, into the future as a united, independent and sovereign people, or whether they will succumb to unflinching, hegemonic pressures of the imperialist West as political and economic slaves.
The writing by the tiger in the West is on the wall for all to see. What remains is for the tiger’s European cubs to respond, obviously willy-nilly and for those targeted, the people of this country, to react in whatever way they choose depending on their political pedigree.
After the United States and Europe failed to exact regime change through illegal sanctions aimed at reversing land reform in Zimbabwe, the USA has taken a much bolder step this time around to cripple this country’s economy by telling – in fact ordering – the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank to block any new lending to Zimbabwe until the country met Washington’s preferred conditions.
Those conditions were set out as restoration of the rule of law, electoral reforms, reversal of land reform as well as reforming the security sector. But were it not for their seriousness, these so-called conditions would be laughable in so far as they demonstrate an imperialist’s country meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign people who do not in any way constitute a client or banana state of America’s.
At any rate, which rule of law or laws have been broken by this country to the point of giving Washington sleepless nights?
What electoral reforms about which America has become a spokesperson for the people of this country?
Or does not America want reforms to enable its underlings to find the way into power for their master’s benefit politically and economically?
As things stand, Zimbabwe is right now working on reforming her electoral act in ways that should facilitate voting for the people of this country and not for the benefit of an imperialist power driven by hegemonic desires.
The fast track land reform, as everyone must be aware, was undertaken by the government after Britain reneged on her undertaking, made during the Lancaster House talks on the independence of this country, to pay compensation to white farmers for land that the government would repossess for redistribution to the majority of Zimbabweans who needed that resource the most.
Now was the government expected to turn the other cheek still sizzling with pain from racial oppression, and say: “Thank you, bwana (boss) for refusing to pay compensation to your kith and kin for the land we sorely desire to give back to our people from whom it was taken by force in some cases, in the first place?”
No ways.
History will certainly immortalise the truth that it was for purposes of recovering land from our erstwhile colonisers that former freedom fighters took up arms to fight the settler regime. Without land, the independence for this country would have remained decidedly hollow.
But of course the US and the West would like to saturate the world with a false belief that land reform was premised on racism, to deprive whites of “their” land.
If truth be told, land reform was, and still is, meant for the economic survival of a people who liberated themselves from dehumanising colonial constraints imposed with brutality on them by a foreign ruling culture.
Government has declared unequivocally that blacks who regard the land allocated to them as a status symbol, instead of putting it to greater economic use, will have the resource taken away from them and given to those who will use it for the benefit of the country. And for those other Africans elsewhere, who may fall short of food, they will look to this country which everyone touted as the breadbasket of Africa in the early years of independence, thanks to the peasantry to whom that high productivity was credited.
That the government has also said offer letters will now be given to white farmers whose use of the land under their possession contribute hugely to the economic well-being of this country, should demonstrate beyond any doubt that land reform was undertaken not to punish white people but rather to benefit the country as a whole.
Washington has also been making deafening noises about alleged “human rights violations” by the government of Zimbabwe led by President Robert Mugabe who happens to be the West’s political nemesis. But what examples of any gross human rights violations has America posted on the globe for all humanity to see and be convinced about Zimbabwe’s alleged sin? The answer is obviously none.
And yet, on the contrary the world has heard through mass media of white policemen gunning down unarmed blacks during demonstrations by African-Americans against violations of their rights by the white establishment there.
To make matters worse some of the policemen who fired the shots with apparent glee have been cleared by juries – and all that is America’s restoration of human rights?
The mind boggles.
Also, the Indians, who are native Americans or the indigenous inhabitants of that vast country have been, and remain rusticated to the obscurity of so-called reservations – cousins, if you will, of African reserves to which white racist regimes in this country literary caged blacks to eke out a living.
And the ears of Zimbabweans and of other Africans elsewhere are filled with loud pontifications from Washington DC about preservation or protection of human rights when under the very noses of those in power there, African descendants languish in ghettos with Harlem in the shadow of Manhattan, or New York City, living in crowded conditions akin to a pigsty.
Generally, African Americans still live like second class citizens, many years after the end of slavery. And that is not to say much about educational and job opportunities available for blacks in that country, which prides itself on being, “the land of opportunities”.
This pen has twice undertaken extensive tours across the United States from the Atlantic Ocean in the east and to the Atlantic Ocean in the west and therefore writes about conditions in that wealthy nation from personal experience rather than from the hearsay that America is fed by non-governmental organisations based in this country and by political opportunists who hunt with the hounds and run with the hares all the while claiming that Zimbabwe is something akin to a pariah state.
The renegade press, in particular Zimbabweans writing for American media, have much to answer to the people of this country for sending distorted information to their employers much of the time.
These scribes subscribe to Western media theory which regard lies as facts around which to flesh out a story when, as true disciples of the “noble profession” facts bereft of truth cannot and should never form skeletons of a news story written to inform and educate people, not to mention entertaining them.
Here is an example of a story written by people deliberately or blissfully ignorant of the workings of their own continental body, the African Union. An American broadcast station aired a story from Zimbabwe after the AU summit held in Addis Abba last week during which President Mugabe as outgoing chairperson of the organisation warned in his speech that Africa might withdraw from the United Nations if the world body continued to deny the continent two seats with veto powers on the Security Council.
The story made it appear as though President Mugabe spoke in his personal capacity rather than as chairman of the AU directing his and the continent’s concerns at the Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, who was present at the summit.
The truth is that the President spoke after consulting other African leaders on the need for the continent’s representation in the Security Council, which other countries have spoken about several times in the past.
And that the heads of state and other delegates present gave President Mugabe a standing ovation at the end of his address demonstrates the fact that they applauded him for putting their views across as well.
The question of succession has also featured prominently in the past when British government leaders visited Harare. It appears now to feature even more as the West appears to view a successor to President Mugabe as head of state and leader of the ruling Zanu-PF, an alternative to regime change by force — a project that was aborted when Thabo Mbeki, as president of South Africa, refused permission to Britain seeking to use his country as a military staging post for the overthrow of President Mugabe and the Zanu-PF government.
But the truth should not be lost on any right thinking Zimbabwean that the foreign enemy is busy cracking the whip for a successor whose political thoughts are diametrically opposed to those of revolutionaries who believe Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans to determine their future without anyone standing behind their back and pointing the direction or course that the revolution should take in fulfilling its course.
There is a danger that those Zimbabweans who pursue inverted political desires and stretch out cupped hands to receive crumbs from the enemy’s dinner table will sell out to the enemy, thereby reversing the gains of independence.
Of course those who want to get into power by hook or crook are wont to accuse this pen of being a scare crow.
Which is true in a way because any political conflagration that the opponents of Zanu-PF might cause through a desire to sneak into power by any means possible, will also not spare the fifth columnist, their children and their children’s children.
Stated simply this pen is making an impassioned plea for Zimbabweans to cross the Rubicon as a united people, regardless of any political differences harboured, in order to navigate our future as a solid rather than a divided nation.
This is because peace, stability and security of the people of this country supersede any individual or minority political ambitions.
It should therefore be abundantly clear to any factionalists either in the ruling party or in the opposition parties that their conduct opens up fissures in the nation through which the enemy will come marching in and shooting from the hip to again turn Zimbabweans into a subject people who bore the brunt of oppression in colonial Rhodesia.
In other words, Zimbabweans, like any other people, are certainly given to different opinions –but a diversity of opinions on the political and economic scenarios in the country should be a source of searching for common ground, unity and strength as a nation, rather than an agenda for infiltration and destruction by the enemy taking advantage of irreconcilable divisions.
Zimbabweans, however, highly educated or learned, should avoid the illusion that whatever those in the top hierarchy politically or governmentally can do they, too, can do.
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Good leadership of one’s nation is God’s grace.
And grace does not sluice into a person, as Chibuku does from a tap into a mug.
Finally, if Zimbabwe is completely denied funding from the West, in spite of its capacity to pay the aid back, the country should turn full spiritedly to our friends in the East who gave us love and empathy in our season of crisis, during the armed revolution, and they will only be too willing to follow up on the moral and other, material support they gave us during the freedom struggle.
After all, they are also just as well financially resourced as those in the Western world.
derick.khumalo