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CRS needs inland freight forwarding and clearing agencies for a huge input consignment destined to reach Zimbabwe through Beira. You recall that PRIZE was a major component of my piece last week. It targets 90 000 smallholder households. How reality moves so fast!
Europe’s amoeba
Similarly, another organisation, Protracted Relief Programme (PRP), has put out an advertisement proclaiming its support for the Zimbabwe Government National Smallholder Agriculture Input Support Scheme.
This one needs manufacturers and rural stockists through whom to reach farmers by way of inputs redeemable through a dual voucher system: one a paper voucher, another, an electronic one.
Interested manufacturers and stockists are required to register with select NGOs operating in districts of their businesses, with October 15 set as the deadline.
All told, this programme targets 45 289 households, each household getting a US$70-worth voucher. Some of the NGOs selected for this exercise are Mercy Corps, CRS, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, Zimbabwe Community Development Trust, Christian Aid, Save the Children (UK), Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe, CARE, German Agro Action, Action Contre le Faim, Christian Aid-Zimbabwe, Project Trust (ZIMPRO), CAFOD and Help Age Zimbabwe. PRP is an initiative sponsored by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Australian Government, Norwegian Government and the United Kingdom.
George Soros again
Of course you also have a business initiative called Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) sponsored by the Australian Government Aid Program and the Soros Economic Development Fund. It calls “for proposals from business for innovative commercial ideas that combine profitability with developmental and social impact.” The funding takes forms of grant, repayable grant funding and/or debt/equity finance.
Departing without leaving
And just in case my readers may have missed it, the Masawara initiative has grabbed its first business by way of the BP Shell assets for whose bidding even time got too tired to tick. BP Shell indicated at the height of our stand-off with Britain that it was shipping out, a decision which got many indigenous players in the fuel industry to put bids. They have lost to the British-registered Masawara, thanks to FMI, Masawara’s fund manager, but also its subsidiary. Who says the British have not left Zimbabwe? I am still to hear from Enterprise Zimbabwe on their latest activities but I have no doubt in my mind that they are hard at work.
Branson may have got it slightly wrong by going openly political, contrary to instructions. After all, MDC-T had disguised its hand by redeploying Bella Matambanadzo, who should have joined the Prime Minister’s Office long back. Enterprise Zimbabwe may need new tact. I pay my debt to a reader who corrected me on Richard Branson and Virgin Records. Apparently Richard sold Virgin many years ago, and the reader tells me he regrets the decision to this day. Thanks mate for that one.
15 with Blackman in tow
If I could also add that the past two weeks have seen many business missions to Zimbabwe, most of them western and focusing on coal and methane gas. Now get me right: I am talking of big burly white men with double cheeks on either side, white men who eat well and have done so for a very long time.
To the number, each delegation had in tow very small black Africans, wiry thin, lips ashen and hungry, but salivating in undefined anticipation. At one time 15 such delegations found themselves in one room somewhere in Harare. I happened to be around the same venue, fully charged with my usual naughtiness.
So what business brings you here black brother, I enquired, seemingly curious, seemingly concerned. At which prompt point one of the burly eating ones stepped in. Boy, didn’t I get a gush of mining detail that sent me reeling, sent me into a swoon!
The simple, rich heirloom
The white man was a fund of geological data on my country, data that revealed thick seams, encrustations and deposits that bespoke of subsoil assets of unimaginable proportions in sovereign Zimbabwe.
He whips out a geological map so heavily discoloured and fingerprinted as to attest to the long, buffeting journey which that precious piece of paper has travelled: across epochs and between generations.
It bore fingerprints; it bore signatures of passing generations, proclaiming itself as an heirloom from an otherwise poor white family that struck it in Zimbabwe’s El Dorado, becoming a great white family as a consequence. Before long, it transformed itself and its fortunes into a family concern, before its final mutation into big global corporations we know today. “This came to me via my great-grand father who bought it from a pioneering family,” said the white man, voice carrying the shiver of an acolyte before the holiest shrine. At which point, the man’s big eyes shrank, focusing on times far gone by, as if to retrieve testimony from doyens of the heritage. A mere map, a mere piece of paper as a legacy!
Would that have made sense to me, a black man? No, never. I would spew bitter spittle on the grave of great grandfather Mbiru for not leaving behind big cattle, big sheep and goats, choosing instead to bequeath a mere piece of paper. We need to know and recognise value, and where it is trapped, divined and retrieved.
The late Boka was very good at that and I am still to see a black person of comparable curiosity. Today that piece of paper controls a country we think we govern.
Today that piece of paper is key to knowing what lies beneath our rough barefoot tread, and thus key to revealing why we find ourselves in the middle of a sandstorm of Caucasian anger. They need the treasures hidden in the map, treasures we do not know.
The brother who did not know
My black brother also rallied behind the ugly, discoloured paper, to “see” what mysteries lay beneath its folding fault-lines, its creased corner ears. Why was he as curious, as amazed like I was, he behind whose confident heels the whole team treaded and followed? Was the white man playing officious junior, quickly adopting the burden meant for his black boss? Why did he wrestle my enquiry from the Blackman?
As the discussion drifted, it became clear who the real leader was and who the follower was. I became twice foolish for ever mistaking a mere patina of blackness for black partnership. After all, since when has my colour owned? Still, it is the white chick, not the black eagle, which is flying. We remain in the back, we the race happy to play harbinger to those who shall own, who shall lead our own homes.
Re-enter Rhodesian NGOs
Let us ground all of the above a bit. The overall objective is achieving what the US Government calls “market-led democratic transition,” using myriad initiatives. Please do not ask me to elaborate. But I can undress a few hidden elements from the welter you see above. The whole agricultural business I alluded to above is being parcelled out to western fund managers and implementers, and this in a country with our level of literacy.
The actual doers are virtually all western, with very few exceptions which are just as interesting. I hope you know that Zimbabwe Community Development Trust and the Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe, some of the local NGOs chosen, were both launched at the height of our land reforms as vehicles for defending the white landed gentry through maudlin concern over the assumed plight of black farm labourers.
It is these two bodies which gave the CFU/JAG land cause a humanitarian tinge that mobilized the West against our land reforms. Today they are being re-invented as bona fide NGOs clean enough to handle land-related programmes in post-land reform Zimbabwe.
White mudhumeni
Much worse, you will come across an organisation called Crown Agents which is linked to the British establishment, apart from being associated with the truck that rammed into the fateful accident which claimed the wife of the Prime Minister. Interestingly, we have our own Crown Agents based in one of the suburbs very near to the city centre, which is run by former commercial farmers. It is involved, the same way that the US programme seeks to turn CFU/JAG into vehicles for agricultural extension services for the smallholder farmer. No, America will not support AGRITEX whose role and mandate is to provide extension services to farmers. Instead it seeks to turn embittered white former landowners still holding grudges and still hoping for the return of the land, to become skills benefactors to the new landowners. These are the same farmers who mobilized farm workers for given political outcomes.
Who questions them when they gather meetings in the name of extension services? But you may also be inclined to limit this to dropping a life-line to white kith and kin. It is much more, which is why ZFU and ZCFU are so key to the overall equation. We shall talk. In the meantime just know that these programmes will not benefit smallholder farmers on what is termed “contested land”. I do not need to tell you where that land is.
So much ado
Last week we had a non-event action through which MDC-T leader Tsvangirai hoped to bring this country to a standstill. But that action did no more than irritate, a mere dance of Pope’s dunciad. Tsvangirai was unhappy and wanted the world to know that. This unhappiness, Tsvangirai told the world, had been triggered by the President’s “appointment” of ambassadors and governors, judges and commissioners without consulting him as Prime Minister, “as provided for in the GPA”.
The country was now in a constitutional crisis, he lamented, blaming it all on a one-man, one rule dictatorship. Where misinformation is this rampant, it becomes all too important to correct even the smallest of details. The President never appointed ambassadors; he merely reassigned serving ambassadors to new stations. This is neither knew nor the last.
There will be more such re-assignments as we move into the future, and the Prime Minister had better gotten used to this. And all of them are career diplomats, not political appointees we have had in five of our missions, and to balance which the two MDC formations have had to nominate an equal number to balance things. That settled the political component of the diplomatic service, leaving career diplomats, themselves members of the civil service, to get on with the work, unhindered.
And the Public Service makes it clear that once employed in the service, one can be recalled, retired or reassigned as pleases the employer who is a constitutional office (PSC). Simply put, there was no issue for the Prime Minister who was officially nothing in this country when these fine men and women were appointed career diplomats.
From what we now know, if there was and is nothing for the Prime Minister on this one matter, clearly there was a lot for the MDC-T leader and his handlers from the same. Hence the charade so elaborately played out in the dingy offices of Harvest House.
A call for new sanctions
His remedy for this great “transgression” was to write letters to countries to which these ambassadors are accredited, pleading for their non-recognition as representatives of Zimbabwe. Pleading for them to be sanctioned and banned, in other words. It’s a trademark request from the MDC-T against this country, is it not? The man has again sought to foul the village well, after slacking his own thirst. His unhappiness has no bearing on the common man in the street. None at all. Its all about his ego and this country cannot be held back by such a puny consideration.
Measures sure to boomerang
Let us evaluate this measure for what it hopes to achieve. Already the UN has indicated it will ignore the letter. And ignore the letter it must, given what it is, namely an inter-governmental body bringing together sovereign countries. Who those sovereign countries dispatch to represent them is an equally sovereign decision which the UN Secretary General, as the top civil servant of that body, cannot question, let alone veto. Or else there has to be an appropriate resolution requiring the outlawing of a state-party, something we are yet to see in history and in the future. I can assure you such a resolution would never be prompted by the MDC-T leader, by however many times he grows in importance or intelligence. Equally, it would never be triggered by his mere unhappiness which is of no consequence in international relations. It is ironic that his Office gets it so wrong a mere week after we are told the same Office has undergone a soaking diplomatic course. Did it grasp anything at all?
Where tit invites tat.
Secondly, the essence of international relations is reciprocity. Whatever attitude a foreign power shows to Zimbabwe’s envoys shall be reciprocated in respect of its own envoy accredited and resident here. This is one area where tit is sure to invite tat and States are generally not too keen for such an unsavoury eventuality.
But even this assumes the cue to de-recognise an ambassador will have come from the dispatching authority. In this country, as elsewhere in the world, an ambassador represents a country through its Head of State.
The Head of State could be a President, a Monarch or whatever authority is made to symbolise the State. In our case the Head of State is President Robert Mugabe. All of Zimbabwe’s ambassadors, including those from the MDC formations, once deployed out by Government, automatically represent the President of Zimbabwe, whatever their disposition towards him. This is why they are also addressed as “Excellencies”. Our constitution makes it clear the President is the appointing authority of these rare bipeds. And with him as Head of Government as well, there can never be any doubt as to who else it could be.
So this whole talk of constitutional crisis is utter “tosh” and the MDC-T leader knows that.
No sane Government takes a cue from fulminations of a man who has nothing to do with letters of recall or credence.
I doubt very much if the MDC-T leader knows what colour those letters are, let alone what messages they carry. Simply, Tsvangirai is not an issue when it comes to the accreditation or recall of Zimbabwean ambassadors accredited to other countries. This is what makes his communication
on this matter to whomsoever, as pint-sized as those who penned the thought in the first place.
Who would lose?
Thirdly, let us not kid ourselves, Tsvangirai’s only hope is some symbolic noises from his handlers, the Europeans who may have had hand in engineering this spate anyway. At worst they can use this to protest to build cheap politics for the mouths of the gullible. But they cannot “dis-accredit” our ambassadors without inviting similar measures here. And they have already been told so. After all, in this environment of sanctions and minimal engagement, who is affected by any strictures on serving ambassadors? Certainly not Zimbabwe which has nothing to gain from representation in such hostile territory. The Europeans will have a lot to lose and they know it.
A matter of goodwill, not GPA
The issue of Governor is straightforward. The President appoints Governors who officially represent him anyway in provinces. They have definite terms which the President can renew at will. He has just done that, even then carefully ensuring he leaves room for other possibilities. Interestingly, the same MDC joined in accusing the President of not renewing governorship of the late national hero Welshman Mabhena. So terms can be renewed? What is the point? Anyway, no section in the GPA talks about governors. Governors only became a matter arising in the course of a governing partnership and growing mutual confidence. And when it did, Zanu (PF) took the position that no movement on the matter would be envisaged until the issue of sanctions was addressed with equal commitment by the three parties. I do not need to tell you that in respect of sanctions, Tsvangirai and his party have shown the profound commitment of hounds running with hares, much to the excitement of the other two parties.
A penny for my power
The issue of judges and commissioners straightforwardly gets dealt with by the respective Commissions which are provided for in the Constitution. The President merely formalizes the recommendations from those Commissions. What is most irritating is that all these matters were dealt with at the August Troika meeting in Windhoek, with the President painstakingly explaining the legalities of all these appointments. At the end of it all, the chairman of the Troika asked – not once but twice – whether Tsvangirai was satisfied. He said he was, which is how the matter ended the way it did. Hardly two months down the line, he allows very short people in his kitchenette to override all this in order to create a sensation. Not everyone in his party thinks this was a clever position to take. There is a deep grumble from the more thoughtful who find themselves associated with this shallowness. But he knows the truth and simply wants a sideshow to hide serious challenges his party is facing. If he thought the inclusive Government was going to grind to a halt, his latest actions have revealed he wields the power of a bark over a moving train.
Funding Zanu (PF) thoughts
But he is also having a torrid time with angry westerners. Angry because they cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that their money was used to collect and consolidate the views of Zanu (PF) in the draft that is shaping up. They think MDC-T was snoozing and gave it all away to Zanu (PF). They need a decent way to extricate themselves from this new imbroglio, which is why our dear Prime Minister now talks in his walk, speaks in his sleep. He is a tortured soul. The MDC-T badly needs to wriggle out of the constitutional process they agitated for in the beginning. Their retreat is uproarious.
What a headline!
Lastly I found the Zimbabwe Independent headline, “Tsvangirai, Khupe boycott cabinet,” very interesting. True, the two and more were not in Cabinet this Wednesday. They were in Nyanga where the Rights and Interest Cluster was meeting, with the DPM presiding. The PM was originally scheduled to open this review meeting on Thursday, in deference to a session of Cabinet deferred to Wednesday on account of the President’s Libyan fixture. But he knew what mess he had committed and sought refuge in the Nyanga programme by bringing the opening forward. Would he meet the President in Cabinet, risking a public spate? In the end, both the cluster review and the opening collapsed, which is why no one bothers about the outcome of that retreat. It was the cluster retreat which boycotted, not Cabinet. Cabinet sat and took binding decisions by which this country shall run, with or without a happy Prime Minister. Most MDC-T Ministers were in attendance, which is what brings me to my point. Could the Independent headline have read: “Tsvangirai, Khupe defied by own over cabinet”? And when Cabinet meets in that representative way, how constitutional is the crisis? An additional little but important detail. Among presenters lined up for the abortive Nyanga cluster review meeting was something or someone called “Fishmonger Representative”. No wonder why the whole thing stank.
Icho!
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