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It is their arrogance that demands we embrace them, having given us little choice in determining such a platonic matter as friendship. Are we to be indecently assaulted then by this embrace in arms directed by ill intent? Who are they these “friends” that Zimbabwe must have imposed upon her?
What is the nature of their friendship and with which Zimbabwe do they claim it? To what ends do they now covert friendship with a people they condemned to be the wretched of the earth, whom they stripped of socio-economic dignity when they imposed their sanctions?
They have traumatised our nation with orchestrated economic sabotage; sought to have our country ostracised and isolated to be left at the mercy of their hostile intent. Yet now they manipulate us, to be like a battered wife and embrace acts of grievous harm inflicted in the name of friendship?
They seek to legitimise a declaration of friendship so hollow, with their feigned acts of kindness. They parade to the world their removal of 81 Zimbabweans from their sanctions list and think us fools to be misled by such a façade. Was it ever individuals sanctioned or our entire indigenous majority?
It is a meaningless act, their delisting of 81 among us. How can Britain, America and their accomplices legitimise their declaration of friendship by the removal of 81 citizens from their sanctions list, when what they have always sanctioned are not individuals but the aspirations our indigenous majority?
President Mugabe and his colleagues within Zanu-PF were placed on the EU sanctions list solely because of their pro-indigenous majority empowerment ideology and policies facilitated in Government, all to the ire of Western governments who are the so-called “Friends” Zimbabwe must now have?
We are an indigenous majority whose aspirations and pursuit, very much economic, are advocated by Zimbabwe’s leaders. It is those of our leaders most crucial to this nation’s endurance along its path to economic emancipation from Western subjugation that have been retained on the sanctions list. They remain sanctioned to cripple Zimbabwe’s economic empowerment backbone.
President Mugabe and the heads of our security sector are no ordinary citizens to be personally targeted by western sanctions as these “friend” touting hostiles would have us believe. They represent a greater interest beyond their person, an interest defining our entire national cause.
They constitute national office, within which their individuality becomes a sacrifice upon the altar of national interest and purpose. Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the heads of our army, police and intelligence represent Zimbabwe and its majority’s independence, sovereignty and economic emancipation.
President Mugabe is the heartbeat of Zimbabwe’s economic endeavour against a legacy of deprivation attributable to the western countries that now call themselves “Friends of Zimbabwe” yet whose intent is to rape Zimbabwe of her fertility, bleed her womb dry of all life sustaining its indigenous generations.
Our national army, police and intelligence services, ably lead by the persons these so-called friends keep sanctioned, have been the vanguard to our national endeavour? How then are sanctions “smart” or “targeted” as they have for so long been misrepresented? Are they not instead directed against an entire nation, when they seek to weaken individuals that represent, fight for and defend our nation’s cause?
If indeed sanctions have been targeted against individuals, why retain the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation? Is it not because ZMDC is the epicenter and symbol of indigenous ownership and control of natural resources that Western countries envy, and would deny us.
ZMDC has been the granary within which a nation under economic siege has found relief. It is with the wealth of diamonds now held in trust by ZMDC that the indigenous majority shall have their sanctions ravaged socio-economic dignity restored. So why would any true “friends” seek to deny us such dignity by destroying ZMDC, a symbol of indigenous ownership of life sustaining mineral resources.
They impose sanctions again the heart of Zimbabwe’s indigenous aspiration, against the persons and institution that keep such heart beat alive and pumping. They are without sincerity, these wolves in sheep skin, friends that embrace with sharpened knives behind their backs.
We must take with a bucket full of salt these “Friends” stated commitment “to work with any government emerging from free and fair elections, which are credible, peaceful and transparent.” What free and fair elections? When they scheme an unfair electoral environment by laying siege to the indigenous majority’s economic will they know shall determine the outcome of our pending plebiscite.
There is a clear message being conveyed from their redrafted “10 Men” sanctions’ list, which is being conveyed to manipulate us, sway our allegiance. They would have us rid of President Robert Mugabe from government, promising return of dehumanising donor funds to be channelled to a government with an adulterated conviction to safeguard Western interests at the expense of its own majority.
And so they incite another “bhora musango” against President Mugabe and Zanu-PF’s indigenisation ideology and programme which they know to be the subject of pending elections. But then, they are no longer confident, not convinced by the ability of those they bought and have coached to score an own goal against their own nation, Zimbabwe’s cause. The MDC-T is now an impediment.
They see an electoral field increasingly dominated by Zanu-PF, with supporters increasing in indigenisation chorus. So now they take evasive action to preserve self interest, to avoid reprisal from a dawning Zanu-PF victory. They begin to court Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF.
Their starved economic interests cannot take another decade, upon a Zanu-PF’s victory, without a share in Zimbabwe’s vast mineral resources which now include an emerging Great Dyke of diamonds stretching from Marange in the east, then westward to Bikita and Chivi to the midlands in Zvishavane.
They have never recalled their mining companies have they, despite indigenisation. And so they will engage a stronger Zimbabwe under Zanu-PF, will settle for 49 percent, even less, for the world’s emerging diamonds hub already benefiting their BRICS competitors. Surely, far less than the 49 percent they spurn now shall be more than enough to revive ailing western economies. Are beggars to be choosers after all?
And so they will make “friends” with those they had thought not worthy. The Zimbabwe they loathed, one led and defined by President Mugabe and Zanu-PF is an anticipated friend to be engaged. They prove the political adage, that there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, just permanent interests.
The West’s permanent interests now shift into the hands of Zanu-PF. They must make friends now with those that will determine their economic fate. Why all the shock then, and anger, now that realigned British interests acknowledge Zanu PF’s role in future Zimbabwe and invite its emissary, Cde Chinamasa.
Must MDC-T sympathisers and anti-Zanu-PF mongers be so naïve and ignorant, that the British empire always calculated its interests and self preservation above those of human rights, good governance and such other manipulated principles.
The Empire’s descendent, Cathy Buckle wrote disappointed over “The irony of EUs actions”, (Daily News March 27, 2013). She is at a loss as to why “the EU considered de-listing in the same week that human rights defender Beatrice Mtetwa was incarcerated”?
Buckle cannot fathom that the empire calculated Beatrice Mtetwa’s fate as irrelevant to the reality that Zanu-PF emerges the common denominator to the fate of its economic interests in Zimbabwe.
Buckle, like many fellow anti-Zanu-PF mongers, remains in denial that Western celebrated human rights defenders have been Her Majesty’s pawns, to be played to interests far from those of an indigenous Zimbabwean majority. They have been played against a Mugabe and Zanu-PF government, and failed to deliver; like rabid dogs they must now be euthanised to allow the salvaging of western interests.
These are the same “Friends of Zimbabwe” that once fed and sustained Professor Madhuku’s NCA when it once upon a time barked loudest against all things Mugabe and Zanu-PF. Now a rabid NCA gone wayward against its master’s self interest plan is cut off its ration of Western funds. A starved and now enlightened Professor begins to bemoan
“Friends of Zimbabwe” “not interested in any open democratic dispensation here”. He realises that “They are interested in a political arrangement in Zimbabwe which serves the interests of the West”, The Sunday Mail, March 31, 2013. If only he now tutors these so called Western celebrated human rights defenders enlisted in the West’s anti Mugabe and Zanu-PF crusade, which civil society colleagues abandoned the Professor and his NCA’s call against a new constitution in preference of salaries and per-diems dangled by Western donors?
Professor Madhuku must warn them, that there are no friends of the West more equal than others. Western friendship is like the oceans current subjected to what stronger winds may come. Such is their definition of “friends”, to be determined by what self-interests must be served and preserved. And so, our Zimbabwe most beloved, you need no enemies with such Western friends as these.
l Rangu Nyamurundira is a lawyer and an indigenisation/empowerment consultant based in Harare, Zimbabwe
Online Reporter