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Behold NED funds at work
AMERICAN money is beginning to work, what with the countdown to 2023 having begun.
A few weeks back, I wrote about monies which the American National Endowment for Democracy, NED, allocated to various political NGOs operating in Zimbabwe. Under the so-called Pachedu, all those political NGOs have now ganged up to call for a national shutdown, whatever that means. I am reminded of the late Amilcar Cabral’s postulate in his essay, National Liberation and Culture. Foreign domination, states Cabral, forces imperialism to do either of the following: to liquidate practically all the population of the dominated country, thereby eliminating the possibilities for cultural resistance; or to succeed in imposing itself without damage to the culture of the dominated people — that is, to harmonise economic and political domination of these people with their cultural personality.
Imperialism’s Triple Cs
Of course Cabral merely sampled culture to illustrate his thesis. Yet his postulate, which holds true for most colonial and post-colonial situations, encompasses all facets of the life of an occupied people. Imperialism falsely couches itself as a force for the good of the colonised, which is why Africa’s colonisation was packaged as nobly subsisting in Triple Cs — Christianity, Civilisation and Commerce of the “benighted” African. In our post-colonial circumstances, the assault of our Independence and Sovereignty was and is done through the seemingly kind, pro-African interest laws purposefully named ZIDERA — Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act. This pernicious law pretends to be Zimbabwean even though it is a law against Zimbabwe by a foreign legislature. It claims to have been passed with the twin goals of achieving “democracy” and “recovering” our economy for us. In reality it destroys both our democracy and our economy to advance America’s selfish interests. Couched that way, the assault on us is made to appear to be in harmony with our country and our aspirations as a people. Cabral could not have put it any better.
Zimbabwe will not be a colony again
Pachedu, itself an American-funded, and largely white-run outfit with sprinklings of blackness, wants to pose as a defender of Zimbabwe’s workforce which is exploited by western capital, and Zimbabwe’s students enrolled in highly subsidised State universities and colleges.
Its leaders all live in leafy suburbs of the eastern part of the City, and drive comfortably home after each day’s treachery.
Cabral quite emphatically says pretensions to harmony between interests of imperialism and those of an occupied people, have never been confirmed by human experience or history. Good luck to Peter Mutasa, Masaraure and their American friends. Zimbabwe will never be a colony again.
Riding on urban commuters
Whatever sound grievances transport operators working under the ZUPCO franchise might have had — and they have sound grievances — these are now enmeshed with the wiles and subterfuges of the opposition and its foreign benefactors.
It will be very hard for these operators to prove their bona fides to Government, whatever shortcomings in the current franchise. What the latest stand-off does is to get Government to apply its mind comprehensively for a lasting solution to urban transport challenges. I am not too sure where that leaves these striking operators.
Reviving sagging politics
Of course Triple C and its telescopic supporters think they now have both a grievance and a red herring on which to revalorise their sagging political fortunes and to mobilise for 2023. A red herring in that issues of their constitution-free and congress-free operations can now — so they hope — take a back seat, away from the gaze of a censorious public.
Sagging fortunes arising from their gradual loss of the urban voter who wallows in appalling services, broken sewers and infrastructures, and ever piling garbage crying out for collection. Of course all these monumental failures will not go away; we will keep them in sharp focus as we permanently tackle the vacuum created by operators who have chosen to withdraw their services. It is also an opportunity to look at the whole transport system, in all its constitutive facets.
One temporary teacher Oates
Not to undone, lately the British have been very active in Zimbabwe’s political market. Recently, their upper house tabled a motion on Zimbabwe which their hoary lords continue to mistake for a colony, a good 40-plus years after formal decolonisation. One Lord Oates who did temporary teaching here after our Independence, was impolitic and chose to perfectly validate Cabral’s afore-quoted thesis. He bemoaned what he claimed was loss of democracy in Zimbabwe, citing as evidence the decline of the fractious and inorganic opposition which Britain founded through the Westminster Foundation. It is as if ZANU-PF only rules well when it props and strengthens opposition to itself! Maybe the time has come for us to momentarily accept British suzerainty so they show us by example and political theory how throughout their long and chequered history they assisted us — in opposition to their colonialism — to grow so we soundly defeat their settler presence here in our country!
Churchillian jingoism won’t work
Or how Johnson’s Conservative Party has gone about purposefully and democratically helping the Liberal-Democrats and the Greens gain their strength and appeal to wallop it in latest local government elections which both the Conservatives and Labour have lost so dismally! It is clear Johnson’s false Churchillian jingoism would not wash with Britain’s irate voters who have decided to punish their churlish leader for sheer dishonesty, and for imperilling the Kingdom through some faraway war in which he has embroiled Britain, in the vain hope of salvaging its mortally declined status as a global power. As I write, the British economy is burning, with the ever soaring cost of living pinching pockets of Britons. Meanwhile, a recent survey on British attitudes in the aftermath of BREXIT, reveals that Britons are now ashamed of themselves, seeking recompense by trading in their vanished pride as Britons for one as Europeans they no longer are!
Does Britain submit to Athens and Rome?
Zimbabwe left the Commonwealth way back in time, of its own accord. That was under the First Republic. With the advent of the Second Republic, it was Britain, not Zimbabwe, which begged the current administration to apply to rejoin the Commonwealth. While Zimbabwe welcomed that suggestion, which cohered with her new policy of engagement and re-engagement, it should never be forgotten this was a British idea and urgent priority. Later, the British changed their mind. While it is their prerogative to prevaricate, it is our burden to bear responsibility for their about-turn in their original ambition to get us back into the Commonwealth, itself a colonial relic. What one finds fatuous and abhorrent is British attempt to make us their concern on the basis of bygone colonial ties no one relishes, or on the basis of some non-existent membership to their Commonwealth. We acknowledge neither, anymore than Britain herself today submits to Rome which once colonised it, or to Brussels after walking out of the EU.
The cycle of Empires
The reactivation of blatant Anglo-American interference in our politics is not fortuitous. Rather, it is the mark of the beast, which is why it must be treated with absolute seriousness. The conflict in Ukraine triggered by NATO’s elastic sense of military geography, has amply revealed the West’s precipitous decline, consistent with cycles of all empires in history. You do not need to be a keen historian to know that American global dominance came about through the so-called two world wars, in reality European wars. And the lesson is clear: global power is shuffled through major wars, themselves modalities for dethroning and enthroning superpowers at every stage in human history. Some analysts go as far as placing a 100-year cycle to the reign of any one superpower. I won’t be that bold.
Unfit rulers
But Tony Blair must have been responding to something real and worrisome to the West when he recently told an American news network that US and NATO must do their utmost to dispel the abiding notion that the West is in decline and decay.
There was much to raise such anxieties and executive frets. A whole Prime Minister turns Number 10 Downing Street into a Piccadilly Circus-like pub!
A whole President of a superpower loudly farts the entire length of his stroll to the microphone, to irrepressible outrage of his Vice President and the country’s media! And once done with his press brief, he turns around for a brisk handshake with….er…American’s impalpable air! As if he is some latter-day Macbeth confronting Banquo’s ghost! I won’t refer to how British MPs while away tedium in the House of Commons by watching some enlivening stuff! Suffice to say never in post-1789 European history has the West ever revealed or shown such inner decay!
Blair’s global lamentations
I said the West’s decline is a real threat to us, and to the rest of the world. That it is! Listening to NATO’s already war-weary media as it covers the war in Ukraine, and to statements from NATO leaders in various echelons, it is clear NATO sees its fight against Russia as cosmic. For NATO, this is a war for its continued planetary dominance, never mind its tattered circumstances. For that reason, the fight is broader than Eastern Europe, and encompasses Asia and Latin America, with Middle East and Africa as the coveted trophies. Tony Blair said as much in the aforementioned interview. He lamented that core-West did not appear to have strategy for handling or coping with China’s rise, which he said is both unavoidable, and requiring tools for both soft and hard containment. He lamented the West’s failure to secure the support of leading Asian and South American powers like India and Brazil respectively, against Russia. Above all, he stressed global leadership entailed control of the Middle East and Africa: both regions had to be barricaded against Sino-Russian encroachment, he stressed. Of course he had comments on the South China Sea and the Pacific, largely aimed against China. The scope was global, and included our Africa. Blair said the West has to combine timeous investments, and the deployment of its values, to re-establish its hegemony over Africa and the rest of the world, thus warding off especially China. As he made those fatuous lamentations, BBC was flighting a special on Chinese infrastructural capital in Europe itself, notably in funding the revival of Greek ports and Montenegro highways under the Belt and Road Initiative! My shallow colleagues in opposition do not know that China is spending billions in Europe – their Europe – compared to the “small beers” it commits to Zimbabwe in relative terms. Yet they don’t see this as a threat to European sovereignties.
Revival of yellow revolutions
Meanwhile, a bad guy has been removed and replaced in Pakistan. Another is under siege in Sri Lanka, closer to the India subcontinent. The Sri Lankan situation is particularly instructive to us here in Zimbabwe from where our opposition and its sponsors appear to get much inspiration. The beauty and value about the debate in the House of Lords is that much was revealed. You can trust the British and Americans to be that helpfully reckless! That included links between Britain and the opposition here, and the link between British bitterness and our irreversible land reforms. Lords chronicled how they had been involved with the opposition, including with Chamisa personally. Of course we have always known about this treacherous liaison between the opposition and British personages. But of course it’s quite another matter to hear the suspect convicted on own plea!
Useless props
Chamisa and his people might seek to exhume Gaddafi for some Pan-Africanist prop. Or attend National Events to project a post-Damascene rebirth. All such false symbolism convinces themselves, and no other. They remain imperialism’s pawn for regime change here. And the links are clear: the spirited opposition to PVO Bill here, America’s NED disbursements to political NGOs in Zimbabwe, needless debate on our country in the House of Lords, the latest call by the opposition to shut down Zimbabwe, and the larger effort to remake the global order through war, regime changes, economic warfare, energy warfare, biological and worldwide cognitive warfare, are all connected.
This donkey sees deeper and far, and will continue to bray facts while untangling the skein, however intricate.
Online Reporter