Zimbabwe has no dictator

Obi Egbuna Jr
On September 10, 2015, Foreign Policy Magazine published an op-ed entitled, “When Dictators Die: The World’s Dictators are aging but democracy shouldn’t be too quick to rejoice”. The article was written by Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Franz. Because US-EU imperialism is arguably more vulnerable than ever before in modern history, it should come as no surprise to the people of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean that the basis of arguments made by their agents in the fields of journalism, academia and politics lack any true historical continuity and direction.

While the article begins by targeting 55 heads of state, who, in the humble opinion of the two co-authors, are authoritarians, the picture Foreign Policy decided to use for this article was that of President Mugabe almost losing his footing but breaking the fall at Harare International Airport in February as he returned from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where he had just been installed African Union Chair.

Any Zimbabwean or patriotic African familiar with President Mugabe’s background and long list of accomplishments who feels the need to notify Kendall-Taylor and Erica Franz that the President is extremely humble and has never felt comfortable when showered with attention — whether from comrades and friends or Zimbabwe’s most hateful enemies or detractors — is welcome.

Due to their unique history and current political circumstances, Zimbabweans, as a nation, are blessed with a keen sense of political objectivity that enables them to be extremely tolerant, especially when reading accounts of their experience written by outsiders seeking to enhance their careers by embarrassing President Mugabe individually or the entire nation he represents with honour and dignity.

What the existing political climate has forced Zimbabweans to do, on a regular basis, is research the background of not only journalists and writers who appear to be obsessed with chronicling their history, but the publications that can’t resist the temptation to bring these racist and indifferent accounts to life.

For this reason, Zimbabweans will be less than thrilled when they discover that Mrs Kendall-Taylor works for the US National Intelligence Council where she serves as the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia.

Ms Franz is an adjunct professor of political science at George Mason University, specialising in authoritarian politics, “democratisation” and political instability.

The so-called African Americans would not hesitate to remind Ms Franz that George Mason himself was the second largest slave-holder in Fairfax County, Virginia, owning 36 slaves at the time of his death.

The only person who owned more slaves than Mr Mason was first US President George Washington. At the end of August, the National Security Law Journal at GMU joined the American Bar Association as official sponsor of the 10th annual Homeland Security Institute.

This platform provides an annual look at the State of Security, which covers everything from infrastructure to exports, immigration to chemical safety and the role of the legal profession and different government agencies — Homeland Security, FBI, NSA, CIA, US Military, and FEMA.

Before his unceremonious departure, former CIA director General David Patreus — when speaking at GMU’s Founder Hall said: “The hard work of comprehensive civil-military campaigns has required the skills and expertise of intelligence officers, diplomats, law enforcement agencies and professionals from other disciplines as well and George Mason has contributed enormously in the past decade, in particular, to help young men and women for dealing with the security challenges of our time”.

Based on the history of Foreign Policy Magazine, it can best be described as a journalist publication that parallels the story of Frankenstein.
When FP began in 1971, its founders — Samuel Huntington, a Harvard Professor, and his friend, Warren Demain Marishel — wanted to present an alternative account of the Vietnam War.

In the next 30 years, FP went from the clutches of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to the Graham Holdings Company (formerly the Washington Post Company) that owned the Washington Post and Newsweek. What we now have is a magazine that came out of the progressive liberal tradition that was eventually sold to the highest bidders.

Therefore, today, Democrats and Republicans treat in the exact manner graffiti artists in New York City spray-painted the subways and the walls of buildings throughout the urban centre in the 70s and 80s.

Current US Secretary of State John Kerry wrote two op-eds in FB’s “Time to Face Facts” and “Assad’s War of Starvation”. One of Mr Kerry’s predecessors, Madeline Albright, penned a piece entitled, “On Syria and Iran, US and Russia can work together”.

What FP considers having balance, in the 21st century, is publishing an op-ed by US Senator John McCain entitled, “How to save the Republican Party”, and US Presidential hopeful Marco Antonio Rubio contributing an article entitled, “Refusal to Lead: Do two dreams equal a nightmare?”

In the case of Mrs Kendall-Taylor, she should not be the least bit offended if Zimbabweans accuse her of having a ghost writer; not because her intellectual prowess is being questioned, but the National Intelligence Council is home to one of President Mugabe’s main denigrators — Ambassador Johnnie Carson.

After his appointment by President Obama as US Assistant Secretary of African Affairs from 2009 to 2013, Ambassador Carson was promoted and now serves as senior advisor to President Obama at the US Institute of Peace. We must warn Mrs Kendall-Taylor.

She is following a blueprint laid out by Ambassador Carson that failed miserably, mainly because of the decision to invest heavily in the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC and 450 civil society groups, which, in the final analysis, failed to deliver the results they were invented by US-EU imperialism to achieve.

As US imperialism’s inability and unwillingness to address police terrorism within its own borders, the next logical and inevitable step for this generation of activists to take is to establish and maintain relationships with countries and movements that have fought courageously to resist their attempts to police the world.

This dynamic appears to force journalists and academicians like Mrs Kendall-Taylor and Ms Franz to lump leaders with a revolutionary pedigree like President Mugabe, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Commandante Fidel Castro and Mao-Tse-Tung together with reactionaries like Mobutu Sese Seko, Felix Houphouet Boigny, Somoza in Nicaragua, Batista in Cuba and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

Which means they define an authoritarian by how long they have been in power, as opposed to the social and political conditions of the countries these leaders govern. According to Unesco, there are 775 million adults who are not literate.

However, these two young ladies chose to target a nation that is 97 percent literate. The callousness continues as they blast a country where 65 percent of the agricultural development is being spearheaded by women. For the record, dictators and authoritarians don’t educate their people and embark on land reclamation programmes that make women the face of agriculture. It is safe to conclude that mouthpieces of FP magazine and a university that would rather be politically cozy with the Military Industrial Intelligence Police Complex will attack President Mugabe and Zanu-PF as long as they remain in power.

The tragedy of following this political and intellectual paradigm is that Mrs Kendall-Taylor and Ms Franz are not just defending US Foreign Policy. They are defending a culture of repression and genocide that is on its deathbed.

Obi Egbuna Jr is the External Relations Officer to the Zimbabwe-Cuba Friendship Association. He can be reached at [email protected]