The Company Patrick Bond Keeps
Posted: Tuesday, March 25, 2008

By Stephen Gowans
March 25, 2008

While Patrick Bond likes to create the impression he offers an independent left perspective on Zimbabwe, it's difficult to reconcile the impression with the reality. Bond has, in the past, recommended that progressives look to two of Zimbabwe's "pro-democracy" groups, Sokwanele and Zvakwana, to find out what's going on in Zimbabwe. (1) Both groups are modeled after Otpor, a Western-funded youth group that worked to oust Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Like their Serb progenitor, the Zimbabwean groups are handsomely funded by Western governments (2), not to oppose the interests of wealthy individuals, corporations, banks, investors, and imperialist states, but to promote them.

"The United States government (is) working with the Zimbabwean opposition" "trade unions, pro-democracy groups and human rights organizations" "to bring about a change of administration." (3) It supports "the efforts of the political opposition, the media and civil society," including providing training and assistance to grassroots "pro-democracy" groups (4) - groups Bond celebrated in a Counterpunch article as "the independent left." (5)

The US also supports "workshops to develop youth leadership skills necessary to confront social injustice through nonviolent strategies," (6) a project enlisting the kinds of nonviolent imperialists Stephen Zunes has made a practice of vigorously defending. (7)

Bond's most recent attempt to bamboozle the West's progressive community is a Z-Net article co-authored with a woman who is part of US-sponsored regime change operations in Zimbabwe. (8)

Last April, Grace Kwinjeh traveled to Washington with Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of one faction of the Zimbabwe opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, and representatives from NGOs funded by the US Congress's National Endowment for Democracy: Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights and the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition. (9)

The NED does overtly what the CIA once did covertly, namely, meddle in the affairs of foreign countries to bring down governments that refuse to do Washington's bidding.

Soon after it was established, the MDC became the party favored by white farmers in Zimbabwe for its opposition to the government's land reform policies. The party is backed by the US and EU. Tsvangirai, the party's original leader, and now leader of one its two factions, wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, pledging to restore property rights and to compensate white farmers for the loss of land their settler ancestors took by force. (10)

Last April's delegation to Washington was organized by the Open Society Initiative, a project of billionaire speculator George Soros, to "build and strengthen the values, practices and institutions of an open society throughout Southern Africa" (11) – roughly, to promote open markets and free enterprise where governments are pursuing programs of economic indigenization.

SW Radio Africa, which operates on funding provided by the US State Department's Office of Transition Initiatives, reported that the group was in Washington to "brief Western institutions like the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Woodrow Wilson Center." (12)

The CSIS is a little known think-tank run by a bipartisan collection of upper class leaders, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. It recently prepared a report recommending that the West use preventive nuclear first strikes to stop other countries, like Iran, from acquiring nuclear weapons. (13)

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars is a US government established center that links "scholarship to issues of concern to officials in Washington." The Center's Africa program was launched with a grant from the Ford Foundation to promote dialogue between scholars and US policy-makers on Africa. The tenor of the dialogue is obvious in the latest edition of the Center's journal, The Wilson Quarterly. Articles extol competition (it's hard-wired into humans) and the US Department of Homeland Security (it doesn't get enough credit.)

Kwinjeh is a frequent guest on Studio 7, a radio station sponsored by the US-government's propaganda arm, the Voice of America. (14) She calls herself "a founder member of Zimbabwe's main opposition party the Movement for Democratic Change, (MDC)," and says she "spent some time in Belgium as the MDC Representative to the EU." (15)

At one point, she was the deputy secretary for international relations in the Morgan Tsvangirai-led faction of the MDC. She ran for the post of MDC secretary of information (the party's propaganda office) unsuccessfully.

When writing for Western audiences, Kwinjeh conceals her MDC connections and presents herself as a journalist - not a senior member of the US and EU-backed MDC, not a part of US-government regime change operations.

The key questions for Western progressives are: Does Patrick Bond know who Grace Kwinjeh is? If so, why is co-authoring articles with her? Is Bond's definition of "independent" the same as that of the US state and Western media, i.e., any individual or group that facilitates the US government in its efforts to bring down foreign governments that refuse to do the West's bidding? If Patrick Bond doesn't know who Grace Kwinjeh is, why is he passing himself off as a left expert on Zimbabwe? Surely, someone who professes to have a knowledge of Zimbabwe greater than that of Western progressives would know about Kwinjeh's role in US regime change operations. And what separation is there between the views of Bond and those of Kwinjeh, an MDC operative who has traveled to Washington on George Soros' account to brief a ruling class think-tank that promotes a nuclear first strike strategy?

NOTES

1. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/zimbabwe-and-the-politics-of-demons-and-angels/

2. Los Angeles Times (July 8, 2005)

3. The Guardian (August 22, 2002)

4. U.S. Department of State, April 5, 2007 report on human rights. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/shrd/2006/

5. http://www.counterpunch.org/bond03272007.html

6. U.S. Department of State

7. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/stephen-zunes-and-the-struggle-for-overseas-profits/

8. http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2008-03/11bond-kwinjeh.cfm

9. http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2007-04/2007-04-27-voa54.cfm?CFID=213706089&CFTOKEN=96857847 and http://www.swradioafrica.com/news290407/un270407.htm .

Regarding NED funding of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights and the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition see http://fanonite.org/2008/03/10/nonviolent-imperialism-major-revision/

10. The Herald (Zimbabwe) (March 23, 2008)

11. http://www.osisa.org/

12. http://www.swradioafrica.com/news290407/un270407.htm

13. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/whose-nuclear-first-strike-strategy-is-this-anyway/

14. http://www.voanews.com/english/africa/zimbabwe/

15. http://gracekwinjeh.blogspot.com/

Source: http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/the-company-patrick-bond-keeps/ 

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