Run-off: Not just a Zimbabwean poll
Posted: Thursday, May 29, 2008By Caesar Zvayi
May 29, 2008
herald.co.zw
READING the headlines in the Western Press and pronouncements by Western leaders and their envoys here when Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T prematurely claimed victory in the March 29 elections, one got the feeling that Zimbabwe was just the stage for a contest far bigger than what the contestants, with the notable exception of those in Zanu-PF, knew.
Readers all over the world were intrigued by the headlines in British newspapers particularly, The Evening Standard, that had a front-page banner that screamed "We have beaten Mugabe".
A banner that left them wondering who had "beaten Mugabe"? Was it the Evening Standard, the British government or MDC-T?
Any doubts about who had squared off against President Mugabe and Zanu-PF on March 29 were soon dispelled when the British and American governments began demanding the release of the official results with the likes of the BBC and CNN devoting hourly reports to Zimbabwe quoting Brown and Bush speaking like contestants.
White former commercial farmers who had left Zimbabwe in a huff after the farms they held – not owned – were gazetted for resettlement, returned en masse and set up base in country clubs dotted around Zimbabwe's farming communities where they held "victory" celebrations complete with fireworks and flare guns before heading to the farms where they threatened resettled farmers with eviction once Tsvangirai was sworn in. The crude ones even racially abused the black bar tenders.
By their feverish excitement and unguarded pronouncements, the Westerners exposed themselves to be the real force behind Tsvangirai and the MDC faction that bears his surname. A sickening and frightening reality that was missed by those who voted for Tsvangirai and his personalised MDC on March 29.
The harmonised poll was a contest between President Mugabe and Zanu-PF fighting from the corner of the entire developing world and Tsvangirai and MDC-T fighting from the corner of the rightwing Western hemisphere with Bush and Brown as trainer and ringside doctor respectively.
The run-off is akin to a rematch of that contest.
One only has to go back to Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana to realise that the events that have unfolded in Zimbabwe over the past eight years were a throwback to Ghana 1957 to 1966.
Zimbabwe represents the last frontier in Africa for the struggle between black nationalist resistance and Western neo-colonial encroachment by proxy. It is the only country that is still headed by a distinguished liberation icon cut from the same cloth that gave Africa Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Samora Machel, to mention just a few.
Many of the countries in Southern Africa that are still under liberation governments are headed by leaders mentored by this class of the 1960s.
Yes, Tanzania is still under the able leadership of Chama Cha Mapinduzi, a revolutionary party, but it is a fact that CCM did not rock the Western boat as much as Zanu-PF has done.
Our brothers down south are still under the leadership of the African National Congress, the party that brought the apartheid behemoth – the National Party – to its knees, but again they have chosen to coast along, barely challenging the economic order in a country that has been dubbed a First and Third World country in one comprising of a scandalously affluent white populace and an impoverished black majority that basically owns nothing apart from the shirts on their backs, as indeed the myopic black-on-black violence amply demonstrates.
That is why the progressive world was collectively saddened by reports that Zanu-PF had lost to MDC-T, while the Western world was collectively elated. Africa was morose because of the realisation that the MDC-T is not Zimbabwean nor African, but the latest brick from the kiln that gave the continent Moise Tshombe's Conakat, Afonso Dhlakama's Renamo and Jonas Savimbi's Unita, to mention just a few.
It was thus fitting that Zanu-PF launched its campaign on May 25, Africa Day, the day the African Uni0n – formerly the Organisation of African Unity – was formed on May 25 1963 with the objective of completely exorcising the foreign ghost from the continent.
That is exactly what Zimbabwe is about; it is about the total eradication of all forms of colonialism, which is why the run-off theme is "100 Percent Empowerment, Total Independence". Zimbabwe, under President Mugabe, has taken up the fight that should have been spearheaded by the AU, that of taking the struggle for independence to its logical conclusion by getting beyond the façade of flag independence to full socio-economic empowerment of the historically disadvantaged Africans.
This is why the Westerners have declared war on Zimbabwe as they do not want Zimbabwe to set a "bad example" for the rest of the developing world, from which the resource-poor West continues to siphon its scandalous affluence.
If Zimbabwe succeeds, the neo-colonial exploitation of the developing world through the likes of the World Bank and IMF will no longer be possible.
The strategic role Zimbabwe is playing in the age-old fight between the North and South is why the Bush administration has openly admitted that "Zimbabwe poses an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States". And that foreign policy, as we all know, is about dominating other people and their resources.
The fact that Tsvangirai and his MDC-T are fronts for Western interests is the reason why the Western alliance ordered him to go on a six-week diplomatic offensive in Sadc to try to establish a connection with a continent his politics had shunned, and which also shunned his politics.
Since the MDC's launch in September 1999, Tsvangirai has spent more time in the US or European capitals, consorting with, and pandering to the whims of the Western leadership while simultaneously insulting African leaders for what he termed "blind support for Mugabe".
This failing was ably captured by British establishment (sub note: ESTABLISHMENT not ESTABLISHED) journalist Peta Thornycroft, who, in an interview on the pirate radio station Short Wave Africa on November 13 last year, said the following, among other things: "When the MDC started in 2000, what a pity that they were addressing people in Sandton, mostly white people in Sandton north of Johannesburg instead of being in Dar es Salaam or Ghana or Abuja. They failed to make contact with Africa for so long, they were in London, we've just seen it again, Morgan Tsvangirai's just been in America.
"Why isn't he in Cairo? Maybe he needs financial support and he can't get it outside of America or the UK and the same would go for Mutambara. They have not done enough in Africa . . ."
And that attempt to connect with an Africa he had shunned and insulted for so long was the reason Tsvangirai went into self-imposed exile not the wild claims that his life was in danger. It is important to note that if one were to look at Tsvangirai and President Mugabe's credentials; it is actually President Mugabe who has a right to claim, with justification, that his life is in danger.
Readers may remember that it is Tsvangirai who has appeared in court facing charges of treason related to either plotting to kill President Mugabe or to unconstitutionally unseating the Government.
It is Tsvangirai who was captured by secret cameras contracting a Canadian political consultancy firm Dickens & Madison to assassinate President Mugabe, which footage was aired under the banner "Killing Mugabe: The Tsvangirai Conspiracy" by an Australian TV station, Special Broadcast Services Dateline, on February 13 2002.
It is Tsvangirai who, at Rufaro Stadium on September 30 2000, shocked the world when he openly threatened President Mugabe with violence, saying in part: "What we would like to tell Mugabe today is, please go peacefully, if you do not want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently."
It is Tsvangirai who organised orgies of violence disguised as a "defiance campaign" that culminated in the March 11 2007 disturbances in Highfield and surrounding suburbs, disturbances that fed months of terrorist bombings on police stations and other Government institutions.
As such, as evidenced above, it is President Mugabe, not Tsvangirai, who can allege an assassination plot with justification.
Anyway, Tsvangirai's actions are consistent with the terrorist activities visited on progressive African countries by his forebears like Tshombe and Savimbi, who we all know were just fronts for Western subversion of the developing world.
As such, as Zimbabwe braces for the run-off on June 27 voters must remember this is not just a Zimbabwean election, they will vote on behalf of the developing world.
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