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April 10, 2008 While the majority of people
across the world may be generally agreed on the notion that the
United States has become a perfect image of an unthinking bully,
it is strikingly ironic that the US and its Western allies rely
on a foreign policy that strongly preaches good intentions.
For the West in general, and the US in
particular, the image of righteous exceptionalism and goodwill
has always been the credo upon which foreign policy is
formulated.
In fact, the US foreign policy has a clear
standard story line in scholarship and in the media. It
oscillates between two conflicting theories -- the Wilsonian
idealism, which is based on genuine and noble intentions and
sober realism, which says that the limitations of the US's good
intentions must be realised.
Woodrow Wilson subscribed to the former
while the likes of Francis Fukuyama, Condooleeza Rice, Dick
Cheney and George W. Bush are hard-core realists and would
inflict any amount of harm on any nationality in the name of
good intentions, always coming in the name of democracy,
liberty, justice, human rights and freedom.
The illegal economic sanctions behind
Zimbabwe's prevailing problems are enshrined in a sanctions law,
the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act.
This is basically ruthless legislation
that has brought so much suffering on innocent families and the
generality of Zimbabweans. The US did not name the sanctions law
the Zimbabwe Sanctions Act -- something that would have been
more accurate.
No, the image of righteous exceptionalism
has to be maintained and the doctrine of good intentions has to
be promoted and upheld. Precisely, this is why the naming of the
Act wrongly suggests a recovery of the economy and that of
democracy as well.
The evil pain coming with the US's
sanctions law has been wrongly attributed to the alleged
shortcomings of President Mugabe and Zanu-PF. The economy has
faltered as a result of the economic warfare and strangulation
that has been orchestrated through the abuse of the Bretton
Woods institutions, mainly the IMF and the World Bank. There has
been an eight-year blockade on balance of payments and lines of
credit but the world is made to believe that President Mugabe
has been deliberately starving his own people because some of
them support the insidious opposition MDC.
The West has generally been blocking
investors from investing in Zimbabwe and influencing companies
already operating in the country to freeze operations. The
rationale for this absurdity has always been the pretence that
the economic strangulation is a way of applying pressure on an
"evil" regime.
The operative rhetoric for the US-led
Western alliance has always been this vainglorious veil of good
intentions, but the truth is what historian Arno Mayer observed
when he said that the US has, since 1947, been a major
perpetrator of state terror and other rogue actions -- causing
immense ruin and harm in the name of democracy, liberty and
justice.
John Stuart Mill, an otherwise man of high
intelligence and moral integrity, seemed to succumb to the
pathology of the false doctrine of good intentions. When Britain
was at the peak of its crimes against humanity in India and
China, Mill wrote what was described as a classic essay on
humanitarian intervention, urging Britain to undertake the
enterprise of invasion vigorously -- never mind that the action
would be "held up to obloquy" by backward Europeans who could
not comprehend that England was "a novelty in the world".
Mill went on to describe Britain as a
nation that acts only "in the service of others", selflessly
sacrificing herself and bearing the cost of bringing peace and
justice to the world.
Is this not the same attitude behind the
proposals for intervention in Zimbabwe? When one reads the
debates about Zimbabwe in the House of Lords, they would be
forgiven if they thought the whole House was composed of the
descendants of Mother Teresa. Sadc, the African Union and the
United Nations are all painted as less righteous groupings that
are either blind to the "evil" nature of the "Mugabe regime" or
even complicity in making Zimbabweans suffer.
It just becomes ludicrous when they wrap
it all by criticising China for its investments in an economy
they want to see completely dead. It becomes more revealing when
they start to debate on British companies that are still doing
business in Zimbabwe, together with those British investors who
have shown interest in doing business in Zimbabwe.
These apostles of righteous exceptionalism
will debate all night-through on how to make the Zimbabwean
economy collapse and then posture as concerned humanitarians who
cannot stand the suffering of the ordinary people of Zimbabwe --
a suffering directly resulting from the orchestrated economic
collapse.
This is just absurd -- but there are many
people out there who have been fooled by these apparent
contradictions, not least among them Zimbabweans themselves.
This recent election pitted Zanu-PF against the economy. While
Zanu-PF was telling people that the economic hardships they are
facing are a result of the ruinous sanctions imposed by the West
at the request of Britain, the MDC was telling the people that
the economic hardships are a direct and deliberate act of
brutality by Zanu-PF and the Government it leads -- all in a bid
to make people suffer; just like that.
The same Tsvangirai who has globetrotted
grovelling for sanctions from any one who cared to listen was
posturing as a man of the people and dangling rescue packages
for a fire that his Western overlords and himself are
responsible for starting.
It would appear that many people have
suffered so much that all they cared about was relief from the
pain inflicted by the sanctions. That way they accepted the pawn
that fronts their oppressor as the liberator. In all his naiveté
and political illusions, Simba Makoni was right when he said the
US$10 billion Tsvangirai was dangling was not enough to end the
economic challenges bedevilling Zimbabwe.
In fact, that money, if ever it were to
come to Zimbabwe, is not meant to make the life of Zimbabweans
any better. The West does not think or operate in such terms.
That money would only be a veil covering the operative rhetoric
of spreading the false doctrine of good intentions. It would be
meant to be the anaesthesia designed to send Zimbabweans into a
deep slumber that will enable the imperialist gang to rape the
country at will.
This is the money that is supposed to send
everyone into a big slumber while the white settler farmers make
a return to the land that the Government has acquired and
redistributed to landless peasants. But is such a slumber
achievable? This writer thinks not. This is the money that is
meant to reward Tsvangirai and his gang of reactionaries as they
play the role of henchman holding Zimbabwe down while the
imperialist gang rapes the country with unparalleled savagery.
This is the money that is meant to pacify the people while
Western companies get a free reign on Zimbabwe's natural
resources.
Are they not in countries like Ghana where
the country is hailed for selling a gross of US$2,5 billion
worth of gold in 2007? What they will not tell the world is that
only US$501 million came Ghana's way while the rest went to
benefit the home countries of these "good-intentioned"
investors.
The larger picture for the MDC is that
they are a subversive outfit fronting an imperial onslaught
meant to re-establish white supremacy in the economic affairs of
Zimbabwe. The ousted white farmers cannot wait to come back to
"their" land and the Western investors are dying to exploit the
Indo-Chinese market for coal, platinum and other minerals.
All the MDC can do for the people is to
get the sanctions lifted and all that will happen economically
after the lifting of the sanctions is something that could
happen easily even if we allowed the Child Parliament to run the
affairs of Zimbabwe.
It is pretty much a restoration of easy
access to fuel, foodstuffs, public transport and basic
medicines.
The level of change will just be enough to
keep the people passive while the West loots all they can lay
their hands on. There is not going to be an expansion of
infrastructure, no expansion of cities, no meaningful fall in
unemployment, no improvements of note in health delivery and, of
course, the country is not going to be any richer.
The MDC is essentially telling people to
refuse to own their own destiny and to surrender their souls to
the Western masters. They are telling the people to kowtow
Western dictates and then live happily ever after.
One reader sent me an email saying: "Let
us sell the country for once and then we will see what happens."
This is the attitude the MDC has cultivated in so many
Zimbabweans.
The question remains whether the country
should allow such an attitude to prevail simply because "vanhu
vatambura Wafawarova" as this writer keeps getting in some of
the feedback mail.
The US has declared that they are positive
Zimbabweans voted "for change" and, of course, that change
refers to a stop to independent nationalism, sovereign rule and
autonomy in the control of natural resources, particularly the
land.
To the US, Zimbabwe's land reform
programme is a reminder of Salvador Allende's democratic
socialism in Chile. Henry Kissinger called the impressive
achievements of Allende's government a "virus" that spreads
contagion. The Chile was "virus" was extirpated on September 11,
1973 -- thanks to Chile's own Tsvangirai, one General Augusto
Pinochet, the renegade general who attacked the Chilean
presidential palace on behalf of Washington.
March 29 was supposed to be the day the
Zimbabwean "virus" was to be extirpated -- our own September 11
-- albeit one of economic terrorism. The attack was launched and
the missile used was Tsvangirai, with back-up arsenal in Makoni.
The attack was obviously disastrous but
not fatal. The result was that false victory in House of
Assembly seats and a stalemate in the presidential race. The
presidential run-off is a God-given opportunity for self
soul-searching among Zimbabweans and it is incumbent upon the
revolutionary forces of the agrarian revolution to ensure that
the masses are clear of who the real enemy is.
This is a time to expose the hidden agenda
behind every word uttered by Tsvangirai. It is a time to expose
the grand plan behind the gospel of change as preached by
Tsvangirai and his notorious sidekicks.
An election featuring President Mugabe and
Tsvangirai is an election featuring heritage and treachery
respectively. It is an election between the soul and silver.
There are no good intentions behind and ahead of the MDC and
Tsvangirai.
All there is are vested interests of the
imperialist club. |
