Zimbabwe: The Political Images, Realities - Democracy,
Human Rights, Terrorism etc.
14 November 2009
By Reason
Wafawarova
POLITICAL concepts — like democracy, human rights,
terrorism or even rule of law — always carry with them
two approaches when one analyses their general use.
In academia, the intellectual community often adopts a
literal approach, taking the topics quite seriously
and trying to establish the best definition of each
term from research and serious consultation.
Politics, systems and institutions of power adopt a
propagandistic approach, construing the concepts to be
more of images at the service of political expediency;
making the image of one political group pretty at the
expense of another.
In each case, the procedure is usually very clear.
The literal approach begins by determining what
constitutes democracy, human rights, terrorism or rule
of law.
Then the approach seeks instances of each of the
respective phenomenon, concentrating on concrete
examples, and trying to determine causes and remedies.
This is the approach that an ordinary street political
activist or a common cyber political blogger is not
only unimpressed with, but also largely incapable of
implementing or even comprehending.
Even many established politicians fall in this
category and this way the propagandistic approach
becomes more of a political doctrine.
Most of the loudmouths in the NGO community screaming
democracy or human rights belong to a cabal that is
not knowledgeable in the least about the literal
approach to these concepts they love to preach so much
about.
This is quite apparent in Zimbabwe where all and
sundry can claim to be political commentators and
experts on such matters as international law or human
rights law.
The most abused term is obviously democracy, daily
misused and abused by a misguided movement that even
has the face and temerity to call itself a movement
for democratic change.
To many in this movement, ‘‘democracy’’ is about
screaming against Zanu-PF and these are fully
convinced that a change of government that brings MDC-T
to power would be the arrival of democracy.
Such unfounded and baseless assumptions are
understandable when one looks at the image of
democracy that is preached by the Western media in
particular and that is advocated by Western
politicians, who have appointed themselves the
guarantors of democracies for lesser peoples in
developing countries.
The intellectual community seeks the reality of the
concept of democracy while political activists and
media propagandists seek an image of democracy that
suits not the needs of the people, but the cause of a
preferred political agenda.
The propagandist approach dictates a course that
expounds a thesis that democracy is a responsibility
of selected politicians whose rhetorical licence to
this entitlement is compliance to the global political
order sought by the supremacist Western Alliance.
Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan enjoys this entitlement
and so does Morgan Tsvangirai and Nouri al-Maliki of
Iraq.
These are democrats by image and not by definition or
reality.
They can afford to cause all sorts of problems in
their respective countries as we have seen with the
gross electoral fraud in Afghanistan and Tsvangirai’s
infantile flip-flops.
In fact, the political groups led by these characters
are called "democratic forces" by title in the West
while their political competitors at home are either
dictatorships or terrorists.
Terrorism is, in fact, a responsibility of some
officially designated enemy and so are the ideas of
dictatorships and lawlessness.
When the United States massacres civilians in Iraq and
in Afghanistan such an atrocity is just "retaliation"
or "self-defence".
It is only when resistance groups fighting the US-led
Western Alliance occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan
carry out an attack that such an action becomes an act
of terrorism.
Tsvangirai can clandestinely change the constitution
of his party to extend his stay as the leader, and
such fraud has been made to carry the image of
democracy.
A democratic endorsement of President Mugabe as a
candidate of his Zanu-PF party is what carries the
reality of a dictatorship and even those who endorsed
him have been vilified and called unprintable names.
There are no surprises that the propagandistic
approach is adopted by governments in general and by
political parties in opposition as well.
The worrying trend is that the same is largely true of
the media and sometimes even scholarship in the
Western industrial democracies, and these issues have
been documented in extensive detail by authors like
Noam Chomsky.
Commenting on aggression, Michael Stohl said: "We must
recognise that by convention — and it must be
emphasised only by convention — great power use and
the threat of the use of force is normally described
as coercive diplomacy and not as a form of terrorism,
though it commonly involves the threat and often the
use of violence for what would be described as
terrorist purposes were it not great powers who were
pursuing the very same tactic."
Of course, one qualification must be added: the term
"great powers" is restricted to favoured states in the
Western convention.
China and Russia are often granted no such rhetorical
licence, and are often charged and convicted for
alleged human rights abuses on the flimsiest of
evidence.
That has become the mirror image of the Chinese legacy
and Russia has not been spared the ridicule on
Georgia.
The mirror image of President Mugabe is that of a
ruthless dictator despite the evidence of him leading
an inclusive Government running the affairs of
Zimbabwe.
That of Tsvangirai is of a hard-fighting democrat
despite his running of a parallel government meant to
undermine the very Government in which his is Prime
Minister.
The image of a persecuted political party is what has
been created for MDC-T and Zanu-PF has been
permanently tainted with the image of a ruthless group
of thugs with a heartless resolve to make the rest of
Zimbabwe suffer.
This image is what the West prefers for Zanu-PF and
any denials are treated with ruthless aggression.
Now we hear that MDC-T’s version of outstanding issues
is unquestionably justifiable and that these issues by
conventional logic must make Zanu-PF look the ugly
monster that we are told the party is.
MDC-T gleefully lobbies for the firm retention of
sanctions on Zimbabwe in the vainglorious belief that
says such a crisis is "political leverage" over Zanu-PF
and we hear democrats lead the party. Democrats do not
scheme on how to starve a nation.
Any appearance of an MDC-T linked person in a court of
law in Zimbabwe has now become a form of "human rights
abuse" and we are supposed to accept this Western
conventional logic as factual lest we are labelled
Zanu-PF apologists or Nazis.
We are told the public media in Zimbabwe spreads hate
speech against MDC-T and its leader yet we have online
papers like zimsituation.com printing unprintable
insults about members of Zimbabwe’s First Family and
the country’s Head of State and Government, and
Commander in Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.
This writer was alerted of part of such despicable
publications by a reader two days ago, and the reader
said editors who allowed articles and comments as
offensive as was forwarded from zimsituation "must
face the wrath of the law, however harsh that law may
be".
The irony of it is that these same publications are
run by people who cry loudest against mere criticism
of MDC-T, and they have even lobbied for the
deportation of the likes of this writer because they
reckon it is hate speech to say MDC-T is a puppet
organisation funded by the British and the United
States.
Frankly speaking, that is not even analysis. It is
simple observation that is apparent to everyone in and
outside MDC-T.
The propaganda approach to the rule of law is what
Tsvangirai used when he recently "disengaged" from the
inclusive Government in protest over Roy Bennett’s
indictment for trial.
The Prime Minister approached the whole issue with a
shut mind and an open mouth.
This is the same approach we see adopted by those
donor mongers that masquerade as human rights
defenders. They employ the same propagandistic
approach in defining human rights, strictly limiting
the alleged abuse of such rights to Zanu-PF and its
leadership, with all others playing victim.
Surely true human rights defenders would not find
logic in supporting and defending a political party
that uses economic sanctions as some form of leverage
for political expediency.
No sane human rights defender would celebrate a
sanctions law that isolates such a big employer as
Ziscosteel with no regard for the job losses of so
many innocent people and the livelihoods of the
thousands of families dependent on them.
But the team that calls itself human rights defenders
in Zimbabwe is advocating more sanctions so that
Zimbabwe does not recover economically under the
leadership of President Mugabe.
The Trumpet has declared that the International
Monetary Fund money recently released to Zimbabwe was
the Prime Minister’s initiative and that Morgan
Tsvangirai is the only contact person recognised by
the IMF.
This clearly is a base lie not worthy a comment.
The paper then claimed that "Mugabe wants to spend
this money but does not want to share power" with the
"powerless party", MDC-T.
This, of course, is the propagandistic approach to the
reality of the political situation in Zimbabwe.
If sharing power is limited to the three or four
issues that MDC-T calls outstanding, then we have a
real problem.
The reality then would be that all power in Zimbabwe
rests with the Reserve Bank, the Attorney General,
provincial governors and ambassadors.
This, of course, is ludicrous and laughable, but that
is the mirror image created around the GPA today.
We now live under a reality where President Mugabe’s
opponent in an election withdraws from the race and is
applauded as a democrat merely on the grounds of the
propaganda mirror image of his Western-loathed
opponent.
Karzai has a run-off forced on him by a humiliating
and shameful revelation of massive election rigging
and his opponent withdraws from the race citing
persistent irregularities and cheating mechanisms, and
it is him (Karzai’s opponent) who is deplored by
Tsvangirai’s praise singers.
Abdullah Abdullah did a Tsvangirai stunt in
Afghanistan and those who applauded the Zimbabwean in
2008 found Abdullah deplorable.
Suddenly the West forgot about the tenets of democracy
and about how to deal with election thieves because
the thief happened to be a client, never mind how
corrupt and dishonest.
These complexities really mean that the only people
who should be deciding on the fate of Zimbabwe must be
Zimbabweans. We do not need all this unwarranted
interference from outside. It all comes down to gross
provocation by people who wronged us the most on this
planet -- our erstwhile oppressors.
©
EsinIslam.Com
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