Misreading African ‘silence’

By Tichaona Zindoga (The Herald)

2 June 2010

WHEN Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was presented with the National Democratic Institute’s W Averell Harriman Democracy Award in America early last month, he called for an end to what he called the "conspiracy of silence" among African leaders.

He said: "As African leaders we must end the conspiracy of silence that has often allowed repression to continue unchecked."

"We must acknowledge and respect the fundamentals of good governance, respect for the rule of law and property rights and the imperative to invest in developing our human capital.

"In doing so, we will unleash the full potential of our continent and ensure that Africa takes its rightful place in the world as a fully-fledged partner for progress, prosperity and stability," he continued.

A fortnight later, upon being conferred with an honorary doctorate by a South Korean university, he repeated this call.

According to reports, including one in his official website, Tsvangirai "urged African leaders to end the conspiracy of silence that has often allowed repression to continue unchecked.

"He reiterated the need to respect fundamentals of good governance, respect for the rule of law and property rights and the imperative to invest in developing human capital."

The striking similarity of the above occasions, both in letter and spirit is palpable.

Tsvangirai is being celebrated and feted in foreign countries for meeting the ideals, which conform to an American-set "global" agenda of democracy and human and property rights.

On both occasions, he chides his African counterparts — none of whom have been so celebrated and feted in recent times — for "complicity of silence".

In essence, African leaders have not received enough of the gospel of "good governance, respect for the rule of law and property rights" brought to them by America.

While Tsvangirai’s impatience with African leaders is not without precedence, events have also shown that his Western-inspired misgivings with his brothers have been proven offside.

The case of the African Union in general and Sadc in particular and their involvement in Zimbabwe illustrates this point clearly.

Riding on the association with the West, Tsvangirai’s MDC party only recently was calling all sorts of names to African leaders including describing Sadc as "a bunch of dictators".

But it was the very same leaders who in 2007 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania opened the way for dialogue in Zimbabwe leading to the formation of the Inclusive Government between Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations last year.

The Inclusive Government is predicated on the Global Political Agreement signed on September 15, 2008, whereof Sadc and the AU are guarantors.

It is beyond question a successful upshot of former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s "quiet diplomacy", which Presidents Kgalema Monthlante and Jacob Zuma also followed.

This "quiet diplomacy" often came under fire from both the MDC and the West when the latter perceived Mbeki as not pushing enough for the "restoration of human rights in Zimbabwe".

"Restoration of human rights in Zimbabwe" was of course a euphemism for the removal of President Mugabe from power, which well fitted the overthrow Western gospel draped in the so-called human and property rights but hardly doing Africa any good.

On a state visit to the United Kingdom in March, President Zuma underscored the success of African effort in Zimbabwe by saying that despite criticism from the West, quiet diplomacy had yielded something in Zimbabwe while Western sanctions divided and caused untold suffering among Zimbabweans.

This declaration, well backed by the situation on the ground, arguably exposes the fatuity of Western involvement in Zimbabwe, along with Tsvangirai’s discipleship.

And as Tsvangirai repeatedly makes a case for his Western allies’ deceptively sweet values, he also parades the poor African statesman in him and how he misses his own complicity in the subjugation of the continent.

It is known that the good governance that the West speaks of goes nowhere beyond securing minority white interests, which has in the past led the West to support rogue and dictatorial regimes in Zaire, (now Democratic Republic of Congo) Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria, to name but a few.

In recent times, America has admired the likes of Prime Minister Raila Odinga — who led a bloodbath in Kenya in 2007 following a contested election — and Botswana’s Seretse Khama Ian Khama, who has increasingly styled himself into a mini dictator.

The two leaders have also had the distinction of speaking against African interest in Zimbabwe to the extent of supporting military aggression against the innocent people of Zimbabwe.

All this is in the name of the so-called good governance, rule of law and property rights.

These Western virtues have a very disturbing undertone.

They are "good" and "right" only to the extent of perpetuating the dehumanising and subjugation of African peoples.

While African rights were negated, plundered and raped in the dispossession of land and other resources in the dark era of colonialism, efforts to redress and re-humanise people have been met with Western resistance with people like Khama, Odinga and Tsvangirai gleefully taking part.

The admiration these leaders have won in America and Europe is underpinned by their willingness to pawn precious African resources, and their people, to alien interests and their readiness to convert all people to the woollen plunder of the West. It is not about ensuring "that Africa takes its rightful place in the world as a fully-fledged partner for progress, prosperity and stability", as Tsvangirai preached.

The forces of plunder, subjugation and evil that are the Anglo-Saxon world do not subscribe to African progress, prosperity and stability.

The systems of slavery, colonialism, apartheid and neo-colonialism are enough testimony that according to the West, the "rightful" place of Africans is under their yoke.

The destabilisation that America and her allies have visited the continent, which was seen as early as the overthrow of Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah and modern Africa’s founding father in 1966, gives away any hint of truth in Tsvangirai’s statement.

This destabilisation has produced American romances with the likes of Mobutu and Moise Tshombe in Zaire, Angola’s Jonas Savimbi, among other traitorous characters who have been presented to the African course of history.

While cherry-picking on the best human capital, which it continues to do to the present day, the West has never allowed Africa to develop its human capital through the destabilisation of the continent and murder of its sons and daughters.

With all this, it is a foregone conclusion that Africa will not be allowed to unleash its full potential, or become a fully-fledged partner for a progress of its own whose imperative is ownership of the wealth of its resources.

The partners that the West likes are the latter-day Savimbis and Mobutus feted in America and Europe for the price of the precious resources of the continent.

Unfortunately, this treacherous complicity with the enemy, which has allowed Western repression to continue unchecked, is coupled by some Africans’ willingness to draw others into the web of evil.