Zimbabwe and the battle of ideas (The Herald)

From Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia

04 February 2010

MDC-T mouthpieces, together with mainstream Western media, as well as the party’s information department have over the years been in a splendid overdrive manufacturing credibility for Morgan Tsvangirai, but true to the dictates of the saying, easy come easy go; Tsvangirai has this terrible reputation for squandering this manufactured credibility — and that must be a cause for concern for those whose job it is to build the status of the Western controlled politician.

Zimbabwe has become a battle of ideas and it does not appear like Tsvangirai is too much of a man of ideas and clearly he is playing like a reckless boozer in a team of professionals.

The Prime Minister’s call for the phasing of sanctions removal is not only uncalled for, unpatriotic and ill informed, but is also a deadly disaster by way of political strategy.

In that call Tsvangirai managed to emphatically confirm that British foreign and Commonwealth secretary David Miliband was precisely correct in asserting that the British government is "above all" guided by the MDC-T on matters relating to sanctions on Zimbabwe.

He also unwittingly proved to everyone that him in particular, and his party in general have it within their power to reverse their call for sanctions on Zimbabwe, and that reversal will be respected the same way their mass-killing call was respected in 2001.

As Professor Jonathan Moyo has already predicted through this paper, the EU, the US and other Western minor players like Australia, Canada and New Zealand are going to adopt this phasing "proposal" from Tsvangirai, not because it is a call from a man whose opinion they respect, but because it is their own call which Tsvangirai was parroting.

It stands to reason that the goal in battles of ideas is to win the hearts and minds of people. Tsvangirai seems so focussed on winning the hearts and minds of Western donors and his Western controllers ahead of those of Zimbabweans.

This week, this writer will revisit our 2008 political history and will centre his argument on views already expressed by Netfa Freeman, the Director of IPS’ Social Action and Leadership School for Activists and an activist in the internationalist and Pan Africanist movements, and those views will be put in context to what is happening in the inclusive Government of Zimbabwe right now.

Freeman wrote an article titled "Zimbabwe and The Battle of Ideas" just after the signing of the inter-party political agreement on September 15 2008; an agreement that was to herald the inclusive Government.

He pointed out that the West dominates the most sophisticated and pervasive methods of information today, and there is this dire need to carefully scrutinise ideas pushed and popularised by these sources.

One of the issues that has been so unjustly popularised by this system is the issue of the so-called "outstanding issues" in this agreement, whose equally unjustly popularised name has of late become "the Global Political Agreement".

Among the critical points of this power sharing agreement are the following:

. Reaffirm the principle of the United Nations Charter on non-interference in the internal affairs of member (states/nations). Agree that no outsiders have a right to call or campaign for regime change in Zimbabwe.

. Call upon the governments that are hosting and/or funding external radio stations broadcasting into Zimbabwe to cease such hosting and funding; (this is illegal under international law but something the US sponsors and has sponsored in several other places like Central America and Eastern Europe).

. Accept the irreversibility of land acquisitions and redistribution.

. Agree to call upon the United Kingdom government to accept the primary responsibility to pay compensation for land acquired from former landowners for resettlement.

. Recognise the consequent contribution of Western financial and economic isolation (sanctions) to the further decline of the economy; and;

. Agree that all forms of measures and sanctions against Zimbabwe be lifted.

These are the core issues of the agreement and unsurprisingly they are dead silent in Western media circles. Those who do not bother to read the agreement for themselves and only understand it through the web of corrupt ideas spun around it by Western sources are sure to misunderstand Zimbabwe. This is the argument pushed forward by Freeman.

So we have what Malcolm X would call a "bamboozled" audience at the mercy of a propaganda machinery that preaches scepticism and reluctance to deal with Zimbabwe "as long as Mugabe is in power" and this is attributed to an alleged inability to trust a "repressive Zanu-PF", a party portrayed as hanging on to power for power’s sake.

The backdrop to this attitude is the well documented Western meddling and interference during the negotiations that led to the coalition agreement. US and British diplomats confirmed this meddling to Business Daily when they said they had "advised" Tsvangirai not to sign the agreement and to "negotiate for more power".

The whole argument is premised on this popularised misimpression that says an "authoritarian" Mugabe assumed the Zimbabwe Presidency in an uncontested 2008 election. This is the dominating version of events in Western circles and it is the officially documented thinking from conservatives to liberals in the West.

"Uncontested" implies an undemocratic process where the electorate had only one choice, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Then we are bombarded heavily with this idea that state-sponsored violence of the Kenya December 2007 levels preceded the run-off date so as to intimidate voters that even the secrecy of the ballot was not enough for the 2 303 269 people that voted in the run off to express their will. That must make sense, we are told.

These are the stories parroted even by so-called leftist analysts and activists supposedly respected for their "progressive and democratic" ideals. The aim of such activism and analysis is clearly to popularise the acceptance of the regime change writings aimed at Zimbabwe.

This position is the one reinforced by all imperialist governments, the corporate and liberal media and most of the more than 2 500 Western sponsored NGOs resident in Zimbabwe. Netfa Freeman deconstructed these misleading narratives making incisive analysis of two essays deemed to be progressive by those that admire the effectiveness of imperialism.

He looked at "African Dictatorships and Double Standards" by Stephen Zunes and "Ballots vs Bullets in Kenya and Zimbabwe by Briggs Bomba.

Bomba failed to clarify that Zimbabwe has no ethnic tensions playing a part in the political polarity between the MDC formations and Zanu-PF, as was the case with the manipulated tensions between the Kikuyu and Luo of Kenya.

He failed to recognise that the polarisation in Zimbabwe is of an ideological nature, two opposing political tendencies.

Bomba misled his readers, as do many writers in Western media and elsewhere today; that there was "a victorious opposition" in the March 2008 election. This is despite that Zanu-PF commanded the popular vote for the Lower and Upper House, falling one seat behind the MDC-T in the Lower House and leading by a clear six seats in the Upper House.

This is also despite that the constitution of Zimbabwe requires a presidential candidate to gain more than 50 percent of the vote to be victorious and neither Cde Mugabe nor Mr Tsvangirai did so. Despite the widely portrayed view that President Mugabe is immensely unpopular, he did receive 43 percent of the March 29 vote, only 4 percent less than Tsvangirai. The candidate who received the most votes in the constitutionally required run-off was Robert Mugabe; 2 150 269 votes to Tsvangirai’s 233 000.

Bomba maintained that false premise that says the run-off election was uncontested, but Freeman rightly argued that "Tsvangirai never followed established procedures for rescinding his candidacy" — a requirement of a 21 day notice before Election Day. Tsvangirai’s grandstanding media announcement was only done five days before the election date.

Freeman looked at factors that could have contributed to President Mugabe receiving 1 106 818 more votes in June than he did in March and Tsvangirai to receive 936 860 less.

Firstly he looked at the post March premature and immature MDC-T announcements of election results ahead of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission — all announcements being false declarations of various victory margins, even contrary to the MDC-T’s own figures. Results like 58 percent, 53 percent and 50,3 percent were all publicised variously by the MDC-T as the official results and in any country, a political party that does that is bound to lose most if not all of its credibility.

Freeman also cited the behaviour of the MDC-T when there was a five-week delay in announcing the March election result.

MDC-T knew that this was the first harmonised election for Zimbabwe and such a delay was not out of question by way of possibility.

They chose to join Gordon Brown and Condoleezza Rice in portraying ZEC as an extension of Zanu-PF, regardless of the fact that some of ZEC’s polling officers were caught manipulating results in favour of the MDC-T.

Then there was complicit Western media chipping in with a fabricated headline story carried by the New York Times, backed by a photo of an 11 month old baby, whose misfortune of disabled little legs was attributed to "Zanu-PF brutes looking to terrorise the opposition".

MDC-T strongly backed this false story and when it became clear to all Zimbabweans that the whole story was a deliberate fabrication more credibility was squandered on the part of Tsvangirai and his party.

Then there was the discredited attempt by the MDC-T to dress up their own youths in Zanu-PF regalia and then attack their own supporters so as to discredit Zanu-PF. Trudy Stevenson will be a star witness to the charge that the MDC-T has no serious problems attacking its own people.

Zanu-PF geared up its campaign in realisation of this combined onslaught by the MDC-T and its mighty Western backers. This campaign was greatly aided by Tsvangirai’s behaviour.

He called for more foreign intervention, went on a gallivanting misadventure of Western capitals during the time he should have been campaigning inside the country and none of his stops was in any part of Africa.

Freeman asks, "If you were Zimbabwean would you vote for him?"

Members of his own party were calling him back in anger and it had to take US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee to instruct Tsvangirai to return to his own country, reportedly because he was "squandering his credibility".

Once in Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai embarked on an extremely badly advised sympathy-gaining gimmick to discredit the runoff.

With the majority of his supporters so angry at his unwarranted and unexplained prolonged absence from duty, and with almost no one really caring, Tsvangirai vaingloriously decided to pretend that his life was in danger and took "refuge" in the Dutch embassy in Zimbabwe, of all places.

Every Zimbabwean saw and heard of Tsvangirai fleeing into this least expected place for dear life, but none of them believed for once that there was someone following. The claim was just so ludicrous that the loudest noise for Morgan to come out of the Dutch embassy and join the race came from the MDC-T supporters themselves.

Tsvangirai came out of the embassy and was correctly briefed that the politics on the ground had drastically changed and his usual instructors ordered him to stage a pull out in order to avoid the pending humiliation. He obliged and the rest is history.

Briggs Bomba decided to insist that with Tsvangirai’s credibility eroded this much, he was or could be "victorious" all the same. That is what happens when you write to manufacture credibility for personalities.

But factual reality is that at the time of the June 2008 election runoff, Tsvangirai had characteristically squandered whatever manufactured credibility had carried him to a 47 percent vote lead in the first round of elections.

This writer will pursue the issue of the battle of ideas next week, looking further at Netfa Freeman, Briggs Bomba, Stephen Gowans and Stephen Zunes.

The reality on the ground is that Tsvangirai has no capacity to retain the manufactured credibility ever poured on him by Western powers and each day passes with the man destroying whatever artificial image is created in his favour.

The matter of the sanctions regime is going to do more damage to Tsvangirai’s cause than did his forgettable drama at the Dutch embassy.

The MDC-T leader would do himself and his party a great favour if he came out clear on sanctions.

The only thing Zimbabweans want to hear about that matter is an unconditional and emphatic call for the lifting of the illegal economic sanctions — nothing more and nothing less.

Any appeasing gimmicks targeted at Western masters and donors will cost Tsvangirai and his party so dearly that that they may never really recover.

Nelson Chamisa must also take this advice seriously and must be reminded that looking away when Miliband is exposing the game plan will not take away the problem.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

. Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@ rwafawarova. com or visit www.rwafawarova.com