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Land reform, sanctions, regime change, and sovereignty
Research and Advocacy Unit
May 09, 2011

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One of the enduring problems of the Zimbabwe crisis revolves around understanding the meaning of the terms employed by the respective protagonists to describe the crisis, whether they are Zimbabwean, African, or Western. It is not a simple problem of semantics, but reflects deep ideological differences between perspectives and the entrenched and polarized positions between the protagonists. It is not helped by the continual over-simplification of the terms applied, and especially the too easy acceptance of these over-simplifications by far too many people. It is more than mere terminology than complicates the problem, but, also the too easy resort to an over-simplified language that exacerbates the problem.

No terms have been more abused or deliberately misunderstood than land reform, sanctions, regime change, and sovereignty, and especially because these terms have become inextricably inter-locked in the highly successful propaganda war mounted by ZANU PF for more than a decade. These terms have become the battleground into which all have been drawn - like moths to the flame. Africa has found itself in conflict with the West, and, as much as the West has attempted to change the discourse, the Western nations have found it impossible to do this.

The ZANU PF position around these terms is relatively simple: land reform leads to Western-imposed sanctions, part of a desire by Western nations for regime change through elections, and that now means that Western puppets [and even now SADC] are planning to interfere with Zimbabwe's sovereign status. And it is breath-takingly simple to run a campaign using this framework, and so extremely difficult to argue against such evocative rhetoric using fact and logical argument. Only those that are prepared to work [it is contradictory to say hard work is needed and then to say the argument is crude] at a nuanced understanding of the Zimbabwe crisis will perceive the crudity, of the argument, and, as always with fascist propaganda, nuanced argument is trumped by the power of endless repetition. It is also trumped by ZANU PF's monopoly of the electronic media allows it (and not the government, the Inclusive Government) the ability to endlessly repeat their over-simplified rhetoric. It is finally trumped because like all good propaganda there is enough of an element of truth to make the propaganda effective, and the further one is away from the immediacy of Zimbabwe - in Lusaka, Lilongwe, Windhoek, etc - the more that element of truth is likely to seem plausible. No-one should be naïve enough to assume that this propaganda campaign is a tissue of lies, or that Robert Mugabe's inveighing against the West is without merit: the messenger may be without merit, but the message is not wholly without real power.

Nor should the power of repetition be under-estimated locally, in Zimbabwe and in the SADC region. According to the latest opinion poll on Zimbabwe, 63% of ordinary Zimbabweans now believe that sanctions are harming Zimbabwe and should be removed. However, it would be instructive to inquire from these same Zimbabweans what they actually knew about sanctions, what form they take, why they were imposed, etc. It is a fair bet that the vast majority is largely clueless, but this matters little in the contest for political power, and the sanctions petition can bludgeon Zimbabweans further into believing the rhetoric. Zimbabweans may not like Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF, but this does not mean that they do not believe that he and ZANU PF have brought the wrath of the world upon them, and that they are suffering as a consequence of the sanctions imposed: that they suffer as consequence of bad governance is true.

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