|
Back to Index
, Back
to part 1
Can
Zimbabwe Become Africa's Cuba
Mukoma
Wa Ngugi
Part 2
November
04, 2005
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=9056
Which Way
Out: ZANU PF, MDC or Moyo’s Third Way?
If
ZANU PF has been hurt by the state of the economy and US led sanctions,
so has the MDC. The sanctions were called for by the MDC. However
sanctions work when most of the population is against the sitting
government, when the only solution envisaged is complete change,
and when the people under that government have nothing to lose.
However, unlike apartheid South Africa, these conditions did not
exist in Zimbabwe at the point of the United States passing the
Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act in 2001[13].
By calling for
the sanctions [14] the MDC at best could only consolidate its power
base and alienate ZANU-PF supporters. Unless MDC was hoping for
a US intervention, it could not under the circumstances have amassed
the critical mass it needed to make Zimbabwe ungovernable thereby
forcing ZANU-PF out office. Such a move depended on alienating vast
numbers of ZANU-PF supporters from ZANU-PF but instead it succeeded
only in strengthening their loyalty to ZANU-PF. In South Africa,
the black majority had nothing more to lose and equally important
were supportive of the A.N.C. Even if some may have had doubts regarding
the call for sanctions, a long history of A.N.C. agitation and sacrifices
of life and limb on their behalf and behest had built enough trust
that when in doubt the maxim would have been to err on the A.N.C.
side. By contrast, MDC cannot pull ZANU-PF supporters into its camp
and also steel its supporters as they go through the hardships created
by sanctions– not enough trust has been built between the party
and the people.
By MDC calling
for sanctions without first assessing where it stands in relation
to Zimbabweans and their history of struggle while at the same time
having only the support of the urban segment of the population who
unlike in Apartheid South Africa have something to lose, the opposite
of what it intended has happened. The MDC Party is understood as
having created the conditions that are taking food away from the
table of the urban worker and have put the middle class in a precarious
situation. As a result, the MDC Party position has weakened to such
an extent that it has been unable to take advantage of the government’s
tragic follies like Operation Clean-Up – an opportunity that any
other party would have seized. The sanctions then have buoyed ZANU-PF
while proving to be divisive for the MDC Party. In short calling
for sanctions was a mistake.
The MDC Party
is also plagued by image problems because of its close ties to white
farmers and the Bush and Blair governments. "We want regime change
in Zimbabwe. But we want regime change through the ballot, not the
bullet," Morgan Tsvangirai is quoted as saying to a European crowd.
The language of regime change is borrowed from Blair and Bush. In
fact in a thinly veiled invitation for the West to intervene that
is highlighted by the Black Commentator, Morgan Tsvangirai is quoted
as saying that "Zimbabwe must be seen as a test case for Africa,
for the resolve of leaders and peoples to deal with a rogue and
illegitimate regime". The Black Commentator makes the following
observation: "The most damning charges concern the MDC’s funding,
and on this count, the BC is in agreement, Tsvangirai has been corrupted
by the imperialists, and shamelessly so [15]". In a country
that saw independence only in 1980 and where memory of colonialism
is still alive, this close relationship to Blair and Bush at a time
when they are engaged in an illegal occupation of Iraq, only alienates
the MDC from would be supporters in Zimbabwe and outside. Iraq recalls
conquest, occupation and the implementation of indirect rule. MDC’s
close tie to both Blair and Bush provides the platform for indirect
rule in colonial memory and remembrance.
In international
media as well as in Zimbabwe there has been discussion and even
hope of a third way led by Jonathan Moyo. He is being promoted and
has cultivated himself as the messiah who will part the political
sea of Zimbabwe and lead the people into a Third Way. Jonathan Moyo
was ZANU-PF’s Minister of Information and ostensibly broke party
rules by running for a Parliamentary seat as a way of retaliating
against ZANU-PF after he felt sidelined by Mugabe in the debate
over the Vice-Presidency. He himself argues that he simply got tired
of the way ZANU-PF betrayed democratic ideals. The Third Way understands
itself as providing a break from Mugabe while continuing with policies
that pursue equality. On this very basis, it also distinguishes
itself from the MDC which it understands as representing white farmer
interests in Zimbabwe. The Third Way seeks to present itself as
the representing the best of both worlds.
But for having
been a staunch supporter of Mugabe, Jonathan Moyo is viewed with
suspicion for having jumped ship by ZANU-PF and MDC supporters.
As Information Minister, he was very visible and recent memory of
him is as a staunch defender of ZANU-PF. For ZANU-PF supporters,
he has shown he can be disloyal. For MDC supporters, he is already
compromised by his former loyalty to ZANU-PF. But the only way he
can create a third way is by splitting the two parties. As one person
put it to me, the problem is not only that both parties stand on
absolutes, but so do their followers. As he put it, ZANU-PF supporters
would die for Mugabe and the MDC supporters would kill Mugabe. Yet,
Moyo needs to be able to get enough supporters from both camps to
form a viable party. Even if he does some ZANU-PF supporters, he
will not get enough of them to bring him to the political table
because ZANU-PF has its supporters in the rural areas that have
directly benefited from land redistribution – they will not abandon
ship. He will need to either discredit the MDC or form an alliance
with it. By trying to undo the MDC he will sound like ZANU-PF. By
forming an alliance, he will sound like MDC. Jonathan Moyo at this
stage remains in the back burners.
ZANU-PF’s support
base is in the rural areas where people now have some land and amongst
war veterans. With the majority of the population in the rural areas,
even if we granted the MDC full support of the urban populations,
the result would be a near stalemate that slightly favors ZANU-PF.
War Veterans in any society are always a powerful group – they are
the emblem of a people’s nationalism, national conscience and society
prides itself to the extent it recognizes their contribution. Unlike
countries like Kenya which attempted to bury its war for liberation
along with its national heroes like Dedan Kimaathi in unmarked graves
with the hope the betrayal of their struggle would remain buried
with them, Zimbabwe celebrates its freedom fighters. Each year,
there is a three-day-weekend celebration that features amongst other
things an all night musical celebration, a National Heroes Day,
and a presidential visit to an acre dedicated to those who died.
The veterans community is not aged Zimbabwe having won its independence
in 1980. Their war has yet to be lost to the lethargy of younger
generations which tend to file away the experiences of the older
generation as they lose their immediacy. Given the relative youth
of the war veterans, they will be around for many more years keeping
both the government and the opposition in check in regards to how
dreams of independence are met.
ZANU-PF,
Pre-emptive Sanctions and Public Opinion
If
globalization has done anything, it has further blurred the lines
between boundaries of strong and the weak nations and the weaker
nations are all the more vulnerable. If we think of globalization
as the next stage of an imperialism that begins with slavery, if
we think of globalization as once and for all stamping the world
America’s backyard, it follows that US public opinion weighs more
than Zimbabwe’s public opinion. What the United States under Bush
realized is that as long as US Citizens agreed or did not interfere
with its foreign policy, international opinion could not be an overriding
factor. After all who really controls the money that keeps the United
Nations afloat? Who really controls the World Bank, literally a
bank that turns millions of dollars in profit each year and is therefore
in tune with its Western sponsors? Therefore, through international
funding organizations and implied threat of direct military or economic
action, Bush can ignore world opinion. After all, what can they
really do to stop him? Pre-emptive war or economic action is the
end result of an empire that is no longer self-effacing, that no
longer has illusions about what it must do in order to fulfill an
imperial destiny.
Traditionally
sanctions were called upon by the majority voices of the oppressed;
now they have become a weapon of the strong against the weak. South
Africa during the anti-apartheid struggle appealed to the US citizenry
and eventually forced Reagan, who preferred strategic engagement
which is to say to do nothing but continue profitable relationships,
to declare sanctions. But because the US citizenry views Mugabe
through the eyes of the media and Bush, Zimbabwe through economic
pressure can be stopped or contained from infecting other poor nations
with the disease of redistribution. In this instance, Zimbabwe sanctions,
like the war on Iraq, are preemptive. At the moment ZANU-PF forcefully
took farms from white farmers, undermined the basis of private property
and naturalized white property rights, whatever actions it took
thereafter were going to be in opposition to the ideology of Bush.
Redistribute democratically or redistribute autocratically, Bush
and by extension the West was going to declare Zimbabwe a rogue
state.
But instead
of realizing the amount of opposition it was going to face and factor
in Western public opinion as part of a necessary defense from Bush
and co., and therefore justify its actions rightly or wrongly, ZANU-PF
came out swinging. Anyone who raised a concern, legitimate or illegitimate
was dismissed off-hand. Long before the West had laid its siege,
ZANU-PF by turning its back on international public opinion had
began its own siege. ZANU-PF has lost so much support amongst people
in the West that the sanctions have hardly raised a murmur.
Perhaps the
Look East Philosophy will at least buoy the Zimbabwean economy though
this will depend on whether the Chinese are going to invest in Zimbabwe
as friends or as venture capitalists. But as things stand the Chinese
presence can be felt in Harare. Some of the public buses are Chinese
are as the planes that fly to Victoria Falls. And the term, Look
East has become part of the everyday language. It is not clear how
deeply the Chinese are willing to get involved in Zimbabwe but at
whatever level, as far as I could tell, they are in for the long
haul.
But whichever
way Zimbabwe goes, the changes are irreversible and an attempt to
return Zimbabwe to pre-land redistribution days will be at great
human cost. If we agree that land redistribution is a necessary
component of democracy as a result of the stark inequalities that
exist in countries like Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe, perhaps
our job is to make sure that Zimbabwe thrives and that the process
of land-redistribution benefits those who were dispossessed by colonialism
and neocolonialism. On a question of reversibility that I put to
Mrs. Mutumbwa, she had this to say "No one is ever going to
take my land from me again – I will die here fighting if need be".
I found no cause to doubt her.
Zimbabwe, Africa
and Diaspora and Democracy with Content Whatever one chooses to
think of Mugabe, ZANU PF, MDC and all the actors in Zimbabwe, it
is important to keep in mind that Zimbabwe also acts as a metaphor
for and of other African countries. Hence, as I said in the introduction,
the reluctance of African leaders who having sworn to defend life
and property (whose life? whose property?) are fearful that Zimbabwe
will trigger calls for land reform in their backyard. In this sense,
perhaps Zimbabwe recalls Cuba – it remains, rightly or wrongly,
a symbol of the search for a democracy with content, a democracy
that contains within it equality, universal health care, land and
wealth redistribution – that basically contains within it the seed
that human societies can be arranged in such a way that the elite
do not thrive at the expense of a poor majority.
Symbolizing
a search for a democracy with content are crucial terms here. Regardless
of what is happening on the ground in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe of
Africa is one that questions what both colonial independence and
multi-partyism have done to better material conditions of the African
marginalized. Whatever happens in Zimbabwe, unless the questions
of land and freedom are addressed in a manner that is cognizant
of colonial history, the future remains bleak. In this sense Zimbabwe
can be pushed to offer a solution or it can be forced into becoming
a symptom of mayhem to come in the rest of Africa.
In Kenya, the
fight for freedom was waged on two points – Land and Freedom. At
the point of independence, when it became clear that the wind of
change had ushered in neocolonialism, land became a metaphor for
freedom. Land and Freedom became one and the same thing. To regain
land is to regain freedom and to regain freedom is to regain land.
What happens in Zimbabwe will have an effect all over Africa. Zimbabwe
has ignited debate about (neo)-colonialism and redistribution of
land in countries like Namibia, South Africa and Kenya to name just
a few.
Mugabe and ZANU-PF
have lost a lot of support in the Diaspora. More than anything that
I discussed with various people in Zimbabwe, the one that struck
most alarm was this one. The organizations and activist leaders
who are speaking out against Mugabe have a long history of political
activism against United States domestic and foreign policies that
globalize marginalization. They have done their work by the African,
the African American and the marginalized in the Diaspora. In 2003,
an open letter [16] to Mugabe titled "Statement On Zimbabwe"
was written and signed by William Lucy, President, Coalition of
Black Trade Unionists Willie Baker, Executive Vice President, Coalition
of Black Trade Unionists Salih Booker, Executive Director, Africa
Action Bill Fletcher, Jr., President, TransAfrica Forum and organizations
like Black Radical Congress. The open letter in part states that
the signatories "view the political repression underway in
Zimbabwe as intolerable and in complete contradiction of the values
and principles that were both the foundation of your liberation
struggle and of our solidarity with that struggle". The waning
support is not only amongst progressives in the Diaspora who have
impeccable records in their fight for human justice but also amongst
Africans albeit more slowly. Wole Soyinka, former prisoner of conscience
and Nobel Prize laureate recently said that "President Mugabe
was typical of "rogues and monsters" clinging to power in Africa
[17]" and called for sanctions. So has Desmond Tutu.
In my view,
there needs to be a dialogue about Zimbabwe between those of us
who in spite of the various positions taken on Zimbabwe remain unequivocally
opposed to the imperialist and racial instincts that are informing
both Bush and Blair and are committed to a society where economic
and political arrangements work for the majority and in which historical
injustices are addressed. In short those of us who are committed
to a democracy with content need to dialogue over Zimbabwe. In matters
where meaning is contested depending on one’s situation, and where
millions of lives depend on whose meaning wins, dialogue should
never be closed. This does not mean that one abandons his or her
point of view. Rather it means viewing our different ideologies
as starting points. If Zimbabwe is not to be returned to the Berlin
Conference, and Bush and Blair are steadily pushing world opinion
in a direction where this can be done under the guise of democracy,
we simply must return to our progressive tables and re-open the
dialogue.
Conclusion:
Zimbabwe International Book Festival and Human Rights
Since
I began with a story from my trip to Zimbabwe for Zimbabwe International
Book Fair, I will end with one. The festival was in two parts, the
Indaba to which I was specifically invited which was a conference
of sorts and the fair proper. The theme of the Indaba was "Human
Rights in Africa". In the Indaba very few of the participants
focused on Zimbabwe since the topic invited participants to move
outside of Zimbabwe and look at African philosophical systems and
how the incorporated the idea of human rights. It was an exciting
time since even though I have spend a lot of time on African Philosophy,
it is very rare that I have come across what can be badly termed
as Applied African Philosophy. Here was a problem, how does African
Philosophy, political or otherwise deal with it? One of the presenters
argued that while the equivalent term for human rights can not be
found in most African languages, the concept itself existed and
was conceptualized in the notion of umuntu – of humanity – certainly
an interesting idea. This was speaking to the same questions that
plague feminism, Marxism, socialism, questions of sexuality etc.
in regards to what is African and what is Western, really a question
that in its search for authentication forgets to look at the conceptual
riches before it. I therefore expected the sponsors, organizers,
panelists and participants to find the debate stimulating and useful.
But to cut a
long story short we were informed, even before we left Zimbabwe
that the funding NGOs (most of them Western) in a huff and a puff
had threatened not to fund the next book fair in 2006. They specifically
asked that Abafour Ankomah, the editor of New African be banned
from ever attending another book fair. The organizers we were informed
were being accused by the donors of having invited only pro-Mugabe
people. Now, there were two, three maybe even four papers that spoke
to Zimbabwe and came out in defense of ZANU-PF policies in the context
of human rights. But the overwhelming number of papers spoke to
and debated the term Human Rights as it applied to Africa. I would
like to suggest that this is what worried the donors most. Africans
from different countries had gathered and were speaking to one another
– Zimbabwe simply provided the occasion. Ankomah’s closing remarks,
part synthesis of the Indaba, rested mostly on the betrayal of Kwame
Nkrumah in Ghana and his Pan-Africanist dream in relation to Zimbabwe.
But at the end of the day there are ways in which the questions
of redistribution of land and justice precede Zimbabwe. Africans
have been questioning Western intrigues in Africa long before Mugabe
became the lightning rod for everything that is going bad in Africa.
Today the questions
arise because colonialism has yet to atone for its history and legacy
of inequality by giving back what it took. So to me, inherent in
the questions that the Indaba was tackling was the question of human
rights and the means to practice them. As a friend of mine once
put it "I am tired of being told that I have human rights when
I do not have the economic means to practice them". At the
Indaba, were we to pretend the question of human rights and practice
was peculiar to Zimbabwe? Were we to talk about human rights within
an empty democracy and outside a democracy with content?
We were later
told that when the topic of Human Rights was suggested the donors
congratulated the organizers because they were sure it would provide
a stage on which participants could attack the Zimbabwean government.
And when that did not happen, and in spite of a debate that spoke
to so many necessary questions pertaining to Africa, the donor response
was to threaten shutting down the festival. The platform had already
closed the debate long before we got there. There is something wrong
here. The donors had an agenda of discrediting the Zimbabwean government
through a proxy war in which we the presenters were to be used as
the infantry. When that failed through the accident of human rights
being an African and not just a Zimbabwean question, they threatened
to burn the whole place down. This is horrifying and simply unacceptable.
No matter who does it. It is an illustration of what happens when
we come to the conversation over Africa with our ideas not as starting
points but as the end. In our dialogue over Zimbabwe, we have to
do better than this and from the start declare an open invitation
and platform.
*Mukoma Wa Ngugi
(mukomangugi @ yahoo.com)
is the author of Conversing with Africa: Politics of Change and
the forthcoming A Malignant History: Looking at America. He is also
the coordinator for the Toward an Africa without Borders Organization.
Sources
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1878846.stm
White farmer killed in Zimbabwe
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4140990.stm
SA 'to learn from' land seizures
3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/4630665.stm
South Africa’s bloody battle for land – Clifford Bestall
4. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/467037131
5 . http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4273890.stm
S African white farm to be seized
6. http://www.guardian.co.uk/congo/story/0,12292,1370528,00.html
"Congo death toll up to 3.8m" – Guardian
7. http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/06/02/congo11041.htm
D.R. Congo: Gold Fuels Massive Human Rights Atrocities – Human Rights
Watch
8. http://allafrica.com/stories/200509290746.html
"Moment of Truth for the Government of Uganda" - Peter
J. Quaranto & Michael Poffenberger
9. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engAMR510202000
USA: Mumia Abu-Jamal -- Amnesty International calls for retrial
10. http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR511601999
APPEAL FOR THE RELEASE OF LEONARD PELTIER – Amnesty International
11. http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/features/law/law307102005.html
Forced evictions are a human rights scandal – Vanguard
12. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/10/04/botswana.bushmen.ap/
Botswana: Police fired on Bushmen
13. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:SN00494:@@@L&summ2=m&
A bill to provide for a transition to democracy and to promote economic
recovery in Zimbabwe
14.
The result of this bill and the so called smart sanctions employed
by the EU against Zimbabwe can be used to twist the arm of donor
agencies in regards to giving loans to Zimbabwe and have undermined
investor confidence in Zimbabwe.
15. http://www.blackcommentator.com/51/51_zim.html
The Debate on Zimbabwe will not be throttled.
16 . http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=3731
Statement on Zimbabwe
17. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4703021.stm
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
