Zimbabwe and the Furies of private interest
Why demonisation?
For a decade now, President Mugabe has been
demonised as an unscrupulous dictator by the imperialist propaganda machine,
and the ZANU(PF) government of Zimbabwe has been routinely referred to during
these years as a lawless and uncivilised administration, constituting a threat
to regional stability. To use the words of Margaret Thatcher, a former British
prime minister, from being “the perfect African gentleman”, Robert
Mugabe has been transformed by the imperialist lie machine into the devil
incarnate, a power-hungry dictator and a white-hating racist. What lies behind
this 180 degree turn in the attitude of the imperialist powers towards Mr
Mugabe and his party, ZANU(PF), and his government? The answer lies in the
following:
1.
First, after having suffered their devastating effects for years, the
Zimbabwean government in August 1999 decided to reject the Structural
Adjustment Policies (SAPs) advocated by the World Bank/IMF combine.
2.
Second, the Zimbabwean government’s dispatch of troops to the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) to aid the progressive Kabila government’s fight
against US-backed invasion by Rwanda and Uganda (in which 3 million Congolese
perished) managed to upset the US and other imperialist powers.
3.
Third, when after Tony Blair’s Labour government decisively reneged on
the British government’s promise, given during the Lancaster House Conference
that led to Rhodesia’s decolonisation, to aid the Zimbabwean government
financially to enable it to buy out white land owners, President Mugabe’s
government decided to expropriate the white landowners, all hell let loose.
March elections
Since then, the imperialist campaign of
vilification of Robert Mugabe and ZANU(PF) has been unrelenting. This campaign
is ratcheted up and reaches a crescendo each time elections are held in Zimbabwe. So it was during the parliamentary and presidential elections at the end of
March (29th), earlier this year. In the run up to these elections, we were
told by the imperialist misinformation agencies and imperialist statesmen alike
that Mugabe was determined to steal the elections; that these elections were
just an exercise in rigging the result; that in the conditions prevailing in Zimbabwe, free and fair elections were simply an impossibility.
All the same, the elections were held in the most
peaceful of conditions and the results surprised ZANU(PF) and imperialism
alike. ZANU(PF) lost the parliamentary election, while President Mugabe
trailed behind the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, by a margin of 4 percentage
points. With no candidate securing the requisite 51%, the run-off second round
was scheduled for 27 June.
Run-off presidential
election
After a great deal of dithering, Morgan Tsvangirai
decided to contest the second round of the presidential poll. However,
Mugabe’s party, jolted out of its complacency by the results of the March
election, galvanised itself into action by mobilising tents of thousands of its
supporters to connect with the Zimbabwean masses, while Tsvangirai busied
himself on a lengthy foreign tour. On his return to Zimbabwe, he was horrified
to discover that ZANU(PF) had recovered much of the ground it had lost
earlier. In view of this, he and his imperialist masters orchestrated a virulent
campaign against ZANU(PF), alleging that the latter was guilty of practising
violence against the MDC, that the Zimbabwean state was guilty of using the
police and armed forces in a campaign of terror against the opposition, 70 of
whose supporters, it was alleged, had been killed.
None of this barrage of imperialist lies cut any
ice with the Zimbabwean masses, who had no difficulty in realising that in the
majority of cases violence was being instigated by the MDC against ZANU(PF)
supporters. The government does not look kindly on anyone – ZANU or MDC –
using violence. This is why the police have arrested 390 MDC and 156 ZANU
supporters for using violence.
One of the tactics adopted by the MDC has been to
steal and don ZANU(PF) regalia, to steal campaign material, before disrupting
their own rallies solely in the interests of creating conditions for
intervention by imperialism in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe. The MDC claimed that ZANU(PF) had disrupted an opposition rally to be held in Harare on Sunday 22 June. This is a stronghold of the opposition. In the circumstances,
would ZANU want to expose its supporters to the tender mercies of the MDC
hooligans at such an event?
Tsvangirai pulls out
Perceiving that the MDC’s anti-Mugabe campaign of
malicious lies, backed to the hilt by imperialism, was not working, and facing
a humiliating electoral defeat at the hands of President Mugabe, Tsvangirai on
Sunday 22 June withdrew from the presidential run-off, citing violence by
Mugabe supporters as the reason for his decision. He said “We will no
longer participate in this violent sham of an election”, adding that “we
can’t ask the people to cast their vote on June 27 when that vote will cost
their lives”. This is a bizarre accusation.
Millions of Zimbabweans voted for the opposition in
March this year without any harm coming to them. Why should it be different
this time? The MDC has a majority in parliament; its parliamentarians go about
their business without any interference or harassment. Leading spokesmen of
the MDC hold public meetings and press conferences in the centre of Harare at which they routinely speak of President Mugabe in the most abusive of terms and
call for his overthrow. This being the case, why should any Zimbabwean feel
threatened for exercising, in complete secrecy, his right to vote for any
candidate of his own choosing?
Tsvangirai’s decision, announced through a press
statement instead of in a letter to the Electoral Commission (ZEC), was timed
to coincide with the United States’ chairmanship of the UN Security Council
with a view to getting the Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the
Zimbabwean presidential run-off as being flawed. The following day, in a
melodramatic move, he took shelter in the Dutch Embassy in Harare, alleging
that he feared for his life. However, since then he has been reported to have
been moving in and out of his sanctuary, giving press conferences, while his
supporters have been distributing his election material calling on the voters
to vote for him. Although on Tuesday 24 June he sent a letter to Justice
Chiweshe, chairman of the ZEC, notifying him of his withdrawal from the
contest, the ZEC is going ahead with the run-off on Friday 27 June, for
Tsvangirai’s withdrawal notification was too late, and therefore a nullity
under Zimbabwean law.
Imperialism piles on
pressure
Refusing to accept facts, imperialism, led by the US, continues to pile pressure on Zimbabwe. It managed to get the Security Council at its meeting
of 23 June to pass a unanimous resolution calling for the scrapping of the
second round of the presidential election in Zimbabwe as the conditions for a
free and fair election were absent, allegedly because of campaign of violence
and restrictions on the opposition. The Security Council further expressed
concern over the impact of the crisis on the region – in an obvious attempt at
laying the basis for future intervention in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe on the pretext of the situation there constituting a threat to regional stability.
Levy Mwanawasa, President of Zambia and the current
chairman of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC), at the
prompting of the gang of imperialist bloodsuckers pretending to be the
‘international community’ was forced to say that the situation in Zimbabwe is “a
matter of serious embarrassment to all of us” and that it would be “scandalous
for SADC to remain silent”.
Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, who
acted for years as an errand boy in what has become the colonial office of
imperialism since the collapse of the Soviet Union, namely the UN, has weighed
in with the assertion that a “victor emerging from such a flawed process
will have no legitimacy to govern Zimbabwe”.
The favourite black parson of imperialism, Desmond
Tutu, has called for sanctions against Zimbabwe to force President Mugabe out
of office. Jacob Zuma, the current leader of the ruling ANC and likely next
President of South Africa, obviously in an effort to placate the US and Britain
and to make sure that these two bloodthirsty and tyrannical imperialist powers
don’t put obstacles in the way of him succeeding Thabo Mbeki, has felt obliged
to join the herd baying for President Mugabe’s blood and has said that the
situation in Zimbabwe “has gone out of hand, out of control,” when he
knows fully well that this is not the case.
Even more shamefully,
COSATU, the South African trade union federation, has issued a statement
demanding that leaders in neighbouring states “withdraw their recognition of
a ‘government’ that has no mandate but is clinging to power”. The
blatant falsity of this statement can be gauged from the fact that COSATU dared
to make this statement before the conduct of the run-off election. Since no
candidate secured the 51% share of the votes cast in the presidential election
of March, thus making way for the second round, what, besides a combination of
malice, ignorance and short-sightedness, made COSATU so bold as to characterise
Robert Mugabe’s government as being bereft of a mandate – even going to the
contemptible length of putting inverted commas around the word government?
Even Nelson Mandela, in
London in connection with celebrations for his 90th birthday, arranged by the
very imperialist circles who connived with his persecution and imprisonment for
27 years by the South African apartheid regime, and who never tired of calling
him a terrorist, felt pressurised to say that the situation in Zimbabwe was a “tragic failure of leadership”. These four words of his are now
being repeated by every imperialist news agency and media outlet throughout the
world.
All this to the accompaniment of the
characterisation of Robert Mugabe as a brutal dictator, a tyrant, a despot and
an autocrat, and calls for the expulsion of Zimbabwe from the African Union and
SADC, as well as the trial of President Mugabe before some kangaroo court set
up by imperialism to try and convict those whose only crime is to oppose
imperialist brigandage and act to safeguard the sovereignty and independence of
their respective countries.
Mugabe’s response
It is just as well that the leadership of ZANU
comprises a sufficient number of men and women possessed of nerves of steel,
who are able to stand steadfast in the face of tremendous imperialist pressures
brought to bear on it. In response to the unreasonable demands made on Zimbabwe by imperialism and its African henchmen, President Mugabe has firmly stated that
SADC exists simply as a forum for the various countries concerned to operate in
it, “however, those who seek to impose themselves on us and make idiotic
noises would not bother us”. He added: “We are a sovereign nation and
the elections are ours. We will accept judgment on the basis of objectivity.
If you harbour any ulterior motives then keep your judgment to yourself. The
verdict is ours as the people of Zimbabwe They can shout as loud as they want
from Washington and London, but our people will deliver the verdict.”
Making it perfectly clear that his government will
not tolerate interference from any quarter and that Zimbabweans alone will
decide whether the election is free and fair, that Zimbabwe was ready to repel
and resist any threat or hint of interference by outsiders in the internal
affairs of Zimbabwe, Mr Mugabe expressed surprise at the fact that some African
countries had failed to appreciate the difficulties that Zimbabwe has had to
face because of illegal sanctions imposed on it by imperialism. He went on to
point to the lamentable and shameful fact that “not a single African country
has been bold enough to say that illegal sanctions imposed by the West should
be lifted or tell them not to interfere in our internal affairs. If we can
allow that to happen then as Africa we are not independent”, adding that,
for its part, Zimbabwe refuses to be subjected to such domination and
humiliating treatment. (The above quotations of Robert Mugabe are taken from Xinhua
of 25 June 2002).
Furies of private
interest
Imperialism is orchestrating a veritable campaign
against Robert Mugabe and his party, ZANU(PF), under the guise of democracy,
rule of law and good governance – all the concepts which were completely alien
to Rhodesia, whose white minority, with full support from imperialism, ruled
with a rod of iron and indulged in the wholesale theft of the Zimbabwean
people’s land. It was ZANU(PF), under the leadership of Robert Mugabe, that
waged an armed revolutionary liberation struggle which brought to Zimbabwe, for
the first time in nearly a century, not just the concepts but the practice of
democracy, the rule of law and good governance. Zimbabwe is the only country
in sub-Saharan Africa which, since its liberation in 1980, has regularly and
punctually held parliamentary and presidential elections, in which the
opposition parties regularly take part, and in which the government by no means
has the monopoly of the media.
If in spite of all this imperialism still continues
to target and victimise Zimbabwe, the reason for this is that the Zimbabwean
leadership alone in Africa has taken the bold step of expropriating the tiny
white minority of farmers who, or whose ancestors, had stolen the Zimbabwean
people’s land at gunpoint. In this context, one cannot fail to recall the
following profound observation of Marx:
“In the domain of political economy, free scientific
enquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The
peculiar nature of the material it deals with summons as foes into the field of
battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the
Furies of private interest. The English established church, for example, will
more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39th of its
income. Nowadays atheism itself is culpa levis [a minor sin] compared
to the criticism of property relations” (Preface to the first edition of Capital,
Vol 1).
It is the Furies of private interest which have
roused the most violent, mean and malignant passions in the breasts of the
imperialist gentry and which continue to inform its attitude, policy and
actions towards the Zimbabwean authorities who had the temerity to look after
the interests of their own people by expropriating a handful of descendants of
the bigtime thieves of the Zimbabwean people’s land. Further, this same gentry
are petrified at the prospect of Zimbabwe’s example infecting other parts of
Africa, especially South Africa. It is this that motivates imperialism’s
propaganda crusade, filled with hatred, vituperative invective, as well as
economic sanctions, against Zimbabwe.
By the device of sheer repetition of lies, in the
fashion of Nazi propaganda chief Dr Goebbels, the imperialists even manage to
fool the people by exploiting their gullibility and ignorance for, in the words
of the great German poet, Goethe, “The man in the street does not notice the
devil even when the devil is holding him by the throat”.
Imperialism is precisely the devil incarnate which
is holding the people of the world by the throat. And it is the job of the
revolutionaries to make people conscious of this fact, to make them recognise
the devil and fight to destroy it. At the present, this task should not be so
difficult as Anglo-American imperialism is busy consummating a gigantic
genocide in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Even if, for the sake of
argument, one were to accept (and we certainly do not accept) as true the
accusation put forward by the imperialist politicians and the mercenary
journalist fraternity – the Jeremy Paxmans, Kirsty Warks, John Humphryses and
dozens of other lickspittles, whose wallets are stuffed with imperialist loot –
that nearly 80 Zimbabweans have been killed through state-supported violence
during the present election campaign in Zimbabwe, what is this figure in
comparison with the 1.5 million Iraqis slaughtered, 4 million displaced, the
wholesale destruction of the Iraqi economy and its infrastructure, the misery,
unemployment and destitution visited on the population of that country since
2003? What is this figure when set against the daily massacres of the Afghans
by the imperialist armies of aggression, or the massacres daily perpetrated by
the Israeli Zionists against the Palestinian people, whose country has been
stolen from them and who are now being collectively punished and starved for
daring to resist the colonial occupiers of their country?
One would have thought that these self-appointed
guardians of truth and a free press would have some very tough questions with
which to face the political leaders of imperialism, who are engaged in massive
campaigns of extermination, death and destruction, in our name, instead of
picking on those in the oppressed countries who are trying their best to lift
their peoples from the poverty and destitution bequeathed to them by decades of
colonial slavery and exploitation.
On the same day that Tsvangirai withdrew from the
presidential contest, The Sunday Times broke the news that the British
forces in Afghanistan have used thermobaric Hellfire missiles, one of the
world’s most deadly and controversial weapons, to fight the Afghan resistance.
The use of this weapon, which creates a pressure wave that sucks the air out of
victims and shreds their internal organs and crushes their bodies, is condemned
by human rights groups as brutal. This weapon is so controversial “that
MoD weapons and legal experts spent 18 months debating whether British troops
could use them without breaking international law” in the end deciding “to
get round the ethical problems by redefining’ the weapon, calling it “an
enhanced blast weapon” rather than a thermobaric one, which is what it is.
One would have thought this was a significant piece of news to attract the
attention of our media and journalists, with their professed concern for truth,
human rights, the rule of law and accountability of governments for their
actions. But no. As was to be expected, this news fell on deaf ears and was
greeted with deafening silence. And this for the simple reason that giving
publicity to this item, far from serving it, instead harms the interests of
imperialism by portraying it in its true colours and bringing into the open the
daily barbarity so characteristic of it. Our mercenary journalists know it.
So they prefer to look the other way, concentrating instead on imaginary
outrages in Zimbabwe, Tibet or anywhere else.
It is the duty of the proletariat,
and their revolutionary vanguard parties in the centres of imperialism, to
expose this hypocrisy and double standards of the imperialist spokesmen –
politicians and journalists alike; to expose the crimes of imperialism. It is
equally their duty to defend the rights of the oppressed people to resist
imperialist bullying, exploitation, domination and aggression. It is for this
reason alone that Lalkar, in its capacity as an anti-imperialist journal
published in the world’s oldest imperialist country, while denouncing
imperialism’s attempts to effect regime change in Zimbabwe by replacing a
proud nationalist revolutionary like Robert Mugabe with a servile lackey such
as Tsvangirai, is proud to stand side by side with Robert Mugabe and ZANU(PF),
to defend them against the campaign of lies and slander propelled by the Furies
of private interest of the robber barons of finance capital.