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Writers Articles And Opinions |
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28 September 2010 By Reason Wafawarova
IN the book Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky
quotes Thucydides as saying, "Large nations do what
they wish, while small nations accept what they must."
Chomsky says this is one of the two leading
principles of international relations.
This can be paired with Adam Smith’s principle
where he pointed out that the "principal architects"
of state policy, the "merchants and manufacturers,"
make sure that their own interests are "most
particularly attended to," however "grievous" the
consequences for others. He was mainly talking about
England of course.
This writer thinks these two principles can also be
paired to a third that is more related to domestic
politics for nation states than to international
relations.
Politicians make sure what they do is in line with
their individual quest for power and personal gain and
many times their actions have no regard for the
consequences to all others or for the good of the
people around them.
We can look at the politics of Matabeleland,
something that Zimbabweans are currently debating a
lot after Nathaniel Manheru stirred the waters of this
supposedly "delicate topic".
What is delicate about the topic is not the issue
of the people of Matabeleland or their declared
feelings about marginalisation and historical events.
Simply put, the people of Matabeleland have neither
exclusivity nor monopoly over marginalisation and
backwardness, as some opportunists seem to preach.
Panganai Village in Bikita, where this writer was
born and bred, can only be described as a virgin of
primitiveness in terms of infrastructural development
and we also have nothing of whatever there is not in
Matabeleland, and the village is a Karanga domain.
What is delicate are the power games played by
politicians who manipulate the feelings of the people
of Matabeleland, real or imagined, for their own
personal benefit.
These are the politicians who thrive on
unconstructive rhetoric and we have seen an alarming
number of such opportunists trying to contrive
legitimacy by overplaying the often exaggerated and
overemphasised marginalisation of Matabeleland.
Anyone running out of ammunition against Zanu-PF in
general or President Mugabe in particular will
patently anoint themselves custodians of all Ndebele
memory, remissly reminiscing hearsay and
unsubstantiated claims over Gukurahundi, as if every
prevailing myth around this topic were a matter of
fact.
The abuse of the plight of the people of
Matabeleland, genuine or imagined, would be sad enough
if it was simply a matter of Westerners trying to
conjure up a pretext for vilifying Zanu-PF and
President Mugabe.
It is sadder when Zimbabwean politicians ride on
the same wave and take advantage of a bitterness they
hardly share with the affected; all in order to endear
themselves to a people they see no more than a mere
source of cheap votes and a route to political
survival.
It becomes appalling when this is reinforced by the
sad reality of a bitterness-based inferiority that
makes some of the so-called marginalised people lose
self-esteem and self belief.
We have a situation where anything done by central
Government for Matabeleland is assumed to be inferior
to what happens in Mashonaland, to the extent that the
absolute nothing that has happened to Panganai Village
since 1980 by way of infrastructural development is
seen as a hundred times better than the equal absolute
nothing that has happened in Guyu, down in
Matabeleland South.
This is when we are not confronted with the
unreasonable cynicism that demeans any act of goodwill
extended by Central Government to the Matabeleland
region.
These political vultures have been politicking on
the matter of two statues made in honour of the late
Vice President Joshua Nkomo, and some of the
complications created on this matter by political
activists and some politicians are, to say the least,
quite ludicrous.
The Nkomo family’s concerns over how the issue of
the two statues should be handled are a different
matter that can be addressed adequately and amicably
by the parties concerned.
It is the self-centred rhetoric from politicians
who want to manipulate the legacy of the late Cde
Nkomo to gain ground in their fight against their
rivals in Zanu-PF that really makes the whole story a
sad chapter in Zimbabwe’s history.
But politicians by their very nature have no regard
for manners, time, place, morality or people around
them, dead or alive — all they do is look after their
own personal interests and political survival, riding
on every raft that offers an opportunity to cross the
deadly high flowing rivers running across the world of
politics.
This writer’s late mother used to tell a story of a
blind man who never trusted the sighted people around
him.
One day the sighted folks decided to spoil the
blind man by filling up his plate with as much fried
goat meat as the plate could carry.
Feeling his plate, the blind man realised his plate
was full to the brim with this delicacy and he said, "Ukaona
isu vasingaoni tozadzirwa ndiro kudai ziva kuti
vanoona umwe neumwe amire nembudzi yake".
Translated literally, he was saying for him to have
that kind of portion it really meant the sighted had a
whole goat each to themselves.
So when we see boreholes in Matabeleland then
Chikombedzi must be full to the brim with running
water taps.
That is the thinking we sometimes get, isn’t it?
They have everything in Harare is what we often hear.
Nathaniel Manheru, Priscilla Misihairambwi-Mushonga
and Professor Jonathan Moyo; my take is that tribally
minded politicians do not need to be pampered with
more meat in their plate, but to receive their sight.
We have a legion of politicians in Zimbabwe today
who are impervious to policy and absolutely illiterate
on matters of economic planning and sound governance.
These are ideologically blind politicians and
reactionaries whose sole occupation in politics is to
react to what Zanu-PF has or has not done, did or did
not do and things like that.
For as long as these blind people occupy political
space in Zimbabwe, then the country will be riddled
with so much infantile bickering that it becomes
impossible even to bury people decently and honourably,
or even to honour our departed heroes.
But this week is about the two principles that
drive international relations theory and when one
looks at these two said principles it becomes a lot
easier to account for a fair amount of state policy,
almost independent of which state it is.
On September 20, 2006 Hugo Chavez was widely
publicised for referring to George W. Bush as "the
devil" and for his subsequent comment about "sulphur"
coming from the podium.
Name calling and the character of George W. Bush
are two sides of the coin that makes up the Bush
legacy, and they are a natural pair in that regard.
Nevertheless, it was rather unconstructive for
Chavez to adopt such rhetoric when he made his
historic speech in 2006.
It was unconstructive in the sense that it made it
possible for the ultra right wing and Western media
propagandists to spin the whole speech into a "devil
comment speech," that way dousing into oblivion the
incisive content the speech carried.
Despite the wide publicity of the devil comment
from Chavez, the reality is that no attention was ever
paid to the Venezuelan president’s speeches, either at
the General Assembly on September 20, 2006, or the
much more important one he gave at the 2005 General
Assembly.
Then Chavez talked about reintroducing the concept
of a new international economic order, a proposal that
was sponsored by the former colonial countries, the
Non Alligned Movement since the 70s, and put forward
by the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development, the main UN development agency.
This was a very serious programme meant to bring
developing countries into international affairs on a
slightly more equitable footing.
Of course, the proposal was shot down very fast,
and the United States and her rich allies instead
instituted the opposite — the so-called neoliberal
order.
Chavez, like President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe,
also brought up crucial questions about UN reforms,
suggested that the United Nations Security Council
should be more democratic, that the UN Headquarters be
placed in an international city, in the South, where
most of the world’s population is.
He raised questions about energy consumption and he
said there is far too much oil used for energy
production, something very destructive for the
environment. This he said despite the fact that
Venezuela is an oil producer and a major beneficiary
of petro-dollars.
Chavez also re-endorsed the position of the UN High
Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change that the
importance of maintaining the constraints on the
threat and use of force in international affairs must
always be observed.
That speech was very important but it received
barely any coverage at all.
It was the devil comment in the 2006 speech that
was widely covered and one must note that although
that comment could have been unconstructive, equally
unconstructive was Donald Rumsfeld’s rhetoric when he
compared Hugo Chavez to Hitler, or Nancy Pelosi’s name
calling when she said the same man was a "thug".
Any serious newspaper would be expected to focus on
Chavez’s policies or Bush’s policies, not on the
rhetoric they use.
We hear a lot of bad mouthing on statements and
comments that are attributed to President Robert
Mugabe, and rarely do we see his policies articulated
and analysed objectively.
The rhetoric used to push those policies often
becomes the news and when the media does that, we are
quite clear that the world is being led into gossip
land.
Mugabe says about George W. Bush that his hands
"drip with the blood of many nationalities" and Chavez
calls the same man a "devil" and both Mugabe and
Chavez received prolonged loud applauses that lasted
so long that the UN officials had to tell the cheering
crowd to cut it out.
Were the applauses prolonged because Bush was
called names or it was because both Chavez and Mugabe
expressed points of view that happened to be very
widely accepted in the world?
Chavez and Mugabe’s sentiments are often described
as "controversial" by Western media when in fact it is
the views of the Western media and commentators that
are controversial.
There is nothing controversial about Chavez saying
that the United States is one of the greatest threats
to peace in the world. Even European polls confirmed
this in 2007 when Europeans placed the US far ahead of
Iran, North Korea and everybody else, in a poll on
countries that threaten world peace.
There is nothing controversial about Mugabe saying
he wants foreign investors to own no more than 49
percent shares when operating in Zimbabwe. In India it
is even down to 29 percent and many other countries
have similar policies.
Equally there is nothing particularly controversial
when Mugabe says colonially stolen land must be
repossessed and distributed back to its original and
rightful owners, indigenous Zimbabweans.
This is more logical than controversial.
These sentiments only become controversial when one
defines the world as the BBC editorial board does, or
as done by that of the New York Times or any other
such ultra-right wing media house.
Just about every article you see about President
Mugabe, Chavez, Fidel Castro or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
describes these leaders as "tin pot dictator(s)".
This is despite that President Mugabe has been
repeatedly elected in many elections certified as free
and fair, and so have Chavez and Ahmadinejad.
The media in both Zimbabwe and Venezuela bitterly
condemn each of the two leaders in terms that are
virtually unimaginable in the West.
Yet the two man are described as totalitarian even
when they tolerate this Western sponsored slander and
vilification.
There is intense debate among people in the US
about whether Obama is helping or hindering their
drive to get the country back on track.
He knocked off George W Bush’s tax cuts, caused an
increase in health insurance costs and launched a
stimulus package which seems to have stimulated
unemployment.
A seventeen-year-old boy from the UK hears these
discussions and sends Obama a nasty email telling him
his piece of mind; and what happens?
The boy gets a visit from the British police on the
orders of the FBI, and the boy is told that he is
banned from visiting the United States for life.
If Zimbabwe’s ZRP had a Zambian 17-year-old banned
from visiting Zimbabwe for life because the boy wrote
a nasty email to Zimbabwe’s State House, we can only
imagine the outcry that would come from Western
countries.
Chavez is popular for his social projects that are
helping the great majority of the Venezuelan
population the same way Mugabe is renowned for his
pro-people policies since independence in 1980.
What is called "undemocratic" by the West is
sometimes extremely interesting.
When Evo Morales made moves toward nationalisation
of Bolivia’s resources, he was condemned as
authoritarian, dictatorial and attacking democracy,
the very same way President Mugabe has been condemned
for reclaiming colonially stolen farm lands from white
colonial settlers for the benefit of 350 000 families
of landless indigenous Zimbabweans.
It did not matter that Evo Morales was supported by
95 percent of the population.
That kind of support is "dictatorial" in the
Western lexicon and as such must be condemned.
This is why Hamas is a terrorist group despite
winning majority votes from Palestinians, why Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad is called a tin pot dictator despite
winning a free and fair election only condemned by the
West as un-free and unfair even before it was held.
That is understandable.
An election is never free and fair unless it
results in the victory of a Western-backed candidate.
The West’s concept of democracy means "do what we
say" and only when a country complies does it become
democratic.
If a country does what the population wants, it is
not democratic by Western standards.
It is undemocratic when Zimbabwean masses rally
behind their government in repossessing land that was
stolen by British settler farmers during colonial
times. It is shocking that sometimes people cannot see
this irony.
In 2008, James McGee, the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe
was literally telling Zimbabweans, "if you do not vote
the way we say, we are going to strangle you".
Right now, Zimbabweans are being told that
sanctions on the country will remain for as long as
Zanu-PF and its leader, President Mugabe are not
destroyed and forgotten.
Martin Rapaport of the Rapaport Diamond Group is
currently organising a conference at The Times Centre,
New York scheduled for the 21st of October and the
major item on the agenda is to make Zimbabwe’s diamond
trade "undemocratic", and to condemn the Kimberly
Process for issuing Zimbabwe with a temporary
certificate for the trade of its Chiadzwa gems.
The Western media will pick the campaign against
Zimbabwe’s diamonds dutifully and what will follow is
hollow Western rhetoric on why Zimbabwe must be
quarantined from the community of diamond traders.
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
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