True theatre of the absurd

The Herald

October 28 2010


PLAYWRIGHTS would tell you that their writings are mostly art imitating life. The absurdity of the human condition that at times manifests in man’s failure to understand his environment or his kith and kin, or simply the failure of some people to understand gave rise to a new form of theatre that broke dramatic conventions while highlighting the characters’ inability to understand each other. This type of theatre came to be known as, the Theatre of the Absurd.
Zimbabweans do not have to look far to find this type of theatre unfolding in real life because election season is nearly upon us and it tends to bring out the worst among those at Harvest House.
Elections by their nature bid aspirants to sell themselves and their programmes to the people. And in the absence of any programmes, some aspirants naturally become perspirants who try to divert attention from their shortcomings with side-shows in the hope of evading public scrutiny.
MDC-T leaders are masters at this game and the comedy of the absurd has truly opened at Harvest House.
Morgan Tsvangirai’s ill-advised letters to South Africa, the United States and Europe calling for the ousting of ambassadors posted there was Act 1, Scene 1 of the theatre of the absurd.
Scene 2 was MDC-T treasurer Roy Bennett’s announcement that he was now in ‘‘exile’’ in South Africa, fleeing what he called a ‘‘military junta’’. Bennett said he would not return to Zimbabwe until the political situation stabilises and rule of law is restored.
This was quite ironic given that in fleeing to SA, Bennett who faces a US$1 million defamation lawsuit and is wanted by the police, broke the law and became a fugitive from justice.
High Court judge Justice Chinembiri Bhunu is suing Bennett for allegedly defaming him in an interview he had with the British paper, the Guardian, on May 24 this year in which he was quoted as saying the judiciary was selective and that "the very judge that is trying me is the owner of a farm that he’s been given through political patronage". Suffice to say the same judge Bennett accused of ‘‘selective application of the law’’ acquitted him of the banditry charges he was facing.
In his tirade from South Africa, Bennett proclaimed his innocence saying he did not utter the defamatory remarks yet the comments are still there to this day on the archives of the Guardian newspaper. All he has to do is prove that he did not defame Justice Bhunu in a court of law, and he would be free to do whatever he wants in Zimbabwe without let or hindrance.
What Bennett does not realise is that in giving the courts a non-existent address before skipping the border he did not behave like the innocent man he passes himself for, but a guilty individual who deserves to be hauled to the courts by the scruff of the neck.
Isn’t he aware that he can still be arrested in SA and extradited to Zimbabwe to stand trial, and that can cause him considerable embarrassment than turning himself into the police and facing the music strummed by his own brutish hands.
I challenge the police to call Bennett’s bluff on rule of law, and show him that it really exists. They must contact their counterparts in the South African Police Services to nab Bennett and ship him back home. The courts need him.
Then, of course, Scene 3 was Tsvangirai’s announcement last week that he was launching ‘‘a nationwide consultative exercise’’ to find out whether the MDC-T should stay in or pull out of Government following the renewal of the tenures of provincial governors, appointment of judges and re-assignment of ambassadors, all of which are within the powers of the President to appoint and outside the powers of the Prime Minister to stop.
The biggest irony, of course, was that Tsvangirai has done this before and always when Bennett was in trouble, coincidence?
I don’t think so. This is a typical case of the tail wagging the dog.
Tsvangirai has taken his party structures for a ride with sham consultations before trashing whatever they would have suggested because baas Bennett’s hide would be in need of saving.
A typical example would suffice here.
Last year, October 2009, soon after the formation of the inclusive Government, Tsvangirai claimed there were differences with Zanu-PF and his party would consult its membership countrywide on whether they should stay in Government or pull out. The party members, we were told, resoundingly said the party should remain in Government, and as fate would have it, Bennett’s treason case opened at the High Court on October 16, and Tsvangirai promptly announced that MDC-T was ‘‘disengaging’’ from Government. It didn’t matter to him that his party’s supporters had said MDC-T should remain in the inclusive Government.
Given Tsvangirai’s history of unilateralism, a crime he ironically accuses President Mugabe of, it does not look like Tsvangirai will value whatever the supporters tell him, after all they have thick lips, broad noses and kinky hair when those he listens to have blonde hair, thin lips, hawkish noses, high foreheads and eyes of any colour other than brown.
The other irony of Tsvangirai’s latest charade is not only his attempt to pass himself off as someone who values the opinion of his party’s rank and file but the fact that he openly contradicts himself without even realising it. In one breath he says he does not want early elections, in another he says he wants to pull out of Government and the GPA, a development that will only abet the cause for early elections.
Tsvangirai would save himself the pain of acting all these sideshows by articulating his party’s policies and proving that they are better than what Zanu-PF has to offer. The coming election will be different, very different.
He will have his new constitution, access to the public media, the Sadc guidelines and principles, all of which he used to take as campaign material; this time people need to hear from his own lips what the MDC-T stands for.
What is the party’s position on indigenisation and economic empowerment; resource ownership by Zimbabweans, where exactly do they stand on the land reform programme, our independence and sovereignty.
Judging by MDC-T’s record in the local authorities they control, they stand for the dispossession of the vulnerable groups of society and the enrichment of a few.
No amount of sideshows will erase the images of widows, orphans, the elderly and infirm demonstrating against the party’s councillors who tried to boot them out of their houses.
This is a picture MDC-T party has made clear can happen at national level by promising to return land to white farmers.
Tsvangirai needs to become truly Zimbabwean. He needs to tune in to the majority sentiment.
As it is he manifests the worst of the human condition, failure to understand his environment and those around him, true, theatrics of the absurd.
caesar.zvayi@zimpapers.co.zw

Give MDC-T space in The Voice

The Herald
October 21 2010

ONE thing that has emerged from the exchanges between Nathaniel Manheru representing, in his interlocutor’s own words, ‘‘the more informed components of Zanu-PF’’ and Tendai Biti, representing the ‘‘intellectual component of the MDC-T’’ is that the MDC (here I mean both factions) leadership has been protected by the years they spent outside Government and without access to the public media platform, and hence public scrutiny.

Their thinking remained more of a mystery to some. Fortunately, that is no longer the case, and if what we have seen from Biti’s contributions is the best that the MDC-T has to offer, then Zanu-PF would do well to give MDC-T officials space in The People’s Voice so that Zimbabweans can see for themselves what lies between their ears.

I will not go into the details of the exchanges as they have been adequately dealt with by the Herald’s contributors, among them Reason Wafawarova, Alexander Kanengoni and Itayi Garande save to say I hope Biti and his colleagues will not chicken out of this captivating debate that has even spread to the pages of NewsDay, of course feeding off the discourse in the leading daily, The Herald.

Be that as it may, there is one overriding question that came out of the exchange, and which begs an answer, which I hope MDC-T leaders can provide.

What does the MDC-T stand for?

Wafawarova, for instance, asked why the likes of Biti claim that people are prepared to die for the MDC, when we have not heard other parties, let alone President Mugabe or even Zanu-PF saying people are prepared to die for Zanu-PF? Doesn’t the MDC stand for something that people can identify as the reason they would die for it?

For instance, we have heard the Zanu-PF leadership and supporters pronounce the principles and issues that make them identify with the party.

Our hard-won independence and democracy, the land reform programme, indigenisation and economic empowerment and so on have all become synonymous with Zanu-PF not just as catch phrases but as tangible programmes already under implementation. The same can not be said for the MDC leadership.

Can Morgan Tsvangirai and his party say the same given their record in government so far and the way the party has approached issues pertaining to the inter-party political agreement, the so-called GPA, for instance?

I raise these questions because prior to the formation of the inclusive Government, MDC leaders claimed they were custodians of democracy and the neo-liberal values of electoral democracy. They framed Zanu-PF as a alien to these values but a look at what has transpired since the signing of the GPA shows that it is the MDC leaders who are strangers in town.

The evidence has been there for quite sometime but when the MDC was not yet in government, many may have just taken it as the party’s way of doing things.

A few examples will suffice here.

In October 2005, MDC leaders — there was still one MDC then — convened a meeting of their national council to deliberate on whether or not the party should contest in the Senate elections that were due in November that year.

The council voted to participate; surprisingly Tsvangirai not only refused to be bound by the outcome, but stormed out of Harvest House to hold a hastily convened Press conference at his house in Strathaven where he claimed that the MDC had resolved to boycott the elections.

This misrepresentation of the party position so riled other high-ranking party officials, among them Welshman Ncube and Gibson Sibanda, who sought to suspend Tsvangirai from the party for breaching the constitution but Tsvangirai would have none of it.

He proclaimed himself the ‘‘godfather of the MDC’’ after which he deployed youths to bar Ncube and his compatriots, who were then known as the ‘‘Pro-Senate faction,’’ from Harvest House culminating in what we now know as MDC and MDC-T, the T of course standing for the party’s godfather, Tsvangirai.

Then soon after the formation of the inclusive Government, Tsvangirai alleged differences with Zanu-PF saying his party would consult its membership countrywide on whether they should stay in government or pull out.

The party members, we were told, resoundingly voted that MDC-T remain in government, and as fate would have it, Roy Bennett’s case opened at the High Court and Tsvangirai promptly announced his party was ‘‘disengaging from government’’ because Bennett had been hauled to court. Tsvangirai had, once again, refused to be bound by what the majority in his party had said.

And only recently, his party — having dismissed the Kariba draft constitution that his MDC-T helped co-author with Zanu-PF and the MDC — demanded that there be a nationwide constitutional outreach programme in line with the dictates of the GPA.

The other parties duly agreed and the outreach was carried out at considerable cost. When Tsvangirai heard that the views of his party and its sponsors had not found purchase with the people, he disowned the outreach claiming that he wants a negotiated constitution. To him, again, the views of the people do not matter, only what he and his sponsors want is paramount.

I have selected here only three of many examples that show that the MDC-T’s claim that it is a stickler for democracy and rule by the people is just that, hot air.

Of course, it should be pointed out from the outset that democracy is far wider than the parochial definition peddled by the MDC and its allies. It is not just about elections or the neo-liberal discourse that reduces it to civil liberties; real democracy is about empowering people to take ownership of their lives and participate in all sectors of society be it the social, cultural, political or economic.

Having fought to win political independence and having guaranteed the civil liberties, Zanu-PF has now embarked on the real fight, that of enabling people to participate in their economy which hitherto had been monopolised by transnational companies and descendents of white settlers.

The MDC was launched to counter this, hence is found wanting on both the narrow and expansive conceptions of democracy.

Be that as it may, I for one am glad that President Mugabe has announced that he will stick to the letter and spirit of the GPA by ensuring that it does not subsist beyond its 24-month life-span and that elections are held by mid-next year, under the new constitution that the two MDCs have been demanding and which the people have given them.

Zanu-PF must ensure that the people’s views are respected, they are far more important than the views of Tsvangirai or his sponsors who are livid that their money was used to consolidate Zanu-PF’s views. This is why Tsvangirai wants to negotiate himself out of the tight corner he put himself in

Despite having told all who cared to listen that Zanu-PF was afraid of elections, there has been grumbling from the MDC-T and its allies who claim that it’s too early to have elections when they knew very well that their free dalliance in Government was meant to last two years and any further dance would have to be earned not negotiated.

What are they afraid of now? Aren’t they the ones who have been claiming that they won the last elections? Aren’t they the ones who claimed they are the biggest and most popular party in Zimbabwe, and that Zanu-PF would never win a free and fair election?


Why not put all this to the test in a poll next year? With all indications pointing to an issue-driven election, it will be interesting to find out what the MDC stands for since the party leadership does not seem to have a clue.

Assuming Tsvangirai gets his way with a negotiated constitution, what would stop him from demanding “negotiated” elections? Ko zvinonzika ukaraidza chembere muto wegwaya inofira mutsime ichida kuraura. This man is turning into a creature of habit, bad habits at that.

caesar.zvayi@zimpapers.co.zw

Biti obsessed with political monism

The Herald

October 14 2010

By Reason Wafawarova
THIS writer has had to defer an essay on Majorities versus Minorities: Quantity versus Quality to next week because of the need to engage Tendai Biti on his Saturday October 9 piece, "Messianic complex, bane of Zanu-PF" — an engagement made imperative by the compelling need to liberate would-be captives to Biti’s gospel of "transitional leadership", a proposed transition of post-colonial Africa from political to capital colonisation.

Monism is a doctrine that there is only a single principle from which everything is derived and developed, idealistically or materialistically, and in Biti’s case all of Africa’s problems are a result of the flaws of nationalism — the monster Biti says was never going to be a suitable instrument for the challenges of post-independent nation building.

Biti rhapsodised passionately and almost endlessly about the hopelessness of liberation nationalists in evolving into effective managers of Africa’s post-independent nation states. He accused the generality of Africa’s founding fathers of being smitten by the deadly zeal to pursue the "power retention agenda".

This of course is coming from Tendai Biti, himself a high ranking addict of the power grabbing agenda that is notoriously associated with the dreadful call for the strangulation of Zimbabwe’s economy through the ruinous economic sanctions that wrecked havoc in the lives of poor Zimbabwean masses in the last 10 years.

Tendai Biti is the abrasive secretary-general of MDC-T, whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai gallivanted across the globe begging Western countries to smite Zimbabwe with deadly sanctions he hoped would force people into a revolt against the sitting government.

Today, Tsvangirai rascally postures in deep provocation to the masses, politicking unashamedly over the issue of the illegal economic sanctions as if the sanctions were a matter of child play.

He signs with his own hand a GPA that acknowledges the ruinous nature of sanctions and that calls for the lifting of such sanctions, and with his rather loud mouth he shouts that the same sanctions do not exist, and that if they do, he can only call them "restrictive measures".

One may want to weigh the options here. Africa is according to Biti’s monistic hypothesis, stuck with nationalists that are firmly possessed by the vicious demon of "power retention", and these are at war with Western-backed anti-nationalist politicians whose sole political occupation is the power grabbing agenda. That is Africa’s power politics, so to speak.

"What we want to tell Mugabe today is: Please go peacefully. If you do not want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently". These are the infamous words uttered by Tsvangirai at the first MDC anniversary in 2000.

Biti vehemently defended these utterances in 2000, and he had his own style of attempting to grab power from Zanu-PF in 2008, when he baselessly and unilaterally announced election results in favour of his party — all from his head, totally unfounded and unverifiable in any way. What honour are we meant to read from these power grabbing games?

Nationalism is in short a devotion to the interests and culture of one’s nation, or the belief that nations will benefit more from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasising national rather than international goals. This Biti sees as the single biggest problem of Africa today and he suggests that Africa must "construct a National Democratic State in the Leninist sense".

Leninism is a political theory and practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat, led by a revolutionary vanguard party, something that Zanu-PF claims to be doing, especially through the radical land reclamation program that was executed mainly by landless peasants and equally landless veterans of the liberation struggle.

Leninism reversed Marx’s order of economics over politics, allowing for a political revolution led by a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries rather than a spontaneous uprising of the working class as predicted by Karl Marx.

Zanu-PF says its politics of empowering the black masses will shape the economic super structure of Zimbabwe and this is why the party adopted the motto "Land is the Economy and The Economy is Land".

This also is why Zanu-PF’s empowerment policy for black capital is supposed to be the base that will create the economic superstructure, reversing Karl Marx’s theory of the economic base shaping the political super structure.

Is this not the National Democratic State that Biti wants the whole African continent to become? How then is it that Biti wants Africa to be exactly what he has devoted his whole life fighting, so that his own Zimbabwe should never become?

Biti thinks this "Leninist sense" nationalism will "unleash the true potential of the African state" when at home he has fought bitterly against the same Leninism, as he has so resolutely and openly done on behalf of white capitalists for the last 10 years.

This is the very Biti that has had to be dragged screaming and frothing against the idea of funding new farmers since he became Finance Minister.

Why does Biti not see the need to unleash the true potential of Zimbabwe’s black farmers when he can so easily pontificate over the dream of an African nation to be prospered by the very ideology he fights so vigorously at home? It is hard to fake nationalism and patriotism when you are employed by imperialists for your daily duties.

Biti wrote that the post-independent African State was primarily anti-capital and more importantly was "viciously against the emergence of a nascent black bourgeoisie".

The first assertion is Biti’s way of bemoaning what happened to white commercial farmers in his home country in 2000 and that position is indeed understandable given that Roy Bennett and his fellow ousted colleagues demand the voice of the MDC-T’s Secretary General for their cause, and that of Tsvangirai as well.

However, any serious thinking person will easily dismiss the assertion that post-independent Africa has "viciously (stood) against the emergence of a nascent black bourgeoisie". This is a ludicrous claim because indeed there is a nascent black bourgeoisie in every post-independent African country, from Ghana 54 years ago to South Africa 16 years ago.

Biti himself wrote about the emergence of this black bourgeoisie in Zimbabwe, wrongly crediting patronage and cronyism for the development.

So where is the vicious aggression against these black bourgeoisies if the African State can afford patronage and cronyism to promote the same?

It is the Leninist state Biti wishes for that will stand viciously against the emergence of black capitalists and bourgeoisies.

In this Leninist African State, presumably run by the proletariat, Biti advocates for a "National Democratic State" where he engages in this hoopla about the "creation of democratic space" so that "(Western) capital is allowed to grow", and that the workforce will "control the process and product of its labour", and also something about the "evolution of the state".

So we are now advocating an African State that imports capital and settles for a workforce that contends with control of the process and product of labour? But Biti just lectured us the other week that we must seek a state that teaches its youth business proposals and not how to be hardworking employees — only excelling in applying for jobs and staying loyal to employers as colonialism trained us to be.

Biti conceded that the founding fathers of African independence had structures that "could not have produced any other outcome" and he described Zimbabwe’s massive education and health expansion programmes of the eighties as a "mitigating factor" and another such "mitigating factor" was the land reform program.

If the founding fathers could not have produced any other outcome why then do Biti and his colleagues engage aliens in his fight against them? And against what are the mass education, the health expansion, and the agrarian reform programs mitigating?

Is it against Biti’s mixed up attack on nationalism or against the vilification that Zanu--PF receives from Biti’s Western funders?

Biti had the nicest words for John Kufour, the man who presided over a gross output of gold exports of US$8 billion in 2008, with only US$550 million being retained by the Ghanaian economy.

Of course, Kufour was a darling of Western investors and that is very understandable. It is more understandable that Kufour is also Biti’s admired hero — he is a forerunner leader of the desired capital colonies that Western countries seek to establish in Africa through sponsored puppet parties like Biti’s MDC-T.

Of course, Kufour did not tell Biti and others who listened to him that Kwame Nkrumah largely inherited and pursued industrial policies that had been initiated by Britain — social democratic policies that almost destroyed Britain’s economy about the same time.

When Nkrumah later committed himself to socialist policies, what the West did with the cocoa market must be noted, totally strangulating Ghana’s economy through manipulating cocoa prices, and resulting in the coup that Biti says was celebrated by all Ghanaians, the very way he says all Zimbabweans support Tsvangirai and MDC-T.

Biti legitimises his revisionist blame on nationalist African leaders by quoting George Ayittey and Dele Oluwu, and his major problem with nationalist leaders is that they have what Biti calls a sense of "entitlement".

Those who think the gains of the liberation struggle are personal entitlements for which they fought must be understood in the right context.

Why would liberation fighters stand akimbo in the name of democracy and human rights when former colonisers come back sponsoring puppet politicians in broad daylight?

There is a huge difference between entitlement to specific achievements and entitlement to a country.

We are all entitled equally to Zimbabwe as our country, but there are those who stand as vanguards to those achievements that we consider the cornerstones of our national independence and what these people defend are values so fundamental to our national being that without them we are rendered as good as a colony again.

What caused the 2008 near collapse economic meltdown were neither bad policies nor what Biti calls a sense of entitlement.

It was what Biti and Tsvangirai braggingly called the "Tongai Tione" campaign — a killer economic onslaught by Western countries that was so comprehensive that it nearly stalled everything in Zimbabwe.

The strategy was to make Zimbabwe ungovernable by causing unprecedented economic chaos — sabotaging supplies, hiking prices, economic isolation, relocating firms to neighbouring countries and employing every dirty trick in the economic hitman’s book.

Biti blamed it all on bad policies on the part of Zanu-PF and on the "inevitable and unwise Economic Structural Adjustment Programme", and he did not bother to explain how an unwise policy became inevitable.

The word "inevitable" is to sanitise the image of those who initiated this draconian killer ESAP programme, the IMF, and the word "unwise" is meant to demonise the recipients of the programme, the Zanu-PF government of the time.

Biti wrote and blamed the one party-state proposals of the late eighties as the cause of the economic decline that resulted in ESAP being implemented. Zanu-PF debated the idea of a party state and that debate resulted in the idea being abandoned and Zimbabwe never became a one party state.

It is a wonder how something that never became policy can be blamed for the economic misfortunes of the time. Did Biti ever read about the Washington Consensus and the Ten Point Plan?

Biti wrote and said that his MDC entered the political arena "in line with the real ideals of the liberation struggle", and he bragged that the same party was "a mere extension of the national liberation struggle".

Jesus comes back! Is this why the MDC was founded and funded by the very people the liberation war was waged against?

Is this why Tsvangirai called for killer sanctions against Zimbabweans? Is this why Zimbabwe stands sanctioned outside the UN mandate today?

All because MDC-T is in line ‘‘with the real ideals of the liberation struggle, and that it is an extension of the national liberation struggle?’’.

A national struggle that seeks to oust "unskilled black farmers" for "skilled white farmers" is what Biti was lecturing us about. He was lecturing us about ideals of a liberation struggle that derives logic in having a bitter ousted white colonial farmer as a deputy minister over the very new farmers that ousted him and "stole his farm".

And Tsvangirai is so scared of the Security Forces and the war veterans that he publicly bemoans his position relative to these men of war.

Yet he is the leader of a party that is "a mere extension of national liberation struggle". Extending from something that deeply loathes you does not sound like a good idea.

Of course, Biti will tell us that his party is an extension of all the dead liberation fighters, those who died in the past, those who die today and those who will die in the future — all because they become separate from the living nationalists — the bane of Zanu-PF, those that do not exactly think that MDC-T is such a good party.

When Nathaniel Manheru says MDC was founded and funded by the Westminster Foundation, that the party is tasked by Westerners to recapture state power from nationalists, to restore white capitalism, and that the party seeks to "found a neo-colony and not a post-colony", the assertion does not imply that black people cannot think for themselves, as Biti suggested.

Firstly, MDC is not representative of all black people and that is just a fact.

Secondly, policymakers in MDC are a minority group of donor mongers who cannot honestly claim that the majority of MDC supporters are clear of where funds that run affairs in that party are coming from.

Biti talks of millions of workers "who voted and are "dying for the MDC" and he accuses anyone who dares criticise his party of crossing the path of these "millions" of dying workers.

Why would people die for MDC anyway?

Is there no ideology to die for in that party — even Biti’s misplaced Leninism, or Chamisa’s real change, whatever that means?

Ever heard President Mugabe saying people died for Zanu-PF at Chimoio or Nyadzonia?

Training people to die for a political party is extreme jingoism and it does not build nations.

Biti is in government and he tells the world that Zimbabwe is being ruled by "hippos that are lazy, slow and ornery"; and he prides himself as the Finance Minister of such a Government?

And we were lectured about this new era of "transformational leadership" determined by "values and trainings" — such as the training "Dr Morgan Tsvangirai" is reported to have had at Harvard University and the take-away doctorate he collected from the South Koreans.

These transformational leaders stand on "superior ground norm of nation building" and Biti tells us that Ian Khama and Raila Odinga are some of the luminaries that belong to this prestigious club alongside our own "Dr Morgan Richard Tsvangirai", a man grudgingly but wrongly described by Biti as "the undisputed and unquestionable leader of the MDC and the face of the democratic struggle in Zimbabwe".

Welshman Ncube will have to comment on this. When Tsvangirai was bragging about the ‘‘tongai tione’’ mantra, the suffering masses rechristened his part Movement for the Destruction of our Country, and yet we hear the man is the face of the democratic struggle in Zimbabwe.

Could this be Leninist democracy as well, that democracy based on the proletariat?

I hope Minister Biti does not find this essay "verbose and violent" and of course he must delight in the fact that Reason Wafawarova is not a nom de plume.

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@rwafa warova.com or visit www.rwafawarova.com

Give credit where it’s due

The Herald
October 13 2010

ALMOST everyone, even cousin Kudzi, who is notorious for doing a Houdini whenever it’s time for contributions, had parted with some money; opaque beer had been sent to the pick and shovel gang who were tearing into the earth to prepare the deceased’s final resting place.

The programme for the next day had been agreed on. Everything, it appeared, was in place. Attention, therefore, naturally turned to other subjects before settling on politics.

Directing the question to no one in particular, one old timer asked, ‘‘saka imi vakomana kana muchiti VaMugabe vatadza kutonga munorevei chaizvo (what do you mean when you accuse President Mugabe of misrule)?’’

I will not delve into the details of the exchange that followed serve to say none of those who believe Morgan Tsvangirai is the best thing since sliced bread managed to give the old man a satisfactory answer.

I pose the same question to you today. What do you mean when you accuse President Mugabe and Zanu-PF of misrule?

What do you mean, when you say they have run down this country when there is evidence that the economic downturn of the past decade began with the imposition of illegal economic sanctions that, in the words of the United States were designed to make the economy scream?

In the words of former US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Walter Kansteiner, the sanctions were designed to make the economy scream to separate Zimbabweans from President Mugabe and Zanu-PF?

Does that make you a free-thinking individual, if you behave exactly in the manner Western think-tanks envisaged you would when they decided to impose the sanctions and when you fail to establish the link between the Zanu-PF led Government’s decision to acquire land for distribution to the landless majority, and the launch of the MDC which promptly trashed land reforms, promising to return land to white former farmers?

And if that agrarian reform programme was such a disaster, why is it that the much-touted economic turnaround that anti-land reform lobbyists like Tendai Biti harp about is, in their own words, under-pinned and driven by growth in the agricultural sector? Yes, that ‘‘evil’’ Mugabe programme, not the western donors we were made to believe were waiting in the wings to flood Zimbabwe with money, is driving the economic turnaround programme.

And what about the successes in the social services sector that even the sanctions failed to significantly dampen over the past decade? Isn’t that evidence of foresight and people centred leadership on the part of Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF?

For instance while other countries had to wait for the UN Millennium Summit at which the Millennium Development Goals aimed at alleviating poverty and improve standards of living in the developing world were unveiled in 2000, Zimbabwe had long invested in all seven areas as early as the first decade of independence which is why the office of Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe sponsored newspaper adverts that declared, ‘‘MDGs: Zimbabwe Takes A Lead In Southern Africa.’’

President Mugabe’s foresight is why today, despite the politicisation of HIV and Aids funding that saw the country get only US$4 per person from the Global Fund for HIV and Aids, TB and Malaria when other countries were getting US$76 per person, Zimbabwe still managed to score big in the fight against HIV and Aids manifest in the progressive decline of HIV prevalence from a high of over 30 percent 10 years ago, to the current national average of 13, 7 percent.

And this decline has been attributed to Government’s progressive decision to introduce an Aids levy and the National Aids Council that has structures that ensure that funding cascades right down to the man at the grassroots.

These innovations are unparalleled in Africa as many countries are, in fact, still struggling to identify strategies that could prevent HIV incidence and prevalence.

What is more despite the brain drain that afflicted the health sector over the past decade, benefiting countries like the rabble-rousing Britain, the Ministry of Health reports that nursing vacancies have been filled countrywide and Government is struggling to accommodate graduates who are being churned out by training institutions countrywide.

And only this week, there was a massive vote of confidence in the University of Zimbabwe’s College of Health Sciences that has been selected by the United States to train 140 000 African health care workers over five years.

The college will receive US$130 million from the Medical Education Partnership Initiative towards the training programme expected to improve the health delivery system across Africa.

Under the programme, the College of Health Sciences will partner with the University of Colorado-Denver, Stanford University, the University of Cape Town, University College of London and King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry.

What is more, despite the decade of sanctions that negatively impacted on Government’s capacity to fund education and pay teachers competitive salaries, a development that prompted skills flight into the region and other countries, Zimbabwe managed to rise to number one in Africa in terms of literacy rates having played second fiddle to Tunisia over the past few years. According to a study by the United Nations Development Programme, Zimbabwe’s literacy rates increased from 85 percent to 92 percent overtaking Tunisia to become the most literate society in Africa.

This remarkable achievement was a culmination of the massive investments made into the education sector by government which adopted a policy of education for all at independence in 1980.

This success so peeved detractors that even the man who should have beaten the loudest drum; Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart feebly tried to dismiss the ranking claiming the UNDP study was flawed.

‘‘With no text books and no teachers, we must not think that all is well. Our literacy rates may not be as high as we think they are. We have several other indicators up there. Our education system is in a crisis and we need to do a lot of work to restore the quality of education for our children’s sake,” Coltart told the Standard.

Yeh right! We have never heard these same questions raised over other reports that seek to portray Zimbabwe as a pariah state, notably from groupings like Amnesty International or Reporters without Borders that always give Zimbabwe low rankings on the corruption perception and press freedom indices.

Coltart’s reasoning: ‘‘The UNDP relied on figures showing attendance at school for the first four years of formal education as indicators of literacy rates when Grade Seven results will be a more accurate indicator.’’

As a lawyer, Coltart obviously went to school and should know that literacy is defined as the ability to read and write. We all know that even before the first year of schooling is out, first graders, unless severely retarded, will be able to read and write.

The real reason for Coltart’s ranting is, however, not lost to me. Such findings like the UNDP’s put Mugabe in good light and should be trashed to sustain the myth of successive, useless Zanu-PF governments. Let’s give credit where it is due please.

I am one of the people still to be convinced that the MDC has anything to offer Zimbabweans, but should they do, I will not begrudge them their contribution.

Zimbabwe’s success in education and human resources development explains why our chief export over the past decade has been well-educated and trained professionals who occupy critical sectors in the economies of sister countries in the region and abroad.


If Coltart is blind to this, then he needs to have his head examined.

While it would be easy to dismiss Coltart’s thinking as a manifestation of the usual MDC mantra that tries to trash any and everything that can remotely credit Zanu-PF, it raises questions of the implications of having people with such thinking overseeing critical social services portfolios particularly when problems in such sectors are deemed as sources of protest votes? Were the MDCs demand for these portfolios motivated by the need to serve or was there another reason linked to the regime agenda?

I wonder, and leave you to ponder.

caesar.zvayi@zimpapers.co.zw

So we have no blood?

So when Westerners talk of the alleged property rights of white commercial farmers, they conveniently forget the rights of Africans who were dispossessed by the same farmers and their forebears?

In fact, the white commercial farmers had no property rights to speak of for the simple reason that those rights were supposed to vest in stolen property.

The Herald

By Caesar Zvayi

THIRTY-SIX years ago, a young Portuguese law student and activist stole several items of furniture from the office of the dean of the faculty of law at Lisbon University, and took them to the headquarters of the underground Reorganising Movement of the Proletariat Party, of which he was a member.

The 18-year-old student, however did not receive the warm welcome he expected as party leader, Arnaldo Matos, reprimanded and ordered him to return the stolen property to the campus.

This incident occurred at the height of Portugal’s trying times under the regime of Marcelo Caetano, who was later deposed by carnation-wielding civilians and army rebels in April 1974 during a bloodless coup that lasted six hours, and that came to be known as the Portuguese revolution, or romantically — the Carnation revolution.

The theft of furniture was not to be the highlight of the young man’s political career as he later morphed into a seasoned politician, and is now former prime minister of Portugal and incumbent EU Commission president.

His name is José Manuel Barroso, the man who has maintained and defended EU sanctions on Zimbabwe even though they were imposed in a bid to protect stolen property.

For all his political savvy, Barroso does not seem to have learnt from that incident, 36 years ago, as he seems to be unaware that all stolen property, not just furniture, should be returned to its rightful owners.

And this includes even land pillaged during the colonial era which is what is at the core of the standoff between Zimbabwe and Britain in particular, and Zimbabwe and the EU in general.

Barroso despite that lesson earlier in his life has bought into British and American propaganda that their stand-off with Harare is about the quest for democracy and human rights.

He passes the biggest rights abusers of them all — the US and Britain as fighting to introduce these values in Zimbabwe while portraying President Mugabe as a repressive autocrat who stubbornly violates the rights of his own people.

The truth of the matter is that President Mugabe is fighting to preserve democracy in all its manifestations while Britain and its big brother Uncle Sam are fighting to subvert these values in Zimbabwe, continuing from where they left off during our 14-year struggle for independence, which was a lifetime compared to Portugal’s six-hour carnation revolution.

Well it’s not as if Barosso and his allies in the EU are unaware of what happens to stolen property or to people who destroy other peoples’ livelihoods for they made the Germans pay for their misadventures in World War I through a £22 billion reparations rap whose last instalment of £60 million was only cleared this Sunday ending 92 years of atoning for the destruction of World War I.

The £22 billion reparations were set by the Allied victors — mostly Britain, France and the United States of America — in the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919 as compensation and punishment for the 1914-18 war.

Most of the money was earmarked for Belgium and France, whose land, towns and villages were devastated by the war, and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging the war to repel Kaiser Wilhelm II’s armies. Individuals, pension funds and corporations also get the funds.

The initial amount agreed upon for war damages was 226 billion Reichsmarks, which was later reduced to 132 billion (£22 billion).

Western media reports say the remaining portion of the debt was cleared on Sunday.

The bill could, however, have been settled much earlier had Adolf Hitler not reneged on reparations during his reign, which actually came about on the back of German resentment over the scale of the reparations that culminated in the second Anglo-Saxon war, World War II.

The question is, since westerners see the need to compensate each other for wrongs, when are they going to compensate Africans for over 400 years of slavery, centuries of colonial pillage and decades of neo-colonial subterfuge?

Are we Africans united enough to present a formidable front to demand reparations from these rabble-rousers or are we going to continue to be divided, dominated and used against each other to further the interests of westerners?

This question is particularly pressing for us Zimbabweans given how gullible some of us have been over the past decade in failing to see how westerners have manipulated not only our country but its people to further their interests and those of their kith and kin who lost the land they pillaged to its rightful owners during the land reform programme.

It has to be noted from the outset that Zimbabwean law has no statutes of limitations (an enactment in common law that sets the maximum time after a wrong that legal proceedings may be instituted). We say mhosva hairovi (a wrong does not pass till righted) as such stolen property remains just that, loot whether the robbery was committed in 1890 or yesterday. It demands redress.

So when Westerners talk of the alleged property rights of white commercial farmers, they conveniently forget the rights of Africans who were dispossessed by the same farmers and their forebears?

In fact, the white commercial farmers had no property rights to speak of for the simple reason that those rights were supposed to vest in stolen property.

We all know that a right ceases to be when it infringes on the rights of others. This is why criminals are incarcerated for trampling on the rights of others in society.

As such by retaining control of 70 percent of the country’s arable land, the 5 000 white commercial farmers were infringing on the rights of 13 million black Zimbabweans. Surely that was not a picture any sane person could defend without looking ridiculous. The illegality of the western economic sanctions, therefore, does not only lie in the fact that they were imposed outside the purview of the United Nations but also in that they seek to protect non-existent rights that vested in stolen property.

Instead of applauding Zimbabwe for opting to share land with those who stole it, the westerners had the cheek to punish Zimbabwe through their illegal embargo that has decimated and constrained livelihoods for a decade when they should have been paying reparations. Zimbabwe should be compensated for the dispossession and reparations should be paid for the losses the country suffered since 1890, the same way the Germans were made to pay for their war games.

While we may not have the muscle to force the sabre-rattling westerners to pay us reparations or compensation for using our resources to build their countries, the least we can do as a people is ensure that we compensate ourselves by taking control of our economies and resources so that our wealth does not continue flowing to the west at the expense of our people.

Through ownership of the means of production we will be able to give our people better lives to undo the injustices of centuries of slavery and decades of imperialism and neo-colonialism.

The starting point for us Zimbabweans is shunning sell out politics and politicians who seek to preserve the interests of foreigners.

We need to support progressive people-centred programmes like the land reform programme and the indigenisation and economic empowerment drive.

Most importantly, we need to stop the heresy of western sanctions by not only speaking against them with one voice but also compiling a detailed analysis of the damage they have wrought over the years.

The childish grandstanding we have seen from the MDC-T leadership, some of whom — in this day and age — deny the existence of sanctions, does not help anyone in Zimbabwe.

caesar.zvayi@zimpapers.co.zw