|
Lord Carrington is quoted to have remarked recently
that if you have to fight a man brought up by the Jesuits and in later life
adopted by Karl Marx, then you know you have a hell of guy to fight. This
admonishing counsel was meant for the British premier, Tony Blair. It went
unheeded. The "hell�uva" guy is none other than Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean
leader with whom Carrington dealt, in the context of the topsy-turvy and
mercurial Lancaster House talks that formalised the transfer of political power
from racist Rhodesian settlers, disguised by Muzorewa�s UANC, to the black
majority, organised as the Patriotic Front.
Almost two decades and half later, and in spite of his advanced age, Carrington still remembers the 80-year-old guerilla leader and the tough African nut he was during those stormy encounters that wore diplomacy and etiquette too, too thin. He even advised Blair to ask Chester Crocker and other so-called American assistant secretaries of state for (more aptly "against" than "for") Africa who tested President Mugabe�s toughened knuckles between �77 Geneva and �79 Lancaster. Sir Shridath Ramphal, himself a dramatic foil to Mr My-key-on (McKinnon)�s comic if not tragic Commonwealth secretary-generalship, gave Blair more or less the same advice. I will not refer to countless advice Blair got from African heads of state and elder statesmen, some of whom shared the trenches with the Zimbabwean guerilla leader. Roelf "pik" Blair Itake note though that more advice continues to flow the Blair way, the latest one coming from Roelf "Pik" Botha, perhaps apartheid�s longest serving foreign minister, and certainly one most seized with the Zimbabwean question, both before and after independence in 1980. The British government, Botha reminds Blair, "agreed to make funds available for buying white farms (for resettlement)". He discourages Blair to stop "shooting straight from the hip", to allow for "a fresh start". There is a lot more in that article which Botha made straightforwardly prosaic to enhance Blair�s comprehension. Incidentally, Blair himself admitted to as much to President Mbeki a year and half ago, helplessly adding though that the media hype made an about-turn on Zimbabwe well nigh impossible. A "fig leaf" package was agreed to between the two, and for a while, guns cooled as President Mugabe waited for Mbeki to dress up Blair�s wilting but still naughty front. Mbeki was soon to find out the British dagger was too hot and sharpened for the scabbard, and the quixotic warrior has to keep stabbing for want of proper housing for his enthusiastic weapon. Blair now wishes another reckless warrior from his side might just grab the sword from him, to bring about much sought-after relief. With the Conservatives too weak to win elections but just about strong enough to make Labour conclude Blair is a growing liability, the hope for a putsch � Margaret Thatcher style � might just be it, finally bringing rest that has eluded the man for quite a while now. He cannot call the hounds back, the same hounds he gave a false spoor. Even his erstwhile trusted diplomats, themselves hounds loyally by the door, denounce his Middle East policy and the act that he has fastened Britain to the madman across the Atlantic. The poor will always be with him But hey, he has a hell�uva guy to deal with, if what happened on Tuesday at Union Building in South Africa is anything to go by. And it is, much so, at that. President Mugabe remains deeply connected to the popular, remains an implacable hero to the ordinary and poor who will always be with him, to adapt a biblical saying. He went up the stage, to roaring acclamation that rang right across the gamut: from the beau monde right down to � and especially to � the world of those who read the news with a halt and a stammer, their lips hesitantly moving with each vowel and consonant so laboriously encompassed. The world of the ordinary, a world driven by great expectations for radical changes, driven by the hope for a brave new world, one rid of white supremacists. How to tackle such an African icon whose fame rests on a solid war of independence and a dramatic follow-up by way of a definitive land reform programme that targeted the same poor who today lift him to a dizzy pedestal: that is the principal problem for Blair and his waning government. For all the synthetic diplomatic breakthroughs Blair has made in Europe and America, Union Building showed President Mugabe is solid on African ground, vindicating Pik Botha�s helpful observation that President Mugabe is not alone in his anti-imperial crusade, and that his "popularity has been demonstrated repeatedly at meetings of African organisation". Of course, Prescott, the pugilist, was there to witness Botha�s banal prophecy come true, and one hopes Prescott will most sincerely report to his boss in plain good English that President Mugabe is a hell�uva guy. I am sure Welshman Ncube, who was also there with his twilight boss, Gibson Sibanda, will help Prescott help Blair. The African sentiment is decidedly on the side of President Mugabe. Hardly surprising. A continent like Africa, for so long bruised and humiliated, needs a compensatory hero who makes up for its myriad weaknesses and repeated defeats, a hero who delivers for it those punches it has repeatedly failed to pack against the offending imperial West. Mugabe is such a hero. African tongue in cheek? My friend Jovial Rantao of the South African Star added rather naively that some day it will become known why President Mugabe is so popular with ordinary South Africans. He sounded either genuinely baffled, or rhetorically asking � big tongue in small cheek � why his white bosses continue to insist that he futilely keeps the gate against the obvious fact of President Mugabe�s value and goodness to those he leads. I happen to know that unlike phoney Mathatha, Rantao is an African in the deep sense Mbeki uses the term, and I am sure he knows the impertinence of asking what has happened to the hoary, old woman, too weak to run away, when right before you, the burping wolf continues to vomit white hair. The British media and its partisan editors and gate-keepers have been doing a bad job of intercepting and distorting reality, their good effort notwithstanding. Jovial, it�s the British media, stupid! Handiende, says hapless McKinnon The good rule for a wife alienated and unsure of her marriage is never to try to extract concessions by threatening to quit. The hubby might just be impatiently waiting for exactly that kind of disposition, and the threat may just sink her irretrievably into a slough. McKinnon felt very bullish when he delivered to the expectant Australia�s Mr (H)Coward and Britain�s Mr B-Liar (I can only suppose Bush is the A-Liar) a Zimbabwe that was out of the Commonwealth. Judging by how much this outcome was awaited for in London, I am sure McKinnon was praised, with all going on a night-long rest, happily revenged and hoping for a happy ever-after. But this was the bliss of infatuates, sure and soon to vanish, opening way of reality in all its "warted" hardiness. It is just now that all of them realise how much of a twin of defeat their supposed victory in Abuja has been. They have no legitimate basis for a re-entry into Zimbabwe�s immensely complex politics, and McKinnon confirmed this in South Africa just this week. Like a kid of bad temperament, he whined that some day, Zimbabwe will come back to the Commonwealth. Except the law of self-respect and decency bids that you quietly wish for such a day, in place of an ungainly proclamation of it on the very soil that carries your bete noire. Expectedly, none from the Zimbabwe delegation gladdened him by a response, and the whole piece became a loud monologue overheard by a hungry, incident-starved, white partisan Press. Rent-an-African? Instigated by Blair and Howard, McKinnon has been encouraging visits to Zimbabwe by a few African heads and other notables, in the hope that such deputations, once repeated many times over, would suggest a real crisis they know does not exist in Zimbabwe. This, they reason, would help the British manufacture a case against Zimbabwe hopefully for UN notice. Coupled with fictitious reports copiously manufactured by the likes of Studio 7, the opposition Press and IRIN, which is fed by Francis Mlongwa writing under pseudonym, the British think this might just add up. Three heads in Sadc had been approached, and even convinced, to undertake such inane, self-fulfilling missions. Thank God African wisdom prevailed, coupled by Presidents Mwanawasa and Nujoma�s emphatic pronouncements against Britain. McKinnon wallows the more. Filling Blair toilets His best hope, which I see is also the hope of Andrew Meldrum and his acolyte John (the non-baptist) Makumbe, both of the colourless International Crisis Group, is the stretch the significance of the so-called Sadc rules on elections forcibly hoisted on our parlia-ments. In reality, these are rules that western NGOs made; that the same NGOs give to rogue/dissident parliamentarians in the mould of the likes of the dysfunctional Mavhaire, for legitimation, much the same way MISA tried to compose a protocol on information for Sadc. That document on so-called elections has neither status nor legal validity and for that reason binds no one, dead or alive. It is un-African, anti-African and thus a case of ventriloqual nonsense from the West, by the West, all to reluctant Africa, via its treacherous half-sons. In any event, those rules cannot reconstruct MDC from paralysis, let alone redeem Tsvangi-rai�s broken stature, so sorely in disrepair. Certainly, it will not find for the MDC better endowed candidates who will not spend the next five years "trying to locate where the toilets are at the Parliament Building", to quote their leader who knows them better than anyone else. I am sure Tambaoga is quite happy to see his scatological imagery find its fitting place in meaning. Phew, the party stinks! The subtle vendor of Lutton! Why is Kindness so unkind to himself? Ko, hinindava kuzviparadza so? He has invited a kind of war he is ill- equipped to fight, let alone win. Why would anyone with living cells between his ears ever want to embrace Sipepa "Undertaker" Nkomo, "Strife" Masiyiwa and Do-do Donnelly? Least of all a sitting ruling party MP? Let us be clear. There is nothing unusual in that Kindness Paradza is made an instrument of British foreign policy goals. Just check the man�s history. What is surprising is that Zanu-PF found him fit to be its MP, and this merely on the basis of the company he kept, on the basis the employers who gave him a livelihood. His company, his employers, have shifted and changed so often over time to guide anyone. After all, this is too extrinsic a criterion for sensible characterisation. Bereft of sound education, principles and means, KP has never been a creature of depth and cause, and the furtive conversation with Donnelly at Namibia�s National Day sealed it all. Thereafter, he was on a rollercoaster, but still hoping to remain the subtle and invisible man. I am in Lutton, says the man, trying to sell my paper! So much for subtlety, Mr Donnelly. Muchivanhu tinoti badza guru rinopuhwa murimi. Big hoes are for real, big farmers, an African wisdom unknown to Albion! This is yet another case of a big plot entrusted to palsied hands of a fool. But hang on Philip. Remember more haste, less speed. Be thorough and methodical. In the meantime the "purchasable" Faith Zaba continues to write as instructed, until of course the better cause pays and bends her auction-able soul! Kwaheri, and see you in Makonde. l [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
