Mutambaras rhetoric unimpressive
By Peter Mavunga
I WAS dismayed to read last week an article by one of the leaders of the two
MDC factions in the "New Zimbabwean" tabloid newspaper entitled: "Embracing the
legacy of Zimbabwes heroes". Of course, respect for our heroes is a laudable
idea, but a lot of things said in that article just did not add up and I
discuss some of them here.
One Arthur Mutambara appeared to be suggesting that only he and his party could
claim to occupy the moral high ground because the present Government had failed
the country in the last 27 years through "political illegitimacy, poor country
governance, and lack of both economic vision and strategy".
I thought the article left a great deal to be desired, not least because it did
not demonstrate a firm grasp of the issues. It was also contradictory.
Zimbabwe lost so many lives during the liberation struggle. The search for a
solution to Zimbabwes problems remains elusive. Yet friends and foe alike
remain very interested in our country. These factors make the situation complex
and there can be no quick answers.
Any of our politicians purporting to champion the cause of our fallen heroes or
claiming to have found the economic holy grail ought to demonstrate an
understanding of the nature of the struggle for independence.
Who was fighting who and why as well as who was the enemy? Also the nature of
the problems Zimbabwe currently faces ought to be fully grasped too.
Without this and I am questioning whether Mutambara has grasped these issues
any attempt to tell the world the way forward is more likely than not to lead
to a rumbling and confusing diatribe that serves to obfuscate issues.
To be sure, the fallen heroes of Zimbabwe died for our freedom from imperialist
oppression in all its manifestations. They died so that we would rule ourselves
and enjoy the land of our ancestors and all its resources to the full.
The first point to make is that the leader of this faction of the MDC seems to
have a superficial understanding of this. One point he makes that exemplifies
this is when he wrote:
"While embracing and leveraging globalisation, we stand opposed to any form of
imperialism."
If this MDC faction leader thinks imperialism is bad enough to deserve his
opposition, why does he embrace globalisation? Does he understand what
globalisation means? I think not.
Globalisation is the modern form of imperialism. John Pilger, one of the
leading investigative journalists of our time, writing about the United States
and the United Kingdom in his book, "The New Rulers of the World", says the
"global economy" is a modern Orwellian term.
On the surface, he explains, it means "instant financial trading, mobile
phones, McDonalds, Starbucks, holidays booked on the net. Beneath this gloss,
it is the globalisation of poverty, a world where most human beings never make
a phone call and live on less than two (US) dollars a day, where 6 000 children
die every day from diarrhoea because most have no access to clean water".
He goes on: "In this world, unseen by most of us in the global north, a
sophisticated system of plunder has forced more than 90 countries into
structural adjustment programmes since the Eighties, widening the divide
between rich and poor as never before. This is known as nation building and
good governance by the quad dominating the World Trade Organisation . . ."
If Zimbabwe under Mutambara will be "embracing and leveraging globalisation"
with the effects described above, I do not think I like a Zimbabwe like that at
all.
Pilger describes in some graphic detail the way American corporations went and
carved up Indonesia in 1965-66 sector by sector. He quotes Jeffrey Winters,
professor at Northwestern University, Chicago, who studied the papers:
"They divided up into five different sections: mining in one room, services in
another, light industry in another, banking and finance in another and so on.
They sat and hammered out the policies that were going to be acceptable to the
corporations to invest in Indonesia.
And Pilger writes: "I have never heard of a situation like this where global
capital sits down with the representatives of a supposedly sovereign state and
hammers out the conditions of their own entry into that country."
These multinational corporations are the new rulers of the world.
That is what they really want to do in Zimbabwe, if I may say so, and embracing
globalisation will achieve for the rich nations of this world something akin to
that.
Mutambara went on to say: "We condemn Western double standards, duplicity and
hypocrisy." He said that while he and his party "appreciate Western
pronouncements on the democratic deficit in Zimbabwe, we condemn the democratic
exemption they extend to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait . . . There is need
for consistency if the West is to be effective in its support for democratic
and progressive movements".
But excuse me!
Since when have Western governments supported "progressive movements"? When our
war heroes where dying for our freedom during the liberation struggle, they
were the progressive forces who, by Mutambaras own admission, did not receive
any military support from governments in the West.
Why then does the faction leader of the MDC suddenly think Western governments
(a) are a progressive force that (b) can be consistent? I would have thought
that the history of imperialism was a history of contradictions!
What is more, Mutambaras condemnation of the West seems to be hopelessly
feeble and disingenuous. He descends into gesture politics, designed to make
him look like he is not a puppet of the West. If I can throw a few
anti-imperialist sentiments that might make me look good, so to speak!
Yet if we remove the cover, we see Mutambara in bed with the West full-time and
his "puppetism", to borrow my very creative friends word, becomes all too
evident. He will need to demonstrate "his anti-imperialist" credentials in a
coherent and disciplined way to convince suffering Zimbabweans.
If the truth be told, the West sees developing countries in terms of their
worth to them. For example, Richard Nixon, former US president, had this to say
about Indonesia in 1967: "With its 100 million people and its 300-mile arc of
islands containing the regions hoard of natural resources, Indonesia is the
greatest prize in south-east Asia."
And what this meant in practice was their support for the overthrow of one of
the founding fathers of the Non-Aligned Movement, Sukarno, who in 1955 convened
the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung.
Because he dared try to pursue a path for his country and region that was
independent of the West, he was considered "unstable". In particular he was
branded a communist and from then on, everything had to be done to remove the
"communist threat" from the region.
This is how General Suharto came to power. Up to 1 million people were
massacred in the name of keeping out imaginary communists, a purge carried out
with American and British support; and all this in order to further their
commercial interests.
Pilger describes what life is like in Indonesia under the new rulers. He
visited Indonesia under Suharto and posed as a London fashion buyer and filmed
factory workers at work.
"I was given a tour of one such factory, which makes Gap clothes for Britain
and America," he says. "I found more than a thousand mostly young women working
battery-style, under the glare of strip lighting, in temperatures that reach 40
degrees centigrade.
"The only air-conditioning was upstairs, where Taiwanese bosses were. What
struck me was the claustrophobia, the sheer frenzy of the production and a
fatigue and sadness that were like a presence. The faces were silent, the eyes
downcast; limbs moved robotically."
Pilger goes on to explain that the women had no choice about the hours they
must work and they worked up to 36 hours without going home. And when he met
the workers secretly later, they told him:
"If Gap trousers have to be finished, we dont leave. We stay till the order is
full no matter what time."
And Pilger says when he told the workers that the American-based company, Gap,
prided itself in "a code of conduct" that protected workers basic rights, they
replied: "We have never seen it. Foreigners from Gap come to the factory, but
they are interested only in quality control and the rate of production."
This is globalisation. This, in fact, is how globalisation started in
south-east Asia.
But what baffles me big time are Mutambaras comments on so-called human rights
violations in Zimbabwe. He writes:
"On human rights violations in our country, such as Gukurahundi and
Murambatsvina, we believe in victim-based and restorative justice." To be sure,
these are operations associated with President Mugabes Government that he
mentions specifically in one paragraph, yet Mutambara went on to say in the
next paragraph:
"If we allow Ian Smith and Robert Mugabe to get away without even
acknowledging, showing remorse and accounting for their crimes, what will stop
future regimes from doing the same?"
The way Mutambara treats President Mugabe and Smith confirms my analysis of
Mutambaras pro-white or pro-West bias. First of all, by lumping together
President Mugabe and Smith he implied the "crimes" allegedly committed as
similar in gravity and seriousness.
Mutambara went on to detail the so-called "crimes" the President is alleged to
have committed. He did not feel it was necessary to do the same for Smiths
crimes. In other words, Smith may have committed some but these were for some
reason not worth mentioning, perhaps too few to mention?
Why, may I ask, does the leader of this faction of the MDC want to hide the
fact that Ian Smith, since he has started it, ordered his army to commit
genocide at Nyadzonia and Chimoio causing some refugees, who included women and
children, to be buried alive?
Does his silence on this point denote that Smiths crimes are not mentionable?
Or does Smith have characteristics that render him so delicate that the MDC
faction leader has to criticise him so gently that the former leader of the
Rhodesian Front must be feeling as though he was savaged by a dead sheep? If
so, what are these characteristics that President Mugabe does not possess?
They say you can fool some people some of the time but you cannot fool all the
people all of the time.
The MDC faction leader ends his article by charting his roadmap to power.
"The strategy to victory has to be through democratic and constitutional
means," he said.
However, he went on to say in the very next paragraph: "In particular, through
actions of defiance, strikes, demonstrations and general mass action we must
drive this illegal kleptocracy to its knees."
If by "defiance", Mutambara means breaking the law, I do not know why he says
his strategy to victory is through democratic and constitutional means.
And as for the "illegal kleptocracy", I am not sure what this means. What I do
know is that the Patriotic Front victory in 1980 brought democracy for the
first time to Zimbabwe and elections have been held in line with the
Constitution ever since.
Nevertheless, the MDC faction leader seems to share the view of some Zimbabwe
politicians whose strategy tries to make Zimbabwe ungovernable, and bleed the
country to death, as it were, so as to emerge as "saviours".
To them, I say remember the two women arguing for a child, both claiming the
child was theirs, and King Solomons way of determining the real mother? He
proposed cutting the child into two so each would have her own half.
"Yes please, do that," said one of the women. She could not wait for her half.
But the other woman would not countenance her child being killed. "No!" she
said, "I would rather you give the baby to her," so the King knew she was the
real mother of the baby.
There are politicians in Zimbabwe who would rather see the masses bleed to
death as long as they remain convinced that the suffering of the majority is
their only route to get into power.
What a shame!
Politicians, in my view, should be identifying themselves with the needs of the
people. The choice of issues they champion must have relevance to the concerns
of ordinary people. Zimbabweans today have more pressing needs than theoretical
and abstract discussions, including even about the need for a new constitution.
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