Southern Africa the world in a grain of sand
ITS a pregnant moment. Zimbabwes womb swells full, fecund with possibilities.
Developments sprout, events pick pace and interpreters grapple to meaning. In
Lusaka, Mbeki reports progress on inter-party talks he mediates; the West,
livid at hearing progress, takes Mbeki off the pedestal of affection, takes him
on with the kind of searing vengeance hitherto only known to, and suffered by
Mugabe.
Mbeki has now joined Mugabe in the pantheon of the reviled. The West's charge
sheet is clear and eloquent: he has become bad, very bad too. Clearly he has
slouched into the "nationalistic liberation rhetoric" so seemly of Mugabe, so
unseemly of him. He is the worst successor to so fine a legacy which Mandela
built, we are again told by the magisterial West.
His regime must be changed, or for a start discomfited. Much worse happens.
South Africa is rocked by an unusual disturbance: violent riots by that
countrys poor. They, we are told, are so fed up to remain homeless, so tired
of a benighted life they have led since apartheid. The riots claim one life,
shot dead. Up until now, South Africa was a land of success, the best democracy
on the continent, a crushing indictment on Zimbabwe's ill-governed polity. In
short, the land of plenty to which hungry Zimbabwean run for respite. But soon
after Lusaka, South Africas immemorial poor, suddenly realise their poverty,
causally locating it in Mbekis "indifferent" governance! Clearly the arm of
the white man has a long reach, and touches far.
Fawning liberal pity
Meanwhile there is a raging debate on this land of Azania, touching on the fate
of some deputy minister of health sacked by Mbeki for playing internal
opposition to the ANC Government policies, to wild cheers from white interests
and their hired black hoodlums.
Such howling from quarters which daily mark and give poor performance to
Mbekis ministers, daily exhorting him to sack his entire cabinet for countless
malfeasances, mostly imagined! Why this sudden closing of ranks in defence of a
mere deputy minister: little known, until now little mentioned and presumably
little liked? It makes me sad when white interests successfully fawn love and
concern of us, getting hordes of us to their side. It makes their hypocrisy
legitimate, unassailable even. It makes us obdurate fools, acutely anxious to
win pity, white and liberal pity.
Mandela in a Square hole
Meanwhile new British PM, Brown, is busy unveiling a statue of former President
Nelson Mandela, presumably to symbolise Browns Labours love of Africa, and
hopefully Africans.
Who accuses the British establishment for hating Africans and their freedom
when right in front of Parliament Square stands tall and stolid Nelson Mandela,
albeit in effigy? Who? And given the timing, namely soon after Lusaka, I
suppose Mbeki is supposed to be piqued by such recognition, piqued and
embarrassed for taking such a hostile stance against British interests in
Zimbabwe, interests so magnanimous as to honour the one who gave him power.
Ingrate!
Changing Mbeki's regime
Meanwhile again, some innocuous, little visible district of the ANC in
Johannesburg becomes a major media character in South Africas white press.
Reason? Well, concerned about the muck surrounding the succession matter within
the ANC, they have just approached Cyril Ramaphosa to tidy up things by
offering himself for presidency. Ramaphosa coquettishly denies any interest in
the matter, the same way Sexwale didnt.
This ANC district demands that Ramaphosa sands, to loud echoes from big
businesses to which Ramaphosa got wedded and served as an intern soon after
1994.
Politics in South Africa can be quite cynical: people on polar opposites of the
welfare and material pendulum, can make each other do things that suggest they
live in intimacy and solidarity, nay, are sharers of a destiny. I mean it is
amazing that captains of Sanlam can get a district of the ANC in Johannesburg
moving for Ramaphosa! And like a huge air disaster, the story balloons and gets
lifted very high, very far to become a centrepiece for white journalism in
Europe and America. All this against the backdrop of an unequivocal verdict
from the white world: that Mbeki and SADC "cant work" after having failed to
nail Mugabe in Lusaka.
Postponing the election launch
Back home, the Herald reports Zanu (PF)'s Politburo is happy with the
Mbeki-mediated inter-party talks, seemingly vindicating Mbekis report in
Lusaka which said real progress had registered on this front. The latest
meeting of the inter-party talks had been held last Saturday, 1st September, a
mere eight days shy of the day bin Laden stepped into history, name bedecked by
epaulets of eternity.
Previous week, Tsvangirai, whose faction is represented at these talks by Biti,
is in Australia, winning lonely standing ovations of Howard and Downer for
asking for more wrongs for Zimbabweans, including harsher sanctions. Of course
he is rewarded a small purse with which to fight Zanu (PF) in the forthcoming
elections, that is, if Anglo-American plans to stop Mugabe before then fail.
Tsvangirais is a posture well calculated to provoke, hopefully succeeding in
wrecking the Mbeki dialogue, and with it, the possibility of the poll set for
March, which the British and the Americans fear so much. Tellingly, the
Tsvangirai faction calls off its election campaign launch, originally set in
Harare for September 9, as if in presentiment of a disaster of twin-towers
proportions which awaits them, should they ever participate in that poll.
The reason given is quite ironic: the faction wants to wait and see the final
outcome to Mbeki's mediation. As if that reason did not exist when the 9
September launch date was set. Never mind that only a week before, Tsvangirai
himself was working so hard to wreck these talks. Zanu (PF) instructs its
government to initiate the parliamentary processes which eventually will turn
Amendment No. 18 into law, to no protests from MDC legislators.
We, the NCA
Except feeble ones from Mukonoweshuro, himself part of the thrust to white
Australia. He says the announcements is of no consequence, unless it had come
jointly from the negotiating teams. He never pauses to think that the same
point precisely makes his reaction a nullity. He is part of the negotiating
team. Will never be.
For that reason, he does not know that after the Saturday meeting, all teams
were asked to report back to their respective constituencies on progress made
so far, which is why Chinamasa needed to brief the Politburo. And of course a
negative reaction from the head-sharp Madhuku and his forlorn NCA which thinks
it is "the people". NCA says the amendment is not "by the people and for the
people". You pity that phrase, so worse for wear. Anything which happens
outside of the NCA automatically happens "without the people"! Madhuku adds:
"amendment number 18 has only one purpose: to promote the interests and agenda
of those who are currently in government and would want to remain so forever".
Really, only those "currently in government"? You almost feel like reminding
him of what Makumbe said of him recently: very loud futility incarnate.
Mutambara is dead quiet or dead dead too numbed to comment on either
Tsvangirais hare-brained address in Australia, on the talks, or on
anything. Clearly completely concussed and buffeted, nicely retreating into
the silence of boyhood which should have been his before a foolhardy venture
into the arena of tussling elders.
A world in a grain of sand
Back home, Zanu (PF) announces not a peoples Annual Conference, but an
Extraordinary Congress. Its constitution does not allow congresses to be
brought forward, which would have taken care of the problem of a tardy 2009,
itself the date for the next ordinary Congress.
And for it, Extraordinary Congresses are a one-item agenda, which immediately
begs the question: what is this lonely item, yet one so powerful enough to move
so phlegmatic a formation that Zanu (PF) is known to be? Pregnant times. Of
course the other time the old Zanu (PF) did this was to prepare for the Unity
Accord, and of course much later in 2000 to deal with the 1999 Congress
unfinished business.
I can see speculation running wild, even suggesting another unity accord is
nigh. Fie, fie! What unity? With whom? MDC? God forbid! MDC is not PF-Zapu. Can
never be. It is not Zimbabwean. Again, can never be. It has to be defeated.
Extirpated from the body-politic. So what then? Let me be banal revealingly,
and here I go: the Extraordinary Congress will be about Zanu (PF)!
Brown is an old, waning colour
All of which means what? Firstly, that there has been appreciable progress on
that part of the talks which matters. Which is why the British are furious
very furious with part of that fury coming through their mouthpiece here, the
Zimbabwe Independent.
Since when has this British, sorry, Zimbabwe Independent devoted a whole
editorial to a rival paper called the Chronicle? Madame Dare at the British
Chancery here had squirted litres of such anger, warning the Zimbabwe
Government not to expect a soft line from Brown. As if the Zimbabwe Government
is trimming for accommodation from the British establishment! Clear colonial
self-affectation on the part of the British to believe that Zimbabwe without a
Britain is doomed! Who believe the principal purpose of an African head of
state is to trim for an endorsement from the Metropolis. She thinks Zimbabwes
silence since Brown's ascendancy was a wish and bid for ingratiation with the
new Brown.
Together with the Independent she says the same establishment which served
Blair still underpins Brown. It is supposed to be a mighty revelation. Who in
the Zimbabwean Government does not know that Brown is an old colour? And no one
tells Dare and her Zimbabwe Independent that the same speculation could be
reversed: is Browns silence to date an expectation of a climb-down on the part
of Mugabe? That Mugabe will say, Mr. Mighty Emperor, Terror of the Universe,
one whose fart trembles the earth, please sent back your kith and kin so
wrongfully ejected, to reassume control of the land? None in the single-minded
Independent stops to ask: why did the same establishment which backed Thatcher
and Major, still break with a set policy on land to infuriate Zimbabwe? Spare
me the crap about Conservatives and Labour, while talking about the
"establishment". Surely establishment are for continuity, if the logic of Dare
and her Independent is anything to go by.
An olive branch is always green
The equation is clear, very clear. MDC is created as an all-British party
effort through the Westminster Foundation. That cannot make support for it a
subject of party vicissitudes, let alone intra-party putsch and change of
guard. This extraordinary collaboration of British parties stemmed from the
trans-party nature of British interests here and overseas in general.
We have an across-parties British absentee landed gentry here, a matter made a
lot easier by the easy-as-corruption criteria for meriting British lordship.
Britains commercial interests here remain implacable, and are perceived as
threatened by the liberation ethos of Southern Africa, whose epicentre is
Zimbabwe.
They remain both politically anxious and influential, if not determinant. It
cannot be a matter for a nearly Labour premier like Blair. Still worse for
un-telegenic, dull colour Brown. It is a matter for defensively embattled
Britain, whoever governs it. Thatcher and Major represented that phase in the
Britain-Zimbabwe relationship when the latter believed charm and minor
concessions could be deployed to disarm the revolution variously, not least
through growing a conservative middle within it.
That phase ended with Blair, opening the present chapter of open conflict, one
whose resolution cannot be a matter of British foreign policy generosity.
Browns appointment of another Brown one Malloch Brown into his cabinet,
sent a clear message to thinking Zimbabwe.
This other Brown was Britains fissure into the last UN Secretary-Generals
office, as she vainly sought to put Zimbabwe on the UN agenda for wider
sanctions. His appointment could never have been an olive branch, whose colour
is green anyway! He is trying his luck at alienating the Chinese against us,
and will not succeed. One hopes the British are not naïve enough to think all
that matters and shapes things here is their wishes and interests, many of
which have already come to grief.
In lap of penal Australia, nothing at home
So the British are angry. Angry that sooner than later, their anti-Zimbabwe
campaign will go limbing, what with an agreement between Zanu (PF) and the MDC
factions. Angry that their campaign will go limping, what with an election
which Africa will acclaim as free and fair, in the process putting paid to
their hysterical lies that Zimbabwe suffers a democratic deficit. They will
have no choice but to lay bare their motive, namely to be rid of Mugabe.
It is a horror scenario which they cannot avert, one they seek to subvert
through such actions as Tsvangirais provocative trip to Australia, itself
another indication long and well read that Brown will be the same, in fact
cant be any different. Penal Australia was doing the bidding of Albion. The
door has to remain shut, even as guards change. Isnt? Much worse, Britain
cannot avert this eventuality because Tsvangirai and his toilet sorry,
kitchen cabinet is doomed electorally.
That faction will have to embrace the progress in Pretoria, in the process
exposing a critical flank of the British. Or it will have to reject it, in the
process sliding deeper into pariah politics when mediating South Africa,
followed by the rest of SADC, will denounce it for negotiating in bad faith.
This will cause a further break-up in that faction, with greater benefits
accruing to Welshman.
No nectar in present foulness?
Tsvangirai will be exiled politically, reduced to a mere nonentity in
Parliament and beyond. The discerning side of both factions of the MDC have
read the writing on the wall, and are looking far beyond March 2008. They know
fully well that while the current situation is not exactly positive for Zanu
(PF), it is incorrigibly much more adverse for both MDCs.
For the MDCs, there in no nectar to be gained from present lifes foulness.
Much rests on Zanu (PF) being able to secure its leader, while isolating a
British-run faction which has been seeking to worm itself to influence. It is a
faction which is greedy, anti-nation, a bit daft, without structures, but well
heeled and quite white at its core.
As the party moves relentlessly to pare down the power claims of this faction,
real threat from the British will recede, clearing the way for many things.
Much rests on whether or not Zanu (PF) is able to do something to bring
meaningful relief to the voter. A big initiative is in the wings. What is more,
much rests on whether Zanu (PF) is able to acknowledge the voters present
challenges by way of current difficulties, and be able to situate these
difficulties within an interpretive framework which is convincing and allows
the voter to peer beyond and glimpse the peep of a daybreak on the horizon.
Which is why December is so significant. Very significant. Icho!
l [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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