Muigwithania 2.0

Zimbabwe Responds ‘Odinga’s hands drip with blood’

4 Comments to “Zimbabwe Responds ‘Odinga’s hands drip with blood’”

1. 
   Mdelelwa Mdelelwa
   July 2, 2008 at 02:28

   IF the future of Africa lies in the hands of men like Raila Odinga of Kenya and his friends in Zimbabwe such as Tendai Biti and Morgan Tsvangirai, then as Africans we are all doomed.

   ‘Safa saphela iSizwe saBansundu bakithi!’

   Addressing the so-called World Economic Forum in South Africa, Mr Odinga had only harsh words for the President of Zimbabwe and the country’s electoral process.

   He also rubbished the entire African leadership past and present saying Africa remains poor because of the mediocrity of its leadership and lamented the fact that Africans were blaming colonialism for their problems when according to him Asian countries that had similarly been colonised were apparently thriving well compared to Africa.

   That must have been sweet music to all imperialists—an African colonial apologist trying to revise the history of our struggles both current and gone-by to the advantage of the colonisers.

   I do not know what political geography this man who boasts in his website that he is a former university lecturer (www.raila07.com) studied or reads. The last time I checked, and that was today, Bangladesh was still one of the poorest countries in the world. Forbes actually lists it as one of the fifty most poverty stricken nations of the world. Sri Lanka was still an island in turmoil with a rampant civil war still tearing the country apart. Nepal was not making any economic waves contenting itself with the abolition of its century’s old monarchy in pursuit of the elixir of a perfect democracy. In Myanmar there was said to be widespread hunger exacerbated by the ravages of the country’s latest disastrous cyclone.

   Further afield, Pakistan remains a smouldering cauldron ready to erupt in flames any time. Afghanistan is hardly recognizable as a nation. In truth it has been a failed state since United States invaded in 2001. With its more than a billion people, India remains riven by economic inequalities, sectarian conflict, religious and tribal violence. Its caste system—used as a divisive weapon by the British imperialists last century—is responsible for the current violent clashes in Mumbai. Human rights against these so called Dalits numbering 160 million people are too many and too painful to list. Even as far as the Philippines examples of poverty and depravation bequeathed to the world by Western colonialist imperialist policies abound.

   So what better progress has Asian countries made in comparison to Africa is this man talking about?

   Indeed due to its colonial history, most of Asia remains poor, unstable and underdeveloped same as much of Africa.

   It is therefore moronic and idiotic for the Kenyan Prime Minister, to ridicule the founders of independent Africa by saying they were sleeping on the job when it is obvious the man is totally ignorant about the workings of the present world order and the international system.

   Making simplistic statements about governance, democracy and economic progress has become the standard talk for the new opposition parties in Africa today.

   The West, through NGOs which fortunately have been banned in Zimbabwe pending the next election, has managed to manipulate the minds of our new breed of African opposition leaders to the extent that they hate themselves so much for being African. Whilst the men of the generation that fought for us to get our Independence like Kenyatta, Kaunda, Nkomo, Neto, Machel and so on were happy to call themselves African Nationalists through and through, now we have these upstarts like Raila Odinga calling themselves Social Democrats, espousing unworkable Western capitalist rooted doctrines and feeling good about insulting the last of Africa’s revolutionaries like President Mugabe and President Mbeki with relish.

   Because they have no-time for anything authentically African, these new champions of our “democracy” work with the former colonizers to undermine African national institutions. They are foot soldiers of nefarious imperialist organisations that are seeking to re-colonize us by stealth.

   They have become used to generous funding from their pay masters like WFD, IRI and others.

   In their warped minds democratically elected leaders are either corrupt, dictatorial or both and therefore can legitimately be removed from power via street protest/violence by ill-educated urban mobs high on drugs bought and paid for by some donations from some shadowy NGOs. These are the guys who jet off around the globe talking down our elected leaders calling for foreign armies to invade and occupy our countries. They campaign for sanctions on their people leading to widespread economic meltdown as we see in Zimbabwe and brazenly blaming sitting governments for resulting economic difficulties.

   On his website, Raila shamelessly calls for sanctions on Kenya. He has not even bothered to strike the offending page out now that he is in the so-called government of national unity because I suspect to him, it is an honourable thing to have called for hunger and hardship to be visited on his own motherland.

   Bob Marley singing about mental slavery must have foreseen that Africa would come to this bleeding end at the hands of her sell-out children.

   When Odinga thundered, “It would not happen in Europe. Let us say what we mean and mean what we say when we talk about African development,…..the way it has been ruled is responsible for Africa’s underdevelopment,” one could indeed sense the man was not comfortable with the skin he was born in.

   People like this man and Biti and the West’s favourite adopted son after Mandela, Morgan Tsvangirai, love the motherland so much that they are not loath to spill (or threaten to spill) a bit of precious African blood in pursuit of political power.

   Odinga presided over the death of 1 500 Kenyans and the displacement of 600 000 others so as to get into government via violence. Even before the election, his warlike language was stupendous. Notes the Africa Policy Brief (No. 1 Jan 2008):

   “The road to Kenya’s 2007 election was a deadly minefield of ethnic fighting in many parts of Kenya, including Kerusoi and Mt Elgon in the Rift Valley and Western provinces, respectively. Hyped idiom of war during campaigns heightened tension to a perilous pitch. “We shall attack the enemy from every direction”, Raila quoted Winston Churchill’s war-time speech, and “We shall launch a simultaneous attack from the land, the air and sea, until we secure victory.”

   The threat of violence became explicit during the ODM’s final rally in Nairobi on 24 December when the party leadership threatened to stage a “Ukrainian-style civil unrest if the government rigged”.

   Contrast this with the language of the MDC and it becomes apparent that these people sing from the same hymn sheet authored and inspired by their imperialist handlers in the West.

   The MDC-T camp on the eve of Zimbabwe’s harmonised elections said, “The lesson from (the election of) 2002 is we didn’t plan for after the vote. Everyone stayed at home and said we will go to the courts. What happened in Kenya was they knew there would be fraud and they were ready. We will be out in the streets celebrating when the polls close. It can turn into a protest easily. Zimbabweans are angry; they are desperate; they are ready to protest. It’s the tipping point we are planning for.”

   In an earlier election in 2000, Tsvangirai had warned via the same belligerent language then yet to be adopted by ODM/Odinga, that he would remove Mugabe violently if Mugabe did not leave peacefully.

   Immediately before the March 29 elections both factions of the MDC made deafening noises about how Mugabe was about to steal the election and win a bogus landslide victory.

   In doing so, Stephen Gowans, commenting on Western subterfuge and policies in Africa, says:

   “The opposition had planned to use the March 29 elections to follow the color revolution script written in Washington to springboard to power. That script called on the opposition to declare victory in elections before the first vote was cast, and then to denounce any outcome other than a clear opposition victory as evidence of electoral fraud. If the opposition failed to prevail at the polls, its supporters were to be mobilized to take to the streets to bring down the government, in a repeat of previous Western-engineered color revolutions in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine.”

   Whilst the model did work to a large extent in Kenya, it failed in Zimbabwe even after Tendai Biti brazenly declared that his boss Morgan had won the election with a landslide victory before the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission had even finished collating the results.

   Therefore Biti is now to be found contenting himself by warning the world day in day out about the outbreak of civil war so that the MDC can be taken into a government of national unity if they lose at the ballot box in a couple of weeks.

   The GNU template is a new Western ploy to get their stooges into the state machinery and erode our African democracies from within.

   It appears to be the fall back position when a colour revolution fails to take off to desired effect.

   In Zimbabwe, it remains to be seen if Zanu PF will buy into this latest Western ploy now given that even a respectable African statesman like President Kaunda has been roped in to demand the same.

   It is indeed galling to have outright western imperial agents in our African midst giving lectures about democracy to principled African revolutionaries like Mbeki at so-called world forums that are organised, sponsored and facilitated by reactionaries.

   What is even more stunning is that these guys are following quite an obvious script, yet there are no outpourings of outrage from the children of the motherland. They are shallow and make overly simplistic statements about human rights, freedom and justice, yet many compatriots fall for their sickening rhetoric.

   They use the same language daily to articulate their masters’ policies, yet millions of our children still buy into all this hogwash. Morgan Tsvangirai even has the audacity to call himself a freedom fighter. He says his desire to subvert our Revolution and reverse our Independence and political gains is a struggle that equates to our fight against the Rhodies.

   What preposterous nonsense!

   Africa, it’s time to get out of your slumber. It’s time to gird the loins and defend the Revolution. There is no Nkomo, Kenyatta or Machel to fight for you anymore. Mugabe is an old valiant warrior on his last legs. Mbeki cannot struggle alone. Our children must wake up and take up the struggle. We cannot allow political dimwits high on Western praise and adulation to continue taking the continent down the sewage drain.

   Leaders like Raila and Morgan and the rest of their ilk in the Western funded Africa Liberal Network only serve foreign interests. To them being a statesman means being welcomed to second rate neo-liberal get-togethers like the recently ended 55th congress of Liberal International where they wine and dine with dubious characters from counter-revolutionary entities like the Democratic Alliance in South Africa under the approving watchful eye of their Western puppeteers.

   Entrusting our future to these political charlatans is tantamount to committing suicide via a fast action rat poison. Africa deserves better.

   A leader like President Mugabe has indeed overstayed at State House. He should be in retirement, writing his memoirs by now. But how is he expected to leave the country in the hands of upstarts who have no clue what it means to be free and be rid of colonialists forever?

   How is a man who sacrificed so much being imprisoned by Rhodie colonists and racists hand over his country to clueless imperialist sponsored stooges because Raila Odinga a man whose political depth is questionable says so? Safa saphela iSizwe saBansundu!

   Mdelelwa Mdelelwa
   mdelelwa1@yahoo.co.uk
2. 
   Garvin Karunaratne
   July 21, 2008 at 04:40

   Many of my friends and contacts have been surprised at my statement about President Mugabe, showing him as a victim of the Superpowers- how they have actually strangled him in my paper: Zimbabwe’s Election Results; The Double Standards of the Superpowers(Asian Tribune 20/04/2008). I wrote:

   Why are the Superpowers so angry with Mugabe? When Mugabe came to power the Whites were ruling the economy. They had established plantations on most of the ideal cultivable land which was taken over from them virtually by force. Earlier this land was controlled by the communities and worked for the welfare of the people. This happened in every country that was colonized and this included countries like Sri Lanka and Kenya. The British did this in a subtle manner by declaring all unoccupied land as belonging to the Crown. In pre-colonial days the forest land near habitations belonged to the villages as common land used for water retention, firewood collection, for forest produce, for habitation as the populations grew, for cattle enclosures during the cultivation season etc. The land was thereafter sold to the white planters for a song and in Kenya, within the forest sold were entire villages, including the people.

   In Out of Africa Karen Blixen documents how the planters sold their land including full villages with the people. In Sri Lanka it is on record that the Police were used to throw out villagers when their villages were situated in forest extents sold to the planters.

   When we think of the Third World countries today we tend to forget that the Third World was entirely conque red by the Colonial Superpowers. In the words of Cecil John Rhodes, the aim of the British Empire was “to bring the whole of the uncivilized world under British Rule”. The colonial masters changed the self reliant economies to become economies that brought about an income for them. The colonies were made to produce raw materials required for their industries and the goods manufactured were sold to the masses in the colonies. In this process the Third World countries were exploited with riches accumulating in the Countries of the Colonial Superpowers. Zimbabwe, earlier Rhodesia, was thus exploited to the maximum.

   Mugabe was a guerilla fighter who fought tooth and nail against the colonial domination of his country. At last in 1978 the guerilla forces forced the British to cede independence. Under the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, Britain, the country that had ruled Rhodesia from 1890 to 1965, when Ian Smith declared independence unilaterally, agreed to pay compensation to white famers who will be dispossessed of their land when the land will be taken over and distributed to the indigenous people. This was argued necessary because the colonial ruler, the British had taken over these lands from the communities that controlled these unoccupied commonly held lands without the payment of any compensation and had thereafter sold these lands to foreign-mainly British planters at nominal- very low rates and they had established plantations and had thereby amassed fortunes over decades. The prosperity of the UK was brought about by the profits that came from the plantations The vast bulk of the cultivable land of Rhodesia was in this process bought and occupied by 6000 white farmers. The dispossessed local people had no employment. It was an attempt to make these impoverished landless people farmers that made Mugabe argue for the plantations to be taken over for distribution.

   However this takes over of plantations was to be done on a “willing seller” basis. In fact the question of compensation payments rocked and almost aborted the Lancaster House Agreement which took three months of discussions to complete. An important premise of this agreement was that no repossessions out side the willing seller concept could be done for ten years. In 1981 Britain pledged to pay GB Pounds 630 melon, but there was continuous disagreement and haggling and ultimately in 1997, the British Government of Tony Blair, reneged on its commitment and paid only pounds 44 million. According to a Report from the Zimbabwe Government the amount paid was only Pounds 17 million.

   Independent Zimbabwe under President Mugabe did well initially after independence. Little land was taken over because of the terms of the Lancaster House Agreement to find willing sellers and the White Farmers continued to work their farms. The indigenous population continued to be landless. There was rapid growth in the Eighties. and then came the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which Mugabe embraced in 1990. However it did not take long for Mugabe to realize that the Structural Adjustment Program did not bring about any development and he ditched the SAP in 2001.. IMF withdrew balance of payments support in 1999 and withdrew providing Aid in 1999.

   During the period of the Structural Adjustment Program loans were made available even for consumption. T he tenet of the SAP was to allow free trade, deregulate and reduce or abolish tariffs on imports on the basis that the IMF will provide easy loans to bridge budget deficits. In this process the foreign debt ballooned to $ 4,500 million in 2001 to the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank. Earlier Zimbabwe was not an indebted country at independence. It was the IMF that ruined Zimbabwe.

   In the words of Richard Saunders, “Loan agreements emanating from the Structural Adjustment Programme have stretched Zimbabwe’s foreign and domestic debt to unmanageable proportions.”(Saunders:30)

   As explained by Patrick Bond and Richard Saunders: 1991 was the turning point… The US was suddenly the sole superpower and the IMF, the World Bank and GATT(later WTO), wasted no time imposing a global neoliberal iron heel. Zimbabwe had significant international debts and suddenly new debt service was conditioned on yielding to the global neo liberal dictatorship. The large State Sector and protected local industries inherited from the prior regime were condemned as inefficient and an Economic Structural Adjustment Program was adopted by Mugabe with considerable enthusiasm. The results were disastrous.

   Manufacturing output declined by 40% from 1991 to 1995 accompanied by a similar decline in worker’s real standard of living and dramatic increase in inflation that ravaged savings and those in the informal economy….Domestic Industry was destroyed in 1990 by the ESAP(Bond & Saunders)

   The Government however was under constant pressure from the people to provide th em with land and Mugabe had no alternative but to take over the plantations without paying compensation. Mugabe commenced repossession of plantations in 1997. In March 2002, all whites were ordered to leave their land without compensation. The Current aim is to transfer 30% of farmland to black ownership by 2014. Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in March 2002 Mugabe established a one party state but by 1990 changed his ideas and held multi party elections.

   Many world authorities are unaware of the real reasons for the disaster that Zimbabwe faces today. Professor Paul Collier of Oxford in his book: The Bottom Billion:Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What can be done about it(Oxford 2007) states: “Mugabe must take responsibility for the economic c collapse in Zimbabwe since 1998 culminating in inflation over 100.000 %.”

   If the British Government had stood by the conditions that were agreed at the Lancaster House Agreement and had provided the 630 million pounds to be paid as compensation, there would have been no problem. But the British Government had reneged on its promise and President Mugabe cannot be blamed for this decision to take over the plantations. It was this act of President Mugabe that made the International Superpowers move sanctions on Zimbabwe.

   No country with a massive foreign debt can face sanctions imposed. Though in the July 2008, G8 Meeting of the Superpowers, full sanctions were not agreed on because Russia and China did not support it, compliance with sanctions already imposed by Britain and Western Superpowers have ruined the economy.

   Paul Collier has taken Mugabe’s present Zimbabwe out of context in castigating Mugabe. One has to castigate Tony Blair and his British Government for reneging on the aid that was agreed at the Lancaster House Agreement and also blame the IMF for implementing the Structural Adjustment Program that ruined local industry and local production. Once the development infrastructure in a country is abolished, it is an extremely difficult task to rebuild. Go through the IMF annals of ‘development’ and the Structural Adjustment Programme and one will find that each and every country that followed it have had their economies ruined.

   In today’s context once a country has a high foreign debt which it cannot service and further its economy has been ruined by following the tenets of the Structural Adjustment programme, it has to depend on the grace of the International Superpowers for further Aid, if it is to pay its dues and survive. Mugabe came to a point where he had to displease the International Superpowers by his decision to take=2 0over the plantations without the payment of compensation and by his decision to not implement the Structural Adjustment Program. What happens is that through following the SAP the development infrastructure that is there in the country is abolished, the country’s assets are privatized and get into the foreign hands- hands of the multinationals and further through privatization of paying assets, the Government does not have a tax base to meet its development expenditure.

   No country can face the sanctions of the International Community for long. Initially a country can raise a few foreign loans at high interest rates, through foreign banks, but this source dries up particularly because the countries cannot service those loans taken at high interest and further because the foreign banks eventually fall in line to the tunes of the International Community and the IMF.

   Mugabe could not face the sanctions of the IMF and the International Superpowers. Thus his economy gradually got into ruins with the inflation rate reaching 7,000% in 2007 and this rising further to 100,000% in 2008. Today the unemployment rate is around 80% and about a fourth of the population work in foreign countries, mainly in South Africa. The people have their incomes from foreign funds remitted by the relatives working abroad.

   So far I have never read anywhere that Mugabe had stached away dollars, as many other Third World rulers have done.

   Due to the fact that the Presidential Election held in 2008 was inconclusive and at the run off the opposition backed out, Mugabe continues as the president. Mugabe faced an election and had every vote counted unlike the US Presidential Elections of 2000 and 2004 In 2000 George H. Bush20was pushed into the seat of the Presidency by the Supreme Court that abruptly stopped the recounts of ballots that were being counted in Florida under the instructions of the Florida Supreme Court. I was in the USA at the time of the election and this very undemocratic act of electing the US President without counting ballots made me document and write a book: The Administrative Bungling that Hijacked the 2000 US Presidential Election. The University Press of America) In 2004 it was the electronic voting machines that declared Bush the winner. The voting machines were prone to malfunction again and again- at times recording four million votes when only 400 ballots were fed into the machines. However as there was no paper documentation the fact whether the machines were correct or wrong in the totaling could not be verified. This very strange method of depending on errant voting machines to declare the winner made me document this new American style of holding elections in my book:The Electronic Stealing of the 2004 US Presidential Election.(Booksurge/Amazon.com).

   What has happened to Mugabe and Zimbabwe is due not to Mugabe’s inefficiency, but entirely due to the fact that Mugabe failed to counter the machinations of the International Community that started imposing sanctions. In today’s neocolonialist era, it is the foreign funded Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) that are used by the Colonial Superpowers to sabotage the development of the Third World covertly. Overtly the Superpowers function as paragons of democracy and human rights and their educated Envoys in their verbosity continue to pose as if they are helping our countries and our leaders are snared. There is a catch in everything that the Superpowers tell us, if only we can decipher it.

   There are a number of lessons for Sri Lanka from Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. The United National Party that ruled Sri Lanka from 1977 embraced the SAP and in the process the economy of the country was really ruine d. In 1977 when the SAP was embraced by President Jayewardene the Rupee was immediately devalued by 40%. The continued implementation of the Structural Adjustment Programme of high interest rates and free trade- allowing a free flow of foreign exchange to everyone for everything and meeting the excess with loans, increasing our debt is the easiest method of ruining any economy. See my book: How the IMF Ruined Sri Lanka & Alternate Programs of Success(Godages) for the process of ruination that took place. This is exactly what happened to Mugabe.

   Sri Lanka has been kicked by the IMF and the World Bank. It is their refusal to give us aid that has made other financial authorities discredit us and it is this that has forced us to get loans with as high an interest as 8.25%. Why are we yet continuing the IMF precepts of the Structural Adjustment Program like high interest rates, which are the highest in Asia and due to which no local production can emerge. Why have we not commenced regulating the use of foreign exchange. Unfortunately Sri Lanka even free floated20the Rupee in 2001 under Chandrika’s Government with the result that the Central Bank no longer is in charge of the foreign exchange that comes to our country. We allow the Banks and this includes the foreign banks to use the foreign exchange that comes in- it is supposed to be according to the rules of supply and demand. In actual practice it has been proved that the foreign banks hoard the foreign exchange that comes in and bids the value of the foreign currency upwards as did happen on 25 th January 2001.( See pages 95-130 of my book: How the IMF Ruined Sri Lanka…)

   Faced with sanctions by certain foreign superpowers and the IMF Mugabe, failed to take total control over the economy. He allowed the NGO to nibble at the economy and did not organize production to take place. Sri Lanka too has to face a grim future unless it is prepared to take total control over the economy, including its foreign exchange and control the use of foreign exchange in other interests of the country.

   The situation today in Sri Lanka is exacerbated by the increase in oil prices to as much as $ 145 a barrel. This has to be met with restrictions in the use of fuel, subsidies for essential services to keep prices of essentials down and the cost of the subsidies to be met with extra taxes on the fuel consumed by inessential use. The people are grateful for the Government in its attempt to rid the country of terrorism. It is a great accomplishment. It is now time that the Government concentrates on the economy before it is too late.

   Exellent comment karunaratne.I like the comparative Asian angle.

   PS. lets keep it a little shorter next time
3. 
   AnaetekapEncut
   August 3, 2008 at 12:19

   Very nice!!
4. 
   waithira
   September 1, 2008 at 07:07

   absolutely amazing and informative,

   Many Thanks

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