UNITE! Info #14en: B. O'Neill: Zimbabwe and the new Cowardly Colonialism
[Posted: 04.04.2008]
Note: The "UNITE! (etc) Info" posting series (1995-) advocates the
political
line of Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong. For all items, see
www.rolf-martens.com.
INTRO NOTE:
A message about the article I'm reproducing below, showing the first part
of
it, was sent early today by Gregory Elich <gelich@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> to the
Modern Marxism mailing list managed by me at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/modern_marxism/,
as its message number 1493
-
thank you for that, Gregory.
The article's author, who among other things quotes precisely Gregory
Elich as
saying in his book, Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit
of
Profit, that ‘Western financial restrictions made it nearly impossible for
Zimbabwe to engage in normal international trade’, in my judgment is not
right
on all points. But clearly he's telling some im****tant truths about
Zimbabwe
and the international dealings concerning that country anyway, and
therefore I
find this article worth reproducing.
Earlier Infos wholly or in part about Zimbabwe have been #286fr-en, "GLAC
sur
le (on the) Congo et (and) Zimbabwe" (31.07.2007), #289en, "S. G.:
Slandering
Zimbabwe's Fight for Independence" (10.08.2007) and #296en, "J. D. Kuvita:
The
True Zimbabwe Story" (21.11.2007).
[article: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4942/]
[QUOTE:]
spiked
Thursday 3 April 2008
Editor brendan o'neill
Z I M B A B W E A N D T H E N E W C O W A R D L Y C O L O N I A
L I S
M
Western intervention against Robert Mugabe’s ‘evil regime’ put Zimbabwe
into an
economic straitjacket and disempowered its people.
‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’, said a frontpage headline in the London Evening
Standard
yesterday. Only there were no quote marks around the words ‘We’ve beaten
Mugabe’, which made it difficult to tell if the paper was re****ting the
thoughts of Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) upon
its
electoral victory over Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF Party, or its own
back-slapping
relish at the thought that its journalism may have played a part in
toppling
Mugabe. Indeed, ‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’ could be the slogan of political and
media operators in Britain and elsewhere in the West, who like to
fantasise
that Mugabe is ‘Africa’s Hitler’, that his Zimbabwe was ‘more evil than,
for
example, China and Saudi Arabia’, and that it is up to the West to ‘put
pressure on Zimbabwe to change’ (1).
The media re****ts about Zimbabwe’s elections present them as a clash
between
the ‘evil’ Mugabe and the ‘heroic’ Tsvangirai, an electoral battle for
Zimbabwe’s soul. Mugabe is depicted as having brought Zimbabwe to its
knees,
causing widespread poverty and enforcing terror and repression, and
Tsvangirai
is discussed as the harbinger of a dignified ‘revolution’ against
Mugabeism
(2). This is a fantasy. It ignores the key role played by Western
governments
and financial institutions in using sanctions, tough diplomacy and the
proxy
interventionists of the South Africa government and the African Union to
isolate and harry Zimbabwe over the past decade. Such self-serving
external
meddling has contributed to Zimbabwe’s economic crisis - and it has
dangerously
distorted the political dynamics inside Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the
south of
Africa.
Over the past 10 years, American and European governments cynically
transformed
Mugabe’s Zimbabwe into the West’s whipping boy in Africa, the state they
love
to hate, a country against which they can enforce tough sanctions to
demonstrate their seriousness about standing up to ‘evil’. The West has
imposed
economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, warned off foreign investors, denied
Zimbabwean
officials the right to travel freely around the world, demonised Mugabe as
an
‘evil dictator’, discussed the idea of military action against Zimbabwe,
and
used moral and financial blackmail to cajole South Africa’s president
Thabo
Mbeki to ‘deal with’ Mugabe (3).
Objectively, this singling out of Mugabe’s regime as the ‘worst government
on
Earth, the most brutal, destructive, lawless government’ made little sense
(4).
No doubt Mugabe is a nasty piece of work, but then so are some of the
government heads that the West is more than happy to work with. Indeed,
one
could argue that, over the past decade, there was more choice and openness
in
Mugabe’s Zimbabwe than there was in Rwanda and Uganda, both close
political
allies of America and Britain. No, Zimbabwe was labelled the demon of
Africa,
not in response to events on the ground in Zimbabwe itself, but in
response to
the needs and desires of governments in the West looking for a purposeful
mission in international affairs.
Western meddling pushed Zimbabwe to the precipice. Yet listening to the
discussion of the elections, you could be forgiven for thinking that the
country had suffered from a sudden, inexplicable case of Spontaneous
National
Combustion. The economic crisis is depicted as a peculiar phenomenon on a
continent where there has mostly been economic growth in recent years.
Where
most of Africa’s economies have been growing at a rate of between five and
six
per cent recently, Zimbabwe is the only African country that had a
negative GDP
in 2007/2008. It is re****ted that the Zimbabwean economy has shrunk by
more
than a third since 1999, a ‘decline worse than in major African civil
wars’,
says one newspaper (5). Apparently there’s an unemployment rate of around
80
per cent, and inflation is running at 100,586 per cent (6). Yet the only
explanation given for this economic nosedive is Mugabe’s seizure of
colonial-era, white-owned commercial farms eight years ago. As the UK
Guardian
says: ‘The economic crisis is largely blamed on the seizure of white-owned
farms that began in 2000, disrupting the agriculture-based economy.’ (7)
It is
true that foreign exchange earnings from these former white-owned farms
have
plummeted, causing major economic problems; but there is more to Zimbabwe
than
tobacco and the other cash crops once produced by the white farmers.
A key driver of Zimbabwe’s economic crisis has been the West’s attempts to
bring down Mugabe by turning the financial levers. Relentlessly, the
American
and British governments, and the European Union, economically punished
Mugabe’s
Zimbabwe for what they considered to be its political disobedience. In
November
1998, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) implemented undeclared
sanctions
against Zimbabwe, by warning off potential investors, freezing loans and
refusing to negotiate with Zimbabwean officials on the issue of debt. In
September 1999, the IMF suspended its sup****t for economic adjustment and
reform in Zimbabwe. In October 1999, the International Development
Association,
a multilateral development bank, suspended all structural adjustment loans
and
credits to Zimbabwe; in May 2000 it suspended all other forms of new
lending
(8).
In December 2001, the US passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic
Recovery
Act, which decreed that Mugabe could restore relations with international
financial institutions only if he agreed to conditions on Zimbabwe’s rule
of
law, the presence of its troops in the Congo, and the conduct of its
internal
elections. The American law also instructed all US members of
international
financial institutions to oppose and vote against any extension of loans,
credits or guarantees to Zimbabwe. In 2002, then British foreign secretary
Jack
Straw declared that Britain would ‘oppose any access by Zimbabwe to
international financial institutions’. Also in 2002, British officials
threatened to withdraw financial assistance to other countries in southern
Africa unless they, too, imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe. This led
Benjamin
Mkapa, then president of Tanzania, to complain that African members of the
British Commonwealth were enduring ‘a bombardment for an alliance against
Mugabe’ (9). The European Union imposed ‘smart’ sanctions against
Zimbabwe,
refusing to allocate visas for travel in EU countries to Mugabe and his
officials and freezing all of their economic assets in Europe (10). In the
early and mid-2000s, both the World Bank and the IMF tried to dissuade
states
and institutions from extending financial credit to Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwean
official claimed that: ‘Our contacts in various countries have indicated
that
these institutions are using all sorts of tactics to cow all those who are
keen
to assist Zimbabwe.’ (11)
The economic punishment of ‘evil Mugabe’ by powerful Western forces had a
massive impact on Zimbabwe. According to one critical observer, Gregory
Elich,
author of Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of
Profit,
‘Western financial restrictions made it nearly impossible for Zimbabwe to
engage in normal international trade’. And ‘for a nation that had to
im****t 100
per cent of its oil, 40 per cent of its electricity and most of its spare
parts, Zimbabwe was highly vulnerable to being cut off from access to
foreign
exchange’. Elich argues that the impact of Western restrictions on trading
and
crediting with Zimbabwe was ‘immediate and dire’: ‘The supply of oil fell
sharply, and periodically ran out entirely. It became increasingly
difficult to
muster the foreign currency to maintain an adequate level of im****ted
electricity, and the nation was frequently beset by blackouts. The
shortage of
oil and electricity in turn severely hobbled industrial production, as did
the
inability to im****t raw materials and spare parts. Business after business
closed down and the unemployment rate soared...’ (12)
Alongside turning the screws on Zimbabwe’s economy, the West interfered
politically in an attempt to undermine Mugabe’s government. America’s
Zimbabwe
Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 authorised President George W
Bush
to fund ‘opposition media’ as well as ‘democracy and governance
programmes’
inside Zimbabwe. In April last year, the US State Department confirmed for
the
first time that the US had sponsored ‘events’ in Zimbabwe aimed at
‘discrediting’ Mugabe (13). It is re****ted that the opposition party MDC
also
received financial backing and political direction from Britain, Germany,
Holland, Denmark and the US.
A small number of political observers in the West have questioned the
wisdom of
Western interference in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs. When America passed
its
Zimbabwe Act, US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney asked during a debate in
the
House of Representatives why US officials were enforcing
politically-motivated
sanctions against a mostly democratic country: ‘Zimbabwe is Africa’s
second-longest stable democracy. It is multi-party. It had elections last
year
[in 2001] where the opposition [the MDC] won over 50 seats in parliament.
It
has an opposition press which vigorously criticises the government and
governing party. It has an independent judiciary which issues decisions
contrary to the wishes of the governing party.’ (14) Indeed, one of the
ostensible reasons why America passed the Act was to protest against the
presence of Zimbabwean troops in the Congo. Yet, in 2001, both Uganda and
Rwanda also had troops in the Congo; and neither Uganda nor Rwanda allowed
opposition political parties or a free press. Yet both were allies of
America,
and received considerable economic backing from the US.
Mugabe was no doubt a rotten ruler; his party certainly used pressure and
even
force in order to secure victory in general elections in the late 1990s
and the
2000s. Yet that is not why he was singled out as a ‘tyrant’ and an
‘African
Hitler’. It was political considerations in the West that elevated Mugabe
to
that position and transformed Zimbabwe into a pariah state. Western
governments
despised what they considered to be Mugabe’s cheek, in particular his
temerity
in daring to seize white farms, to interfere in the Congo without a green
light
from the US, and his frequent denunciations of Western colonialism.
Indeed,
since the defeat of the white rulers of Rhodesia in 1980, Mugabe lived off
his
reputation as a brave warrior against Western arrogance in Africa. It was
colonialism and imperialist intervention that gave him his base of
sup****t,
which has always been a substantial one, despite, or perhaps because of,
international hostility against Zimbabwe. As the African commentator
Barrie
Collins has argued: ‘Since the end of the Cold War, the USA and the UK
have got
used to a high degree of compliance on the part of African governments -
and
they are no longer prepared to tolerate those, like Zimbabwe, that insist
on
doing things their own way.’ (15)
Ba****ng Zimbabwe played a dual role for Western officials and
commentators. It
allowed those of a conservative stripe to defend the historic reputation
of
colonialism by comparing it favourably with the rule of individuals like
Mugabe. Eton-educated British observers loathed Mugabe because they
considered
him a symbol of African cockiness, who had humiliated Ian Smith (the white
minority ruler of a self-declared ‘independent’ Rhodesia from 1965 to
1979)
before the eyes of the world. Attacking Mugabe’s rule became a way of
rehabilitating the image of old-fa****oned, British-tinged colonialism. At
the
same time, one-time anti-colonialist radicals - including most notably the
gay
rights activist Peter Tatchell in the UK - focused their political
energies on
opposing Mugabe, describing him as intolerant and not sufficiently
respectful
of minority rights. At a time when political radicalism is on the wane in
the
West, some activists sought to recover their old campaigning spirit by
taking
potshots at the easy target of a beleaguered African state. Indeed,
radicals
often led the charge for tougher economic and political punishment of
Zimbabwe
- and frequently, they got what they asked for.
From the late 1990s to today, Zimbabwe became the West’s favoured punchbag
in
the ‘Dark Continent’. Yet Western governments have chosen striking forms
of
intervention. Instead of militarily and directly intervening in Zimbabwean
affairs - despite loud demands from the colonialist/radical alliance that
they
should do so - governments in the West pursued a more hands-off form of
meddling in Mugabe’s regime. They used sanctions and economic blackmail;
they
funded opposition parties and ‘events’; and most revealingly they put
pressure
on South Africa, Tanzania and other nearby states to use their muscle to
try to
push Mugabe from power. This was effectively ‘blacked-up imperialism’, an
attempt by Western powers nervous about being seen sma****ng their way into
Africa to use local proxies to do their dirty work for them. To their
credit,
many African officials refused to play the game. The African Union turned
down
Western suggestions to send forces to Zimbabwe in 2005, arguing that ‘it
is not
proper for the AU commission to start running the internal affairs of
members’
states’. Though South Africa’s Mbeki has become involved in Zimbabwean
politics, he has also, to the irritation of Western observers, insisted
that
the future of Zimbabwe ‘has never been a South African responsibility’
(16).
Zimbabwe captures both the West’s sense of caution in international
affairs and
also its inexorable drive to interfere wherever and however it can. As the
former British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett argued, Britain cannot
be
seen explicitly interfering in Zimbabwe because we are ‘the old colonial
power’
- yet at the same time Britain apparently has a ‘responsibility’ to spread
democracy around the world (17). The end result of this schizophrenic
approach
to African affairs and international affairs more broadly - a political
defensiveness combined with a desire to do something seemingly purposeful
and
proper - is an unpredictable, ravenous, behind-the-scenes form of meddling
in
other countries’ affairs, a kind of ‘cowardly colonialism’. And it can
have
dire consequences for people in the third world.
On the basis of little more than the fact that they needed a focus for
their
international pretensions, Western governments have put Zimbabwe into an
economic straitjacket and warped its internal political process. If the
sanctions, blackmail and withdrawal of trade have helped to push
Zimbabwe’s
economy into freefall, then the relentless backdoor political
interventions
have disempowered the people of Zimbabwe. The dynamic of Western
intervention
caused Mugabe to become more entrenched and paranoid about outsiders - and
it
encouraged the MDC to look to Western officials and radicals for their
favour
and flattery rather than to build a meaningful grassroots movement inside
Zimbabwe. Indeed, for all the talk of a ‘revolution’ in Zimbabwe, both
during
minor street protests last year and during the elections this week, many
people
actually seem quite resigned about Zimbabwe’s fate. As one re****t recently
said: ‘[T]he opposition hasn’t been able to mobilise tens of thousands of
people…’ (18) Lots of the current news coverage continually shows
Zimbabweans
queuing up for hours to buy a newspaper for a few thousand dollars so that
they
can read about the elections. This footage is supposed to show how bad
inflation has become in Zimbabwe, but it also reveals something else: that
the
West’s attempted strangulation of Mugabe’s regime reduced the people of
Zimbabwe to observers rather than masters of their fate, who look to the
front
pages of newspapers to find out what might happen next in their country.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his website here.
Previously on spiked
[Note: For reaching websites linked to in the original of the below, see
the
version of this Info at my homepage www.rolf-martens.com. - RM]
Brendan O’Neill said that Darfur has become ****ography for chattering
classes.
Philip Cunliffe looked at what it means for Darfur to have been colonised
by
‘peacekeepers’. He argued that Bernard-Henri Lévy’s re****t from Darfur
shows
that liberal lust for Western intervention survived Iraq, and that African
Union troops are being enlisted in Darfur to give a respectable face to
Western
intervention. Or read more at spiked issue Africa.
(1) End of days for ‘Africa’s Hitler’, National Post, 1 April 2008
(2) Heroic return for Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Independent.ie, 28
March
2008
(3) Mugabe hoping to side-step Mbeki and Annan , ioL, 24 July 2005
(4) Abroad at Home; A Regime Of Thugs, New York Times, 5 May 2001
(5) Britain prepares £1bn-a-year package to aid Zimbabwe, Guardian, 3
April
2008
(6) Britain prepares £1bn-a-year package to aid Zimbabwe, Guardian, 3
April
2008
(7) Britain prepares £1bn-a-year package to aid Zimbabwe, Guardian, 3
April
2008
(8) The Battle over Zimbabwe’s Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007
(9) The Battle over Zimbabwe’s Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007
(10) ‘This time, Bob, it’s personal’, by Barrie Collins, 22 February 2002
(11) The Battle over Zimbabwe’s Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007
(12) The Battle over Zimbabwe’s Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007
(13) US reveals its efforts to topple Mugabe regime, Guardian, 6 April
2007
(14) Sanctions, which sanctions?, New African, May 2007
(15) ‘This time, Bob, it’s personal’, by Barrie Collins, 22 February 2002
(16) Tra****ng Mugabe, by Josie Appleton, 25 July 2005
(17) See Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett Condemns Mugabe Goverment
(18) Zimbabwe: talking up a revolution, by David Chandler, 22 April 2007
[END OF QUOTE]
_____________________
Message posted by:
Rolf Martens
Malmö, Sweden
Phone and fax:
+46 - 40 - 124832;
rolf.martens@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
