Category: Zimbabwe

Even at MRZine the ruling ideas on Zimbabwe are the ideas of the ruling class

By Stephen Gowans

On May 4, 2008 MRZine published Chido Makunike’s “The Complexities of Zimbabwe.” Makunike’s analysis had originally appeared at the Ford and Soros foundation-funded Pambazuka News, with help from the European Union and British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, partners with another Pambazuka News sponsor, Fahamu. Pambazuka News’ editor, Firoze Manji, is the director of Fahamu. His views on Africa, very likely reflecting those of the imperialist governments and corporate foundations that pay his salary and sponsor his publication and charity, was published by MRZine on April 28 (“China Still a Small Player in Africa”).

While the ostensible mission of MRZine is to dissect the politics and culture of capitalism, Makunike, a Western-educated public relations executive living in Africa, strayed no further than the accustomed anti-Zanu-PF line of the New York Times, Times of London, and other ruling class-dominated newspapers in the West.

Since these newspapers recycle the views of the US State Department and British Foreign Office, and rely on so-called “independent” experts on the ground, who in reality, represent corporate foundation- and Western-government supported NGOs, the circle is complete. The British Foreign Office puts forward its views on the Mugabe government, the world’s major media amplify the message, Makunike mimics it, and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, through Fahamu, provide him a platform to express recycled British Foreign Office views in the apparently left-leaning Pambazuka News.

MRZine then reproduces the article, under the guise of dissecting the culture and politics of capitalism. Anyone exposed to the blanket of negative coverage of the Zimbabwe government and the Zanu-PF program comes to the conclusion that the British Foreign Office view is indisputable; after all, everyone appears to agree on it: other Western governments, Western-educated PR executives living in Africa, the New York Times and Times of London, and MRZine (or at least its editor, Yoshie Furuhashi.)

What’s happened, however, is that the independent socialist publication has reproduced ruling class ideology, and has put its own stamp on it to make it acceptable to its left-wing constituency. When the British Foreign Office view is passed from one publication to the next, each affixing its own imprimatur, is it any wonder everyone agrees with the British Foreign Office?

To piece together what’s really going on in Zimbabwe, you need to critically examine what’s coming from the opposition, the government and other governments, but what’s usually done is to seek out “independent” sources, who often receive funding from the US or British governments or both, and turn out to be repeating what the mainstream media say, which in turn repeat what the US State Department and British Foreign Office say.

Last March, Z-Net published an analysis on Zimbabwe by Grace Kwinjeh, a founder, along with white commercial farmers and the British government, of the now US- and British-backed Zimbabwean opposition party, the MDC. Z-Net didn’t bother to mention Kwinjeh’s party affiliations, presenting Kwinjeh instead as an “independent” journalist.

The MDC’s program is to establish conditions agreeable to US and British foreign investment in Zimbabwe. Because Kwinjeh’s analysis was co-authored with leftist scholar Patrick Bond and appeared in an apparently leftist publication, the illusion is created that Zwinjeh’s US and British-backed MDC view is really an independent left view. In the same vein, co-author Patrick Bond, celebrates the underground anti-Zanu-PF groups, Sokwanele and Zvakwana, as an independent left, even though their funding and training comes from Western sources, the same sources that stand to profit from the replacement of Zanu-PF by the MDC.

While committed publicly to dissecting the politics and culture of capitalism, MRZine does nothing of the sort where Zimbabwe is concerned. Instead, it repackages the justifications the US and British ruling class are using to torpedo Zimbabwe’s efforts to invest national liberation with real content, in the service of the bottom lines of Western investment banks, corporations and white commercial farmers.

How is it that “independent” journalists, “independent” experts, “independent” underground movements, “independent” left scholars, “independent” election monitors, “independent” media, and “independent” socialist e-zines, are either funded by or represent the US and British ruling class or repackage ruling class ideas? So pervasive is the use of the word “independent” to disguise the influence of corporations, imperialist governments and their foundations, that “independent” should become a warning sign: Caution: Ruling class interests ahead.

Unusual Sources on Zimbabwe’s Elections

Stephen Gowans in conversation with Peter Leibovitch on Zimbabwe on CFMU’s April 30, 2008 Unusual Sources radio program.

Taylor Report on Zimbabwe’s Elections and Darfur

Stephen Gowans and Zafar Bangash in conversation with Phil Taylor on CIUT’s Taylor Report, April 4, 2008.

Expressions of imperialism within Zimbabwe

By Stephen Gowans

Zimbabwe’s Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa on Friday denounced the US and Britain for their interference in Zimbabwe’s elections. At the same time, he decried the Morgan Tsvangirai faction of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T), and its civil society partner, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), as being part of a US and British program to reverse the gains of Zimbabwe’s national liberation struggle.

“It is no secret that the US and the British have poured in large sums of money behind the MDC-T’s sustained demonization campaign,” Chinamasa said. (1)

“Sanctions against Zimbabwe (were intensified) just before the elections,” while “large sums of money” were poured into Zimbabwe “by the British and Americans to bribe people to vote against President Mugabe.” (2)

The goal, Chinamasa continued, is to “render the country ungovernable in order to justify external intervention to reverse the gains of the land reform program.” (3)

The justice minister went on to describe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC “for what they are — an Anglo-American project designed to defeat and reverse the gains of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, to undermine the will of the Zimbabwean electorate and to return the nation to the dark days of white domination.” (4)

The minister also described the ZESN as “an American-sponsored civil society appendage of the MDC-T.” (5)

Were they reported in the West, it would be fashionable to sneer at Chinamasa’s accusations as lies told to justify a crackdown on the opposition. But, predictably, they haven’t been. For anyone who’s following closely, however, the minister’s charges hardly ring false.

The ZESN is funded by the US Congress and US State Department though the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Its board is comprised of a phalanx of US and British-backed fifth columnists. (6)

Board member Reginald Matchaba Hove won the NED democracy award in 2006. Described by its first director as doing overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, the NED – and by extension the NGOs it funds — are not politically neutral organizations. They have an agenda, and it is to promote US interests under the guise of promoting democratization. Hove is also director of the Southern Africa division of billionaire financier George Soros’ Open Society Institute, which has been involved in funding overthrow movements in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Soros also has an agenda: to open societies to Western profit making. Indeed, the board members of the ZESN comprise an A-list of overthrow activists, with multiple interlocking connections to imperialist governments and corporate foundations.

It doesn’t take long to connect Hove to left scholar Patrick Bond (of Her Majesty’s NGOs) and his Center for Civil Society. The Center is a program partner with the Southern Africa Trust, one of whose trustees is ZESN board member Reginald Matchaba Hove. The Center for Policy Studies, whose mission is to prepare civil society in Zimbabwe for political change (that is, to prepare it to overthrow the Zanu-PF government), is funded by the Southern Africa Trust, a partner of Bond’s Center for Civil Society. Other sponsors include the Soros, Ford, Mott, Heinrich Boll (German Green party), and Friedrich Ebert (German Social Democrats) foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers, the NED, South African Breweries and a fund established by the chairman of mining and natural resources company, Anglo-American. Significantly, Zimbabwe is rich in minerals. Zanu-PF’s program is to put control of the country’s mineral resources, as well as its land, in the hands of the black majority, depriving transnational mining companies, like Anglo-American, of control and profits. Everjoice Win, the former spokesperson for the ZESN, is on the advisory board of Bond’s center. The Center supports the Freedom of Expression Institute (FEI), which is funded by George Soros and the British government’s Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD). The FEI is a partner of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (also funded by the British government), whose director Rashweat Mukundu is a board member of the ZESN.

Bond co-authored a report with Tapera Kapuya, a fellow of ZESN sponsor, the NED. He also contributed to a report titled Zimbabwe’s Turmoil, along with John Makumbe and Brian Kagoro. The report was sponsored by the Institute for Security Studies, which is financed by the governments of the United States, Britain, France and Canada, the Rockefeller Brothers, and of course, the ubiquitous George Soros and Ford foundations. Makumbe has published in the NED’s Journal of Democracy, and is a former director of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (funded, not surprisingly, by the NED). The Coalition, like the Center for Policy Studies, is devoted to ousting the Mugabe government under the guise of promoting democracy, but in reality promotes the profits of firms like Anglo-American and the interests of US and British investors. Kagoro is a former coordinator of the Coalition. Significantly, the Coalition is a partner of the ZESN.

Add to this Bond’s celebrating the Western-trained and financed underground movements Zvakwana and Sokwanele as an “independent left” (7) and his co-authoring a Z-Net article on Zimbabwe with MDC founding member Grace Kwinjeh [8] (MDC leader Tsvangirai admitted in a February 2002 SBS Dateline program that his party is financed by European governments and corporations (9)), and it’s clear that Bond links up with the spider web of American and British-sponsored civil society appendages of the MDC-T.

Chinamasa’s clarification of the connections between the US and Britain and Zimbabwe’s civil society and opposition fifth columnists is a welcome relief from Western newspapers’ attempts to cover them up. The ZESN, despite being generously funded by the US through Congress and the State Department, is described by the Western media as “independent” while ZESN partner, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), is called “an international pro-democracy organization” (10) and “a Washington-based group.” (11) What it really is, is the foreign arm of the Democratic Party. The NDI receives funding from the US Congress (as well as from USAID and corporate foundations), which it then doles out to fifth columnists in US-designated “outposts of tyranny.” Only in the service of propaganda would the Democratic Party be called “a Washington-based group.” One wonders how Americans would have reacted to the British monarchy parading about post-revolutionary Washington as a “London-based” group – an “international good government” organization bankrolling an American NGO to monitor US elections? Would anyone be surprised if the leaders of the British-financed NGO were dragged off to jail, especially were its backers openly working to oust the government in Washington to restore the rule of the British monarchy? In Zimbabwe, the only surprise is that the Zanu-PF government hasn’t reacted with as much force as the Americans would have done under the same circumstances. That Zimbabwe’s government has tried to preserve space for the exercise of political and civil liberties in the face of massive hostile foreign interference is to be commended.

Washington is quite open in its intentions to overthrow the Mugabe government. Under the 2001 US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act “the President is authorized to provide assistance” to “support an independent and free press and electronic media in Zimbabwe” and “provide for democracy and governance programs in Zimbabwe.” (12) This translates into the president financing anti-Zanu-PF radio stations and newspapers and bankrolling groups opposed to Zimbabwe’s national liberation movement to inveigle Zimbabweans to vote against Mugabe.

“The United States government has said it wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is working with the Zimbabwean opposition…trade unions, pro-democracy groups and human rights organizations…to bring about a change of administration.” (13)

Last year, the US State Department acknowledged once again that it supports “the efforts of the political opposition, the media and civil society” in Zimbabwe through training, assistance and financing. (14) And the 2006 US National Security Strategy declares that “it is the policy of the US to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation…with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in…” North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus and Zimbabwe. (15)

The goal of the overthrow agenda is to reverse the land reform and economic indigenization policies of the Zanu-PF government — policies that are against the interests of the ruling class foundations that fund the fifth columnists’ activities. The chairman of Anglo-American finances Zimbabwe’s anti-Mugabe civil society because bringing Tsvangirai’s MDC to power is good for Anglo-American’s bottom line. Likewise, the numerous Southern African corporations that Lord Renwick of Clifton sits on the boards of stand to profit from the MDC unseating Zimbabwe’s national liberation agenda. Lord Renwick is head of an outfit called the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust (ZDT), also part of the interlocked community of imperialist governments, wealthy individuals, corporate foundations, and NGOs working to reverse Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. The ZDT is a major backer of the MDC. (16)

Police raids on the offices of the ZESN and Harvest House, the headquarters of the MDC, seem deplorable to those in the West who are accustomed to elections in which the contestants all pretty much agree on major policies, with only trivial differences among them. But in Zimbabwe, the differences are acute – a choice between losing much of what the 14-year long national liberation war was fought for and settling for nominal independence (that is crying uncle, so the West will relieve the pressure of its economic warfare) or moving forward to bring the program of national liberation to its logical conclusion: ownership of the country’s land, resources and enterprises, not just its flag, by the black majority. In this, there is an unavoidable conflict between “a government which is spearheaded by a revolutionary party, which spearheaded the armed struggle against British imperialism” and “a party that was the creation of the imperialists themselves (that) has been financed the imperialists themselves.” (17)

It’s impossible to achieve independence from foreign control and domination without turmoil, disruption and fighting – not when the opposition and civil society are directed from abroad to serve foreign interests. Can Zimbabwe’s elections honestly be described as free and fair when the economy has been sabotaged by the West’s denying Harare credit and debt relief [18] and where respite from the attendant miseries is promised in the election of the opposition? Are elections legitimate when media are controlled by outside forces (19), and civil society and the opposition have been controlled by foreign powers?

Chinamasa’s complaints, far from being demagoguery, are real and justified. Zanu-PF’s decision to fight, rather than capitulate, ought be applauded, not condemned. Imperialism cannot be opposed without opposing the MDC and its civil society partners, for they too are imperialism.

1. Herald (Zimbabwe) April 26, 2008.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Michael Barker, “Zimbabwe and the Power of Propaganda: Ousting a President via Civil Society,” Global Research.ca, April 16, 2006. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8675
See also http://www.ned.org/dbtw-wpd/textbase/projects-search.htm and http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Zimbabwe_Election_Support_Network
7. Stephen Gowans, “The Politics of Demons and Angels,” April 15, 2007, https://gowans.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/zimbabwe-and-the-politics-of-demons-and-angels/
8. Stephen Gowans, “The Company Patrick Bond Keeps,” March 24, 2008, https://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/the-company-patrick-bond-keeps/
9. Rob Gowland, “Zimbabwe: The struggle for land, the struggle for independence,” Communist Party of Australia, http://www.cpa.org.au/booklets/zimbabwe.pdf . The MDC is also financed by the British government’s Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose patrons include former British foreign secretaries and is headed by Lord Renwick of Chilton, vice-chair of investment banking at JPMorgan (Europe.)
10. The Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 26, 2008.
11. The Washington Post, April 26, 2008.
12. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s107-494
13. The Guardian (UK), August 22, 2002.
14. US Department of State, April 5, 2007.
15. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/
16. “Zimbabwe ambassador: Self-determination is at the root of the conflict,” FinalCall.Com News, April 22, 2008. http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_4611.shtml
17. Ibid.
18. Under the US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001, “the Secretary of the Treasury shall instruct the United States executive director to each international financial institution to oppose and vote against–

(1) any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or

(2) any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution.”

See http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s107-494

19. The same question can be asked of elections in Western liberal democracies, where the media are controlled by an interlocked community of hereditary capitalist families and corporate board members who share common economic interests inimical to those of the majority.

On Zimbabwe, Western left follows agenda set by capitalist elite

By Stephen Gowans

While the Western media loudly demonizes the government of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, it is fairly silent on the repressions of the US client regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

Outdoing each other in the quest for the William Randolph Hearst prize for excellence in yellow journalism, Western newspapers slam Mugabe as the “Monster” and “Hitler of Africa .” At the same time, civil society hagiographers compromise with imperialist forces to help oust the “dictator” in Harare, but on Egypt, have little to say.

Meanwhile, wave after wave of strikes rock Egypt, sparked by rising food prices, inadequate incomes, political repression, and the government’s gutting of the social safety net.

Virtually absent in a country which receives $1.3 billion in US military aid every year are democracy promotion NGOs helping to organize a people’s revolution. Indeed, it might be hypothesized that the amount of democracy promotion funding a country receives is inversely proportional to the amount of US military aid it receives.

Egypt is not even a limited democracy. It is a de facto dictatorship. You might, then, expect to find Stephen Zunes’ International Center for Nonviolent Conflict training nonviolent democracy activists to overthrow the Mubarak regime. You might expect the Voice of America to be broadcasting “independent” news and opinion into Egypt, urging Egyptians to declare” enough is enough!” Predictably, this isn’t happening.

A year and a half ago, Hosni Mubarak – seen in Egypt as “Washington’s lackey” (1) — reversed the country’s social security gains of the 50s and 60s. The changes, he said, would “not only aim to rid Egypt of socialist principles launched in the 60s, but also seek a more favorable atmosphere for foreign investment” (2) – the same goal the opposition seeks in Zimbabwe.

Elections held last June to select members of the upper house of Parliament were described by election monitors “as manipulated to ensure that the governing party won a majority of seats.” (3)

Still, in the West, few have heard of vote-rigging in Egypt. Most, however, are familiar with vote-rigging allegations against Mugabe. Few too know that in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, “the only opposition group with a broad network and a core constituency,” is banned. (4) At the same time, Zimbabwe’s opposition MDC has never been banned, despite its conspicuous connections to foreign governments that have adopted regime change as their official policy.

The Brotherhood’s “popularity is based on a reputation for not being corrupt and extensive solidarity work in clinics, nurseries and after-school tutoring.” Its volunteers “fill the gaps left by a state system that has seen illiteracy rise and services fail as liberal economic reforms enrich businesses close to the regime.’ (5) Zimbabwe’s opposition, by comparison, seeks to privatize, slash government spending and give the country’s prized farm land back to European settlers and their descendants to restore the confidence of foreign investors.

In recent years, “Egyptian officials have stepped up repression as a means to blunt the rising popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood, locking up its leaders without charge. There is also talk of amending the constitution for president, but in such a way as to prohibit any independent candidate aligned with the Brotherhood.” (6)

As in Zimbabwe, a vast majority live in deep poverty, but unlike in Zimbabwe, “Egyptian authorities have cancelled elections, prohibited the creation of new parties and locked up political opponents.” (7)

Last June, “President Bush lavished praise on President Hosni Mubarak…while publicly avoiding mention of the government’s actions in jailing or exiling opposition leaders and its severe restrictions on opposition political activities.” (8) Bush’s silence contrasts sharply with his accusations against President Mugabe, who hasn’t jailed or exiled opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai or banned his party.

So, how is it that a regime that “arrests political opposition figures, beats street demonstrators, locks up bloggers, and blocks creation of new political parties” (9) gets so little attention in the West, while Zimbabwe gets so much?

And why is there a liberal-progressive-left affinity with opposition forces in Zimbabwe, when those forces are funded by a billionaire financier, capitalist foundations and Western governments, while if there’s any solidarity movement with the people of Egypt, it is virtually invisible?

The answer, I would suggest, lies in the failure of the greater part of the Western left to understand how corporate officers, corporate lawyers, and investment bankers set the agenda through their ownership of the media, domination of government, and control of high-profile foundations and think tanks.

Mubarak’s pro-investment policies and repression of the Arab street serve
the bottom-line interests of the US corporate class. Accordingly, the media and foundation agenda steers clear. What foundation grants are distributed, are handed out to groups that eschew confrontation, and seek to work within the system, rather than against it, to change it.

On the other hand, Mugabe’s land reform and economic indigenization policies challenge Western corporate and investment interests. It’s in the interests of European-connected commercial farmers, resource-extraction companies and Western banks, through their control of the media and foundations and domination of Western governments, to mobilize public opinion and forces on the ground to oppose these policies and replace them with more investment-friendly ones.

Not surprisingly, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, the principal immediate potential beneficiary of the corporate-directed mobilization in Zimbabwe, promises to “encourage foreign investment” and to bring Zimbabwe’s “abundant farmlands back into health” (10) – that is, to return Zimbabwe to raising cash crops and to reverse legislation mandating majority ownership of the economy by the majority population.

This is an agenda that serves Western corporate elites, not ordinary people. Cheerleaders for a left practice of compromising with imperialism say this is a sign of independence. But a left that is regularly mobilized on behalf of corporate and investor interests when those interests are threatened, and remains quiescent when the same interests are being challenged, is hardly independent.

Western leftists should ask themselves fundamental questions.

Who owns and controls the media? Are the media neutral, or do they shape public opinion in ways that advance the interests of the media’s owners and others who share the same interests and connections? What are the interests of the people who own and control the media?

Who owns and controls the foundations that fund policy experts, including those on the left? Do foundations give money to people who effectively oppose their interests or to people who effectively advance them?

How will a leader, political party, or movement that effectively advances the interests of ordinary people over those of corporations, banks and imperialist governments be treated by the media and by foundation-connected experts (recognizing that corporations and banks own the media and foundations and dominate imperialist governments)? Will they be given grudging respect? Are will they be vilified?

If a leader promotes the interests of corporations and investors while cracking down on ordinary people (Mubarak) will he be demonized? If not, why not? And if a leader promotes the interests of ordinary people over those of foreign corporations, investors and colonial settlers (Mugabe), will he be treated indifferently?

1. New York Times, September 20, 2006
2. Al-Ahram Weekly, February 1, 2007
3. New York Times, June 15, 2007
4. New York Times, April 9, 2008
5. The Guardian (UK), July 19, 2007
6. New York Times, October 22, 2006
7. Los Angeles Times, October 22, 2006
8. New York Times, June 17, 2008
9. New York Times, September 20, 2006
10. The Guardian (UK), April 7, 2008

New York Times reporter arrested in Zimbabwe

By Stephen Gowans

On March 27, I wrote about how the US state, media and NGOs were collaborating to shape public opinion on Zimbabwe’s March 29 elections.

The article centered on a March 26 New York Times report by Barry Bearak, titled “Hope and Fear for Zimbabwe’s Vote.”

Bearak’s reporting was confined to interviewing representatives of so called “non-governmental” election monitoring groups that, far from being “non-governmental”, are funded by the US government.

Not surprisingly, the misrepresented “non-government” voices Bearak featured in his article aped the line of the US government.

Bearak was arrested in Harare on April 3. He was in the country as a journalist without accreditation.

While Bearak’s arrest has been condemned as inexcusable repression, the New York Times reporter is part of a propaganda apparatus integrated into US regime change efforts in Zimbabwe.

In 1977, Carl Bernstein showed how the US media had worked hand in glove with the CIA. Foreign correspondents, including those of the New York Times, acted on behalf of the US intelligence agency while on assignment abroad.

While Bearak may or may not have been acting on behalf of the CIA, there are sufficient grounds for authorities in Zimbabwe (or for anyone else for that matter) to suspect he was.

Even if Bearak is free from CIA-connections, he was not in Zimbabwe as a neutral observer but as an active participant in efforts to oust the Mugabe government and its program of investing Zimbabwe’s liberation with real content.

Overthrowing Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party’s program will clear the way for the reversal of the agrarian reforms and will block further efforts to put the country’s economy in the hands of the black majority.

Bearak’s arrest should be considered neither surprising nor indefensible.

For the latest foundation-sponsored Patrick Bond spin on Zimbabwe, check out Pambazuka News, brought to you by The Ford Foundation and George Soros as well as Fahamu, i.e., the US Congress-funded Media Institute of Southern Africa, the European Union, and, oh yes, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

What happens if Mugabe goes?

By Stephen Gowans

The idea of demonizing a country’s leadership is to portray the political situation in the country as akin to having a thorn in your foot. Nothing else matters but getting the thorn out.

The war on Iraq was sold as an exercise in extracting a thorn named Saddam Hussein. Nothing else mattered – not how many would be killed, maimed or left homeless by war, and not even whether there were really any WMDs. All that mattered was getting rid of the thorn. Even high-profile left-wing critics of US foreign policy said the world would be a better place once the thorn was gone.

Except the world didn’t become a better place. The rape and torture rooms George Bush said Saddam Hussein operated were replaced by rape and torture by US troops. Numberless people lost their lives. Millions lost their homes. The death and destruction that would have been caused by Saddam Hussein, was nothing compared to the death and destruction US forces brought. For Iraqis, the US exercise in thorn removal was, remarked William Blum, like going into the hospital with an ingrown toenail, and coming out minus two legs.

If you believe civil society scholars, NGOs and opposition parties – all linked by the same sources of Western foundation and government funding – there’s a thorn in Zimbabwe that must be got rid of. Nothing else matters but getting the thorn out.

This obsession blinds people to what’s left after the thorn is removed.

Anyone not so obsessed can see. If the civil society scholars, NGOs and opposition parties who are agitating to get Mugabe out are funded by corporate wealth and imperialist governments, then what succeeds Mugabe will benefit corporate wealth and imperialist governments. That is, unless corporate wealth and imperialist governments are presided over by morons who dole out cash to people who are working against their interests.

If the obvious is lost on the thorn-obsessed, it’s not lost on others. Here’s what David Blair, writing in the Irish newspaper, The Independent, predicts that a Mugabe successor would do:

Reduce the size of the civil service.

Privatize the publicly owned companies.

Slash military spending.

Allow white farmers to return.

Repeal land ownership laws which make all agricultural land the property of the state.

Restore private title deeds.

Is Blair wrong? After Slobodan Milosevic was forced out of office in Yugoslavia, the opposition – a carbon copy of the one in Zimbabwe – came to power and did exactly what Blair predicts Zimbabwe’s opposition would do: slash and privatize.

The beneficiaries, not surprisingly, were corporate wealth and imperialist governments. These were the sources of funding for the civil society groups that ran Milosevic out.

The thorn – or what was made into a thorn, by propaganda and the miseries that attended military aggression and economic warfare – was gone, but the promised relief never materialized.

Instead, the lives of ordinary people became poorer and more uncertain. They returned to their proper place: to be screwed by Western investors, corporate executives and the modern-day equivalents of self-confident Englishmen in pith helmets and jodhpurs.

In West, voice of Zimbabwe’s fighters marginalized

Much as Zimbabwe’s opposition, its civil society, and the Western media, would like to create the impression that everyone in Zimbabwe is for Tsvangirai and everyone against Mugabe, the reality is that Zimbabwe is a divided society.

Not all, or even most, Zimbabweans are enamored of the opposition and the prospect of its likely retreat from the project of investing Zimbabwe’s liberation with real content.

Some, however, (yes, even many) see in the opposition a way to secure relief from the miseries of the economic warfare the West has waged against their country. For some, a vote for Tsvangirai is way of crying uncle.

Emblematic of the first view, (the view of the fighters) is the following letter written by Hamadziripi Bvopfo to the Zimbabwe Herald. I offer it for two reasons: (1) to show that the authentic Zimbabwean voice is not the monopoly of the US- and British-controlled opposition and civil society; (2) as an augury of the struggle that will continue should the opposition come to power.

Tsvangirai will never rule Zimbabwe

I wish to remind fellow Zimbabweans that the liberation struggle was not a one-day wonder.

It took many years and many lives were lost before we at last got our independence.

What had to follow was to ensure that the majority black people are economically empowered.

Land, a major reason for taking up arms to fight for liberation, had to be given back to its rightful owners — the black majority.

And when the Government embarked on the agrarian reform there were rigorous attempts to resist the program, and then the MDC was born. The imperialists were furious and are still furious.

President Mugabe became the talk of the world and has been condemned for merely doing what is best for his people.

Tsvangirai globetrotted asking for sanctions and persuading the whole world to stop aid to Zimbabwe.

The economy was sabotaged, we have hit hard times, people are struggling to make ends meet, decent meals have disappeared from our tables and the future looks very uncertain.

Morgan Tsvangirai has been on cloud nine dreaming that the hardships will propel the electorate to turn to him as the Messiah.

We are not fools.

It pains us to hear Tsvangirai’s claims of having pioneered the land reform, when we know for certain that he was sponsored to reverse the program.

We have also not forgotten a letter to Cde Kumbirai Kangai, the then Minister of Agriculture and Lands.

The letter came from Tsvangirai’s masters in 1997 — written by Clare Short — then foreign affairs minister in Blair’s government.

Short wrote in her letter that there was no way Britain was going to fund the redistribution of land, and she even went further to claim herself to be of Irish origin.

Finally to Tsvangirai, I say to you, you will never ever rule Zimbabwe.

Hamadziripi Bvopfo.

Norton.

In Zimbabwe, Opposition Follows Washington’s Plan

By Stephen Gowans

The color revolution in Zimbabwe (yet to be given a color) unfolds as other US- and British-government and foundation-directed color revolutions have unfolded in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine.

The revolution is what, in business circles, is called a turn-key solution. All you do is turn a key, and follow the plan.

The plan was developed by the US State Department, based on advice from “peace” and civil society scholars, and is cheered on by the same scholars who contributed to its development.

Here’s how the plan unfolds:

1. Elected officials in countries that won’t do Washington’s bidding are denounced a dictators. That the officials in these countries have won free and fair elections doesn’t matter. Doubt is raised about the legitimacy of the elections or the leaders are said to govern in an anti-democratic manner (Chavez) or both. This provides the US with the justification for step 2.

One of the most persistent critics of “anti-democratic” leaders abroad is US Vice-President Dick Cheney, whose commitment to democracy hasn’t dissuaded him from explaining that it doesn’t matter what the US public thinks of the war on Iraq – the administration does what it wants, not what’s popular. While the next administration will doubtlessly dismiss what’s popular in precisely the same way, there’s no movement afoot to get rid of the dictatorship where it’s needed most.

2. The US, Britain, and other Western countries provide financial support, expertise and other assistance to “civil society, the media, and opposition parties” to remove the “dictator.”

3. An election campaign is used as the setting to force the government to step down. The apparent inconsistency of a dictator holding elections is explained away as a hollow sham used by the dictator to claim legitimacy. (If the leadership is really dictatorial, and the elections really lack legitimacy in the eyes of voters, why are real dictators holding elections at all? Hitler, Mussolini and Franco didn’t. Why would real dictators do so now?)

4. The Western-supported media, civil society and opposition parties declare in advance, consistent with the dictator narrative, that the vote will be rigged. Western media dutifully trumpet this prediction.

5. Before the official vote is announced, the opposition and “independent” election monitors announce an opposition victory.

6. If the official vote tally contradicts the opposition’s claim of victory, the vote is denounced as fraudulent, and people are encouraged to move the battle to the streets.

Ian Makoni, election director for Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai explained two days before the vote:

“The lesson from 2002 (when the last presidential election was held) 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 on the streets celebrating when the polls close.”

Note that Makoni had already declared an opposition victory before the vote had even been held. It’s one thing to say the vote will be rigged – quite another to declare in advance of the poll that you’ve won.

Makoni continued: “It can turn into a protest easily. Zimbabweans are angry, they are desperate, they are ready to protest. It’s the turning point we are planning for.”

Opposition spokesman Nelson Chamisa said that if the opposition isn’t declared the winner, Kenya will look like a picnic.

7. Public opinion is mobilized in the West by the media’s single-minded focus on the opposition and its civil society allies, completely excluding the government’s point of view.

Every major Western newspaper has based its reporting of Zimbabwe’s election in the last week exclusively on the point of view of the opposition and the civil society groups who share the same Western sources of funding. It’s as if in an election held in the United States, the media only covered the Republican candidates.

European Universalism

By Stephen Gowans

“The intellectual justifications that Sepulveda gave in the 16th century to justify the conquests of the Indian lands are,” says Immanuel Wallerstein, “almost word for word, the same ones used for colonization, and the ones that are given today for what is called intervention.” He continues: “At that time, it concerned evangelization and the expansion of Christendom. Today, these values are ‘freedom and democracy.’ But they are in fact the same thing.” (1)

George Bush, in his own way, underscores Wallerstein’s point. Freedom and democracy, he writes in his 2002 National Security Strategy, “are right and true for every person, in every society – and the duty of protecting these values against their enemies is the common calling of freedom-loving people.” (2)

Stephen Zunes strays only millimeters from Bush’s universalism. “The best hope for advancing freedom and democracy in the world’s remaining autocratic states,” he writes, “comes from civil society, not the U.S. government.” (3)

The problem is that in what Zunes and the U.S. government call the world’s last remaining autocratic countries, the U.S. government and civil society are the same. In these places, explains the U.S. Department of State in a 2007 report, the U.S. financially supports “the efforts of civil society to create and defend democratic space”. It funds “international and local NGO programs that [promote] a wide variety of causes, including social welfare, democratic processes, human rights, peace-building, women’s and youth empowerment, and public advocacy.” And it supports “the efforts of the political opposition, the media, and civil society.” (4) That makes Zunes’ “best hope for advancing freedom and democracy” and Patrick Bond’s and Grace Kwinjeh’s “wellspring of hope” (5) functionally equivalent to the U.S. government and the corporate board members, corporate lawyers and investment bankers who dominate it.

Kwinjeh, a founding member of Zimbabwe’s opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, and a regular guest on the U.S. government sponsored propaganda Voice of America radio show, Studio 7, is a beneficiary of the U.S. government’s support for the political opposition, the media and civil society in Zimbabwe.

Not without chutzpah, Kwinjeh presents herself as an “independent” journalist. Her co-author Bond, likewise celebrates civil society groups that are on the U.S. payroll as an “independent” left.

In their lexicon, “independent” means: not aligned with the “autocratic state” the U.S. is trying to bring its universalist values of freedom and democracy to — on behalf of corporations, investors and banks.

Janet Cherry is another universalist. She too believes that the countries the U.S. government calls the world’s last autocracies are indeed the world’s last autocracies and that civil society is the best hope for advancing the values of freedom and democracy in these places. She appears in the film “A Force More Powerful,” a celebration of civil society’s power to change the world. The film’s editor and content advisor was universalist Peter Ackerman, an investment banker who made a fortune on Wall Street and has authored a companion book by the same name. Ackerman heads up Freedom House, an organization which describes itself as “a voice for freedom and democracy around the world,” and whose directors have included cabinet members from previous U.S. administrations – they too mainly corporate board members, corporate lawyers and investment bankers like Ackerman. Ackerman also founded the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, which has been involved in training activists to bring down governments that refuse to do the bidding of the U.S. (the last autocracies of the world), including the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Latter day Sepulveda Stephen Zunes, who wants to use civil society to advance the universalist values of freedom and democracy, is the ICNC’s chair of the board of academic advisors. (6) Ackerman is also a member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. ruling class organization dominated by directors of major U.S. corporations, corporate lawyers and CEOs. The CFR brings together executives, government and military officials and scholars to provide policy advice to the U.S. State Department.

The U.S. government advances its foreign policy goals under the guise of promoting freedom and democracy. “The name for our profits,” remarked singer-songwriter Phil Ochs in the 60s, “is democracy.” Were he alive today, he might say, “The name for our profits is civil society.”

Cherry wrote me to defend Zunes and Patrick Bond. She capped off her remarks with this: “As for Otpor – well, if only the opposition movements in Zimbabwe, both political parties and civil society, could organize as efficiently! Sometimes it is necessary to step back from self-righteous leftist rhetoric, take some action to break the impasse, and get rid of the dictator. Then ordinary people can, though ordinary democratic processes, find their own way forward.” (7)

Otpor was a youth group funded by the U.S. government and trained by Robert Helvey, an associate of Stephen Zunes, to work with NATO bombing and economic sanctions to bring down the Milosevic government in Yugoslavia. After getting rid of the elected “dictator,” Otpor failed to help the ordinary people of the former Yugoslavia find their way forward. Unemployment soared; publicly and socially-owned assets were privatized. Nato had signaled its intention to privatize the Yugoslav economy in the appendices of the 1999 Rambouillet Accord, which the Milosevic government rejected. The next day, Nato began a 78-day campaign of bombing.

Ackerman and others celebrated the ouster of Milosevic in the film “Bringing Down a Dictator,” attributing the fall of the Yugoslav president to a grassroots movement that practiced nonviolent direct action to bring “freedom and democracy” to one of Europe’s last “autocratic states.” The role of the U.S. government in engineering the possibility of an uprising by creating misery through economic sanctions and military intervention, its efforts to shape public opinion inside Yugoslavia by funding anti-Milosevic media, and its bankrolling of the opposition and Otpor, were skipped over.

“A Force More Powerful” and “Bringing Down a Dictator,” are useful for conservative forces at home. They create the illusion that the civil society-based nonviolent direct action that appears to work abroad can work anywhere to bring about social change. Scholars associated with Z-Net are advocates of this view.

But while seemingly effective outside the West, there are significant differences that make the model’s effectiveness in the West approximately zero.

1. Absence of funding. Civil society has been able to play a role in bringing down governments outside the West because it has been richly funded by wealthy individuals, capitalist foundations and imperialist governments. The same sources of funding are not available to groups and individuals in the West prepared to challenge the funders’ dominant positions. Reebok, an employer of sweatshop labor, will finance a human rights award and give it to Janet Cherry to burnish its image, but Reebok isn’t going to give money to groups or individuals working to overthrow the systemic imperatives that produce sweatshops. Ackerman won’t help nonviolent activists expropriate his wealth.

2. Public opinion. Outside the West, civil society has operated in a public opinion milieu shaped by wealthy individuals, capitalist foundations and imperialist governments through their funding of “independent” media inside target countries and propaganda broadcasts originating from outside. Independent media that seek to shape public opinion against wealthy individuals and corporations at home will never have access to the same funding and will never achieve the same volume and critical mass. It’s easier to rise up against a “dictator” when the information environment is shaped to portray the country’s leadership as autocratic and when “independent” media call for an uprising. Any media in the West that called for an uprising at home would remain perpetually under-funded and unable to achieve sufficient volume to persuade more than a handful of people.

3. Absence of external pressure. It is the explicit strategy of Washington to apply pressure to populations of target countries through economic warfare and military aggression. The intention is to create growing misery, if not to provoke a crisis, to prepare the ground for an uprising from within. While Western countries aren’t immune to growing misery or crisis, they are immune to growing misery and crisis engineered from outside.

In the absence of funding, a sympathetic media to shape public opinion, and growing pressure on the population created by economic warfare and military aggression – all necessary conditions whose creation depends on access to resources commanded by wealthy individuals, corporations, and imperialist governments – decentralized, civil society-guided nonviolent direct action becomes a means for diverting energy for change into safe and inconsequential avenues.

As a mechanism for political change, civil society works when backed by military force, economic warfare, a sympathetic media and oodles of cash, but when these conditions exist, its purpose is to advance the interests of those who have established the conditions for its effectiveness. At these times, civil society marches under the flag of European universalism, its foot soldiers draw their pay from foreign governments, and its generals sit on the boards of foreign foundations. At all other times, it is a force less powerful.

1. Olivier Doubre, “European Universalism Is Used to Justify Imperialism: An Interview with Immanuel Wallerstein,” MRZINE, March 26, 2008, http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/doubre260308.html
2. George W. Bush, National Security Strategy, September 20, 2002.
3. Stephen Zunes, “Nonviolent action and pro-democracy struggles,” Z-Net, February 17, 2008. http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16538
4. U.S. Department of State’s account of its promotion of freedom and democracy in Zimbabwe, April 5, 2007. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/shrd/2006/
5. Patrick Bond and Grace Kwinjeh, “Zimbabwe’s political roller-coaster hits another deep dip,” Z-Net, March 11, 2008, http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2008-03/11bond-kwinjeh.cfm .
6. See https://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/stephen-zunes-and-the-struggle-for-overseas-profits/ .
7. Comment March 27, 2008 in response to Stephen Gowans, “Mugabe vote rigging allegations,” March 27, 2008. https://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/mugabe-vote-rigging-allegations/