Now that “regime change” is no longer a “Will it come?” question, but “When and how?” those who profted most from ZANU loot are looking for places to hide from the retribution they fear. Seeing one ZANU stooge making repeated efforts to launch a book on violence makes me suspect that author or the bigwigs funding the publication are planning to have a candidate ready to head a Justice and Reconciliation Commission when the international community insists on us making a credible effort to clean up our house.
Source: Feathering their nests – The Zimbabwean
That man and his backers might not fool us, but that “international community” represented by jet-setting politicians, ex-politicians posing as experts and their tame journalistic mouthpieces are easier to fool. For one thing, they don’t have time to do detailed studies; a quick overview is easier to base decisive action on.
Don’t let them kid you; the Evil West are on the list of our chefs’ possible saviours. The senior Vice President has been openly courting the West and during last year British officials, financiers and political analysts and the Belgian diamond merchants indicated that he was their preferred choice to succeed our present Dear Leader. They are serious; I know someone who, visiting Britain, was invited to talk to “military intelligence” who wanted information on Zimbabwe’s infrastructure. (He declined of course, but they’re probably still searching.)
These backers seem to have realised that their choice was unworkable, so they now apparently back Joice Mujuru. You might think that is an improvement, but is it enough of an improvement? Is it what we want? Their thinking, in as far as they spell it out, is that they would prefer people in any new government who have government experience. ZANU(PF) have been in power, or in a position to block anyone else from governing effectively, for 36 years, so where else will the Brits find people with experience? That may sound like a plausible argument until we ask what is our experience of ZANU rule. Has it brought us freedom? Made us richer? Made us healthier? Made us happy? Made our country respected in the world? We have to conclude that those in power in the West aren’t really interested in those issues. They may mean well, as they may have done in Iraq, but they haven’t asked themselves the questions we ask.
Even if they sincerely believe there is no candidate who is free from connections with ZANU(PF), why have they overlooked Simba Makoni? He has experience of different kinds of governance from ZANU’s. He is intelligent and respected outside the country. And he didn’t leave ZANU(PF) over an issue of his personal position, but because he disagreed with their disastrous economic policy, or rather their disastrous lack of any policy beyond looting.
I’m not campaigning for anyone, but these questions need answering. If we ask them, we will realise that we have a number of other able people I’ve not named. Many of them are doing responsible jobs in other countries for the benefit of those countries. Some of them can be found in opposition parties at home.
My point is that the West, while making some sympathetic noises about our human rights, our impending famine and our economic meltdown, are really more interested in what they can make out of our diamonds, gold, platinum and other exports or from contracts to rebuild Zimbabwe to their design. They are not philanthropists; they are business people and politicians with their own business and political interests.
I don’t suppose I need to remind anyone that the Chinese government, the Indian diamond merchants and other Eastern “friends” of our Dear Leader share those business and political interests, but don’t waste much time covering them with a veneer of humanitarian hypocrisy.
We do have real friends out there, but they’re rarely in government or big business. They are the sort of people who stood by Aung San Suu Kyi until even their governments had to accept democratic change in Myanmar.
COMMENTS
The British government is almost certainly the most two-faced, hypocritical government in existence. It will abandon any friend without compunction if it sees it to be in its interests. It has no interest whatever in ‘the people of Zimbabwe’, as it piously pretends, but seeks only what capital it can extract from supporting whomever it sees as being expedient at the time.