Africans with white 'no-fly zones' mentality

You will be blessed wherever you go, both in coming and in going. "The LORD will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven! "The LORD will bless everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you. "If you obey the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways, the LORD will establish you as his holy people as he solemnly promised to do. Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the LORD, and they will stand in awe of you. "The LORD will give you an abundance of good things in the land he swore to give your ancestors--many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops. The LORD will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens to bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them. If you listen to these commands of the LORD your God and carefully obey them, the LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always have the upper hand. (Deuteronomy 28: verses 3-13)

The utterances "Sarkozy has commited a crime" in Libya and in Cote d'Ivoire". But it expresses the growing true feeling among pan-Africanists in Zimbabwe and throughout the Sadc region: That French President Nicolas Sarkozy, being the most current and most rabid face of white racist imperialism, has committed crimes in Cote d'Ivoire and Libya which will follow his people for many generations.

The white racist "no-fly zones" imposed by Nato are not just geophysical, geostrategic and military; they are also spiritual and mental. In fact, they were ideological, mental and spiritual before Nato tried to give them a geostrategic and geophysical form over Libya.

The representatives of Nigeria, South Africa and Gabon who voted for the evil UN Security Council Resolution 1973 were already hemmed-in by the white man's "no-fly zones" of the mind which made them believe that they could not fly in the face of white aggression and white imperialist interests; they could only try to cajole, accommodate and impress the rabid Sarkozy and his imperialist colleagues. That is why the chairman of the African Union Commission, Jean Ping (who is also from Gabon) had gone as far as inviting Nicolas Sarkozy and other EU leaders to address the AU Summit in Addis Ababa long before UN Security Council Resolution 1973 and before the Nato bombing of Libya.

So, we have a particular situation here: Zimbabwe and much of Sadc feel that Africa is blessed; this region in particular is blessed. Former South African pPresident Thabo Mbeki's diplomatic shield for Zimbabwe and Sadc, otherwise known as the Global Political Agreement, has so far survived and been spared from the add-ons which the MDC formations and their Anglo-Saxon sponsors have been spinning as ladders for imperialism and its Rhodesian cousins to climb back inside Zimbabwe's politics. The most recent Sadc Extraordinary Summit in Sandton, South Africa, managed to clip away the Livingstone add-ons which the Anglo-Saxon powers and the Rhodies were trying to use to bring themselves inside Mbeki's original shield. That imperialist effort has not only failed; the current Sadc chairman, President Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia, has sworn that what almost happened on March 31 2011 in Livingstone, Zambia, should never be allowed again. This is to say Africans should erect their own "no-fy zones" against imperialism and racism.

Zimbabwe and the Sadc region are triumphant and feeling blessed because Zimbabweans have overcome a decade of full economic and financial warfare and those who imposed their sanctions on this country are frantically looking for face-saving ways to dump the MDC formations they have used for the last 10 years and to start doing normal business again with Zimbabwe, a Zimbabwe which lies at the heart of Sadc and whose economy is growing despite the horrific sanctions.

Moreover, Zimbabwe's massive wealth in diamonds, platinum, gold, coal and other minerals means that the illegal sanctions will not only be defeated by the people themselves but they are likely to end up punishing and embarrassing those who invited them and those who imposed them. The long-term problem about these illegal sanctions is that it is only white racist countries, the same countries waging war against Libya and Cote d'Ivoire, who imposed and enforced them. The rest of the world, the rest of the growing economies of the world, are very happy to do business with Zimbabwe. Sarkozy apara ngozi!

It is therefore not surprising that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, as one of the Africans obeying the white man's "no-fly zones" of the mind, has been pushing the panic baton. He should be worried.  Frederick Chiluba ' the one-time union leader who became President of Zambia under the same banner of "change, democracy, multipartyism and human rights" ' has just been buried without anyone noticing. If Mr Tsvangirai is in any doubt about the meaning of all this, he should go back to the death of the late Mozambique president Samora Machel in 1986: or the burial of Cde Edgar Tekere in June 2011.

Why US First Lady won't come to Zimbabwe

Africans in this region have a lot to be grateful for. Our African liberation memory is still intact and most of us, especially the re-organising youth, have breached if not dismantled the white man's "no-fly zones" of the mind. That is why US First Lady Michelle Obama won't come to Zimbabwe while her husband is helping to bring Libya back to the Stone Age.

By recognising that former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba did not add value to Africa and African pride, by recognising that Chiluba and his party did not achieve much beyond harassing and denigrating Zambia's founding president, Dr Kenneth David Kaunda, the Sadc region has shown that it has discarded sponsored neoliberalism and its silly mantra. Zimbabwe is soon to be a "no-fly zone" for imperialism, even when that imperialism is fronted by black faces
And yet, we are still stuck with large numbers of African "leaders" who suffer from the strictures of "no-fly zones" of the mind imposed and enforced over hundreds of years by the white empire.

The most palpable demonstration of the persistence of these white racist "no-fly zones" of the mind in Zimbabwe is the refusal by the MDC formations to accept their responsibility for inviting illegal economic sanctions, to accept their sworn commitment to fight those sanctions together with all Zimbabweans, and to admit that the people and the economy have suffered as a result of the same sanctions.

African leaders who accept the white man's "no-fly zones" of the mind require the empire's "pass" or permission to say or do certain things. They stay away from burning issues which are relevant to their own people and they deny realities which white people require them to deny. Instead of joining the massive nationwide campaign to denounce and defeat sanctions, leaders of the MDC formations have been fanning and promoting tribalism and regional chauvinism by misrepresenting the devastation caused by sanctions as consequences of tribal and regional discrimination and marginalisation.

This is because dividing the people along language, region and ethnicity has always been a tactic of imperialism and colonialism.  It is consistent and compatible with the white racist template for explaining African problems.
The desperation of superpowers (and the thousands of NGOs they fund) over a small country of less than 14 million people is bound to make a juicy and lasting story.

That is why the publishers and editors of The Zimbabwe Independent, The Standard, The Sunday Times, The Zimbabwean and Newsday all seem to have reached the end of their wits, trying to find new angles from which the story of the illegal and racist Anglo-Saxon sanctions against Zimbabwe can be suppressed. And on October 4 2010 MPs from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC faction tried to force the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) to hide that its member companies have been ruined by the same illegal sanctions.  Minister Welshman Ncube thinks the devastation of people's lives in Matabeleland is a product of Shona discrimination. Illegal sanctions remain for him a "no-fly zone" which cannot even be mentioned.

The sanctions-denying Press have gone as far as turning US Embassy officials into regular columnists for their papers; they have targeted any and all effective Zimbabwean communicators of the anti-sanctions message for gratuitous defamatory attacks; and, most recently, their sponsors took the desperate step of hiring Liberian Deputy Minister Kpandel Fayia to write a false report on the basis of which it was hoped Zimbabwe's Chiadzwa diamonds could still be banned from the global market.

The problem faced by the Anglo-Saxon powers is a simple one: They have mobilised a gargantuan ideological, PR and propaganda machinery to deny the reality and impact of these illegal and racist sanctions on the people of Zimbabwe. The size, sophistication, direction and orchestrated activities of this machinery alone enable the people of Zimbabwe to appreciate the pervasive and intrusive manifestations of these sanctions throughout the society and throughout the world. Several months ago I showed how the impact of these illegal sanctions hits anyone who enters Kingston's bookstores in Harare with open eyes.

By trying to lynch Zimbabwe in every forum, through all channels and on every platform, the Anglo-Saxon powers have awakened the entire population of Zimbabwe to the evil intent of their sanctions. Citizens have seen Zimbabwe being pursued and pestered at the Commonwealth, at the IMF, at the World Bank, at Kimberley Process meetings, at the EU, at the UN ' but each time Zimbabwe has overcome and exposed the aggressors both morally and legally. The latest is the Sadc Extraordinary Summit in Sandton, South Africa, which has put Prime Minister Tsvangirai into panic mode.

The problem which the Anglo-Saxon powers and those they have paid to cover up their tracks now face can be seen by considering, for example, one story in The Daily News on Sunday for July 13 2003: "Cyclone Bush hits Africa".

The Daily News and its headlines

That article was written immediately after the MDC's promised a "mass uprising", called "The Final Push", to remove the Zimbabwe Government from power. The "Final Push" had just flopped in June. So by July 2003, "Cyclone Bush", that is the US President George W Bush and the machinery at his command, was supposed to complete the "Final Push" which the MDC had failed to pull off. The article gleefully celebrated all the fresh effects of illegal sanctions and financial warfare upon the people, but without any direct reference to the economic and financial nature of the same sanctions. The sanctions had to be put across in the media as if they were merely political restrictions on a handful of officials. Yet real financial and economic sanctions had actually been unveiled as part of an acute emergency in the foreign policies of the US, UK and EU toward Zimbabwe.

In the wake of George W. Bush's visit to South Africa, MDC officials and supporting NGO leaders flocked to that country to try to meet the US president. The Daily News on Sunday told Zimbabweans in a celebratory fashion that:
"Zimbabwe has failed to print its own money, inflation is over 300 percent and unemployment is over 80 percent . . . The country is fast hurtling towards becoming a failed state like Liberia and Somalia."

By November 2005, US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell realised that the impact of the Anglo-Saxon sanctions on the people had become difficult to blame on so-called "corruption and mismanagement", partly because people could see the over-zealousness of the Anglo-Saxon powers themselves and those paid to cheer their assaults on the Zimbabwe economy. The idea of a "Cyclone Bush" hitting Africa and finishing off the Zimbabwean economy where the MDC's rioting and stayaways had failed to deliver a "final push" did not really sound like a convincing "mismanagement" story.

So, Ambassador Dell mounted a campaign which took him to Mutare, Bulawayo and Harare. Its purpose was to recognise the unprecedented nature of the devastation, telling students at Africa University that the livelihoods of the people of Zimbabwe had been brought back and down to the levels of 1953 and admitting that the sanctions law called the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act was indeed the "cornerstone" of US policy towards Zimbabwe; but it did not mean real economic sanctions.

The idea was that the US could meet the people of Zimbabwe halfway by recognising their suffering and offering crocodile tears and some relief (chema nenyaradzo) while diverting and directing their hostility toward the people's own elected government. This seemed to work until after March 2008. Minister Welshman Ncube tried the same trick in Matabeleland last week.

Unfortunately for the Anglo-Saxon powers and their local supporters, the people began to piece together the parts of the puzzle and began to attack the illegal sanctions and call for their immediate lifting. It did not matter what the US and EU chose to call whatever it was they had imposed on any or all Zimbabweans: The devastation was everywhere and these white powers should simply prove to the people and their leaders that all forms of Anglo-Saxon interference in Zimbabwe's internal affairs stopped.

This is the clearest message from the Copac outreach and the anti-sanctions mobilisation, and it has precipitated a panic. The Anglo-Saxon powers had thought that the relief economy and the people's own partial victory over the illegal sanctions would quickly make the sanctions story stale, irrelevant and uninteresting.

The opposite is true: By refusing to lift the illegal and racist sanctions, the white racists have put themselves in the shoes of Goliath! The Goliath story does not become stale, outdated or irrelevant. It is being repeated in Libya.

What is going to happen is that the little but blessed people of Zimbabwe will discover that six years after Christopher Dell's overbearing lecture (saying that livelihoods had been brought down and back to 1953 but not because of sanctions) the sanctions story is everywhere.

The people will discover, for instance, that each one of the following stories is, in fact, a sanctions story presented as something other than what it really is:

    "Zim slips lower on (World Bank) business index," Herald Business, November 5 2010;
    "Woo back lecturers in the Diaspora," Chronicle, November 3 2010;
    "Zim airspace shock: Civil aviation authority admits obsolete equipment makes flying into the country dangerous," Sunday Times, October 31 2010;

    "13 000 face UK deportation," Newsday, October 30 2010;
    "Sanctions not to blame ' EU," Zimbabwe Independent, October 29 2010;
    "Agriculture set to continue on recovery path," Zimbabwe Independent, October 29 2010;
    "Addressing industry's recovery needs," Zimbabwe Independent, October 29 2010;
    "Those pieces of silver make a difference," Newsday, October 28 2010;
    "Extend multiple-currency use [in place of own currency] ' Bankers' Association of Zimbabwe," Zimbabwe Independent, October 22 2010;
    "Dire consequences of rural poverty," The Standard, October 18 2010;
    "Farm workers suffer due to Zim land reform," Sunday Times, October 10 2010;
    "End sanctions, Zuma tells EU," The Herald, September 29 2010;
    "Copac violence dampens Zim, US re-engagement," Newsday, September 29 2010;
    "Zim's economic upsurge falters," Zimbabwe Independent, August 6 2010;
    "Government seeks US$2 billion for industry," Herald Business, 30 July 2010;
    "Economy misses production target (by nearly 50 per cent)," The Business Connect, May 3 2010;
    "Jaggers closes 11 branches," Herald Business, April 19 2010;
    "Edgars closes 20 branches," Herald  Business, January 20 2010;
    "Zim (trade) shipments fall 90 percent," Sunday Mail Business, January 3 2010;
    "Annual shutdown (now) mere routine," Herald Business, December 17 2009; and
    "No going back on job cuts, says Airzim chief," Herald Business, November 9 2009.

The illegal sanctions story could have diminished in importance if the Anglo-Saxon powers had removed the sanctions immediately after the March 2008 elections or just at the time of the formation of the inclusive Government.

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• Tafataona P. Mahoso was the chairman of the Media and Information Commission (MIC), he is known for his support for Zanu-PF policies and the party.