Revolution: Betrayal versus reason

A SLAVE who does not organise his own rebellion deserves no pity for his lot. He alone is responsible for his misfortune, especially if he harbours illusions in the dubious assurances of a master's promise for freedom.

These are words reminiscent of the revolutionary lexicon synonymous with such heroic names like Thomas Sankara, Chris Hani, Samora Machel or Josiah Magama Tongogara - heroes whose mission was no less than breaking the colonial and post colonial chains that hung and continue to hang on the necks of the African population today.

Freedom comes through struggle, and that struggle is a focused mission quite different from the political bickering that gave birth to the unwanted baby Zimbabweans call the Global Political Agreement, nothing more than three signatures that allowed for the creation of political offices for a group of stranded politicians from across the political divide. The 2008 election left the Zimbabwean political community desperate for legitimacy and a mandate to rule, especially with the hung parliament the election produced. This forced the political elites to negotiate in the name of their respective political parties for what was essentially a pathway to political office for all concerned.

Those who mislead themselves into believing that there is a struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe must be pitied for who they are - sincere miscreants who mistake their burning ambitions for political power for a search for democracy - honestly believing that they are in a struggle for a democracy they think is pathetically lacking in a political landscape that denies them a chance to assume political power, fairly or unfairly. Democracy is about people collectively benefiting from a system that governs them more than it is about how battles for numerical votes are carried out.

On May 16, 2008 this column carried a piece titled "When Great Minds go for Betrayal." It was a direct response to the repeated attack on this writer and other foreign based patriots who express patriotic views that may run contrary to the policies of their host countries, especially when such views are expressed in the public domain.

There is a vociferous clique of furious attackers who cannot stand the fact that this writer runs a column in The Herald from a Western base, especially considering that the column in question often relentlessly attacks Western foreign policy, especially that of the US, the UK and their minor sidekicks from other Western outposts. Almost every one of this writer's pieces attracts the comment "come home if Zimbabwe is so good," or "what are you doing in the West if the West is so bad." Some have accused this writer of hypocrisy, while others have labelled this writer "an agent of Robert Mugabe." Perhaps the question of why someone can criticise the West while "enjoying their comfort" is not a minor one.

There is no doubt about the sincerity of this question, at least from the viewpoint of most post-colonial Africans. The expectation for a Western trained intellectual or mind is that the trained person must think West, act West, and proudly wallow in Western terminology and values. This is why a product of an Australian University is not expected to run a column on anti-imperialism like what this writer does.

This expectation is not necessarily coming from the Western community. It is coming right from the African that sends his children to study in the West, the African that watches other Africans departing for Western capitals, admiring and envying them for escaping dark hell for glorious paradise. It is an expectation often shared by the African that receives the Western training in question - the delusional achiever that proudly interprets success as wallowing in Western champagne swallowed within the confinements of treacherous and obscene wealth. This is the person that views himself as a heroic escapee from the world of African poverty and misery, not a shining example that must help his own people to develop themselves to their full potential. It is expected of this writer to reflect his appreciation for the glory and glitter of the West. There is a social reward that comes with emulating Western values and imitating the Western lifestyle, even to the point of denying one's own children the right to know their own language - priding highly in the feat that a child of two black Zimbabweans is a unilingual English speaker. Ordinarily that must be absolutely shameful. But white supremacy is no ordinary matter. It is a scourge riding heavy on the back of the African.

But this writer is a creature of the liberation principle, operating on a vow to serve Africa and Africa alone. His baptism is that of the struggle to free Africa and its oppressed people, not through making Africa a continent of emulators and mimickers of Western values and aspirations, but a free continent of people who pride in their own development and sovereign values. This writer was born in the struggle, initiated into it, participates in it vehemently, and will never abandon the struggle until Africans achieve true freedom, or until he dies, whichever comes first; hopefully the former.

As George Kennan once noted, Western interests are threatened by "radical and nationalistic regimes," that are responsive to popular pressures for "immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses" and development for domestic needs, tendencies that conflict with the need for "a political and economic climate conducive to private investment," with adequate repatriation of profits. This is according to National Security Council Document Number 5432/1 of 1954.

It is the Western selfish interest that today is camouflaged in the lexicon of democracy and human rights. But we cannot wallow in velvety plastic luxury while availing ourselves as tools for the furtherance of the subjugation of our own people, an attitude that says Africa is a place only good for aid, and for the implementation of Western ideas about governance and the concept of civilisation.

The idea of governance from a US perspective is that America must be allowed to influence any country whose resources or strategic position may be of interest to the US Empire. This is why a US State Department official noted that the post World War 11 era was facing a threat of "the philosophy of the New Nationalism, (which) embraces policies designed to bring about a broader distribution of wealth and to raise the standard of living of the masses."

That is what was happening throughout the world at a time colonial empires were beginning to fall across Africa, later leading to a wave of a socialist revolution across the continent, where the West saw nothing but deluded people who believed that "the first beneficiaries of the development of a country's resources should be the people of that country" (Kennan), and who thought that Africa had to industrialise.

Of course this attitude is in contrast to economic rationalism that dictates that the first beneficiaries should always be Western investors while Africa fulfils its service function, refraining from "excessive industrial development" that infringes on US and Western interests. There is no hope, and no salvation for Africa unless we turn our backs to the models provided to us by Western charlatans of all types. For long Africa has been sold lethal ideas that have stalled the development of the continent and it appears our leadership is currently addicted to these destructive ideas, sometimes openly defending the Western elites from local dissenting voices.

Outside the rejection of Western models there is effectively no salvation for the impoverished African masses. This is why Minister Kasukuwere's efforts at indigenisation must be progressively studied and critiqued as opposed to being vilified for the benefit of our oppressors. Africa needs raptures like what we saw with Zimbabwe's land reform programme, itself highly vilified by Western elites and their pliant media. It was not the first rapture of its kind, but it still stands highly significant to the African cause, especially now that the beneficiaries of this program are beginning to bring meaningful dividends to the country's agricultural sector, particularly the tobacco farmers.

There were other such raptures like the Iran oil nationalisation of 1945, Julius Nyerere's Ujamaa efforts in Tanzania, Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal in Egypt, or Gaddafi's OPEC dream, for which he is being ruthlessly bombed by Nato today.

It is quite informative that each of such raptures is always faced by a wave of Western intellectual giants emerging like monsters from the deep oceans. These always awaken to the threat of billions in rags weighing on the colonial privileges of their own countries. One can revisit the intellectual outrage at Robert Mugabe's land reform program - an outrage that was directed at the supposed insanity of one man, carefully avoiding direct confrontation with the marauding landless masses that invaded white-owned commercial farms to correct an unsustainable colonial imbalance.

We have a Western political system that impressively perpetuates racial supremacy while emphatically preaching against it. There are these supernatural tricks coming through development packages and the pro-democracy lexicon. It would appear Africans themselves are pushing for Western values and for Western investors to enjoy privileges within Africa. In fact it is true that there is a strong sentiment from Africans who are pushing for democratic values from the platform of the Western perspective. Most of the owners of the African voice preaching democracy and human rights today are not exactly driven by the moral drive for fairness and justice, but by the strategic interest of tapping into the donor funds from Westerners, not necessarily for what the donations are proclaimed to be for, but essentially for self-aggrandisement - the so-called "Madhuku strategy" in Zimbabwe. In noting the monstrous gang of intellectuals that perpetuate the suffering of the masses we must never ridicule or ignore the patient efforts of honest intellectuals who expose the evils of the current world order, the likes of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, John Pilger, Amos Wilson and many others.

Of course it is the dishonest intellectuals perpetuating the hegemony of Western powers over the poor societies of this world that are well resourced and funded by the system they protect; the likes of John Makumbe in Zimbabwe and many others from the mainstream Western intellectual community. Alongside the treacherous lot from the intellectual community is the petty bourgeoisie which is not prepared to give up its privileges in Africa, just like elsewhere across the world.

Precisely this class is tranquilised by the sweetness of the crumbs of imperial hegemony, by the employee mentality, or by plain intellectual laziness. Some of these people are found within political structures, even fervently masquerading as heroic revolutionaries, pumping up rhetorical slogans while thumping the masses down to perpetual poverty. A genuine political struggle is unmistakable. It is based on initiative, honesty, rigorous theoretical debate, and a commitment to the implementation of people-oriented projects.

We cannot have political leaders who claim to be in a political struggle for our emancipation while they are satisfied with being passive consumers of Western intellectual input, unquestioningly adhering to instructions from Western institutions. Some of us, the intrepid few that choose not to live on borrowed values and reasoning; are routinely condemned as "ungrateful hypocrites" who fail to do the basic requirement of appreciating the greatness of Western benevolence, deriding the supposed very source of our presumed happiness. It is considered hypocritical to criticise Western policies, especially when the critic is residing in the West. The pure logic is to swallow all that comes from the West as positive and progressive for humanity, especially if what is under review is something to do with democracy or any of the truisms that come with the West's big brother role over the entirety of humanity.

This writer must logically explain why he is in the West if he does not think white commercial farmers were not supposed to be kicked out of "their" colonially acquired farmlands in Zimbabwe. He must explain what he is doing in Australia if he thinks the Reaganite policies in Central America were ruinous, or if he thinks Israel is brutalising Palestinians, or if he holds the view that the US occupation of Afghanistan is unjust, or that the Iraq invasion was illegal and criminal.

By merely residing and working in the West, it is assumed that one must, as a matter of pure logic, begin to sanitise all the political acts of his host country, lauding every act of aggression as the promotion of democracy, and in the case of Zimbabweans like this writer - express unparalleled fury against President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party, and of course hail the heroics of the pro-West Morgan Tsvangirai and his

MDC-T party. But this writer is not in the business of accumulating bonuses of shame, indignity and treachery.

He is in search of light, in search of the African voice for justice and equality.

We search today for the voice of Dr Martin Luther King, for the days of negritude and the African Personality, for the days of Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Samora Machel and those of Patrice Lumumba.

These are not gone and forgotten days but pure foundations for our inspiration today and forever more. We need to answer ourselves on why the search for ideas that are purely African in origin is in vain.

As President Yoweri Museveni recently noted, not only were we stalled in developing our own technologies and civilisation, but we have even forgotten whatever skills we had before the coming of the white man - forgetting even how to make a spear. For some reason we still think it's sane to ask why we Africans are a continent of beggars.

For those in political writing, there is no such thing as neutral writing. Credos are not neutral positions and they need to be explained and defended. This writer is a messenger to all Zimbabweans, to the people of Africa, to our politicians, our civic society, to the petty bourgeoisie, and to the media fraternity. We all need to protect our homeland, to fight for our disinherited and suffering masses. We must wrench our beloved homeland from foreign domination and exploitation. We need an honest and faithful image of our people and our continent and this is essential.

Our politicians must be disciples of creativity, honesty and dedication, not the likes of the comical characters gracing the Parliament of Zimbabwe today - largely a bunch of excited hecklers and sloganeers with no clue whatsoever what public policy is all about, seemingly never to understand even if taught by the ancient Rabbis or messengers from High Heavens.

We cannot continue to have politicians who specialise in widening the chasm between the affluent of our society and those whose only aspiration is to eat their full and quench their thirst, merely to survive and preserve the dignity of passing through the face of this planet.

How long are we going to enrich ourselves by profiteering from the sweat of the poor? The rich man's cattle cannot continue to fatten on the crops of the poor man in a country we all inherited from a common ancestry.

We cannot cry for political change when all we mean by that is to open our country to influxes of aid laced with the poison of dependency and domination by the aiders.

There is no such thing as development achieved through foreign aid, and any of our politicians who cannot dig this must quit politics pronto. Otherwise Africa will forever be riddled by a leadership that is no more than a bunch of aid slaves - practitioners in the infamous trade of puppet politics. Foreign aid is a foreign policy tool for the strategic interests of the benevolent country.

That is perfectly understandable. What is not understandable is that some people see logic in contesting this obvious reality, even calling the aid "humanitarian".

The only true developmental or humanitarian aid is equality, fair trade, fair investment, and true self-determination for the weaker developing nations. If that were allowed to flourish each country would undoubtedly make meaningful strides in realising its full potential.

The science of today's multinationals does not condone or cherish such partnerships. They thrive on a monopoly of knowledge and would rather perpetuate the crisis of childhood diseases and water born diseases than share the knowledge that combats such challenges.

They prefer to expand their knowledge into the cosmetics industry by setting up plastic surgeries meant to satisfy the whims of some overfed people whose charm and life are threatened by the excess of calories in their meals.

Their communities need technology and science to deal with diseases emanating from excess food while our children are born in malnutrition-related sickness, and all we can do is look and admire.

When we write in protest to a world order of this nature what we get are some among us attacking us furiously in defence of the sins of the masters that lord it over our own people. Some of us believe in the dazzling splendour of white supremacy - accepting our fate as God-given, and deriding our own prophets for justice and equality.

Those who vociferate against the writings of this writer are free to keep their chains if they are from our own people in Africa, or to keep their delusions of grandeur if they hail from the lands of our tormentors and oppressors. What is not going to happen is to have betrayal triumphing over reason.

Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@wafawarova.com