When America aims fatal blow to the stomach

A genius in the American establishment must finally have realised that so long as Zimbabweans have the land and they can feed themselves, it would be very hard to separate them from Zanu-PF, never mind the El Nino-induced drought, which has hit the entire region. Hit them directly in the stomach.

The United States has become brazen in war against Zimbabwe.

Americans are past masters at starting a foreign war, fighting and at times winning those wars using all manner of weaponry, but without losing a single drop of blood of an American soldier. One way to achieve that is to deploy the foot soldiers of the targeted country and arm them to do the dirty work for them. America will then come in to anoint a titular leader to manage its affairs and do its bidding.

It has been able to do that all over the world. Often with success too, as far as its objectives are concerned. That has been possible because America invests resources in the use of its citizens' brain power abroad and propaganda at home to justify and win authorisation to pursue those wars in the name of its assumed universal values and its so-called "manifest destiny".

The targeted country must have strategic importance in terms of natural resources or geographical location. Using brain power, propaganda is deployed at two levels.

The leader of the targeted country becomes the proverbial dog who must be given a bad name before he is hanged. The population on the other hand is sold a mirage which must be tantalising enough to entice the target nation's intelligentsia and intellectuals to believe their leader stands in the way of them touching that mirage.

The rest of the populace can then be deployed as canon fodder in the fight to domesticate the American mirage.

We have bone witness to the results of these American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Libya and now in Syria. The trouble is that a mirage keeps receding as you approach, justifying a continuous pursuit, a continuous war, continuous killings. It is in the nature of a mirage to keep running away, and it is in America's interest to keep the hope alive that it is possible to domesticate the American illusion if people fight hard enough, have faith in America and believe that it is sacrificing its resources for their own good.

We have witnessed all this scheming in all the blighted countries mentioned earlier. It helps a lot if the people can be reduced to starvation, in which case American philanthropy can be revealed in "food aid" coming from the American people.

(The right hand must know fully what the left hand is doing; modesty in doing charity belongs to Jesus.) The more the destruction of critical local infrastructure, the greater the glory to America, for it must, after the destruction, capture all the contracts to do reconstruction work, for which those who survive and future generations must pay and be forever grateful.

The bombing by the Nato gang of Gaddafi's world's Great Man made Project in Libya by which he wanted to turn the Libyan desert green bears testimony to America's limitless capacity to ruin anything that threatens to diminish its importance in our lives.

The logic is perversely America. A hungry man, they say, is an angry man. And if you want to see an unthinking man look for an angry man. That leaves America to do the thinking for warring people on what's best for their country. A thinking native, a thinking leader in the targeted country, must be eliminated, must get a bad name, if he hasn't earned it, so that there is a reason to hang him.

The script keeps replaying itself in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Think of Sankara. Think of Gaddafi or Lumu- mba.

Wherever capitalism wants to venture and establish its dominance, democracy and human rights have superseded religion as the post-colonial gospel to numb the mind, with the "enlightened" intellectuals heading NGOs and political parties as latter-day missionaries out to administer the drug that sedates the natives the better for American corporations to do their work. A Steve Biko would never be intellectual enough to head one such NGO or political party.

This is the context in which Zimbabweans must view the latest assault on the economy by bringing the country's fertiliser manufacturing companies, Zimbabwe Fertiliser Company and Chemplex Corporation under the dragnet of Zidera and Ofac.

Zimbabwe has been under US and EU sanctions since the turn of the millennium. President Mugabe has been the dog which must be hanged. He has been given all bad names. The economy has been suffocated to the estimated tune of $40 billion.

Zimbabweans of various shades and persuasions have been told the economy has been ruined by the land reform, by the departure of the white farmers from the land, by the deficiency of democracy and human rights. All of this, they are told, reflect a single trait which is peculiarly African — mismanagement. Lately they have added corruption, another peculiarly African disease which never afflicts the white race.

All this has not been effective in getting Zimbabweans to hang Mugabe. Moreso after South Africa under Thabo Mbeki refused a mooted invasion of the country.

When we thought Zimbabwe and the US were making headway in mending relations between the two nations, Obama gives the country a brutal, valedictory backhander as he leaves the White House. He wants to demonstrate to his white masters that he has been a faithful keeper of the George Bush edict, Zidera, against an African country fighting to give economic meaning to the unfinished political struggle for independence.

The ZFC and Chemplex are not an ordinary addition of errant companies to the list of entities America has put under sanctions. Fertiliser is at the heart of the success of Zim-Asset, Zimbabwe's struggle for food self-sufficiency. A genius in the American establishment must finally have realised that so long as Zimbabweans have the land and they can feed themselves, it would be very hard to separate them from Zanu-PF, never mind the El Nino-induced drought, which has hit the entire region. Hit them directly in the stomach.

No man can endure hunger long enough, especially if it hits the family. A hungry man cannot think too far away from the kitchen. That is why it is important to manufacture hunger, to have more angry natives who can't think too far beyond the kitchen and the stomach. That is where those parcels come in hand, rudely marked: USA; Africans must never be well-fed enough to have time to think beyond food and security. Thinking is for those who must rule the world.

What hungry villager thinks about politics and propaganda against his country when his children are starving? They say a hungry man will forget the way to the synagogue.

To target ZFC and Chemplex Corporation for sanctions is to garrote the economy, it is a fatal blow, a coup de grace that was predicted to make "your own people stone you on the streets". Stories about $15 billion missing from Chiadzwa diamonds can only add salt and pepper to a sore wound.

But the Americans still make clean work of their dirty job by deploying your own to work for them. Not only physically but mentally, too, as South Africa seems to have discovered lately.

Zanu-PF and the ANC are the only liberation movements still standing up to foreign encroachment.

The ANC has been complaining lately against the US pushing a regime change agenda through youth training programmes, a strategy which has been deployed in Zimbabwe for a very long time. South Africa seems to have been luckier. Its youth have returned to report that "we suspect what we attended in America is not what we want".

In Zimbabwe our youth come back to head NGos, university and government departments pursuant to the regime change agenda. Their focus is always on leadership and governance, human rights, rule of law and transitional justice.

They have become the masters of democratic rule. You would think all this was incompatible with black economic empowerment. They love what they were taught, what they "attended in America".

In the middle of all this you have Zanu-PF spending more energy fighting itself. Why should America not be brazen about its schemes!