Zimbabwe's Political Opposition Deploys Its Own WMD claim
> May 20, 2008
> By Stephen Gowans
>
> Zimbabwe's political opposition and its Western-sponsored civil society
> allies are concocting stories of an impending genocide to call for
> Western intervention to oust the economic nationalist Zanu-PF government
> of Robert Mugabe. Yet they themselves have used threats of violence to
> destabilize the country to pursue an agenda shaped by and conducive to
> the interests of Western corporations and investors and the white
> settler community.
>
> The opposition had planned to use the March 29 elections to follow the
> color revolution script written in Washington to springboard to power.
> That script called on the opposition to declare victory in elections
> before the first vote was cast, and then to denounce any outcome other
> than a clear opposition victory as evidence of electoral fraud. If the
> opposition failed to prevail at the polls, its supporters were to be
> mobilized to take to the streets to bring down the government, in a
> repeat of previous Western-engineered color revolutions in Serbia,
> Georgia and Ukraine.
>
> On the eve of the election, Ian Makoni, director of opposition leader
> Morgan Tsvangirai's campaign, explained that the Movement for Democratic
> Change (MDC) would avoid the failures of the past.
>
> "The lesson from (the election of) 2002 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 in the streets celebrating when the polls close.
> It can turn into a protest easily. Zimbabweans are angry; they are
> desperate; they are ready to protest. It's the tipping point we are
> planning for." [1]
>
> But when the opposition's charges of vote rigging fell flat as election
> results showed the governing Zanu-PF party losing its majority in the
> assembly and the party's presidential candidate Robert Mugabe trailing
> Tsvangirai in the presidential contest, the edifice on which the MDC's
> color revolution plan was predicated collapsed. If the vote had been
> rigged, Mugabe's party would have sailed to victory. Instead, Zanu-PF
> trailed. The margin separating the two parties, however, was slim,
> revealing the opposition's support to be limited. With Tsvangirai unable
> to command overwhelming support, despite massive Western intervention in
> the election against Mugabe, the opposition needed a way to grab power
> without having to rely on the uncertainties of a run-off election. It
> decided to take a leaf from the book of its US and British patrons,
> inventing a pretext for military intervention on par with the WMD
> fiction used as the basis for US-British intervention in Iraq. Outside
> forces, preferably those of the former colonizer Britain, whose
> corporations still have a large stake in the country, would be called
> upon to intervene militarily to avert an impending genocide and in the
> process, install the MDC as the new government.
>
> Over a month ago, MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti appealed to his
> "brothers and sisters across" Africa not to "wait for dead bodies in the
> streets of Harare." "Intervene now," he demanded. [2] Twelve days later,
> with no sign of an impending genocide, Morgan Tsvangirai called on the
> West to launch a humanitarian intervention. [3] The next day, church
> clerics weighed in with their own warning: "If nothing is done to help
> the people of Zimbabwe from their predicament, we shall soon be
> witnessing genocide similar to that experienced in Kenya, Rwanda,
> Burundi and other hot spots in Africa and elsewhere." [4] Two days
> later, MDC-T (the faction of the party led by Morgan Tsvangirai)
> spokesman Nelson Chamisa warned that "If something isn't done in a few
> days, this country is going to be converted into a genocide zone." [5]
> That was more than three weeks ago. A half a month later and with still
> no looming genocide in sight, Biti sounded the genocide alarm once
> again, calling on Zimbabwe's neighbors to ease Mugabe from power "before
> rivers of dead people start to flow, as they did in Rwanda." [6]
>
> It is true that there has been politically-motivated violence in
> Zimbabwe, but it has occurred on both sides, is political, not ethnic,
> and has led to nowhere near the number of deaths that would even
> remotely qualify as genocide.
>
> The stakes in the election aftermath are high. Violence has erupted on
> the part of some Zanu-PF supporters because they fear the loss of what
> they gained through their revolutionary struggles, and there's no doubt
> that an MDC government would set back the project of investing national
> liberation with real content. That the elections were neither free nor
> fair has only made Zanu-PF supporters more embittered by Zanu-PF's poor
> showing in the elections. Jabulami Sibanda, chairman of the Zimbabwe
> National Liberation War Veterans' Association, has criticized the vote
> for being held "when people were being pushed by hunger and illegal
> sanctions to conduct themselves in a way that could have been
> different." [7] And Zanu-PF itself has challenged the fairness of the
> elections, pointing out that:
>
> o NGOs distributing food threatened to cut off food aid if Zanu-PF won
> the election.
>
> o The sanctions, which will be removed if Zanu-PF is ousted, amount to
> Western blackmail.
>
> o The campaigns of the MDC-T and former Zanu-PF member Simba Makoni were
> financed by foreign governments and corporations.
>
> o Western-financed anti-Zanu-PF radio stations, including Radio SW
> Africa (financed by the US State Department) and the Voice of America's
> Studio 7 stepped up their broadcasts during the election period.
>
> o MDC activists doubled as vote educators working for the US
> government-financed Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network and used their
> position to promote the opposition under the guise of explaining
> electoral procedures. [8]
>
> There's no question there has been massive Western interference in the
> elections. During the election campaign British Prime Minister Gordon
> Brown informed the British Law Society that his government's funding to
> civil society organizations in Zimbabwe opposing the Mugabe government
> had been stepped up. [9] On May 14, 2007 Australia announced it would
> spend $18 million backing critics of Mugabe, two-thirds of which was
> slated to be spent in the run-up to the elections. [10] And this doesn't
> include the much more extensive funding Mugabe's opponents have received
> from the United States, other Western governments, corporate
> foundations, and wealthy individuals.
>
> Western interference has made the post-election period one aptly
> described by Sibanda as "a battle between revolutionaries and
> counter-revolutionaries: Zimbabwean people represented by President
> Mugabe and foreign interests (represented by) the MDC." [11] Under these
> conditions, and especially considering that MDC youth activists have a
> history of using violence to provoke the police, and then to use the
> police response to paint the government as authoritarian and repressive,
> some degree of political violence is inevitable. But is it out of hand?
> And is it one-sided?
>
> The documentation of violence against MDC supporters has been gathered
> by the US Embassy in Harare, which is hardly neutral and has an interest
> in discrediting Zanu-PF to bring its favored vehicle, the MDC, to power.
> Human Rights Watch (HRW), which is dominated by former members of the US
> foreign policy establishment, has also been involved. But even HRW
> acknowledges the violence isn't exclusive to supporters of Zanu-PF.
> "Eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that...MDC supporters had burned
> homes of known Zanu-PF supporters and officials." [12] Louise Arbour,
> the UN's top human rights official, who, in previous jobs has invariably
> sided with the US and Britain, notes that the information she has
> "received suggests an emerging pattern of political violence" that is
> not exclusively inflicted by supporters of Zanu-PF. [13] Kingsley
> Mamabolo, a senior South African official who led the region's observer
> team for the March 29 elections agrees that violence is "taking place on
> both sides," as do human rights and doctors groups in Harare, most of
> which have Western sources of funding. [14] Paul Themba Nyathi, a civil
> rights lawyer and MDC member, says that "Tsvangirai's followers seem to
> be saying to themselves that they can win elections by beating people
> and by using the crudest methods of intimidation." This has largely
> escaped the attention of the media, he adds, "because the big prize is
> still to rid the country of Mugabe." [15] Police arrested 58 opposition
> activists on May 9 on suspicion of setting fire to the homes of Zanu-PF
> members. On May 14, they arrested 50 Zanu-PF activists.
>
> While Mugabe is often portrayed as a monster egging on thugs to beat
> opposition supporters (whereas we'll see below, it is opposition leaders
> who have egged on their followers to use violence), he has spoken out
> against violence. On May 17, he told the country that "Such violence is
> needless and must stop forthwith." He added that "support comes from
> persuasion, not from pugilism. Genuine support for the party cannot come
> through coercion or violence." [16] At the same time, Zanu-PF has
> proposed a joint Zanu-PF-MDC committee to investigate political
> violence. Zanu-PF representative Patrick Chinamasa invited the MDC-T to
> form a joint team "to investigate violence so that we do not end up with
> false allegations." MDC-T spokesman Nelson Chamisa voiced no objection,
> "as long as there was commitment among the parties." [17]
>
> Despite these developments, it's unlikely the opposition's calls for
> military intervention will cease. Last summer, then Archbishop Pius
> Ncube called on Britain to invade. "I think it is justified for Britain
> to raid Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe," he said. "We should do it ourselves
> but there's too much fear. I'm ready to lead the people, guns blazing,
> but the people are not ready." [18]
>
> Former head of the British military General Lord Charles Guthrie
> revealed that the British government had pressed him to consider
> invading Zimbabwe on a number of occasions. Guthrie says he advised
> against an invasion, warning military intervention would backfire. [19]
> But that hasn't stopped the politicos from pressing for a military
> assault. Tony Blair's chief of staff for 10 years, Jonathan Powell,
> argued in a Guardian article in November for British military
> intervention in Zimbabwe on humanitarian grounds. In the article, Powell
> defends interventions in Yugoslavia and Iraq and argues for a British
> invasion of Zimbabwe. "Are we really saying we just have to wait while
> (Mugabe's) people suffer?" [20] If Powell were genuinely concerned about
> the suffering of Zimbabwe's people, he would press for the removal of
> sanctions, the principal cause of Zimbabweans' suffering.
>
> Basildon Peta, an opposition journalist, also makes the case for Western
> intervention. "The philosophy that African states should take the lead
> in Zimbabwe is bankrupt," he argues. "Most of these entities would not
> survive without Western subsidies. We Zimbabweans have reconciled
> ourselves to the fact that our fellow Africans will do nothing for us in
> our hour of need. In desperation we have to look to our former
> colonizers for help." [21]
>
> The MDC claims to be the party of democratic change, founded on the
> non-violent principles of Ghandi and King, but its behaviour belies its
> claims. No sooner had the party been born, with Britain acting as
> mother, father and midwife, than it was threatening political violence.
> "What we would like to tell Mugabe is please go peacefully," said leader
> Morgan Tsvangirai. "If you don't want to go peacefully, we will remove
> you violently." [22]
>
> When Tsvangirai lost an internal vote on whether to boycott or
> participate in Senate elections, he claimed that the leader of the party
> was not bound by the majority's decision. What ensued showed the party's
> non-violent credentials to be as bogus as its democratic principles. An
> internecine war flared between the two factions, featuring beatings,
> hijackings, posters stripped from street polls, and the party's director
> of security thrown down a stairwell. [23]
>
> Leader of the alternative MDC faction, Arthur Mutambara, is equally
> prepared to use violence to achieve political goals. "I'm going to
> remove Robert Mugabe, I promise you, with every tool at my disposal," he
> told supporters. "We're going to use every tool we can get to dislodge
> this regime. We're not going to rule out or in anything - the sky's the
> limit." [24] Were Mutambara the leader of an opposition group opposed to
> a British or US ally, he would find himself on the US and EU official
> lists of terrorists.
>
> Neither is the Roman Catholic Church averse to violence, as already seen
> in former Archbishop Pius Ncube's desire to lead the people, guns
> blazing. "In an Easter (2007) message pinned to church bulletin boards
> around the country, Zimbabwe's Roman Catholic Church bishops called on
> President Robert G. Mugabe to leave office or face 'open revolt.'" [25]
>
> Ncube contemns Zimbabweans as cowards. "The idea of dying for your
> country was something valuable in Western countries. We haven't grasped
> the idea of laying down your life. The people are cowards. I was hoping
> the politicians would do it but it seems that don't have any
> convictions. We must torment and harass the government. Zimbabweans are
> a bit lethargic and we find ourselves caught with our pants down." [26]
> Zimbabweans are hardly cowards. Many fought in the war to liberate
> Zimbabwe from British colonial rule and Rhodesian apartheid. They are
> understandably uninterested in rallying behind Ncube and others who are
> leading the charge to restore Britain to its former dominant position in
> Zimbabwe.
>
> Finally, it should be noted that MDC-T spokesman Nelson Chamisa, whose
> colleague Tendai Biti was crying wolf over an impending genocide a
> little over one week later, warned three days before the elections that
> if Zanu-PF won, Kenya would look like a picnic. [27]
>
> Zimbabwe's government has been far more lax in its tolerance of violent
> dissent than Western governments would ever be. In the US or Britain, a
> political leader who threatened to use violence to oust the government,
> appealed for foreign military intervention and economic warfare, and
> accepted funding from hostile foreign powers, would be branded a
> terrorist and traitor and locked up. Not surprisingly, there are some in
> Zimbabwe urging the government to take a harder line. Zimbabwe Lawyers
> for Justice has importuned the government to declare a state of
> emergency. "Zimbabwe is at war with foreign elements using local
> puppets," says the organization's chief advocate Martin Dinha. "Western
> countries are known to fuel violence, civil war and strife." The
> government, Dinha says, should "consider the possibility of declaring a
> state of emergency to quell the disturbances." [28]
>
> Clearly, the opposition, with the massive backing of Western
> governments, corporate foundations and wealthy individuals, intent on
> coming to power to reverse Zanu-PF's economically nationalist policies,
> has no qualms about using violence, nor deception, to carry out its
> Quisling aims. Tsvangirai, Biti, Chamisa and their civil society allies
> are prepared to use a lie as great as the WMD deception of their British
> and US patrons for the same end: to justify military intervention in
> order to put the West firmly in charge. Where Zanu-PF has used violence,
> has been in the struggle against oppression. Where the opposition has
> threatened and carried out violence has been in the pursuit of an agenda
> shaped by and conducing to the interests of Western economic elites.
> There is no looming genocide in Zimbabwe, only the threat of Western
> military intervention whose justification is a lie concocted by fifth
> columnists doing their masters' bidding.
>
> 1. The Guardian (UK), March 28, 2008.
> 2. The Independent (UK), April 9, 2008.
> 3. The Times (London), in The Ottawa Citizen, April 22, 2008.
> 4. Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishop's
> Conference and the Zimbabwe Council of Churches. The Independent (UK),
> April 23, 2008.
> 5. The New York Times, April 26, 2008.
> 6. The Washington Post, May 16, 2008.
> 7. TalkZimbabwe.com, April 4, 2008.
> 8. The Herald (Zimbabwe) May 3, 2008.
> 9. The New African, April 2008.
> 10. Reuters May 14, 2007.
> 11. The Herald (Zimbabwe) April, 2, 2008.
> 12. Human Rights Watch, April 25, 2008.
> 13. The New York Times, April 28, 2008.
> 14. The New York Times, May 10, 2008.
> 15. TalkZimbabwe.com, April 28, 2008.
> 16. Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe), May 18, 2008.
> 17. The Herald (Zimbabwe), May 20, 2008.
> 18. The Sunday Times (UK), July 1, 2007.
> 19. AFP, November 21, 2007.
> 20. The Guardian (UK), November 18, 2007.
> 21. The Independent (UK), September 20, 2008.
> 22. BBC, September 30, 2000.
> 23. The New York Times, May 5, 2007.
> 24. Times Online, March 5, 2006.
> 25. The New York Times, April 9, 2007.
> 26. The Guardian (UK), April 2, 2007.
> 27. The Herald (Zimbabwe), March 27, 2008.
> 28. TalkZimbabwe.com, May 15, 2008.
>