Reason Wafawarova on Thursday
The term eliminationism was coined by American political scientist Daniel Goldhagen in his 1996 book titled “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”, and it refers to a political ideology that is deep rooted in eliminative materialism – the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some, or all of the mental states posited by common sense, do not actually exist.

Eliminationism in politics is the belief that one’s political opponents are “a cancer on the body politic that must be excised — either by separation from the public at large, through censorship or by outright extermination — in order to protect the purity of the nation,” according to Phyllis Bernard (2009).

We have in recent years seen the egregious effects of imperialist eliminationism, ranging from the supposed success story of Timor Leste, the horrendous elimination of the Gaddafi family and the Jamahiriya practitioners in Libya, the deadly overthrowing and murdering of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, as well as its aftermath so-called sectarian violence (to be discussed later in this essay), and the dismal failure of Western interventionism in Afghanistan, where the elimination of the Taliban has proven to be impractical.

We still have afflictive memories of the gruesome military acts of NATO in Yugoslavia, where Western consciences and interests caused a huge refugee problem and destabilised the entire region in the name of exterminating communism.

Closer to home we have excruciating recollections of the Rwanda genocide of 1994, and from that experience we have a clearer image of the danger that comes with intolerance and eliminationist politics.

We cannot forget the chilling reports of war rapes in Sudan’s Darfur between 2003 and 2010, the Cambodian genocide between 1975 and 1979, the carcinogenic Operation Condor in Latin America between 1973 and 1985, the catastrophic atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the Auschwitz concentration camp death marches between 1944 and 1945, the barbarous British concentration camps for the Mau Mau freedom fighters in Kenya between 1952 and 1960, and the Boer Wars of 1880 to 1881 and 1889 to 1902.

In the name of democratising the lesser peoples of this world, and that of fighting the overly sensationalised scourge of terrorism, the right wing rhetoric on eliminationism has been on the increase since September 11, 2001. The anti-terror war has become a doctrine so powerful that one can be deemed an accomplice for perceived failure in adherence.

We are told the Americans had every right to invade and ravage Afghanistan in pursuit of deadly terrorists that needed extermination, and that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a legitimate cause in view of the sacrosanct need for the West to democratise that part of the world.

Now Iraq is burning to ashes with the deadly inroads of ISIS militants reversing whatever it is the imperialist eliminationists ever established after the overthrowing and murdering of Saddam Hussein.

Libya has virtually become a failed state run by numerous rival militia groups with a hapless government in Tripoli absolutely inert. Memories of NATO atrocities across Libya in 2011 are still fresh in our minds, and clearly the elimination of Gaddafi has only achieved untold anarchy in the country.

Democracy in its Aristotelian sense is all about running matters of governance in a non-eliminationist way, adopting a tolerant approach where competing political ideas are packaged and put to the vote in search of majority opinion.

It is sad when we see our political activists in the MDC-T declaring opponents of Morgan Tsvangirai persona non grata, and forcing them out of the opposition party purely on the basis that they happen to criticise the dear leader on aspects of his leadership qualities. It is even sadder when Tsvangirai himself condones the unwarranted purging of his critics, and it is heart-rending when the man actively encourages that repudiating behaviour from his loyalists.

It cannot be admirable for ZANU-PF to seek to defeat the MDC or any opposition party by employing the politics of elimination. It is not a sign of patriotism for anyone in ZANU-PF to incite Zimbabweans into the politics of eliminationism where parties other than the ruling party are viewed as a threat to the security of the country, or as a cancer that is fatally detrimental to the national good. We must thank heavens that Zimbabwe has no culture of banning opposition political parties.

If indeed any political party is a national threat to the security of the country, the democratic process presses upon us the need to expose the detrimental values of that party, so that the party is rendered unelectable in any genuine democratic election. The route of physical elimination of members of such a party is not only undemocratic, but also a huge risk to the political stability of the country.

We have unrepentant eliminationists within our political landscape across the divide, and this is why hoodlums loyal to Tsvangirai believe that violence in defence of their leader is a noble part of the struggle for democracy.

The media tells us that a senior ZANU-PF official recently urged some youths of that party to eliminate members of a reported rival camp “so that we remain with only one camp” The leader in question lamentably reminisced the forgotten old days of a banned pesticide by the name gamatox, urging excitable youths to do to their opponents within the party what the deadly gamatox used to do to weevils.

In case any among the youths had ideas to go against the eliminationist advice, the media tells us that the ZANU-PF leader warned that the party had sophisticated eyes to see the secret thoughts of everyone – threatening would-be offenders with exposure of their bedroom secrets if need arose. Even at their very worst, ancient monarchies never sank to levels of such baseness, and one hopes this was an unfortunate case of misquoting on the part of the media.

Assuming that the media reports in question are meritorious, and the reports have so far not been disputed or refuted, the real worry is where this kind of politics will take the nation.

We cannot run our country by eliminating those whose political affiliations and values vary from ours. That is exactly what gave this world Adolf Hitler, what gave us the Rwanda genocide, and what we ourselves fought against in our war of liberation against the murderous Ian Smith regime.

Those among our political leaders who may happen to think that the youths are at their disposal for the exercise of politics of barbarism must have a rethink of the deadly impact of their primitiveness.

Our young politically aspiring people must be nurtured into tolerant democratic beings whose role in the politics of the country is to win the hearts of the majority, not to eliminate political enemies and to coerce the majority into submission.

Our people are very receptive to sound political ideas, and that is why they supported our liberation fighters all way through to the attainment of our national independence, and that is why they overwhelmingly support our land reform programme, and our economic empowerment policy. They do not need to see the elimination of fellow citizens, or to be reminded of possible deadly consequences in the event that they fail to tow a certain party political line.

We are after a country that stands against eliminationist and exterminationist politics, a country built on solid preventive measures against this necrosis.

Where preventive action has failed we have seen some countries resorting to secession, intervention or punishment. It is undesirable for us to pursue any of such routes.

Things like political youth wings at the service of violence-prone political leaders are simply tyrannical or non-democratic political institutions that only serve to perpetuate the incidence of eliminationist politics. We need democratic political institutions that are respected by all players in our political landscape, for only these can assure us as a nation that the incidence of eliminationist politics is radically minimised, or even eliminated.

Morgan Tsvangirai must not enforce his opinion by employing the services of intolerant chanting youth militias.
Such youths, however many they may be, are not and cannot be a sign of democratic popularity. They are a sad indictment on the democratic process, a deplorable sign of an unthinking braggart obsessed with the idea of the politics of coercion.

It is quite disconcerting to see people like Trust Mamombe and other well-meaning youngsters in desolate regret over the error of ever having chosen to work with Tsvangirai. A true democrat would enhance the value of the CVs of those that work with him, not taint their future by messing up their reputation through ill-thought political conduct.

We hear some in ZANU-PF want to preserve the party by ensuring that there are no elements that will destroy the party from within. That fear is understandable, but we read in it the dreadful message that the party may no longer be so sure about its own principles and ideological values so much that its leadership is as insecure as to warrant the belief that a lone intruder can single-handedly bring down the 50 year-old foundational pillars of the revolutionary party. That state of affairs, if assumed to be true, is less than impressive, even extremely dangerous.

In thinking about a preventive regime against eliminationist politics, we must take into perspective features about modernity itself and about the modern state. We cannot run a modern state solely on values enshrined in the history of our liberation struggle, much as those values must continue to inspire our contemporary thought processes.

We must never lose sight of the structural relationships of our ethnic composition as a country, and how as one nation we need to ensure that such relationships are in no way violated or abused by unthinking politicians who do not see beyond personal ambition.

The international context of our country must never be taken for granted. We are indeed a sovereign country, but sovereignty must not mislead us into some renegade status. We cannot successfully establish a preventive regime against eliminationist politics if we consider all others across the world irrelevant to our internal affairs.

There are certain beliefs about certain groups of people, and some kind of understandings of politics and society that lead to political leaders and their followers to think that the elimination of certain people is desirable. Whether this manifests through MDC hoodlums or through gamatox sentiments within ZANU-PF, such beliefs must not have any room in a country boasting 34 years of democratic rule.
We must establish a truly democratic political culture that will enable us to deal with proximate factors producing the political opportunity and will to turn eliminationist desires into eliminationist onslaughts. When a political leader wants his political rivals physically eliminated, that leader must simply find no takers for his primitive thoughts.

Our youths must never be political tools for political leaders with savage ambition. Intolerance and violence must not even be mentioned among our political leaders.

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

REASON WAFAWAROVA is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia

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