Meet Bruce Wharton, the Sophist!

my turnSOME modesty prevents me from feeling good about how fast I am learning books at this one apex institution of higher education in the country. So, in studying foundational political philosophy or theory, we learn about a breed of controversial thinkers called Sophists who existed some four to five centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ. They were Greek philosophers and, more specifically, nomadic teachers and itinerant intellectuals who taught young wealthy Greeks what is referred to as arete (virtue or excellence), which at first referred to courage and physical strength but was latter politicised in democratic Athens to apply to the abilities of rhetorical persuasion.

It is said that it is at this point that the first Western lawyers were born.
Yet, for all the contributions to the democratic movement and political thought, the Sophists were reviled, not least for their charging for the service of teaching.
“… the term sophistry has come to signify the deliberate use of fallacious reasoning, intellectual charlatanism and moral unscrupulousness,” George Duke of the Deakin University in Australia explains.

I have used the term sophism, and its derivatives, especially on this latter sense, a couple of times in relation to people like US President Barack Obama and even one Morgan Tsvangirai (and perhaps I misapplied it here).

All the same, we have seen that Obama, who is noted for his oratory and art of arguing, is a perfect sophist as he pursues, or rather conforms to, US policies.
(Remember how he used the occasion of his receiving a Nobel Peace Prize to incredibly talk about just wars?)
Obama’s countryman here, Bruce Wharton, the US Ambassador, is cut from the same cloth of sophism and sophistry.

Maybe it is because he has to defend a dishonest, difficult, and ultimately racist policy that his country pursues against Zimbabwe.
That policy is anchored on hostility defined by sanctions that the US has maintained since 2001, which it imposed on Zimbabwe on the ostensible grounds that Zimbabwe had democratic deficits, which America as the “policeman of the world”, couldn’t ignore.

The fact is that America imposed sanctions to effect regime change after the ruling party Zanu-PF and President Mugabe pursued the historical and self-determining policy of land reform.

The US, and other Western countries that adopted similar stances, did so on behalf of, and in solidarity with, former coloniser Britain, which was the biggest loser of the reversal of the racist land tenure systems.
So our Wharton daily is faced with uncomfortable questions over US’ hostile disposition.

He goes sophistic, immediately.
Three months ago, it emerged that the US was tightening the screws in its application of sanctions against Zimbabwe to the extent of barring humanitarian donations by private US citizens to Zimbabwe.
He denied the fact.

He went further to incredibly show us how America so loved the people of Zimbabwe, except those on its official sanctions lists.
“The 106 Zimbabweans with whom Americans may not do business nor give donations are still on the US targeted sanctions list. We still seek to support and do business with the other 12 999 894 Zimbabweans.”
How impressive!
How dishonest!
How immoral!

To demonstrate Wharton’s sophistry, one has to go back to an interview that Wharton did with the now defunct pirate radio station SW Radio Africa in July last year.
He said: “Well there’s (sic) two broad sets of targeted measures, or targeted sanctions that affect Zimbabwe. One is the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act often called

ZIDERA, which basically instructs American representatives to the international financial institutions to oppose new loan facilities or debt-forgiveness for Zimbabwe until such time as the country returns to the rule of law, respects human rights and has credible elections.

“So that is a congressional, that’s actually a law, something that our Congress will have to examine and consider about whether or not it’s time to eliminate that or alter that or continue that. The other big set are these targeted individual restrictions on 121 people and 71 entities, mostly farms and companies owned by the 121 people which, the bottom line of those is that that executive order, those executive orders, make it illegal for Americans to do business with those people or those entities and it restricts the ability of those people to travel to the United States.

“It doesn’t make it impossible but it restricts their ability. So those are the two big sets of sanctions policies on Zimbabwe.”
The greatest dishonesty is that Wharton claims that America loves 12 999 894 Zimbabweans yet America bars the Government of Zimbabwe, which represents the same people, from accessing new loan facilities or debt-forgiveness from multilateral institutions “until such time as the country returns to the rule of law, respects human rights and has credible elections”.

It is known that these values are only applicable in the case where Zanu-PF loses.
So the Zanu-PF-led Government has not been able to, and will not be able to, access facilities until the US is satisfied, or more specifically, achieves regime change in Zimbabwe.
Charlatan Bruce Wharton, like other sophists before him and back at home, usually hold up the “bad guys” on the lists to deflect attention from the real sanctions that affect the 12 999 894 Zimbabweans.

In another dangerous show of immorality and charlatanism, the US has been using grassroots projects and funding to try and hoodwink 12 999 894 Zimbabweans believing that the US is for the welfare of ordinary people.

The trick is that the person getting a scholarship or a village or community getting a water project or health facility will not think badly of the US and the sanctions that the Government talks about.

Which is what Wharton sought to achieve when he said during a tour of the USAid-funded Mutema banana project in Chipinge West that, “Zimbabwe is a great country with potential to build its own good future . . . but the problem lies in the policy and decision makers.”

He said, “… my country has continued to support Zimbabwe through assistance in agriculture, health, economic growth, education and other key areas, as well as humanitarian areas.”
Western countries have been conveniently mentioning the donations they have made to Zimbabwe after they imposed sanctions, which they hope compensate, in the eyes of the people, their curtailing of Government’s capacity to help its own people.

These projects may as well constitute such activities as those carried out by the so-called “Dirty Dozen”, who may have been too naïve or collusive in the undermining of Zimbabwe through the innocuous-looking “self-help projects”.
And after the blow-up over the “Dirty Dozen”, Wharton took to his familiar sophistic horse.

Asked about the so-called “Dirty Dozen” last week, Wharton said: “Dirty Dozen was a Hollywood movie released 30 years ago and is fiction.”
And in a Facebook note addressed to us, his “friends at Zimpapers”, Wharton said that the activities that he was doing, which had so much raised stink, were “just as Zimbabwean diplomats in Washington seek to meet with and understand the perspectives of members of the US, Congress …”
Surely?

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