Reason Wafawarova: Worshipping at the shrine of Empire

through the ensuring of the privacy and confidentiality so desired.
We have been bombarded with juicy details from the whistleblower website WikiLeaks and it is not so surprising that the majority of people following the revelations are sunk into who said what about whom, and not many are too occupied with the implications of who met who and why they did so.
It is neither a leak nor news that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai lacks the mental capacity to impress as a man of classical intelligence or even cleverness.
We surely do not need Nelson Chamisa or Obert Gutu to leak it to Zimbabweans that Morgan Tsvangirai is “inept and indecisive,” or Tendai Biti to tell us that the PM’s “idiocy is breathtaking”.
It was not an invention or a new revelation when Christopher Dell described the Prime Minister as “a flawed figure, not readily open to advice, indecisive and with questionable judgment.”
Neither was Dell playing the rocket scientist when he described Morgan Tsvangirai as “an indispensable element for opposition success . . . but possibly an albatross around their necks once in power. In short . . . Zimbabwe needs him, but should not rely on his executive abilities to lead the country’s recovery.”
There is no need to admire or begrudge Roy Bennet for stating a widely held view that Morgan Tsvangirai “does what the last person tells him to do”. Even Job Sikhala thinks the same.
It is not news that President Robert Mugabe is advanced in years and that the issue of his succession is a matter of politicking, backstabbing, backbiting, lobbying and factional squabbles within Zanu-PF. No sane person can reasonably claim any semblance of credit for “leaking” this public knowledge.
Anyone who believes that it takes a US diplomatic cable to reveal that Simba Makoni and his Mavambo Kusile Dawn outfit were the work and product of Zanu-PF officials has no business in the politics of Zimbabwe, or if they claim to have any such business, then they need to have their heads examined.
A party with Simba Makoni, Kudzai Mbudzi, Ibbo Mandaza, Dumiso Dabengwa in its leadership cannot be described correctly without mentioning the name Zanu-PF. Of course there are others who still remained within the ranks of Zanu-PF while their hearts and resources went with new wind at MKD. They only have the cowardice to blame for not following when Makoni pioneered the way.
What must be interrogated is the actual intention of those who most likely considered themselves auspicious to be accorded what they must have considered highly propitious opportunities to meet with American officials.
What must be interrogated is why Gutu, Chamisa, Biti, and Bennet pretend to respect Morgan Tsvangirai when they posture before the Zimbabwean public, and yet they conspire to denigrate the man in the cover of darkness, once they stand before the Americans and presumably other Western outsiders too.
There are no surprises that MDC officials can oblige to the convoking of US officials with the obedience of sheep to the shepherd. But they are expected to be submitting names of Zanu-PF officials they want sanctioned to death, pleading for more murderous sanctions on us all, or to be pontificating on how best to destroy “the Mugabe regime,” when they are not asking for ever increasing sums of money to pursue “the struggle for democracy,” or asking the Americans to invade Zimbabwe.
These are acts quite synonymous with the MDC-T DNA, to borrow Biti’s complicated phrase.
What is surprising is that the MDC officials would consider it prudent to hail Tsvangirai when facing the Zimbabwean public while vilifying the man to the Americans.
From the responses of Nelson Chamisa we must take heart in learning that he and his friends of darkness were in fact deceiving the Americans, not the Zimbabwean public. Does Chamisa really believe Zimbabweans bought his gimmicks? It is quite unfair to be vilified in secret by those that always and only hail you when you are present.
It must be relieving to learn that Chamisa says our PM is not the Coney portrayed in these most despicable leaked US diplomatic cables.
He is just our own burden to whom pretentious honour must be rendered by power mongering politicians who have no problem hailing the debility of the PM as breathtaking astuteness, at least whenever in front of the PM himself.
What must be interrogated without any sense of hesitation is the audacious treachery by Zanu-PF officials who chose to join the likes of Chamisa, Biti, Gutu, Bennet and others to worship at the shrine of the Empire, loosening and opening up like a harlot to the man of the purse – shamelessly confiding to very junior US officials what they should have reserved for debate and discussion within the structures of their Zanu-PF party.
This writer refuses to accept any explanation that tries to justify the behaviour of renegade revolutionaries that have the temerity to attend Politburo meetings alongside night stints with American officials. There are only two ways to describe the Zanu-PF officials implicated in the WikiLeaks. They are either perfect idiots with an appalling sense of judgement, or they are extremely dangerous traitors who must be viewed as totally undesirable to the cause of the revolution that Zanu-PF identifies with.
Why would anyone want to attenuate the leadership strength of a revolution he says he defends, especially doing so with the very enemies of the same revolution? The war against the West’s regime change agenda cannot be fought and won fronting traitors and foolish men. Zanu-PF has to understand this as a matter of survival.
Recently Ambassador Charles Ray was trying to establish a grip on the Zimbabwean youths by holding widespread meetings with our young people in the name of a fact finding mission. When Minister Saviour Kasukuwere voiced concern that these meetings were being held outside the knowledge of his Youth Ministry, Charles Ray complained bitterly that his access to the youths should not be tempered with, arguing that his freedom to associate and travel was being violated.
When this writer asked Charles Ray if it was part of international diplomatic practice to organise and mobilise citizens of a host country for any purpose in the name of freedom of association and movement, Ambassador Ray had this to say:
“Reason: Actually, if you look at the history of diplomacy from its beginnings, it has been accepted that Ambassadors will talk to everyone in a country. It’s only in dictatorships that limits are imposed.”
This writer then asked if it was imaginable for an Iranian Ambassador to go around the United States talking to everyone about how Iran reserves every right to develop its nuclear energy with no one questioning, even suggesting Iran had every right to have nuclear weapons if it so wished.
Ambassador Ray answered well in saying there were no diplomatic relations between the US and Iran, adding that if there were any, then indeed the Iranian ambassador would be free to do such advocacy in the US.
This writer then asked if Ambassador Ray was talking about the same United States that denied the Iranian President permission to visit the World Trade Centre on September 20 2007.
Charles Ray answered: “NYPD denied access for reasons of security and construction. Might have been a lame excuse but it’s better than using thugs to do it, don’t you think?” Of course Ambassador Ray does not want to believe that the New York Police Department employs thugs in uniform. Only “rogue states” like Zimbabwe do, as we are often told.
Is it not true that US Ambassadors are deployed to play world leader roles in their host countries? Is this not why Charles Ray would want to shape the thinking and opinion of our politicians, our youths, our women and our civil society? Yes even our soldiers! Are our people any wiser at it?
This writer watched a video in which one good friend who should have left youth advocacy work a long time ago on account of his now prohibiting age; was profusely pleading with Ambassador Ray to “provide to us the youth of Zimbabwe support and money so we can implement a lot of the good work we want to emulate from the United States.”
This writer once co-founded a youth organisation with this good friend who now pleads for Ray’s US funds so that our youths can “emulate” the Americans. We never talked like that in 1998 when we approached the likes of Kellogg Foundation for funding of youth projects. We were never inspired to emulate the diktats of the Empire.
Now we have our civic society, our politicians, our women, our bankers, our media gurus, and even our soldiers lining up to worship at the shrine of the Empire. Why must we wonder when the Americans get it right in treating us like the fools they believe we are?
The primary challenge facing the people of the world is decent survival and the imperialists are doing a good job of it at the expense of lunatics like the Zimbabweans exposed by WikiLeaks, or the toothless and cowardly African Union that watches Libya burn to ashes.
Former head of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), General Lee Butler wrote that throughout his long military career he was “among the most avid of these keepers of the faith in nuclear weapons,” but it is now his “burden to declare with all of the conviction I can muster that in my judgement they served us extremely ill.”
He further asks: “By what authority do succeeding generations of leaders in the nuclear-weapons states usurp the power to dictate the odds of continued life on our planet? Most urgently, why does such breathtaking audacity persist at a moment when we should stand trembling in the face of our folly and united in our commitment to abolish its most deadly manifestation?”
Now the military might of the United States and other nuclear-weapon states is directed at “rogue states” of the so-called third world. Our people are awed into submission with some even admiring the ruthless military might of the West.
We have seen some Africans ululating and hailing the NATO bombings in Libya, and some Zimbabweans have gone to the extent of publicly wishing for NATO bombs to fall on Harare – rhapsodising that such an eventuality would bring with it “democracy and freedom.” We are viewed as insane conspiracists when we write in aggressive attack against imperialism. Charles Ray suggested this writer “could moderate your words on occasion,” and that “the extreme rhetoric is unnecessary”.
Taking of moderates; we now know the moderates that the United States is working with in Zimbabwe, thanks to WikiLeaks. These are our class of politicians who always and only sing praises to Prime Minister Tsvangirai and some to President Mugabe when they want to survive in the tough political terrain in Zimbabwe. Yet they always and only deride the same leaders when they think such posturing will please those that sit at the throne of the shrine of the Empire; even tremblingly doing so before very little men posted to man the embassies of the United States.
It looks like some of the most rewarded politicians were at the forefront of deriding their own leadership in the comfort of supposed water proof privacy – privacy now mischievously hacked by Comrade Julian Assange, much to the delight of us who now pride ourselves for never ever having had to meet with the Americans; something we confidently now claim is a result of our resolute principle and integrity. Who can blame us?
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

l Reason Wafawarova is a political writer.

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