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RADAR
It’s good manners to start at home. Ibbo, Dr Ibbo Mandaza please! This one came as indeed a shocker. We want to pray that it is wholly untrue, that the good doctor was quoted maliciously out of context and content. Let the people judge.

We encountered the article on Newzimbabwe.com. The bold headline declared: “We must ban Sadc, AU observers, they are not credible — Ibbo Mandaza.”

He was reportedly speaking at his think-tank, Sapes where he railed against members of the Sadc Electoral Observer Council who were meeting various stakeholders in the country. In short he said Africans can’t guarantee democracy, only whites are objective.

“There is a bunch of Sadc observers who are here making very profound statements on arrival,” fulminated Ibbo.

“Should we trust observers, or should we ban observers? The Sadc and AU observer missions have been a disaster and if it were not for the Commonwealth observer mission in 2002 and EU, it might be a different narrative in this country.”

He asked rhetorically; “Should we have observers only who are credible and therefore objective than partisan ones which are likely to be the case with the AU and Sadc? They should be disqualified from observing.”

One doesn’t have to belong to Zanu-PF to be disgusted by this slavish self-loathing. For how many pieces of silver Ibbo just to keep SAPES afloat. A whole continent is biased against your preferred horse by merely being African and black?

Let’s go step by step. First, If Africans can’t guarantee free and fair election as rated by white Europeans, who needs that standard in Africa? Who owns it? To what end?

Ibbo seems to imagine that democracy is something that walks on feet, far more than what he enjoys along with the rest of us. Is he speaking from Europe or a cave? Is this his first time to speak? Has anything ever happened to him before for speaking his mind? What does he want to say which he can’t because there is no democracy? And he is a doctor like Grace Mugabe!

Second, proposing a ban on AU and Sadc election observers sounds like the very antithesis of democracy. ED has instead said all those interested in observing Zimbabwe’s elections later this year are welcome. “We have nothing to hide,” he said. Mandaza and Grace square.

Third, the adage “charity begins at home” is very profound. Make friends first at home before you seek to cajole foreigners who already have contempt for you because your race were their slaves and they still view you as a monkey anyway. It is foolish to pine for a utopian democracy which has no application in the entire continent.

Zimbabwe must integrate with Africa first before it can seek to be European. We thought Ibbo was better than Grace!

Finally, while Ibbo’s white saints might make noise about democracy, they are more concerned about economics for now. That’s why they have embraced ED; it wasn’t just the AU and Sadc. And they are not ignorant of what happened, but Britain (Commonwealth Britain) was the first to despatch an emissary to congratulate ED, not to spite Mugabe, but because there are economic matters more vital than politics of democracy.

We expected Ibbo to see things more profoundly than Grace. Instead he has just validated Grace’s doctorate. Wherever he obtained his, same fanana African academic!

Televised debate

It’s Nelson Chamisa again. Mouth open, mind shut. He said he was the inheritor of the Tsvangirai legacy. So far he hasn’t disappointed, only getting messier and dangerously devious as a politician. At this rate, he will leave election observers confused. Perhaps that’s a tactic. But first the challenge.

The new MDC-T leader this week challenged President Mnangagwa to what the NewsDay glorified as a new trend in Africa, a televised live presidential debate. Perhaps getting puffed up due to sycophantic cheering from his Orwellian sheep, Chamisa declared ED was too small for him.

He asked him to bring along Vice President Kembo Mohadi and Buhera MP Joseph Chinotimba to help him.

Needless to say Chamisa didn’t state what issues he had for debate, why they needed a public spectacle, who the other interlocutors would be. Why should a whole President of the Republic reduce himself to the student activism of Chamisa?

What Zimbabweans are waiting for are MDC-T policies, not childish fantasies about turning Harare into a mammoth brothel he calls Las Vegas.

Turning closer to his home turf, Chamisa acknowledged MDC-T councillors were corrupt. That’s no revelation. It’s a public scandal that people tend to downplay to spite Zanu-PF. The shock is that in the same breath, Chamisa said his party had approved a 20 percent quota for youth candidates in the next elections.

It’s the same populism which gave us the current crop of overnight rags to riches councillors. The approach in other jurisdictions is that councillors, MPs and other public officials are elected for their philanthropic service to society.

They are people who have made it in life on their own, not job-seekers or students who have no experience in anything. What public service can such a person offer when he/she doesn’t have a home and can’t feed himself? These are the roots of corruption Mr Chamisa. It’s important to use your brain sometimes, even as you fantasise about life at State House. That shouldn’t be a priority for a leader who wants to serve.

Promoting violence

Chamisa told aspiring candidates in his party to shun violence, asserting incredibly that the MDC-T was a party of “excellence” made up of “democrats, doves and peace ambassadors”.

That should have made sense had he not then immediately jumped to provide cover for violence himself. Continuing the legacy and traditions of his predecessor, Chamisa said his party had been infiltrated by Zanu-PF to cause violence. Zanu-PF was deploying agents to attend his party meetings and rallies to besmirch the MDC-T’s name, he said.

“They (Zanu-PF) are planting their people, some come wearing MDC-T T-shirts, while others try to influence our members to engage in violence,” declared Chamisa.

“They are agents provocateurs for the purpose of labelling our party a violent one.”

Recall that “agent provocateur” is how he described fellow vice president Thokozani Khupe after she was attacked by party thugs in Bulawayo.

Even the most credulous election observer won’t swallow this. But that’s not the point. If Zanu-PF had such power to influence, wouldn’t it be more fruitful to influence MDC-T supporters to joint its ranks than to cause violence?

Chamisa’s claims run contrary to the accounts of senior party members past and current such as Khupe, her driver Witness Dube, Obert Gutu, Trudy Stevenson, Elton Mangoma and Welshman Ncube who have tasted the wrath of MDC-T hooligans going by the moniker Order of the Vanguard.

It is a terror militia which foreign election observers must investigate before they worry about exaggerated claims about the peril inherent in legal instruments like POSA and AIPPA. We suspect the fear is that POSA could be used to neutralise Chamisa’s militia.

If POSA had been so pernicious Chamisa would be behind bars for hate speech. Here is an example from the same meeting: he claimed the MDC-T was different from Zanu-PF because it elevates young people while Zanu-PF persecutes them.

“In Zanu-PF they do generational genocide like what they did to G40.”

We would expect tempered language from a lawyer, not incendiary rhetoric. We hope the election observers have their ears and eyes open to see who is provoking and inciting violence, well before there is a date.

A leopard loves its spots, white is a special race

The South African Parliament voted by a wide margin last week to expropriate land without compensation pursuant to its variant of Zimbabwe’s land reform as part of “radical economic transformation” being championed by the African National Congress.

The motion has the full support of the ANC leader, President Cyril Ramaphosa. It was spearheaded by Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema. It was opposed by the white Democratic Alliance.

So far debate has been raging around the implications of the motion. It’s typically an emotive one. The South African Constitution and the ANC’s Freedom Charter are the two reference bibles on what can or cannot be done.

For the few white farmers who control 80 percent the land, there is a third and more potent reference point: Zimbabwe is being used as a scarecrow of why giving or surrendering or losing land to Africans (Mandaza’s nemesis) would be a disaster, because they don’t know how to use it.

All along President Ramaphosa has been trying to be as Mr Nice Guy as possible, saying there won’t be a jambanja to a sceptical, but taunting white world waiting to see if he can be trusted to repeat a Marikana if land hungry poor South Africans heeded Malema’s message to “grab” white farms.

He has promised a peaceful process, that there won’t be a smash and grab, that his government will not allow a process which destabilises the economy, agricultural productivity and jobs or scares away foreign investors.

We have been here. It’s the same demands and conditions set for Zimbabwe at the 1998 Donors Conference. Nothing has changed, true to the adage that a leopard does not change its spots. It’s a language whites love to hear, even when we thought they had learnt a thing or two from what happened in Zimbabwe.

South Africa must learn this: It was never violence for its own sake in Zimbabwe. Land reform is an idea whose time has arrived in South Africa, and there will be violence if one race takes itself as special to keep colonial, whites-only privileges. There will be blood. That’s why Mugabe first disarmed them.

Fortunately we have long past that stage, including surviving the consequential trauma of 20 years of white sanctions.

The black plague — not Mugabe again!

President Ramaphosa thought he was in control of the debate over land expropriation and was still trying to justify to the white world why a radical economic transformation was important to correct the “original sin” of black dispossession.

Last week he even made an effort to lure Julius Malema back into the fold of the African National Congress, perhaps to blunt his radical rhetoric on the subject, although he stressed the issue must be resolved.

But white Australians thought he was taking too long to rein in his wayward people. They jumped into the affray. They were unnerved by the vote itself and are not waiting for assurances from an African leader.

On Wednesday they deployed their Home Affairs or Immigration minister, one Peter Dutton, to speak the Western mind on the matter of land.

Gory images of whites being slaughtered en-masse and farms being looted and burnt and niggers going for the precious white virgins were being envisioned. Mugabe’s ghost was stalking the Rainbow Nation of saintly Nelson Mandela. Whites were being tortured and murdered by black savages.

Dutton felt diplomatic protocol was standing in his way. He called for a fast-track issuing of visas to white South Africans to escape to “civilised” Australia. There was plenty land there, the media stated.

And they quickly joined in to stoke the flames, saying South Africa should be banned from international sporting events as “punishment” for attacks on white farmers. They said land expropriation equated to “apartheid in reverse”.

Paul Murray, a popular host on Sky News Australia, said land expropriation without compensation was apartheid in reverse.

“I don’t want to ostracise the entire population of South Africa tomorrow, but in the same way that little things built to what became apartheid, little things can build to a reverse of it,” said Murray.

“I don’t think they (South Africa) should be banned tomorrow (from the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane in April), but I do think it’s a little bit weird that no one is having a conversation about punishing South Africa through sport as we did quite correctly for apartheid, when they have passed laws in their parliament to forcibly remove the land of whites.”

(Note how South Africans deserve to be punished even if they follow the rule of law and people’s representatives vote in parliament.)

Death of Mandela legacy

Dutton said whites in South Africa deserved “special attention” owing to the “horrific circumstance” they faced. “If you look at the footage and read the stories, you hear the accounts, it’s a horrific circumstance they (white farmers) are in . . . from what I have seen, they do need help from a civilised country like ours.”

A former Liberal Party MP Bronwyn Bishop rued the death of Nelson Mandela’s legacy.

“Well, it’s apartheid isn’t it?” she moaned. “It’s (land expropriation is) being brought in, and it means Mandela’s legacy is dead. He was such a remarkable man with such a vision as to how things could be reconciled and people could live together and this is reinstating apartheid — this time by black over white.

“They are following the Zimbabwean path,” she wailed, “where (Robert Mugabe) became such a hideous dictator, where government took over all their (whites) agriculture. This used to be a food bowl for all of Africa and it absolutely meant that people starved to death. It’s just so sad, so sad. And the question will come, where will those whites go? And I think they should come here.”

(Obviously the unspoken subtext is that the British bandits who were exiled to Australia did a wonderful job of exterminating the Aborigines, that’s why there is plenty land for whites. Jan Van Riebeck and gang should have done the same in South Africa. Read Gleeson below)

This hysteria about whites in peril from the black plague is not confined to your usual ignorant fellow, the Donald Trump-type. Sky News quoted Sunday Mail editor Peter Gleeson supporting Dutton’s bid to fast-track the visa process for white farmers.

He claimed 400 white farmers were murdered every year in SA, whereas in civilised Australia it was only 3 in 100 000.

“If ever there was a case where we should bring our South African neighbours (whites) who are in peril — these people are in peril; they are being subjected to the most extraordinary torture and murder regime. If we can’t bring some of these people out here and have them own the land in some of our rural and regional areas, I don’t know what this country is coming to . . . At the moment, those statistics around the murder rate and the rape rate are extraordinary,” lamented the Sunday Mail editor sagely.

(Even those with the shortest memories will recall these lurid descriptions of Zimbabwe’s land reform, the exaggerations which were used to justify the imposition of sanctions by the white world. It’s a matter of time before Ramaphosa turns into a ogre, a typical dictator if he doesn’t change course.)

The South African government expressed regret that Australia had ignored diplomatic protocol and imposed itself in the debate on land. What they miss is that South Africa is not civilised like Australia.

However, when we look at the frequent reference to “whites” in all the comments from Australia, we learn a basic truth. Racism, not the land reform, is the obstacle to black economic emancipation and social justice in Africa. White, racist property rights derived from colonial plunder are sacrosanct, inalienable, more important than permitting the African a decent life in his own country.

We know whose side Dr Ibbo Mandaza is on.