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“When you write and you get the flak from all the dunces making a confederacy against you purely on the basis that they feel offended because you have no sugar coats for their political affiliation or beliefs, be rest assured you are a genius.”
This quote from a Facebook post by this writer, to which the most prominent interpretation was the assertion that this column could be getting the flak for its recent “attacks” on some of the policy positions within Zanu-PF, particularly on matters to do with Bikita West, and also on the impact of economic sanctions relative to Zanu-PF’s capacity to deliver on its election promises.

If such a backlash were real, this writer would not be surprised at all, because the reaction is quite predictable in any circumstance where policy is challenged.

However the quote has nothing to do with a Zanu-PF backlash, which at this moment does not exist, but all to do with the seven year-long smear-campaign this writer has suffered at the hands of those who have felt offended by this column’s hailing of such policies as the land reform programme, the indigenisation policy, and the column’s general appreciation of the Pan Africanist stance against Western domination in international affairs.

Such appreciation has undermined the politics of some, particularly those that have been compelled by financial need to abandon Pan African values and to pretend to be in favour of Western liberalism – if only to please the financial muscled Western funder, so the purse strings can be loosened.

The tendency of Zanu-PF politicians to over-rely on the excuse of economic sanctions in justifying or explaining failure to deliver even on declared election promises is sadly mothered from the same womb as the MDC-T’s obsession in justifying and even denying the existence of such sanctions. Both of the behaviours are in fact an expression of how smitten the African mind is with the welfare mentality.

Zanu-PF seems to be saying if you take away our welfare support through withdrawal of Western donor support and Bretton Woods loans and grants we cannot survive as a country, and the MDC-T is saying if you withdraw these privileges you essentially take away our welfare, and that will push the people into the protest line against our political opponents, that way elevating our hopeless selves into their place in government.

Unless we learn how to shed the welfare mentality we cannot have a bona-fide revolutionary party on one end, or a bona-fide homegrown opposition on the other.

Had we not been colonised by Britain at the end of the 18th century we would not have particular relations with the West to begin with, and hardly would there ever have been any possibility of us to think we had the right to expect something from England.

In the name of internationalism we have dangerously preserved and cherished the colonial legacy to our own detriment, and we are determined not to be corrected, we are adamant colonialism is dead and buried, and we tell ourselves only those bigots incapable of outgrowing the fantasies of history can obsess themselves with the long-gone and forgotten concept.

Zanu-PF formulates the best of policies always, very appealing to our local ears and very threatening to the imperial status quo.
Each time such policies are announced we get these time frames given to us from the West, for example that our coffers will run empty before long, and that we will not be able to pay our functionaries in government or to run our own cities, and that we will have to run to the IMF or the World Bank for help like Patrick Chinamasa recently did, only to come back with instructions and essentially meaningless benchmarks.

But shouldn’t we be struggling along shedding off this welfare mentality, for better or for worse, until we pass through this storm and emerge on the other side with our destiny right in our own hands? Or we do not believe we can.

The detractors set 2002 in the year 2000 and the land reform policy survived under the stewardship of Zanu-PF.
They set 2005 as the year of demise after that, and again the policy and its beneficiaries survived reversal in election 2005, and that survival was attributed to “election fraud” on the part of Zanu-PF by the Western detractors and their sponsored functionaries.

After the 2005 survival where Zanu-PF claimed the election loser was not exactly Morgan Tsvangirai but Tony Blair, we had new targets for election 2008, and somehow Zanu-PF held on after a narrow escape from electoral defeat at the hands of the MDC formations, which could have just crossed the mark to victory if they had contested as a united lot.

In 2009 Zanu-PF embraced its political opponents, pampered them in government, distracted them immensely from the political scene, campaigned vigorously but clandestinely behind their backs, frog-marched them to an election on July 31 2013, larruped them heavily in both the presidential and parliamentary races, and Zanu-PF is now consolidating its gains by luring disgruntled cadres from the other side to its own camp.

It appears there have been massive reversals to MDC-T inroads, as well as what looks like a definite death knell to Welshman Ncube’s other MDC.

But Zanu-PF is determined to enter weighty financial commitments with the IMF at a time the party says it is unfettered on its course to self-determination, vowing whole heartedly in the run-up to the election that gone were the days when Zimbabwe’s natural resources were in the hands of foreign exploiters.

The post election vows on this matter are sounding rather half hearted, and every single move by Francis Nhema is being watched anxiously by the global economic vultures at whose proposed expense the election was won, and so far many of these vultures seem not to be too disappointed.

We face the traditional capitalist system where storm troopers create wonderful investment opportunities for their kith and kin, using IMF proposals and guidelines to do so. We are talking about people who know best how to create the need for capital elsewhere and use that capital to make super profits at the expense of whoever may be caught along the line.

The system started with externalised value addition even for the simplest of products. There is virtually no need for our people to smoke this or that brand of cigarette. But were we not convinced that smoking certain Western brands of cigarette would make us fit among the most powerful men on earth, capable of seducing any woman of our choice, and that way getting ourselves cancer instead?

Zanu-PF must remember that the Zimbabwean revolution to which it attaches some of its policies is not a revolution directed against other countries or peoples, and sadly many people have adopted this misunderstanding for fact even among Zanu-PF’s own supporters and leaders.

Rather, this revolution is aimed at restoring the dignity of Zimbabwean people. It is aimed at allowing our masses to achieve happiness as defined by their own collective criteria.

Zanu-PF must learn that induction tours for deployed foreign diplomats and prospective foreign investors are best carried out in the countryside among our poorest people rather than through the corridors of air-conditioned government offices.

Our people must be the starting point for anyone that wishes to know who we are and what our expectations entail.
We must make it clear to everyone that here we do not have people who die from too much food, but from the lack of it. But we strive so much to take foreign dignitaries to places we believe compare favourably to places from where these visitors will be coming, and we even take exception when some of us decide to re-route these visitors towards the real Zimbabwe our affluent politicians would not want them to see.
You can earn the tag traitor quite easily for showing a visiting Westerner any place of indisputable poverty.

We must come to a point where we make informed analysis of how we place ourselves in international affairs. We cannot dismiss every NGO in the name of the regime change conspiracy – which in fact is a subsisting conspiracy capable of coming to fruition one day.

The NGOs within Zimbabwe have both a good and bad side. After all they are just a manifestation of the failure of state-to-state relations in our day.

When our relations with other states block interaction people are obliged to find other channels for contact and dialogue, and we have to accept that.

There comes a time when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can become politically dysfunctional in terms of fostering state-to-state relations, and Zimbabwe has experienced that in relation to the Western world in the last decade.

We would be irrefutable fools if we disbelieved the reality that are non governmental organisations that serve as spy agencies for imperialism, or that are motivated by the political preferences of politicians from the countries they hail.

However, it is quite naïve to believe this is the case with every Western NGO.
Many are organisations run by men and women who think that this is the ideal way for them to express themselves and to make a contribution to global challenges affecting humanity.

These people have decided not to take comfort in the luxuries of their own countries, but to take part in the suffering of those smitten by the unbridled poverty in the less developed countries, just to share the burden with these people purely from a humanity empathetic viewpoint.
We also know that the work of NGOs is hampered in that implementation of programmes is Western style while use of those programmes is African style, and we know that some NGOs are pre-occupied with producing impressive press clippings to circulate back in Europe, and they forget to meaningfully engage with the locals for sustainable solutions.

There is the famous story of an Italian NGO that just popped up in Zambia, told the locals of its massive plans to teach the villagers how to grow a certain tomato breed in a fertile valley the NGO had identified.

The locals were taught what to do, they co-operated, and the tomato flourished impressively.
The harvest was ready and looking more impressive than it had ever looked back in Italy before one fateful night when a herd of hippos invaded the plantations and consumed just about everything in sight.

When the NGOs staffers from Italy expressed their shock before the villagers, one villager humbly told them, “That is why we do not grow anything in that valley.”

We must make sure that the objective of civic society is to assist the intended and declared beneficiaries in a meaningful and sustainable way.

We cannot promote this legacy where NGOs are satisfied with the fact that their work is topping news bulletins back in Europe, and the local elites in the host countries are happy that the NGOs have employed just about all their relatives and given them super-attractive perks.
We cannot sustain a system where our politicians use NGOs as miracles workers for starving villagers, promising, “If you are clever vote for me and there will be cooking oil and food.”

The cooking oil and food arrive from USAID or Care International and everyone is ecstatic over this sterling performance that produces such miracles – almost like Jesus Christ feeding thousands from some loaf of bread and two fishes, or something like that.
NGOs must of necessity refuse to be vote earners for any politician, unless they wish to be part of the corrupted lot.

We have to make sure that NGOs do not exacerbate our already direly corrupt governance network, but that they are focused on promoting accountability and genuinely reaching out to the needy areas where the biggest beneficiary of foreign aid is the intended beneficiary, not the local employee, or just a good name back home on the part of the NGO in question.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome.

It is homeland or death.

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.