Immoral to demand RBZ, AG posts in exchange for fighting sanctions

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona Mahoso (24/11/09)

Illegal sanctions and pirate radio broadcasts belong to a battery of imperialist terror tactics which have been used to terrorise nations over the last 50 years.

They cannot be explained away as methods of democratising and liberalising a society the way leaders of the MDC formations are trying to explain them.
Even worse, the national and Pan-African fight against the illegal and racist sanctions imposed on the people of Zimbabwe cannot be equated with the partisan vendettas which MDC-T has been pursuing against Attorney-General Johannes Tomana and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr Gideon Gono.
If Sadc and the inter-party negotiators in Zimbabwe ever allow these matters to be discussed and bargained over as if they belong to comparable levels of seriousness as governance issues of national interest, these negotiators will have created a scandalous precedent which will bring shame on us as a people once the heat of the current partisan combat is gone. This is not a partisan, Zanu-PF interpretation. This is an objective view of the issues concerned.
Readers should refer to the April 2008 article by Edward Herman and David Peterson called “Principles of the Imperial New World Order” which article also borrowed findings from Herman’s ground-breaking 1982 book called “The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda” (p134). It might also help to refer to the 1978 Unesco Declaration on Fundamental Principles Concerning the Contribution of Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International Understanding, to the Promotion of Human Rights and Countering Racialism, Apartheid and Incitement to War.
It might also help to read Professor Kaarle Nordenstreng’s 1997 study of the 1978 Unesco Declaration entitled “On the Nature and Significance of the Unesco Mass Media Declaration”.
In addition, New African magazine’s report of the US State Department’s April 5 Press conference in Washington, DC in 2006 can also help to clarify the issues, if there is any confusion.
Illegal sanctions and pirate radio stations belong to a battery of 12 to 20 instruments of imperialist subversion and terror which have been used especially by the US government over the last 50 years.
Herman documents past uses of 12 of these instruments against Brazil, Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala and Uruguay. He could have also included Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Iran, Venezuela and now Zimbabwe.
In other words, pirate radio stations and illegal sanctions belong to a class of instruments of imperialist subversion and aggression which include direct military invasion; organising or sponsoring coups d’état; assassinating leaders; physical attacks on infrastructure; financial warfare; bribing and corrupting selected political leaders; infiltrating the security agencies; bribing or infiltrating media houses; bribing journalists and intellectuals; infiltrating and corrupting religious institutions such as churches; bribing and corrupting trade unions; infiltrating and subsidising associations of women, students and youths; war-like propaganda; and biological war.
There is no way anyone in his or her right mind would wish to compare and exchange these with the appointments of an Attorney-General, a governor of the central bank or a provincial governor in terms of the nation’s Constitution. This explains why, in the case of Zimbabwe’s Inter-Party Agreement (IPA) between Zanu-PF and the MDC formations, RBZ Governor Dr Gideon Gono and Attorney-General Johannes Tomana did not and could not feature in the document at all.
But illegal sanctions and pirate broadcasts are illegal in terms of the UN Charter and in terms of the statutes of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), to which the US and its allies are signatories.
As this column has stated many times before, the inter-party negotiators legally represent their parties but they must understand that those parties are there in the talks because they all claim to represent the people of Zimbabwe. Given our collective national interests and the precedents already set in international relations, Sadc and our negotiators would have set a scandalous precedent if they agreed that Zanu-PF should compromise on the clearly constitutional and procedural appointments of two loyal officers in exchange for the MDC formations agreeing to fight against illegal sanctions and illegal radio broadcasts!
The argument that pirate broadcasts and illegal sanctions have traditionally belonged together as part of a battery of instruments of subversion and terror is not academic.
The imposition of illegal sanctions first required lies and lying in order to appear to be justified.
Therefore, refusal by the MDC formations to stop the illegal broadcasts demonstrates the reality that the MDC formations can no longer use normal, legal channels to deny or defend illegal sanctions in the broad view of the people. This can continue to be done only through illegal and clandestine broadcasts.
Therefore, it is wrong to argue that the illegal pirate stations are part of a democratic struggle for Press freedom.
There is no Press freedom law anywhere in the world which accepts such a bizarre definition of Press freedom. Illegal broadcasts are the most obvious and blatant violations of Press freedom anywhere in the world.
On April 5 2006, at the Press conference where the US State Department announced its 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Bruno Garcez, the BBC reporter based in Brazil, was able to see through the fraud which the MDC formations and their sponsors have been perpetrating.
He made the following observations about the US State Department’s Country Report on Zimbabwe:
The illegal sanctions and pirate radio stations against Zimbabwe were premised on the claim that there was no Press freedom, no rule of law, no democracy and no space for freedom of association and freedom of expression. However, the State Department’s own report on Zimbabwe destroyed the very same foundation on which it was premised because it boasted that the US Embassy and its affiliate agencies in this country in 2005 alone facilitated the following:
l More than a dozen categories of forums and organisations funded and attended, whose purpose was to attack or discredit Government policies;
l Hundreds of US-sponsored activities successfully organised and executed throughout the year and throughout the country for the same purpose of discrediting Government policies;
l Hundreds of individual activists sponsored to travel in and out of the country on missions to discredit Government policies; and
l Scores of ongoing US-sponsored projects in communities throughout the country which projects are also meant to discredit Government policies.
Garcez pointed out that in countries where the government had responded to such foreign-sponsored subversion by clamping down on the activities in question, the reports completely lacked the range of documented detail which the State Department’s Zimbabwe Country Report boasted of.
Confronted with this perceptive reading from Brazil, US Assistant Secretary of State Barry Lowenkron had to pretend not to understand the absurdity of the report’s claims in light of the contrary detail it contained: “I am a little puzzled by your question,” he pretended.
The MDC formations will also pretend to be puzzled by the observations that illegal sanctions (which Christopher Dell said had taken the living standards of the population back to 1953) cannot by any stretch of the imagination be placed as a priority issue at the same level as the legally and constitutionally filled jobs of RBZ Governor and Attorney-General.
Appeals to a Sadc Press release on those matters do not help because the confusion reflected within Sadc is coming from Zimbabwe’s key negotiators themselves.
The people of Zimbabwe are now allowing some of the parties to the Inter-Party Agreement to abuse the generosity and patience of Sadc, by taking to that regional body issues that are purely internal and administrative.
As far as the people of Zimbabwe are concerned, as far as normal international relations are concerned, Sadc finished its job long ago when it witnessed the installation of the inclusive Government. What has been lacking since then is commitment and hard work on the part of the IG, to tackle the economic crisis which it was set up to tackle.
MDC-T especially senses that it has failed dismally to deliver on any of its promises. It must therefore engage in diversionary puzzlements and boycotts in order to avoid staring reality in the face: illegal economic sanctions and private broadcasts historically, conventionally and legally belong to the category of imperialist instruments of subversion and terror.
They cannot be equated with the appointments of qualified professionals to posts which are provided for in the Constitution of the country.
For the sake of the nation and the dignity of Sadc, the people of Zimbabwe should demand that those issues should not be linked and that the appointments of the Attorney-General and the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe should not be taken to Sadc.
Sadc’s diplomatic intervention produced the Inter-Party Agreement in order to empower the people of Zimbabwe and not to reduce them to a subject people who must consult outsiders on everything and anything.
The preamble to the Memorandum of Understanding among the three parties stated clearly the key objectives of the inclusive Government:
l To uphold, defend and sustain Zimbabwe’s sovereignty.
l To uphold, defend and sustain Zimbabwe’s independence.
l To uphold, defend and sustain Zimbabwe’s territorial integrity and national unity.
l To recognise, accept, and cherish the achievements and legacy of the African national liberation struggle as the foundation of Zimbabwe’s independence, freedom and human rights.
l To put our people and our country first and always in all our dealings with one another and with outsiders.
l To accept and celebrate the fact that the demand by the African majority to reclaim its stolen land and resources has been at the core of contestation in Zimbabwe and that this land question has now been resolved in a way that is worth defending and irreversible.
l To demonstrate loyalty to Zimbabwe, patriotism and commitment to Zimbabwe’s national purpose, core values, interests and aspirations.