I am the circus monkey or at least, that was how an apparently enraged reader of one of my articles on
Zimbabwe
and her darling head of state Robert Gabriel Mugabe decided to identify me. I have received all kinds of insults since I began blogging, but none has appealed to me like the one I have chosen as part of the lead of the current article. It is not as though I am insensitive to all the insults that I have received. But I am prepared for insults that I have received and will continue to receive. This is so because, I know fully well that, most of those insults are caused by the way I put or look at things. And those who are delighted to vomit their bowels at me, are not those from lands where freedom is considered alien, but from people from lands considered as the seats of freedom of speech. The paradox is clear, some times, those who advocate freedom of speech, democracy and the respect for human rights may not necessarily be their best defenders and protectors. But insults are good and nourishing, especially when they come as a result of your provocations. And as the late Chinese leader Mao Setung once said, it is best to coax the snake out of her hole in order to kill it, hence I will continue with my provocations or humours. But I won’t go to extremes or kill as Mao did or recommended, even if I had the means.
My provocations have permitted me to know what many people truly think, especially those from lands that freedom of speech, democracy and human rights respect are their swan songs. Other things with insults are that, those who insults you, are some times or always people who love or envy you and through their insults, they may be sending you a subtle message, demanding you to change course, improve or join them. I can therefore assure you all that, the author of the circus Monkey of an insult and who also added that, I was a foolish Uncle Tom may have contemplated that he had thrown at me the greatest insult, but he instead did me a great service. For it has made me to look twice or trice at the Munhumutapa or Monomotapa kingdom and the way she has been attracting extravagant media attention, and this, since 2002. But this doesn’t in any way change my original thoughts that, the grand old comrade Bob is a dictator, who has ruined his country via his flagship destruction programme, land reform.
Land reforms elsewhere and it consequences
Personally, I think land reforms no matter how attractive and brilliant it may sound; she is never in reality a good policy. For wherever she has been implemented by any government, it has led to economic ruin.
Peru
was ruined economically because of land reforms introduced by late General Juan Valasco Alvarado who ruled the Latin American country from October 3rd 1968- August 30th 1975. And since then, she has never economically recovered fully. Currently
Venezuela
under General Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is on the path of economic ruin, simply because he (Mr Chavez) has also decided to launch land reforms that are strangely not getting the same media buzz as that of
Zimbabwe
. But
Venezuela
’s economic difficulties are absorbed by the benefits that her government is generating from the stratospheric oil price. Any significant drop in Oil price, might also chime the toll bells of the end of the rule of the proponent of Bolivarian Socialism, for it will be difficult, if not impossible for him to control the wave of anger and demonstrations that will hit his country. Honesty therefore requires that, sentiments not be put on land issues.
Land reforms as carried out in
Peru
and now in
Zimbabwe
,
Venezuela
or in
Zaire
(Democratic Republic of Congo) under late Field Marshal Moboutou Seseko and that was metaphorical called authenticity should be discarded. Governments should instead find other economically plausible means to solve farming and land problems and also try to increase and create incentives that engineer’s wealth, rather than kill the hen that lays the golden eggs that commercial agriculture is. More commercial farming is a large employer and no government with her people at heart, will like to create the enabling environment for her people to suffer via opting for ideological land reforms or economic policies that has linings of settling of scores. But that is what Mr Mugabe has done in
Zimbabwe
and a majority of his people are now suffering.
Questions
But questions need to be asked. Was land reform in the manner that it was has been carried out in
Zimbabwe
necessary? Did
Zimbabwe
’s foreign partners, principally
Great Britain
, respect her part of the Lancaster House agreement, which paved the way for majority black rule? If not, has it contributed in anyway to make or push Mugabe to act the way he has? And if
Britain
, had honoured fully her part of the Lancaster House agreement, would Mugabe still have acted the way he has done? Is land problem the predicament of
Zimbabwe
alone on the African continent? If no, are there some successes on the African continent and what lessons can
Zimbabwe
and other African country with similar problems learn? Is it only a matter pitting the aboriginals against the Whites Zimbabweans? The answers to those questions could help better understand the problems in
Zimbabwe
than what the media distils out regularly. But there is another thing with
Zimbabwe
. Why is it that, she is attracting a lot of media attention whereas there are several Mugabes and Zimbabwean like countries on the continent?
Double standards
I have tried to refuse what I am about to write, but I have sadly come to the conclusion that, if the international media and the Commonwealth in particular is focusing on Mugabe and Zimbabwe the way they are doing, it is simply because, part of those who are victims of Mugabe’s misrule are White Africans of Indo-European stock. If it were an ordinary black on black violence or Arab African on Arab African violence, it won’t have made the same resonance as it is currently. For example, in
Cameroon
, Paul Biya has been misruling the West African county for the past 25 years and has recently decided to introduce a law approved in a parliament that is dominated by his party, which gives him the right to elongate his tenure as president. But it has not made headlines with the International press. Even those International media outfits like the BBC, VOA and RFI, with greater presence on the African continent were not bothered. They treated Biya’s act to tinker with his country’s constitutions, and this, in a bid to misrule his country for life with an insolent levity. According some accounts, Paul Biya has massacred close to 4 thousand Cameroonians of greater north extraction, simply because, those from the region and serving in the Cameroonian Army, staged a failed coup d’etat in 1984. Furthermore, he has been arresting English-speaking Cameroonian nationalists who are members of the Southern Cameroon’s National Council (SCNC) and torturing them to death. The biggest arrest of SCNC activists who are peaceful in their quest for a separate homeland for English-speaking Cameroonians was carried out in March 1997. Since their arrest, they have been languishing at the Kondengui Maximum security prisons in Yaoundé, only realised to go home and die of the injuries they have incurred from their atrocious torture, while in detention.
But no international media outfit is interested in their plights. Some international human rights NGOs nonetheless do seasonally pay lip service concern, which is a far cry from the whining and wailings we hear about
Zimbabwe
. The same Mr Mugabe now the bete noir of his former praise singers began showing his true colours in the mid 80s. By massacring some 20 thousand mostly black Zimbabweans in
Matabeleland
. But the answers of the current Tsars of conscience or respect of human rights and democracy were audacious in contradiction. He was instead celebrated in the Western world and decorated with honorary degrees, like one decorates a Christmas tress. Any despot or regimes that kill his own people is respected in the West by her hypocritical and greedy politicians and elites. They celebrate countries wherein they can travel to act as they like, rape young boys and young girls, impose some of their deviant conducts or do what thy won’t do in their own countries. They gave
China
the right to stage the August 2008 Olympic Games and suddenly they have started staging their cynical manoeuvres and broad day hypocrisies. Because their consciences and in particular, their jealous minds won’t let them see others succeed. They like to see others suffer and it may explain why they are worried at
China
’s interest in Africa, for it may offset their secret plans to keep
Africa
everlastingly adrift. No wonder, they will never see
Africa
in good light and yet some of them like thieves will tiptoe into the continent to generate their private wealth. Then like hens, turn and insults her. My repulsion is complete.
Zimbabwe
: The only country where a civil war will be welcomed
Since the March 29th elections in
Zimbabwe
, she has become the only country in the world wherein the Western world and their media who feted Mugabe yesterday wants to start the very civil war and instability that they seem to discourage elsewhere on the continent. And as the saying goes: “unless the wind blows, you can see the anus of a hen”, the current situation in
Zimbabwe
has opened my eyes on the double standards of some Westerners and I now doubt their calls for peace, democracy or development in
Africa
. Take these other examples, the horn of Africa,
Somaliland
is a successful democracy, but none of them wants to recognise her. They will recognise
Montenegro
and Kosovo, but will deny Somaliland and
Western Sahara
the same prestige. Simply because both are African for the right to self determination doesn’t concern Africans that they can’t extort anything from. A group of rebels took control of Somalia, a chaotic country without a government for the last16 years and was about establishing peace and security, but she was driven away courtesy the Ethiopians, under the doubtful claim that, those who wanted to establish peace were Islamists who were also hiding members of the Osama bin Laden conglomerate called Al Qaeda .
The world knows fully well that, when Osama bin Laden was in Sudan and was connected with Nairobi and Dar es Salem bombings, the government of Khartoum led by General Ahmad Hassan Al Bashir offered to arrest him and hand him over to the Americans, but the former US President William Jefferson Clinton rejected the offer. Perhaps the former
US
president was busy rollicking and frolicking with one of his secretaries or other women, hence he put aside and in jeopardy the national security of his country and that of the world. In
Sudan
’s western province, Darfur, Western nations are arming the multiple and intractable net works of rebels, but the only culprits that the world is made to know are the
Sudan
government and
China
. Western Sahara is occupied by
Morocco
since 1975 but Westerners consider it as normal. But the same Westerner under the dubious banner of international community invaded
Iraq
in 1990, when she occupied
Kuwait
.
No need for scaremongering
While there is no doubt that Mugabe and his ZANUPF want to use all stratagems to hang on to power for some more time, the results of the legislative elections even after recounting, has indicated without any doubt that, the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission is truly independent. Thus there is no need for scaremongering or the floatation of any governance policy, such as power sharing or unity whatsoever, before the official results of the presidential elections are released. The opposition in
Zimbabwe
has been confirmed as winners of the parliamentary elections, whereas in
Cameroon
, that is still a proud member of the Commonwealth, since the introduction of multiparty elections in 1992, the opposition has never won any elections. And this not because the people so dearly love the ruling
Cameroon
People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) and their president for life Paul Biya, but simply, because, Paul Biya cheats, rigs electoral results and use violence to win all elections. In spite glaring evidence of gigantic electoral frauds and state sponsored violence and tribalism in
Cameroon
no one, not even the Commonwealth that is loquacious on
Zimbabwe
raises a finger in protest. What the Commonwealth instead does whenever Cameroon’s situation comes up are that, she becomes dumb, blind and deaf or resort to the same silent diplomacy employed by Thabo Mbeki on Zimbabwe.
Silent or silence diplomacy
Silent or silence diplomacy is a strategy that Mr Mbeki has been criticised for and also named and globally shamed. But since silence diplomacy is practised by the Commonwealth as far as
Cameroon
is concern, it is supported. Why
Cameroon
is treated the way she is treated by the Commonwealth? It is simply because those who are victims of Paul Biya’s violence and misrules are blacks and it jars with their philosophy about blacks. Another strange with
Zimbabwe
has been the open call by the so-called International community for
South Africa
to invade
Zimbabwe
and drive Mugabe from power, brilliant idea only that, it is only in
Africa
that such calls are directed. Why don’t they ask
China
(or no, she is Communist) or
India
to invade
Burma
? Why don’t they ask
Mexico
or
Colombia
to invade
Venezuela
? Or it is in process? But some will quickly point out that, when
Kenya
went up in flames after the electoral rigging of Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki, the international community did mobilise. But we all know why? In the volatile East African region, the powers that be could not afford to see another country slip into chaos, which they some times orchestrate. Therefore, the chair of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in
Zimbabwe
should not listen to sirens of violence as chimed by what are labelled as international community. He should respect the verdict of the poll and if there is a need for a second round, let him run. And if he looses he should not resort to violence, for it will cause more pains to the masses that he claims he loves and who are already suffering. Robert Mugabe is not Methuselah. One way or the other he will leave power. I can understand that, Mr Tsvangirai has been waiting on the sidelines for too long to rule
Zimbabwe
, but he should take power peaceful and not via the remedy proposed to him by those now pretending to be his friends.
Lessons from
Cameroon
Cameroon has very little to show other African countries in terms of positive examples, but I would recommend the chair of the MDC to visit Cameroon, to have a talk with John Fru Ndi, the chair of the Social Democratic Front(SDF), Cameroon’s alter ego of MDC. In 1992 John Fru Ndi defeated Paul Biya in the presidential elections and the only countries that supported the SDF’s claim to the presidency which she was cheated of were: US,
Germany
,
Canada
, the
Netherlands
and
Germany
.
France
as usual, supported the despot, while
Great Britain
stood on the fence. There were many who encouraged John Fru Ndi to take up arms, but he refused and he was called a coward. But it is best to be called names when you are for justice and none violence. More most of those calling for war do so from safe parts and in comfort and may not have ever witnessed a street demonstration or government crack down of pro-democracy activists. Democracy has not changed in
Cameroon
very much from what she was in 1992, but she is making snail pace progress. But the biggest gains are that, there is no war in
Cameroon
. It is better for a country to be badly ruled with people at peace than a civil war that causes untold hardships, pains and death, with no prospects of peace. I don’t think Morgan Tsvangirai wants at all course to become president, to a point that he won’t mind a civil war in his country, as it is currently desired by those who have self styled themselves a friends of
Zimbabwe
. Well, former friends of Mugabe.
Web sites:
Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission: www.zimbabweelectoralcommission.org
Government of
Zimbabwe
: www.gta.gov.ci.zw
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC): www.mdc.co.zw
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