By Reason Wafawarova March 23, 2008

This writer recalls a few encounters with the late Dr. Eddison Zvobgo when he used to come to visit my uncle who was the ZANU PF Chiredzi District chairman for the better part of the 1980s and the early 1990s. Cde Zvobgo used to advise those around him to be vigilant in politics and many times he said, “Politics isinjonjo tamba wakachenjera.”

How this writer wishes Simba Makoni had had opportunity to hear this warning in time. When Simba Makoni announced his bizarre intentions to run for the presidency on February 5, he gloated that he had strong backing from within ZANU PF and many believed him for they thought he did not look like an aimless fool running from the ruling party crowd. However, Simba is increasingly looking like a lost sheep and it appears those who incited him to jump to the deep end are now just too eager to cheer President Mugabe swimming to victory as opposed to backing the sinking Simba Makoni.

Simba Makoni caps it all by his one-man symbol of clutching the air with both hands. This is exactly what is going to happen on March 29 and it is just as ironic that Simba is communicating his fate so unwittingly but so accurately. The only other person this writer has seen clutching thin air along with Simba Makoni is Dumiso Dabengwa of the “political heavyweight” infamy. Of course Dabengwa is the only quack to have so far emerged from the reported camp of double headed charlatans behind the now comic Makoni project. Dabengwa proudly displays the two heads he has kept since 1987’s Unity Accord. For reasons only known to his tribalist self, Dabengwa reckons it is part of good politics and public relations to confess that he has all along been an infiltrator in the revolution.

We hear that part of the so-called “military campaign” for Makoni was to have a shocking series of defections from ZANU PF – all calculated to systematically isolate President Mugabe in favour of air-clutching Simba Makoni. This writer wrote three weeks ago about a similar rightwing clique trying to play the same tricks within Venezuela’s Chavista movement. Recently, they openly supported President Hugo Chavez’s constitutional reforms by the day but they joined the opposition in campaigning for the “NO” vote by night.

This is the kind of counterrevolutionary tricks that Simba was hoping to enjoy and there was so much belief in the scheme that the gang of charlatans were even convinced that 59 days was enough time to implement their onslaught on a revolution that started in 1963, exactly 45 years ago. How naïve! Zimbabwe’s revolution is five times older than Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution and cannot be derailed by clandestine night darkness counterrevolutionary campaigns.

With two weeks left before the elections it is highly unlikely that any further popping up by any of the double-headed charlatans would create any shock as to warrant a political upset. In fact, there is every likelihood that those who could have had any links with this limping and drowning project are most likely to profusely deny any such links and even to go as far as suing anyone who might try to unmask their current incognito status.

This is why Cde. Zvobgo said this game of politics is like the sinjonjo dance – you play it watching your back all the time. Now Simba Makoni has to clutch to his yellow sunflower when he is not clutching thin air on roadsides and at rural bus termini. Why would anyone ever carry a flower to the battlefield anyway? At least Morgan Tsvangirai knows that his Australian made crocodile cowboy hat can at least give him the image of a fighter.

When all is said and done on March 29, this writer is of the view that the revolution will accordingly deal with the two-headed charlatans associated with this Makoni misadventure. The project is just reminiscent of détente and the Nhari rebellion during the armed struggle. The Western backers of détente’s advocates are back in full force backing Simba Makoni and his companions. During détente the advocates for an internal settlement with Ian Smith were backed by Vorster’s apartheid regime in South Africa and also by big multinational corporations.

Today, the same South Afican whites and the same multinationals are behind the funding of Makoni’s failing project. Some of the people who ran for cover when détente was crumbling are already running for cover even before March 29. Simba Makoni can ask Wilfred Mhanda about the politics of détente and for sure Dzinashe Machingura will tell him what happens when a project like this one goes the way things are happening for Simba Makoni.

Meanwhile, the agrarian revolution is on a cruise and the third phase of the agricultural mechanisation programme has just re-energised the revolution, and like the Cuban revolution, there is no going back.

Cuba had an economic growth rate of 7.5% in 2007. Cuba is a symbol of a successful anti-imperialist revolution and international solidarity. Not only has the revolution brought significant gains for the people of Cuba, such as free education and health care – securing a lower infant mortality rate and more doctors per head of population than the US – but Cuba also exports its gains, with Cuban doctors providing free health care to the poor in 68 countries around the world.

Although Zimbabwe’s economy is currently under serious imperialist attack and faltering, the agrarian revolution remains a symbol of both anti-imperialist struggle and international solidarity. The solidarity given to Zimbabwe over Gordon Brown’s attempts to isolate the country from the EU-Africa summit in December 2007 was just a phenomenal show of how much the developing world aspires to overturn the burden of imperialism.

Currently, Cuba has embarked on “Mission Miracle” in partnership with Venezuela. This programme provides free eye operations to the sight-impaired and it has restored the eyesight of over a million people from across the Americas, including the US. In the late eighties, over 10% of Cuba’s national expenditure was on aid to Africa, including the solidarity military intervention in Angola.

Cuba’s achievements have only been possible because the revolution has broken the hold of corporate interests over its economy and political system, and created an economy planned according to the principle of human need, not private profit.

In the same vein and principle Zimbabwe has introduced an economic indigenisation law meant to ensure at least 51% local control of the means of production. This follows the successful redistribution of land to the poor landless masses. This is the only way one can break the capitalist hold on the means of production but as we are seeing already the triumph comes with a big price. Imperialism will always fight back and that is always done through willing agents like Simba Makoni and Morgan Tsvangirai – rightwing lap-dog politicians fronting the imperialist cause in the name of “re-engagement to the family of nations” as if the West comprised the family of nations.

When Cuba broke the corporate hold on its economy, the slanderous propaganda spread by capitalism’s lackeys in the Western media has always been that the Cuban revolution is undemocratic, just like Zimbabwe suddenly became undemocratic when the Mugabe government embarked on the popular agrarian reform programme in 2000.

Of course the Cuban revolution was always democratic from the onset, quiet contrary to the widely held myth that the revolution was made up of only a small band of guerrillas. This is the same propaganda line sold against Zimbabwe’s land reform programme where the world has been told that the whole land occupation process by the landless peasants was only the work of a clique of veterans of the liberation war.

For Cuba, what was crucial for the overthrow of Batista’s dictatorship was an urban mass movement that organised workers, students, professionals and the unemployed in towns and cities. For Zimbabwe, the overthrow of the Ian Smith regime was made successful by the support offered by peasants to youngsters who left schools, colleges, universities, work places and villages to join the armed struggle in Mozambique and Zambia. Likewise the same peasants were crucial in ending the white-settler-farmer regime that occupied about 80% of Zimbabwe’s arable land until the year 2000.

One wonders how such popular uprisings can be labelled undemocratic. While Cuban democracy, just like Zimbabwean democracy; cannot be called perfect – both democracies are far from the ruthless dictatorships the Western media is fond of peddling.

Zimbabwe is a multi-party democracy that has held regular elections timeously since independence in 1980. All the alleged problems regarding elections in Zimbabwe started when Britain and America created and fielded the opposition MDC in the 2000 election – all in an effort to reverse the land reform programme. It was the new players in the Zimbabwean political process who brought trouble and this had nothing to do with a lack of democracy. Now the Western diplomatic community has shifted away from their MDC baby and created a new baby by the name Simba Makoni. The idea is to try and field this new baby alongside the old baby; the MDC and if that fails then the two babies are meant to merge into one and go for another battle. Of course two losing babies do not suddenly know how to win; it is just like that.

While the Cuban Communist Party (CCP) remains the only legal party in Cuba, it is forbidden from participating in elections. All elected representatives in Cuba, including the president and the ministers – can be recalled at any time by their local electorates.

Women now make up over 43% of the Cuban legislature, an increase of 7%, and the proportion of those aged between 18 and 30 has increased from 23% to 36%.
Cuba’s approach to expressions of dissent from within Cuba was all captured by President Raul Castro on February 24 when he said, “We do not deny right to expression, provided they do it with respect for the law.”

He further argued, “We shall not avoid listening to everyone’s honest opinion, which is very useful and necessary simply because of the sometimes ridiculous noise made every time a citizen of our country says something that the very noise makers would pay no attention to if they heard it anywhere else on the planet.”

This of course mirrors the attention given to any hogwash uttered by the economic refugees who keep masquerading as victims of political torture by the Zimbabwean government. They enjoy prime media coverage in Britain, New Zealand and Canada – not because their stories are smart enough to fool anyone or because what they say is newsworthy, but because what they say makes good propaganda politics for the imperial agenda.

Raul Castro conceded that the Cuban democracy is not perfect, much as it is “participatory as few others are.” He emphasised the need for open debate in order to improve the system, and he added that the “best solutions can come from a profound exchange of differing opinions, if such an exchange is guided by sensible purposes and the views are uttered with responsibility”.

These words cannot be attributed to a dictatorship from whatever number of angles. Likewise the six general elections so far held under a multi-party democracy in Zimbabwe cannot be attributed to a dictatorship even by the wildest stretch of imagination.

It is George W. Bush’s unilateral decision to invade Iraq that passes for a dictatorship. It is Gordon Brown’s unilateral decision to isolate Zimbabwe from the EU-Africa summit that passes for a dictatorship.

It is the US’s unilateral punitive measures on the innocent peoples of Cuba and Zimbabwe that passes for a dictatorship. It is George W. Bush’s unilateral laws governing operations at Guantanamo Bay that passes for a dictatorship.

The counterrevolutionary misadventure that has thrown Simba Makoni to the deep end without a life jacket cannot be allowed to keep thriving among the revolutionary people of Zimbabwe. This is a time to decisively deal such surrogate forces a blow big enough to send a chilling message to the imperialist masters in White Hall, White House and Brussels.

The people of Zimbabwe have a perfect opportunity to bury both Simba Makoni and Morgan Tsvangirai once and for all on March 29. Such a victory is not for President Mugabe or for ZANU PF. It is a victory for posterity. It is a victory for future generations and a victory for Africa. There is no doubt that almost everyone of our Zimbabwean people wants to be free from imperial domination and any other form of domination. However, if one wants to be a free man they necessarily need to start thinking like one. Under the pressures of these biting sanctions it is important that the people of Zimbabwe start thinking like free people. They must start voting like free people just like they must commit themselves to the success of the agrarian revolution like free people. Morgan Tsvangirai and Simba Makoni cannot be allowed to make the people think like economic slaves, to make them vote like economic slaves and to make them decide their future like besieged slaves.

This is the philosophy behind the economic strangulation that has brought the country to these trying times we are living under. Imperialist believe they can punish a people until such a people begin to accept their tormentor as the liberator. Morgan Tsvangirai remains facilitator in chief for the tormenting sanctions that has ruined the lives of so many Zimbabwean families. He cannot be a liberator for the people of Zimbabwe and neither can Makoni play liberator by jumping on board the imperial ship of domination in order to do the bidding of Britain on who should be ruling Zimbabwe.

The defeat for Makoni and Tsvangirai is much bigger than the two lap-dog agents fronting the neo-liberal imperial agenda. It is a defeat of a global monster. It is a defeat for the world’s most powerful gang of looters and thieves. It is a defeat for the most evil economic ideology ever to be embraced by humanity.

This is why March 29 is the day to stand up and be counted. It is a day when after all is said and done one will stand to be either part of the group that stands for justice and freedom or the other group that stands for global imperial domination. The people will win and it is only prudent to stand with the people.

Zimbabwe we are one. It is homeland or death. Together we shall overcome!