Unity: Best enemy repellent (The Herald)

By Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia

31 December 2009

AS we come to the end of 2009, it is important for all Zimbabweans to once more be reminded of the need to appreciate the importance of oneness and the inviolability of patriotism.

The callous attitude towards the inclusive Government by Western governments and their representatives and agents is not surprising at all.

It must be understood in the context that whatever conflict we had among ourselves as Zimbabweans from 1999 — that conflict was a fight to repel an external enemy.

It was never a conflict to express a quest for tyranny or the love for self-inflicted suffering. That is the propaganda we have heard from the enemy and it is time we earnestly engaged ourselves in the national healing process that will help us rebuild a country we helped shatter by allowing ourselves to collaborate with those external forces that sought to strangulate our economy.

The denunciation of President Mugabe has become a secular doctrine in the West, and that fulmination is all rooted in the imperial commitment to world domination and the establishment of client states in place of the fallen colonies.

The cranky obsession with President Mugabe that we saw in the Western media after he joined 134 world leaders at a dinner hosted by the Queen of Denmark recently just goes to show that the enemy is not going to retreat just because we have decided to rebuild our shattered country as one family.

It was commendable that Mr Gordon Brown decided not be exiled in his own continent this time around and he attended the Copenhagen Summit without throwing the childish tantrums the way he did with the 2007 Lisbon EU-Africa Summit, which he boycotted by fleeing his own continent for Iraq.

As if it was of any necessity or relevance the handlers of the British Premier needlessly told Danish function organisers that Brown had no intention to speak to President Mugabe. It was all the now too familiar snivelling rhetoric that Britain is dead worried about human rights in Zimbabwe, and that its Premier is too holy to be in the same place with the President of Zimbabwe.

In 1999, the British government decided to invest in an illicit regime change agenda in Zimbabwe. This was a snorting effort at halting what Tony Blair saw as Mugabe’s “land invasion policy”.

The rascality of the regime change project became apparent when the United States weighed in with a sanctions law, ZDERA, and Australia’s John Howard came in with his rancorous campaign for the expulsion of Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth.

In 2000, as we prepared for a parliamentary general election, our country was hit by a disastrous sabotage campaign targeted at basic commodities like sugar, fuel, salt and cooking oil. The calculation was to create conditions for a protest vote against Zanu PF and in favour of the British sponsored MDC. We fought back as a country. We confronted the enemy’s material superiority and abundant supplies with a collective political and revolutionary determination.

The vanguard of our national revolution — the war veterans, the Defence Forces, the youth and the masses decided against fighting from the same corner with the imperial aggressors.

It was a time to unleash a collective sense of genius, and the strategies adopted have written heroic deeds into the pages of African anti-imperialism history — albeit with a sad and dear price on the welfare side of our country.

This is how the revolution was protected. It was protected because it was under attack, and we as Zimbabweans owe our country protection day and night.

We defended the country not as a duty to protect Zanu-PF, but as a duty to defend the revolution.

The economic war that we saw against Zimbabwe in the last 10 years was just like any other war, which is nothing but an extension of politics.

The enemy’s politics were extended and became a sanctions war. Our politics were extended and became a generalised popular defence of the revolution and the country.

Two political lines confronted each other and the end result so far has been the GPA and the inclusive Government led by the West’s number one enemy, President Mugabe, and which includes arguably their number one favourite African politician, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Now it is time to think about all those who succumbed to death as the economy of the country was shattered by the ruinous Western sanctions onslaught. To us these people should be viewed as having fallen on the field of honour.

It is time to spare a thought for all those who were injured in political conflict, about the tearful families, our people from across the political divide who were touched by this confrontation. Each of us Zimbabweans must make an effort to surmount all feelings of hate, rejection, bitterness and hostility towards our fellow citizens.

It is time to repel the enemy — the real enemy behind this confrontation. We can all now see clearly that it is only the Western community that stands opposed to the inclusive Government and our efforts to rebuild our nation. We have the blessing and good will of all members of the family of nations but the West.

Each of us Zimbabweans must win the ultimate victory by killing all seeds of hostility and enmity within us towards fellow citizens.

This is an important victory to win — bigger than any election victory that anyone can ever dream of.

It is time to plant seeds of genuine love and oneness in our hearts — a love capable of withstanding the murderous assault of ruinous sanctions and isolation.

This kind of oneness and patriotism can only be built on the revolutionary bedrock of sincere love for our country and heritage.

This writer is convinced that each Zanu-PF member and supporter is capable of this kind of love for the MDC members and supporters, and likewise each MDC member and supporter is capable of this kind of love for those from Zanu-PF.

The principals presiding over the GPA have expressed a willingness to work together, and their respective parties have been doing more negotiations than fighting of late. All Zimbabweans should chant yes, to this. That chanting must then be put into practice.

We should all remember that there has never been anything but unity and oneness among Zimbabweans. Our confrontation has been in the context of the presence of an unwanted external enemy.

Our people — the real guardians of power in Zimbabwe — must speak loud and clear that in Zimbabwe we are one and our heritage and future is one. This is the cheapest and easiest way of repelling the enemy.

Those sheepish smiles from the faces of Zimbabweans in the Diaspora whenever they are confronted with patronising statements like “you poor thing”, or “aren’t you lucky to be here?” must be translated into bold declarations that we are neither poor nor lucky to be away from home.

On behalf of our country we must boldly tell the world that there are no more problems in our country and none of us should ever again posture as an asylum seeker of any kind.

We must make it clear that we can return to Zimbabwe when and as we wish, in total freedom and pride.

We did not fight against the imperial onslaught in order to create refugees and economic prisoners. We fought to repel the enemy and we are happy that the objective of the enemy was thwarted.

Now that the enemy can be fully repelled by our one voice, it is time we realise that we are one family as Zimbabweans. We are our own liberators and together we will always triumph.

It is time to avoid being dragged and diverted into fights that are not for the benefit of our country and our people.

It is time to avoid being involved in concerns that are not concerns of our people in this mad race toward aid money and all manner of sponsored campaigns.

It is understandable that the pressures of want create this great temptation and pressure on some of our people to keep pace with welfare needs by stepping up to the dictates and requirements of the Western donor.

That only gives justification for the bellicose actions of such aid providers as the USAid and Endowment for Democracy, together with Britain’s Westminster Foundation.

When we do their bidding to dupe them into releasing those much wanted US dollars, all we are doing is providing them with a pretext for holding our country for ransom.

When we think we are duping those gullible immigration officials by dramatising false stories so we can be granted asylum, all we are doing is giving the enemy the pretext he needs to portray our country as having a terrible human rights record.

It is when we stop all this self-defeating behaviour that we can successfully repel the enemy.

The Western media, in reality the imperialist Press, has often said of Zimbabwe that recovery of the economy would take decades.

Now the same media has passed a sentence on itself by reversing its opinion — albeit in an attempt to create an economic wizard out of our Finance Minister.

Whichever way, the economic reality on the ground clearly shows that most of what they wrote about the state of Zimbabwe’s economy in the last five or so years was a slander. We can rebuild our country so fast if we stand as one and the enemy will be forced to come face-to-face-with his own slander.

We can live freely and happily as a family and the enemy who wrote that we were a pariah state will have to come face to face with his own slander.

Iraq, Guantanamo, Palestine and Afghanistan have shown the world who the real human rights abusers are. It is all now too clear.

It is time for Zimbabweans to wash away our shame and to re-establish the truth about our country and its true revolution. Those who detest the revolution for various illicit reasons will not stop causing confusion.

Their manoeuvres will continue and so we must brace ourselves for the battles that await us as a nation.

This writer would like to wish every Zimbabwean a happy 2010 — happiness in keeping with our national goal of rebuilding our economy and with the collective efforts we are all ready to make.

In wishing the nation a good and happy 2010, this writer would also like to plead with every Zimbabwean to brace up and look on the experience of the last ten years. This must be viewed as an unfortunate episode — nevertheless very rich in lessons.

We all need to analyse the experience so that we can benefit our future and the future of our revolution.

We must always remember that “when people stand up, imperialism trembles” as Thomas Sankara said on March 26, 1983; when he launched the Burkinabe Revolution.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!