[R-G] Expressions of imperialism within Zimbabwe

[Anthony Fenton]

April 27, 2008
Expressions of imperialism within Zimbabwe
http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/expressions-of-imperialism-within-zimbabwe/

By Stephen Gowans

Zimbabwe’s Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Patrick  
Chinamasa on Friday denounced the US and Britain for their  
interference in Zimbabwe’s elections. At the same time, he decried the  
Morgan Tsvangirai faction of the main opposition party, the Movement  
for Democratic Change (MDC-T), and its civil society partner, the  
Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), as being part of a US and  
British program to reverse the gains of Zimbabwe’s national liberation  
struggle.

“It is no secret that the US and the British have poured in large sums  
of money behind the MDC-T’s sustained demonization campaign,”  
Chinamasa said. (1)

“Sanctions against Zimbabwe (were intensified) just before the  
elections,” while “large sums of money” were poured into Zimbabwe “by  
the British and Americans to bribe people to vote against President  
Mugabe.” (2)

The goal, Chinamasa continued, is to “render the country ungovernable  
in order to justify external intervention to reverse the gains of the  
land reform program.” (3)

The justice minister went on to describe opposition leader Morgan  
Tsvangirai and his MDC “for what they are — an Anglo-American project  
designed to defeat and reverse the gains of Zimbabwe’s liberation  
struggle, to undermine the will of the Zimbabwean electorate and to  
return the nation to the dark days of white domination.” (4)

The minister also described the ZESN as “an American-sponsored civil  
society appendage of the MDC-T.” (5)

Were they reported in the West, it would be fashionable to sneer at  
Chinamasa’s accusations as lies told to justify a crackdown on the  
opposition. But, predictably, they haven’t been. For anyone who’s  
following closely, however, the minister’s charges hardly ring false.

The ZESN is funded by the US Congress and US State Department though  
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and United States Agency  
for International Development (USAID). Its board is comprised of a  
phalanx of US and British-backed fifth columnists. (6)

Board member Reginald Matchaba Hove won the NED democracy award in  
2006. Described by its first director as doing overtly what the CIA  
used to do covertly, the NED – and by extension the NGOs it funds —  
are not politically neutral organizations. They have an agenda, and it  
is to promote US interests under the guise of promoting  
democratization. Hove is also director of the Southern Africa division  
of billionaire financier George Soros’ Open Society Institute, which  
has been involved in funding overthrow movements in Yugoslavia,  
Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Soros also has an agenda: to open  
societies to Western profit making. Indeed, the board members of the  
ZESN comprise an A-list of overthrow activists, with multiple  
interlocking connections to imperialist governments and corporate  
foundations.

It doesn’t take long to connect Hove to left scholar Patrick Bond (of  
Her Majesty’s NGOs) and his Center for Civil Society. The Center is a  
program partner with the Southern Africa Trust, one of whose trustees  
is ZESN board member Reginald Matchaba Hove. The Center for Policy  
Studies, whose mission is to prepare civil society in Zimbabwe for  
political change (that is, to prepare it to overthrow the Zanu-PF  
government), is funded by the Southern Africa Trust, a partner of  
Bond’s Center for Civil Society. Other sponsors include the Soros,  
Ford, Mott, Heinrich Boll (German Green party), and Friedrich Ebert  
(German Social Democrats) foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers, the  
NED, South African Breweries and a fund established by the chairman of  
mining and natural resources company, Anglo-American. Significantly,  
Zimbabwe is rich in minerals. Zanu-PF’s program is to put control of  
the country’s mineral resources, as well as its land, in the hands of  
the black majority, depriving transnational mining companies, like  
Anglo-American, of control and profits. Everjoice Win, the former  
spokesperson for the ZESN, is on the advisory board of Bond’s center.  
The Center supports the Freedom of Expression Institute (FEI), which  
is funded by George Soros and the British government’s Westminster  
Foundation for Democracy (WFD). The FEI is a partner of the Media  
Institute of Southern Africa (also funded by the British government),  
whose director Rashweat Mukundu is a board member of the ZESN.

Bond co-authored a report with Tapera Kapuya, a fellow of ZESN  
sponsor, the NED. He also contributed to a report titled Zimbabwe’s  
Turmoil, along with John Makumbe and Brian Kagoro. The report was  
sponsored by the Institute for Security Studies, which is financed by  
the governments of the United States, Britain, France and Canada, the  
Rockefeller Brothers, and of course, the ubiquitous George Soros and  
Ford foundations. Makumbe has published in the NED’s Journal of  
Democracy, and is a former director of the Crisis in Zimbabwe  
Coalition (funded, not surprisingly, by the NED). The Coalition, like  
the Center for Policy Studies, is devoted to ousting the Mugabe  
government under the guise of promoting democracy, but in reality  
promotes the profits of firms like Anglo-American and the interests of  
US and British investors. Kagoro is a former coordinator of the  
Coalition. Significantly, the Coalition is a partner of the ZESN.

Add to this Bond’s celebrating the Western-trained and financed  
underground movements Zvakwana and Sokwanele as an “independent  
left” (7) and his co-authoring a Z-Net article on Zimbabwe with MDC  
founding member Grace Kwinjeh [8] (MDC leader Tsvangirai admitted in a  
February 2002 SBS Dateline program that his party is financed by  
European governments and corporations (9)), and it’s clear that Bond  
links up with the spider web of American and British-sponsored civil  
society appendages of the MDC-T.

Chinamasa’s clarification of the connections between the US and  
Britain and Zimbabwe’s civil society and opposition fifth columnists  
is a welcome relief from Western newspapers’ attempts to cover them  
up. The ZESN, despite being generously funded by the US through  
Congress and the State Department, is described by the Western media  
as “independent” while ZESN partner, the National Democratic Institute  
(NDI), is called “an international pro-democracy organization” (10)  
and “a Washington-based group.” (11) What it really is, is the foreign  
arm of the Democratic Party. The NDI receives funding from the US  
Congress (as well as from USAID and corporate foundations), which it  
then doles out to fifth columnists in US-designated “outposts of  
tyranny.” Only in the service of propaganda would the Democratic Party  
be called “a Washington-based group.” One wonders how Americans would  
have reacted to the British monarchy parading about post-revolutionary  
Washington as a “London-based” group – an “international good  
government” organization bankrolling an American NGO to monitor US  
elections? Would anyone be surprised if the leaders of the British- 
financed NGO were dragged off to jail, especially were its backers  
openly working to oust the government in Washington to restore the  
rule of the British monarchy? In Zimbabwe, the only surprise is that  
the Zanu-PF government hasn’t reacted with as much force as the  
Americans would have done under the same circumstances. That  
Zimbabwe’s government has tried to preserve space for the exercise of  
political and civil liberties in the face of massive hostile foreign  
interference is to be commended.

Washington is quite open in its intentions to overthrow the Mugabe  
government. Under the 2001 US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery  
Act “the President is authorized to provide assistance” to “support an  
independent and free press and electronic media in Zimbabwe” and  
“provide for democracy and governance programs in Zimbabwe.” (12) This  
translates into the president financing anti-Zanu-PF radio stations  
and newspapers and bankrolling groups opposed to Zimbabwe’s national  
liberation movement to inveigle Zimbabweans to vote against Mugabe.

“The United States government has said it wants to see President  
Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is working with the  
Zimbabwean opposition…trade unions, pro-democracy groups and human  
rights organizations…to bring about a change of administration.” (13)

Last year, the US State Department acknowledged once again that it  
supports “the efforts of the political opposition, the media and civil  
society” in Zimbabwe through training, assistance and financing. (14)  
And the 2006 US National Security Strategy declares that “it is the  
policy of the US to seek and support democratic movements and  
institutions in every nation…with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny  
in…” North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus and Zimbabwe. (15)

The goal of the overthrow agenda is to reverse the land reform and  
economic indigenization policies of the Zanu-PF government — policies  
that are against the interests of the ruling class foundations that  
fund the fifth columnists’ activities. The chairman of Anglo-American  
finances Zimbabwe’s anti-Mugabe civil society because bringing  
Tsvangirai’s MDC to power is good for Anglo-American’s bottom line.  
Likewise, the numerous Southern African corporations that Lord Renwick  
of Clifton sits on the boards of stand to profit from the MDC  
unseating Zimbabwe’s national liberation agenda. Lord Renwick is head  
of an outfit called the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust (ZDT), also part of  
the interlocked community of imperialist governments, wealthy  
individuals, corporate foundations, and NGOs working to reverse  
Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. The ZDT is a major backer of the MDC.  
(16)

Police raids on the offices of the ZESN and Harvest House, the  
headquarters of the MDC, seem deplorable to those in the West who are  
accustomed to elections in which the contestants all pretty much agree  
on major policies, with only trivial differences among them. But in  
Zimbabwe, the differences are acute – a choice between losing much of  
what the 14-year long national liberation war was fought for and  
settling for nominal independence (that is crying uncle, so the West  
will relieve the pressure of its economic warfare) or moving forward  
to bring the program of national liberation to its logical conclusion:  
ownership of the country’s land, resources and enterprises, not just  
its flag, by the black majority. In this, there is an unavoidable  
conflict between “a government which is spearheaded by a revolutionary  
party, which spearheaded the armed struggle against British  
imperialism” and “a party that was the creation of the imperialists  
themselves (that) has been financed the imperialists themselves.” (17)

It’s impossible to achieve independence from foreign control and  
domination without turmoil, disruption and fighting – not when the  
opposition and civil society are directed from abroad to serve foreign  
interests. Can Zimbabwe’s elections honestly be described as free and  
fair when the economy has been sabotaged by the West’s denying Harare  
credit and debt relief [18] and where respite from the attendant  
miseries is promised in the election of the opposition? Are elections  
legitimate when media are controlled by outside forces (19), and civil  
society and the opposition have been controlled by foreign powers?

Chinamasa’s complaints, far from being demagoguery, are real and  
justified. Zanu-PF’s decision to fight, rather than capitulate, ought  
be applauded, not condemned. Imperialism cannot be opposed without  
opposing the MDC and its civil society partners, for they too are  
imperialism.

1. Herald (Zimbabwe) April 26, 2008.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Michael Barker, “Zimbabwe and the Power of Propaganda: Ousting a  
President via Civil Society,” Global Research.ca, April 16, 2006. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8675
See also http://www.ned.org/dbtw-wpd/textbase/projects-search.htm and http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Zimbabwe_Election_Support_Network
7. Stephen Gowans, “The Politics of Demons and Angels,” April 15,  
2007, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/zimbabwe-and-the-politics-of-demons-and-angels/
8. Stephen Gowans, “The Company Patrick Bond Keeps,” March 24, 2008, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/the-company-patrick-bond-keeps/
9. Rob Gowland, “Zimbabwe: The struggle for land, the struggle for  
independence,” Communist Party of Australia, http://www.cpa.org.au/booklets/zimbabwe.pdf 
  . The MDC is also financed by the British government’s Westminster  
Foundation for Democracy and the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose  
patrons include former British foreign secretaries and is headed by  
Lord Renwick of Chilton, vice-chair of investment banking at JPMorgan  
(Europe.)
10. The Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 26, 2008.
11. The Washington Post, April 26, 2008.
12. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s107-494
13. The Guardian (UK), August 22, 2002.
14. US Department of State, April 5, 2007.
15. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/
16. “Zimbabwe ambassador: Self-determination is at the root of the  
conflict,” FinalCall.Com News, April 22, 2008. http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_4611.shtml
17. Ibid.
18. Under the US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001,  
“the Secretary of the Treasury shall instruct the United States  
executive director to each international financial institution to  
oppose and vote against–

(1) any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit,  
or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or

(2) any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the  
Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international  
financial institution.”

See http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s107-494

19. The same question can be asked of elections in Western liberal  
democracies, where the media are controlled by an interlocked  
community of hereditary capitalist families and corporate board  
members who share common economic interests inimical to those of the  
majority.