11 May 2012 By Reason Wafawarova Every sane person wants to be optimistic about
democracy and the rule of law, and would leap at any
straw in the wind to express appreciation for this
nobility. This is precisely why the gospel of
democracy and human rights became for a good while a
currency for the expansion of Morgan Tsvangirai's
Movement for Democratic Change. For a good while because the people of Zimbabwe
have now made an unequivocal distinction between the
perfect logic of democracy and the total insanity of
politicking, regardless of who is carrying out the
politicking dramas. It has become abundantly clear that the MDC-T, just
like their colleagues in Zanu-PF, can impose election
candidates against the will of the people, regardless
of Tsvangirai's vociferous sloganeering about
democracy and respect for the will of the people. Both parties lost between five and six seats each
in the 2008 Parliamentary election simply because they
fielded two candidates in single contests, one
disgruntled people's choice forced to run as an
independent, and the other the imposed candidate, that
way splitting the vote and handing away victory to
whoever would have been second best. The people of Zimbabwe are now more than aware that
despite the perfect logic of the democracy that
Lovemore Madhuku studiously supplicates at the
National Constitutional Assembly, the organisation
still has to put up with the same man's insane
violation of the NCA's constitution, dubiously and
arrogantly awarding himself exemptions to regulated
term limits so he can be at the helm of that
organisation for as long as he personally feels. The people of Zimbabwe have in the MDC-T found
themselves with a party that preaches with admirable
probity the perfect logic of transparency and
accountability, while profanely providing the insanity
of 100 percent corrupt urban councils largely run by
spectacularly under-qualified political activists with
no administrative or leadership experience whatsoever,
this writer's lucky but hopeless cousin included. It is the same party that has given us the perfect
logic of excellence, under the leadership of a man
with a legendary legacy of inconsistency and
embarrassing blunders, not to mention an equally
eventful and controversial sexual life, made apparent
after the tragic loss of his loving and cultured wife
Susan, a woman who made our PM look like a man of
tremendous integrity. The other women have
collectively made the man look like a marauding
womaniser. In 1991, the chief economist of the World Bank,
Lawrence Summers, inimically demonstrated that the
Bank should encourage polluting industries to move to
the poorest countries. He reasoned: "The measurement
of the costs of health-impairing pollution depends on
the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and
mortality." The American economist continued: "From this point
of view, a given amount of health-impairing pollution
should be done in the country with the lowest cost,
which will be the country with the lowest wages. I
think the economic logic behind dumping a load of
toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable
and we should face up to that." On the morality of this view, Summers pointed out
that any "moral reasons or social concerns could be
turned around and used more or less effectively
against every Bank proposal for liberalisation." After Summers' memo was leaked, it goes without
saying that it elicited fury from people in developing
countries, with Brazil's Minister of Environment, Jose
Lutzenberger, writing to Summers: "Your reasoning is
perfectly logical but totally insane." Lutzenberger's conclusion leads us to this whole
ironic reality in international affairs where
perfectly logical arguments often lead to insane
conclusions. One can look at the perfect logic of UN Resolution
1973 and its proclaimed goal of protecting Libyan
civilians, purportedly from the murderous wrath of
Colonel Gaddafi, only to be concluded by the total
insanity of massive Nato bombardment of Libyan cities,
culminating in the killing of 50 000 Libyans, mostly
innocent civilians and children. One can also look at the perfect logic of the
United States going after Osama bin Laden in the
aftermath of the 2001 September 11 attacks on the Twin
Towers. This logic has, however, not yet been
concluded, almost a year after Osama was reportedly
killed in Pakistan, and the United States and its
Western allies are still pursuing the total insanity
of war-ravaging Afghanistan, wantonly killing hundreds
of thousands of innocent civilians in the process, now
ostensibly on the basis of yet another perfect logic
of democratising the country, or more precisely,
freeing Afghans from their own religion. George W Bush is quite notorious for his legendary
lie upon which he invaded and ravaged Iraq for a good
eight years starting in 2003. The perfect logic of
stopping Saddam Hussein from possessing weapons of
mass destruction resulted in the total insanity of
invading a sovereign country on the basis of an
absolute lie. America is still to pay the price for
this insanity, like it has to for many other insane
brutalities committed on various nationalities over
the years. Barack Obama's perfect logic of stopping Iran from
developing nuclear weapons could be concluded with the
insanity of a meaningless and unjust war if the
vacuous and baseless emotive rhetoric against Iran
remains unabated. Africa risks another mass-killing war in the Sudan
as Khartoum employs the perfect logic of defending its
oil fields from the occupying South Sudan, itself
doing so under its own perfect logic of "self-defence,"
a position so supported by the United States and other
Western countries, as well as by US-allied African
states like Uganda. The insanity of another Khartoum-South Sudan war
could be averted if only the perfect logic of
US-Russia-China economic interests in the Sudan was
not the insane but supreme factor in the scheme of
things. Sudanese people from both the North and the
South are mere pawns doing the bidding of superpowers. Here is a statement recently attributed to
Zimbabwe's Finance Minister Tendai Biti by the Voice
of America: "The biggest thing which we did was to restore
trust in the market, because we have been predictable,
we have been consistent, and I have said if there is
anyone who is going to push me to carry out a measure
that I do not agree with, if anyone is going to force
me to retain the Zimbabwean dollar, I will quit and go
back to my law firm." The minister was speaking at the Atlantic Council
think-tank recently and he chose this occasion to
proclaim his pride in the insanity of hailing from a
country without a currency. The perfect logic of
restoring "trust in the market," and of being
"consistent" is as laudable as Minister's Biti's feat
as a competent lawyer, but to take pride in having no
ambition or plan to restore a national currency is
insanity of the highest order, from any number of
angles. There is a huge difference between condemning
the bringing back the Zimdollar at the wrong time and
advocating never bringing it back again. Biti is a
disciple of the later, or so it seems. Commenting on Minister Saviour Kasukuwere's
spirited efforts at indigenising the economy of
Zimbabwe, Minister Tendai Biti had this to say: "You are just transferring shares from a few rich,
white people, to a few rich, black people, so it is
not democratisation. It is just elite transfer. So it
was not well thought out. And the true due process is
not sufficiently being followed, so I think it is a
programme that we need to go back to the drawing board
and then say genuinely how we can empower people." Again we see the perfect logic of democratisation
overriding the total insanity of us putting up with
the demeaning and humiliating reality of a
white-controlled economy. In Biti's view, if we cannot
literally give the white-controlled firms to all
Zimbabweans put together, then we are better off
leaving the "few rich white people" in control. We are
in this sense better off putting up with a few rich
white people than a few rich black people. Better a
foreign exploiter than your own brother, so the
reasoning goes. Zimbabwe is a capitalist state by practical
definition and from that perspective "nationalisation
of resources" must mean state capitalism, or the
control of capital by a few rich Zimbabwean nationals,
with the majority benefiting through the filter-down
effect of jobs and taxation the usual way of
capitalism. This writer knows Tendai Biti from his
socialist days at university, but is more than certain
that the minister is not advocating for every
Zimbabwean to acquire a share or two in foreign-owned
firms. That would be myopic. What the minister is doing is using the perfect
logic of democratisation to protect the total insanity
of foreign domination over our economy. He cannot
stand out there and say: "Leave these few rich white
people alone. They are our friends at the MDC-T." That
would be politically suicidal. Minister Biti has a grand plan to get Zimbabwe out
of the IMF loan bondage, an economic slavery suffered
by almost every African country at the moment. He
tells us we are US$140 million in debt arrears to the
IMF, and that the total debt stands at US$550 million. "He said clearance of ECF arrears would unlock new
financing arrangements from the IMF, within the
context of a fund supported financial arrangement,
which would then be used to repay the bridging loan
obtained from the co-operating partners." This is a
quote from The Zimbabwean. So we have a Finance Minister whose idea of
economic independence is to borrow money cheaply from
some unspecified friendly lenders or donors, use that
money to pay up arrears at the IMF, and once arrears
are cleared, persuade the money shark organisation to
add more millions of dollars to our US$550 million
debt, then we take those borrowed extra millions to
repay our lesser interest and friendly "co-operating
partner" lenders. Very sound thinking indeed. So you borrow at a lesser interest and use the
money to clear arrears of an expensive loan, after
which you ask for another expensive loan to go and pay
back the soft loan, become good friends with the
"co-operating partners," at the expense of an expanded
and expensive IMF loan. And you end up with a bigger
IMF loan, mortgaging the country for decades under a
financially murderous Bretton Woods loan regime. We have a Finance Minister once rated the best in
Africa'' and perhaps we should give this clever plan a
chance. Maybe he will negotiate a write-off of all our
debts at the IMF one day. Please not under HIPC
arrangements! We are not poor. A wholesale loan write-off would be the only
logical way of getting us out of the IMF financial
bondage that the minister wants so much to secure for
us, or more precisely to add for us. So determined is
Minister Biti to get us a bigger IMF loan that he
actually has warned us to be at our behaving best if
we are not to lose out. He said: "Zimbabwe will,
however, need a track record of implementing sound
macro-economic policies and assurances . . ." Our Finance Minister seems not to have his eyes on
wheeling up our production lines in a country so much
blessed with all manner of natural resources,
including a huge array of expensive minerals, and an
agricultural potential only unique to ourselves in
Southern Africa. Rather he wants us to have it the easy but most
brutally expensive IMF way, the way most renowned
Finance Ministers are going in Africa, as what made
Malawi such a widely praised "economic success"
between 2004 and 2010, after which the economic
success immediately disappeared with the back of an
expelled British diplomat. Biti's reasoning is perfect logic for a recovering
economy like that of Zimbabwe, but in all honesty it
is total insanity when premised on the rationale of
sustainability and building of the future for
Zimbabwe's coming generations. Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome.
It is homeland or death! Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in
Sydney, Australia. Comments 💬 التعليقات |