IN the book Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky quotes Thucydides as saying, "Large nations do what they wish, while small nations accept what they must."

Chomsky says this is one of the two leading principles of international relations.

This can be paired with Adam Smith’s principle where he pointed out that the "principal architects" of state policy, the "merchants and manufacturers," make sure that their own interests are "most particularly attended to," however "grievous" the consequences for others. He was mainly talking about England of course.

This writer thinks these two principles can also be paired to a third that is more related to domestic politics for nation states than to international relations.

Politicians make sure what they do is in line with their individual quest for power and personal gain and many times their actions have no regard for the consequences to all others or for the good of the people around them.

We can look at the politics of Matabeleland, something that Zimbabweans are currently debating a lot after Nathaniel Manheru stirred the waters of this supposedly "delicate topic".

What is delicate about the topic is not the issue of the people of Matabeleland or their declared feelings about marginalisation and historical events.

Simply put, the people of Matabeleland have neither exclusivity nor monopoly over marginalisation and backwardness, as some opportunists seem to preach.

Panganai Village in Bikita, where this writer was born and bred, can only be described as a virgin of primitiveness in terms of infrastructural development and we also have nothing of whatever there is not in Matabeleland, and the village is a Karanga domain.

What is delicate are the power games played by politicians who manipulate the feelings of the people of Matabeleland, real or imagined, for their own personal benefit.

These are the politicians who thrive on unconstructive rhetoric and we have seen an alarming number of such opportunists trying to contrive legitimacy by overplaying the often exaggerated and overemphasised marginalisation of Matabeleland.

Anyone running out of ammunition against Zanu-PF in general or President Mugabe in particular will patently anoint themselves custodians of all Ndebele memory, remissly reminiscing hearsay and unsubstantiated claims over Gukurahundi, as if every prevailing myth around this topic were a matter of fact.

The abuse of the plight of the people of Matabeleland, genuine or imagined, would be sad enough if it was simply a matter of Westerners trying to conjure up a pretext for vilifying Zanu-PF and President Mugabe.

It is sadder when Zimbabwean politicians ride on the same wave and take advantage of a bitterness they hardly share with the affected; all in order to endear themselves to a people they see no more than a mere source of cheap votes and a route to political survival.

It becomes appalling when this is reinforced by the sad reality of a bitterness-based inferiority that makes some of the so-called marginalised people lose self-esteem and self belief.

We have a situation where anything done by central Government for Matabeleland is assumed to be inferior to what happens in Mashonaland, to the extent that the absolute nothing that has happened to Panganai Village since 1980 by way of infrastructural development is seen as a hundred times better than the equal absolute nothing that has happened in Guyu, down in Matabeleland South.

This is when we are not confronted with the unreasonable cynicism that demeans any act of goodwill extended by Central Government to the Matabeleland region.

These political vultures have been politicking on the matter of two statues made in honour of the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo, and some of the complications created on this matter by political activists and some politicians are, to say the least, quite ludicrous.

The Nkomo family’s concerns over how the issue of the two statues should be handled are a different matter that can be addressed adequately and amicably by the parties concerned.

It is the self-centred rhetoric from politicians who want to manipulate the legacy of the late Cde Nkomo to gain ground in their fight against their rivals in Zanu-PF that really makes the whole story a sad chapter in Zimbabwe’s history.

But politicians by their very nature have no regard for manners, time, place, morality or people around them, dead or alive — all they do is look after their own personal interests and political survival, riding on every raft that offers an opportunity to cross the deadly high flowing rivers running across the world of politics.

This writer’s late mother used to tell a story of a blind man who never trusted the sighted people around him.

One day the sighted folks decided to spoil the blind man by filling up his plate with as much fried goat meat as the plate could carry.

Feeling his plate, the blind man realised his plate was full to the brim with this delicacy and he said, "Ukaona isu vasingaoni tozadzirwa ndiro kudai ziva kuti vanoona umwe neumwe amire nembudzi yake".

Translated literally, he was saying for him to have that kind of portion it really meant the sighted had a whole goat each to themselves.

So when we see boreholes in Matabeleland then Chikombedzi must be full to the brim with running water taps.

That is the thinking we sometimes get, isn’t it? They have everything in Harare is what we often hear.

Nathaniel Manheru, Priscilla Misihairambwi-Mushonga and Professor Jonathan Moyo; my take is that tribally minded politicians do not need to be pampered with more meat in their plate, but to receive their sight.

We have a legion of politicians in Zimbabwe today who are impervious to policy and absolutely illiterate on matters of economic planning and sound governance.

These are ideologically blind politicians and reactionaries whose sole occupation in politics is to react to what Zanu-PF has or has not done, did or did not do and things like that.

For as long as these blind people occupy political space in Zimbabwe, then the country will be riddled with so much infantile bickering that it becomes impossible even to bury people decently and honourably, or even to honour our departed heroes.

But this week is about the two principles that drive international relations theory and when one looks at these two said principles it becomes a lot easier to account for a fair amount of state policy, almost independent of which state it is.

On September 20, 2006 Hugo Chavez was widely publicised for referring to George W. Bush as "the devil" and for his subsequent comment about "sulphur" coming from the podium.

Name calling and the character of George W. Bush are two sides of the coin that makes up the Bush legacy, and they are a natural pair in that regard.

Nevertheless, it was rather unconstructive for Chavez to adopt such rhetoric when he made his historic speech in 2006.

It was unconstructive in the sense that it made it possible for the ultra right wing and Western media propagandists to spin the whole speech into a "devil comment speech," that way dousing into oblivion the incisive content the speech carried.

Despite the wide publicity of the devil comment from Chavez, the reality is that no attention was ever paid to the Venezuelan president’s speeches, either at the General Assembly on September 20, 2006, or the much more important one he gave at the 2005 General Assembly.

Then Chavez talked about reintroducing the concept of a new international economic order, a proposal that was sponsored by the former colonial countries, the Non Alligned Movement since the 70s, and put forward by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the main UN development agency.

This was a very serious programme meant to bring developing countries into international affairs on a slightly more equitable footing.

Of course, the proposal was shot down very fast, and the United States and her rich allies instead instituted the opposite — the so-called neoliberal order.

Chavez, like President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, also brought up crucial questions about UN reforms, suggested that the United Nations Security Council should be more democratic, that the UN Headquarters be placed in an international city, in the South, where most of the world’s population is.

He raised questions about energy consumption and he said there is far too much oil used for energy production, something very destructive for the environment. This he said despite the fact that Venezuela is an oil producer and a major beneficiary of petro-dollars.

Chavez also re-endorsed the position of the UN High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change that the importance of maintaining the constraints on the threat and use of force in international affairs must always be observed.

That speech was very important but it received barely any coverage at all.

It was the devil comment in the 2006 speech that was widely covered and one must note that although that comment could have been unconstructive, equally unconstructive was Donald Rumsfeld’s rhetoric when he compared Hugo Chavez to Hitler, or Nancy Pelosi’s name calling when she said the same man was a "thug".

Any serious newspaper would be expected to focus on Chavez’s policies or Bush’s policies, not on the rhetoric they use.

We hear a lot of bad mouthing on statements and comments that are attributed to President Robert Mugabe, and rarely do we see his policies articulated and analysed objectively.

The rhetoric used to push those policies often becomes the news and when the media does that, we are quite clear that the world is being led into gossip land.

Mugabe says about George W. Bush that his hands "drip with the blood of many nationalities" and Chavez calls the same man a "devil" and both Mugabe and Chavez received prolonged loud applauses that lasted so long that the UN officials had to tell the cheering crowd to cut it out.

Were the applauses prolonged because Bush was called names or it was because both Chavez and Mugabe expressed points of view that happened to be very widely accepted in the world?

Chavez and Mugabe’s sentiments are often described as "controversial" by Western media when in fact it is the views of the Western media and commentators that are controversial.

There is nothing controversial about Chavez saying that the United States is one of the greatest threats to peace in the world. Even European polls confirmed this in 2007 when Europeans placed the US far ahead of Iran, North Korea and everybody else, in a poll on countries that threaten world peace.

There is nothing controversial about Mugabe saying he wants foreign investors to own no more than 49 percent shares when operating in Zimbabwe. In India it is even down to 29 percent and many other countries have similar policies.

Equally there is nothing particularly controversial when Mugabe says colonially stolen land must be repossessed and distributed back to its original and rightful owners, indigenous Zimbabweans.

This is more logical than controversial.

These sentiments only become controversial when one defines the world as the BBC editorial board does, or as done by that of the New York Times or any other such ultra-right wing media house.

Just about every article you see about President Mugabe, Chavez, Fidel Castro or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad describes these leaders as "tin pot dictator(s)".

This is despite that President Mugabe has been repeatedly elected in many elections certified as free and fair, and so have Chavez and Ahmadinejad.

The media in both Zimbabwe and Venezuela bitterly condemn each of the two leaders in terms that are virtually unimaginable in the West.

Yet the two man are described as totalitarian even when they tolerate this Western sponsored slander and vilification.

There is intense debate among people in the US about whether Obama is helping or hindering their drive to get the country back on track.

He knocked off George W Bush’s tax cuts, caused an increase in health insurance costs and launched a stimulus package which seems to have stimulated unemployment.

A seventeen-year-old boy from the UK hears these discussions and sends Obama a nasty email telling him his piece of mind; and what happens?

The boy gets a visit from the British police on the orders of the FBI, and the boy is told that he is banned from visiting the United States for life.

If Zimbabwe’s ZRP had a Zambian 17-year-old banned from visiting Zimbabwe for life because the boy wrote a nasty email to Zimbabwe’s State House, we can only imagine the outcry that would come from Western countries.

Chavez is popular for his social projects that are helping the great majority of the Venezuelan population the same way Mugabe is renowned for his pro-people policies since independence in 1980.

What is called "undemocratic" by the West is sometimes extremely interesting.

When Evo Morales made moves toward nationalisation of Bolivia’s resources, he was condemned as authoritarian, dictatorial and attacking democracy, the very same way President Mugabe has been condemned for reclaiming colonially stolen farm lands from white colonial settlers for the benefit of 350 000 families of landless indigenous Zimbabweans.

It did not matter that Evo Morales was supported by 95 percent of the population.

That kind of support is "dictatorial" in the Western lexicon and as such must be condemned.

This is why Hamas is a terrorist group despite winning majority votes from Palestinians, why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is called a tin pot dictator despite winning a free and fair election only condemned by the West as un-free and unfair even before it was held.

That is understandable.

An election is never free and fair unless it results in the victory of a Western-backed candidate.

The West’s concept of democracy means "do what we say" and only when a country complies does it become democratic.

If a country does what the population wants, it is not democratic by Western standards.

It is undemocratic when Zimbabwean masses rally behind their government in repossessing land that was stolen by British settler farmers during colonial times. It is shocking that sometimes people cannot see this irony.

In 2008, James McGee, the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe was literally telling Zimbabweans, "if you do not vote the way we say, we are going to strangle you".

Right now, Zimbabweans are being told that sanctions on the country will remain for as long as Zanu-PF and its leader, President Mugabe are not destroyed and forgotten.

Martin Rapaport of the Rapaport Diamond Group is currently organising a conference at The Times Centre, New York scheduled for the 21st of October and the major item on the agenda is to make Zimbabwe’s diamond trade "undemocratic", and to condemn the Kimberly Process for issuing Zimbabwe with a temporary certificate for the trade of its Chiadzwa gems.

The Western media will pick the campaign against Zimbabwe’s diamonds dutifully and what will follow is hollow Western rhetoric on why Zimbabwe must be quarantined from the community of diamond traders.

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

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on Wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@ rwafawarova.com or visit www.rwafawarova.com

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