Zimbabwean Opposition MDC-T: Aristocracy Or Democracy?

30 January 2010

By Reason Wafawarova

ZIMBABWEANS were left in no doubt that the unpopular adumbration of describing the illegal and ruinous economic sanctions on Zimbabwe as mere "restrictive measures" as preferred by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, and the vainglorious claim that it is "only Zanu-PF" that can get the sanctions removed is all mischievous hot air from the lips of ‘‘aristocrats’’ whose regard for the ordinary man is akin to that of Satan for those under his temptation.

David Miliband, the British foreign and Commonwealth secretary articulately enlightened the whole world in the clearest of terms that the British foreign policy on Zimbabwe is "above all" guided by the MDC-T leadership.

He did not call the sanctions by any scanty name like "restrictive measurers", as would those from MDC-T, notably Tsvangirai and the bunch of cheerleaders from his office.

In response to a question in the House of Commons, Miliband had this to say, "In respect of sanctions, we have made it clear that they can be lifted only in a calibrated way, as progress is made. I do not think that it is right to say that the choice is between lifting all sanctions and lifting none at all.

"We have to calibrate our response to the progress on the ground, and, above all, to be guided by what the MDC says to us about the conditions under which it is working and leading the country."

Clearly, the British are not going to be guided by any action or lack of it, from Zanu-PF. Their game is "above all" guided by MDC-T and it is this very party that mobilised, organised and guaranteed the sanctions in the first place.

They legitimised the illegal sanctions by welcoming them in the name of a "persecuted" people.

MDC-T and its leader have in the past openly bragged about "making Zimbabwe ungovernable" and in 2008 they adopted the infamous "tongai tione" motto, bragging that they would call on their "international partners" to starve Zimbabwe "until the regime falls".

This is the philosophy behind the compilations of names of individuals and over 40 key companies that are on the sanctions lists of Western governments and the EU — compilations that were all done at Harvest House for the benefit of these imperialist elites.

A former high-ranking MDC official has gone public revealing that the party drafted the sanctions law, the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act for the Americans, and that assertion has not been contested by anyone from MDC-T.

This revelation was not news to the majority of Zimbabweans who are quite clear on the destruction capabilities of Morgan Tsvangirai and his party. Zimbabweans have been openly threatened with starvation, diseases and all manner of suffering "if you allow the regime" to rule.

Every Zimbabwean over the age of five knows who said, "Muri kuti muri kushayiwa? Hamuna chekudya, zvino muchanyatsoshayisisa chaizvo izvo", meaning, "You think you have suffered lack and shortages yet? You ain’t seen anything yet, you will suffer real lack and that without fail".

These were utterances made by Morgan Tsvangirai at a political rally and they have been replayed quite often.

It is now absolutely ludicrous for MDC-T to keep playing the democratic soldiers and to pretend with straight faces that they are a party that cares for Zimbabweans, let alone a "party of excellence".

It is in their power and capacity to tell their British masters and by extension the masters of the British themselves, the Americans; that Zimbabweans have suffered enough under the ruinous sanctions regime, and that the sanctions have to be lifted. Yet this has not happened, and all despite the agreement in the GPA that MDC-T would actively denounce sanctions and also advocate the removal of the same.

The simple reason for what MDC-T is doing is that to them, political power is more important than the people.

Where they accuse Zanu-PF of using violence to push people into submission, they themselves go for economic strangulation and mass starvation to push an entire nation into political submission.

The thousands who have died because of the ruinous sanctions are mere collateral damage to MDC-T’s notorious cause of leveraging Zanu-PF by starving the nation.

The charlatans that compromise MDC-T leadership have the temerity to pretend they did not hear Miliband, and they of course underestimate the intelligence of the common man, believing all the way that they can make the nation believe it’s all Mugabe’s fault always.

Eliphas Mukonoweshuro cannot try to obfuscate a message as clear as was said by Miliband without making a perfect fool of himself, and he should have known better.

The question that needs an answer is what exactly is MDC-T and what do they want to achieve? They call themselves the "Movement for Democratic Change" but are they in reality after "democracy"?

The MDC-T is led by people who see the path to privilege and authority in service to state-corporate power.

As David Hume wrote in his "First Principles of Government", "responsible men" are guided by an intuitive understanding of a maxim formulated to ensure that "the many are governed by the few" and to guarantee "the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers".

By keeping the sanctions regime running the MDC-T hopes to get all Zimbabweans to surrender all their aspirations and passions, land reclamation included, to the rule of the MDC-T as directed by Britain and her Western allies.

Hume’s philosophy propounds that governors must control thought processes of the masses. He wrote, "It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and its maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular".

Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin observed that "the worst of all despotic governments" was from this class of "red bureaucrats" emerging from a "new class" of intellectuals.

Thomas Jefferson made these reflections earlier when he reviewed the classical liberal thought and the libertarian socialist perspective. In his last years Jefferson had serious concerns about the fate of the democratic experiment. He made a distinction between "aristocrats and democrats".

Jefferson defined aristocrats as "those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes". The democrats in contrast are those who "identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interest".

The aristocrats of Jefferson’s day were the advocates of the rising capitalist state, which Jefferson regarded with disdain because of the obvious contradiction between democracy and capitalism, whether in the state-guided Western model, or some other form.

The MDC-T cannot claim to identify with Zimbabweans when they mobilised ruinous sanctions against the people. MDC-T leaders cannot claim to have confidence in the people when Tsvangirai equated newly resettled farmers to wild mushrooms sprouting on white occupied farmlands.

The party cannot claim to cherish and consider our people as honest and safe when they clearly think the masses that reclaimed stolen farmlands are a danger to their Rhodesian donors.

Rather the MDC-T fears and distrusts Zimbabwe, and wish to draw all power from them into the hands of imperialist elites who finance their party. This is why the MDC-T thinks Britain must have more power over the economic affairs of Zimbabwe first, before they can have sanctions lifted.

MDC-T leaders are committed advocates for a capitalist state whose affairs are run from London and Washington, and they have expressed open disdain for capital from within Zimbabwe and from countries like South Africa and China.

MDC-T hopes to secure the reign of Western capital through moneyed banking institutions and corporations so that they can put the Zimbabwean "public in its place"; that is, providing cheap labour for private profiteers, and they want a Zimbabwe that is free of "democratic dogmatisms" like how the popular land reform program is viewed in the West.

As John Dewey noted in his later years, "politics is the shadow cast on society by big business" and as long as this is so, "the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance".

Real democracy requires that the source of this shadow be removed, and this shadow is the lifeline of the MDC-T; as the party is entirely funded by this massive shadow of imperialist business.

Democracy requires the removal of this shadow not only because of its domination of the political arena, but because the very institutions of private power undermine democracy and freedom.

Dewey was very explicit about the kind of power he was talking about. He said, "power today resides in control of the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Whoever owns them rules the life of the country".

Dewey described "actual power" as "business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda".

This explains Minister Biti’s advocacy for Western financial control over the economy, together with his hysterical lobbying for a tax-free regime for foreign media. That is exactly how you create actual power for owners of capital.

The system we are talking about here is a source of coercion and control, as are the sanctions illegally imposed on Zimbabwe at the request of Tsvangirai and his colleagues. Unless this system is unravelled we cannot talk of democracy and freedom; all we can talk of is government by the nobility, or aristocracy.

We cannot continue to have a system that will train our children to work, not freely and intelligently, but for the sake of the work earned, and designed all to make profits for private power. This is the glorious history of the farm worker of yesteryear whom Zimbabwe is accused of depriving of an awesome lifestyle under the employment of the white farmer.

These people toiled day and night for nothing else but the profits of the slave masters that "employed" them.

They had nothing more than food enough to allow them to provide hard labour for their taskmaster and no more than scant dressing to hide their private parts while toiling on the farms. They were under the system of "actual power" as Dewey would put it, and MDC-T wants this aristocratic power restored.

This is why they find it hard to advise the British that Zimbabwe does not deserve the illegal sanctions they imposed. They view the lifting of sanctions as the lifting of their control over an economically subdued population. It is all just too sad.

There must be a public outcry for MDC-T to do exactly what Miliband said he is waiting to see from them.

The Prime Minister must call sanctions by their name as his financiers represented by Miliband are doing.

He must unequivocally call for the lifting of these sanctions or else he must admit he has no intentions to make any positive contribution for the country.

 

 

©  EsinIslam.Com

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