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ZIMBABWE - LETTER FROM THE DIASPORA !
Dear Friends,
The sixteenth century Venetian philosopher Nicolo Machiavelli may seem an inappropriate reference when discussing a present day African dicatator but much of what Machiavelli wrote in The Prince seems entirely applicable to what Robert Mugabe is doing to fill the dreadful hiatus since he lost the election. Machiavelli's work is a guide book on what the Prince or Ruler must do to gain and retain power. Machiavelli advocates the use of force, though never excessive or prolonged, as a justifiable means to an end and that end is to stay in power. I have heard that Mugabe is not unfamiliar with this work; maybe it is bedtime reading for him but whatever the source of his idealogy, whether it is Marxist political philosophy or simply the ravings of a half-mad meglomaniac he certainly seems to be following the Machiavellian dictum that to rule, 'It is better to be both feared and loved but if you can't be both it is better to be feared'
Having lost the love of his people, Mugabe has gone for the Machiavellian option: fear; for Mugabe the means justify the end. And the end is to stay in power at all costs. The violent onslaught on opposition supporters that we are seeing all over the country is being directed from the highest level and with the compliance of the Zimbabwe Republic Police who for the most part do nothing to stop this further descent into barbarous anarchy. The evidence is now so visible and widespread that even Zanu PF loyalists can no longer deny it but they can and do attempt to justify it. Speaking this last week, Didymus Mutasa said that the violence only occurs when the loyal Zanu party activists are provoked. 'They are being beaten ( the people who voted the wrong way) because they are provoking people. People don't cease to be human because of an election. They still get irritated by an act of provocation and beat they will if they are angry'!
Such one-sided and nonsensical statements have become the norm as government officials seek to defend the indefensible. Images of tiny children, their eyes huge with fear, their faces swollen, their mothers beaten, sometimes raped by men who have surrendered their own humanity in a desperate attempt to keep one man in power defies all belief. For anyone who lived through the violence of the Third Chimurenga as Mugabe called the farm invasions when they began eight years ago, it is all horribly familiar. The same ludicrous excuses were used then by the ruling party propagandists. The white farmers in Chinoyi were alleged to have deliberately trashed their own properties and caused mayhem to bring shame on the country's international image. This week the government made the claim again; it is the MDC which has carried out all the political violence in order to tarnish Mugabe's name the argument goes. With complete disregard for common sense or truth the propagandists trot out the same tired old nonsense - and no one believes a word of it.
Bright Matonga is the new 'government spokesman' it seems. Every word he utters is regarded by naïve and often not very well-informed foreign journalists as being the official voice of the Zanu PF government. He certainly makes the right kind of idiotic utterances. The Bright One is actually only the Deputy Minister of Information so one is justified in asking: Where is the Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu himself and why is he not the one doing all the talking to the world's press on behalf of the government? Dig a little deeper and you will discover that Matongo's rapid advancement is one consequence of the internal battles going on within the ruling party. Matongo is Mnangagwa's man and Emmerson Mnangagwa is once again Mugabe's choice for successor in State House. Ndlovu has been side-lined; perhaps because he was not a loud enough praise singer for Mugabe?
The trouble for dictators who surround themselves with praise singers and parasites is that they can never be sure that such men have the intelligence to argue the case convincingly before a sceptical world press. After all it does not take very much intelligence to parrot every word the master says including all the hateful racist rhetoric. Despite the fact that Matonga himself has a British wife he spent twenty minutes of an interview with South African Radio 702 this week ranting and sneering at white farmers who he said had rushed back into the country when they heard the MDC had won to 'invade' their former farms. When asked by the interviewer for evidence of this return of white farmers he was of course unable to give any but continued to rant and rail about the inhumanity of the white farmers and how little they had paid their workers and how racist and greedy they were. Not true Zimbabweans at all, said Matongo. The implication being of course that if they were they would support the ruling party!
The President (?) of the CFU was also on the programme but he very soon gave up the struggle to argue with the man. There was no chance of logical argument with this rabid apologist for the ruling party. Logic and common sense were just not in his vocabulary; all he could do was to drone on and on about the evils of the past and the racism of the white people apparently unaware that his own racism was showing very clearly. 'But two wrong don't make a right' observed the interviewer - herself an African by the way - and how can you defend the violence now taking place on the farms'? And in one leap that surpassed logic or morality Matongo answered that the war vets were angry because the so-called returning whites were trying to take away 'their' land. And, he added the war-vets' anger was so great that the government simply cannot stop them!
By that time tears were not far away but whether it was hysteria or sorrow or anger, I cannot say. It was a phone-in programme and the contempt in the people's voices was obvious as one after another they unpicked the Bright One's nonsensical rubbish. There was, however one more gem for the listener to marvel at. Right at the end of the programme Matongo was asked a direct question, 'Are you a racist?' 'I am not' he replied 'I just speak my mind.' Well, so did the apologists for apartheid as they defended their hated philosophy of racial separation or the Nazis as they propagated their concept of racial purity. They all 'spoke their mind' but that didn't make them any less racist. In Zimbabwe, 'Speaking your mind' is a privilege confined to the ruling party; while lawyers and journalists, trade unionists and students are arrested for seeking and speaking the truth men of Bright Matonga's calibre are permitted to speak any racist rubbish that is in their minds.
And all to keep one man in power.
Yours in the (continuing) stuggle. PH