Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Un'altra prospettiva sullo Zimbabwe

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4942/
Zimbabwe and the new Cowardly Colonialism
Western intervention against Robert Mugabe's 'evil regime' put
Zimbabwe into an economic straitjacket and disempowered its people.
'We've beaten Mugabe', said a frontpage headline in the London Evening
Standard yesterday. Only there were no quote marks around the words
'We've beaten Mugabe', which made it difficult to tell if the paper
was reporting the thoughts of Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) upon its electoral victory over Robert
Mugabe's Zanu-PF Party, or its own back-slapping relish at the thought
that its journalism may have played a part in toppling Mugabe. Indeed,
'We've beaten Mugabe' could be the slogan of political and media
operators in Britain and elsewhere in the West, who like to fantasise
that Mugabe is 'Africa's Hitler', that his Zimbabwe was 'more evil
than, for example, China and Saudi Arabia', and that it is up to the
West to 'put pressure on Zimbabwe to change' (1).
The media reports about Zimbabwe's elections present them as a clash
between the 'evil' Mugabe and the 'heroic' Tsvangirai, an electoral
battle for Zimbabwe's soul. Mugabe is depicted as having brought
Zimbabwe to its knees, causing widespread poverty and enforcing terror
and repression, and Tsvangirai is discussed as the harbinger of a
dignified 'revolution' against Mugabeism (2). This is a fantasy. It
ignores the key role played by Western governments and financial
institutions in using sanctions, tough diplomacy and the proxy
interventionists of the South Africa government and the African Union
to isolate and harry Zimbabwe over the past decade. Such self-serving
external meddling has contributed to Zimbabwe's economic crisis - and
it has dangerously distorted the political dynamics inside Zimbabwe
and elsewhere in the south of Africa.
Over the past 10 years, American and European governments cynically
transformed Mugabe's Zimbabwe into the West's whipping boy in Africa,
the state they love to hate, a country against which they can enforce
tough sanctions to demonstrate their seriousness about standing up to
'evil'. The West has imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, warned
off foreign investors, denied Zimbabwean officials the right to travel
freely around the world, demonised Mugabe as an 'evil dictator',
discussed the idea of military action against Zimbabwe, and used moral
and financial blackmail to cajole South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki
to 'deal with' Mugabe (3).
Objectively, this singling out of Mugabe's regime as the 'worst
government on Earth, the most brutal, destructive, lawless government'
made little sense (4). No doubt Mugabe is a nasty piece of work, but
then so are some of the government heads that the West is more than
happy to work with. Indeed, one could argue that, over the past
decade, there was more choice and openness in Mugabe's Zimbabwe than
there was in Rwanda and Uganda, both close political allies of America
and Britain. No, Zimbabwe was labelled the demon of Africa, not in
response to events on the ground in Zimbabwe itself, but in response
to the needs and desires of governments in the West looking for a
purposeful mission in international affairs.
Western meddling pushed Zimbabwe to the precipice. Yet listening to
the discussion of the elections, you could be forgiven for thinking
that the country had suffered from a sudden, inexplicable case of
Spontaneous National Combustion. The economic crisis is depicted as a
peculiar phenomenon on a continent where there has mostly been
economic growth in recent years. Where most of Africa's economies have
been growing at a rate of between five and six per cent recently,
Zimbabwe is the only African country that had a negative GDP in
2007/2008. It is reported that the Zimbabwean economy has shrunk by
more than a third since 1999, a 'decline worse than in major African
civil wars', says one newspaper (5). Apparently there's an
unemployment rate of around 80 per cent, and inflation is running at
100,586 per cent (6). Yet the only explanation given for this economic
nosedive is Mugabe's seizure of colonial-era, white-owned commercial
farms eight years ago. As the UK Guardian says: 'The economic crisis
is largely blamed on the seizure of white-owned farms that began in
2000, disrupting the agriculture-based economy.' (7) It is true that
foreign exchange earnings from these former white-owned farms have
plummeted, causing major economic problems; but there is more to
Zimbabwe than tobacco and the other cash crops once produced by the
white farmers.
A key driver of Zimbabwe's economic crisis has been the West's
attempts to bring down Mugabe by turning the financial levers.
Relentlessly, the American and British governments, and the European
Union, economically punished Mugabe's Zimbabwe for what they
considered to be its political disobedience. In November 1998, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) implemented undeclared sanctions
against Zimbabwe, by warning off potential investors, freezing loans
and refusing to negotiate with Zimbabwean officials on the issue of
debt. In September 1999, the IMF suspended its support for economic
adjustment and reform in Zimbabwe. In October 1999, the International
Development Association, a multilateral development bank, suspended
all structural adjustment loans and credits to Zimbabwe; in May 2000
it suspended all other forms of new lending (8).
In December 2001, the US passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic
Recovery Act, which decreed that Mugabe could restore relations with
international financial institutions only if he agreed to conditions
on Zimbabwe's rule of law, the presence of its troops in the Congo,
and the conduct of its internal elections. The American law also
instructed all US members of international financial institutions to
oppose and vote against any extension of loans, credits or guarantees
to Zimbabwe. In 2002, then British foreign secretary Jack Straw
declared that Britain would 'oppose any access by Zimbabwe to
international financial institutions'. Also in 2002, British officials
threatened to withdraw financial assistance to other countries in
southern Africa unless they, too, imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe.
This led Benjamin Mkapa, then president of Tanzania, to complain that
African members of the British Commonwealth were enduring 'a
bombardment for an alliance against Mugabe' (9). The European Union
imposed 'smart' sanctions against Zimbabwe, refusing to allocate visas
for travel in EU countries to Mugabe and his officials and freezing
all of their economic assets in Europe (10). In the early and
mid-2000s, both the World Bank and the IMF tried to dissuade states
and institutions from extending financial credit to Zimbabwe. A
Zimbabwean official claimed that: 'Our contacts in various countries
have indicated that these institutions are using all sorts of tactics
to cow all those who are keen to assist Zimbabwe.' (11)
The economic punishment of 'evil Mugabe' by powerful Western forces
had a massive impact on Zimbabwe. According to one critical observer,
Gregory Elich, author of Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and
the Pursuit of Profit, 'Western financial restrictions made it nearly
impossible for Zimbabwe to engage in normal international trade'. And
'for a nation that had to import 100 per cent of its oil, 40 per cent
of its electricity and most of its spare parts, Zimbabwe was highly
vulnerable to being cut off from access to foreign exchange'. Elich
argues that the impact of Western restrictions on trading and
crediting with Zimbabwe was 'immediate and dire': 'The supply of oil
fell sharply, and periodically ran out entirely. It became
increasingly difficult to muster the foreign currency to maintain an
adequate level of imported electricity, and the nation was frequently
beset by blackouts. The shortage of oil and electricity in turn
severely hobbled industrial production, as did the inability to import
raw materials and spare parts. Business after business closed down and
the unemployment rate soared...' (12)
Alongside turning the screws on Zimbabwe's economy, the West
interfered politically in an attempt to undermine Mugabe's government.
America's Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001
authorised President George W Bush to fund 'opposition media' as well
as 'democracy and governance programmes' inside Zimbabwe. In April
last year, the US State Department confirmed for the first time that
the US had sponsored 'events' in Zimbabwe aimed at 'discrediting'
Mugabe (13). It is reported that the opposition party MDC also
received financial backing and political direction from Britain,
Germany, Holland, Denmark and the US.
A small number of political observers in the West have questioned the
wisdom of Western interference in Zimbabwe's internal affairs. When
America passed its Zimbabwe Act, US congresswoman Cynthnia McKinney
asked during a debate in the House of Representatives why US officials
were enforcing politically-motivated sanctions against a mostly
democratic country: 'Zimbabwe is Africa's second-longest stable
democracy. It is multi-party. It had elections last year [in 2001]
where the opposition [the MDC] won over 50 seats in parliament. It has
an opposition press which vigorously criticises the government and
governing party. It has an independent judiciary which issues
decisions contrary to the wishes of the governing party.' (14) Indeed,
one of the ostensible reasons why America passed the Act was to
protest against the presence of Zimbabwean troops in the Congo. Yet,
in 2001, both Uganda and Rwanda also had troops in the Congo; and
neither Uganda nor Rwanda allowed opposition political parties or a
free press. Yet both were allies of America, and received considerable
economic backing from the US.
Mugabe was no doubt a rotten ruler; his party certainly used pressure
and even force in order to secure victory in general elections in the
late 1990s and the 2000s. Yet that is not why he was singled out as a
'tyrant' and an 'African Hitler'. It was political considerations in
the West that elevated Mugabe to that position and transformed
Zimbabwe into a pariah state. Western governments despised what they
considered to be Mugabe's cheek, in particular his temerity in daring
to seize white farms, to interfere in the Congo without a green light
from the US, and his frequent denunciations of Western colonialism.
Indeed, since the defeat of the white rulers of Rhodesia in 1980,
Mugabe lived off his reputation as a brave warrior against Western
arrogance in Africa. It was colonialism and imperialist intervention
that gave him his base of support, which has always been a substantial
one, despite, or perhaps because of, international hostility against
Zimbabwe. As the African commentator Barrie Collins has argued: 'Since
the end of the Cold War, the USA and the UK have got used to a high
degree of compliance on the part of African governments - and they are
no longer prepared to tolerate those, like Zimbabwe, that insist on
doing things their own way.' (15)
Bashing Zimbabwe played a dual role for Western officials and
commentators. It allowed those of a conservative stripe to defend the
historic reputation of colonialism by comparing it favourably with the
rule of individuals like Mugabe. Eton-educated British observers
loathed Mugabe because they considered him a symbol of African
cockiness, who had humiliated Ian Smith (the white minority ruler of a
self-declared 'independent' Rhodesia from 1965 to 1979) before the
eyes of the world. Attacking Mugabe's rule became a way of
rehabilitating the image of old-fashioned, British-tinged colonialism.
At the same time, one-time anti-colonialist radicals - including most
notably the gay rights activist Peter Tatchell in the UK - focused
their political energies on opposing Mugabe, describing him as
intolerant and not sufficiently respectful of minority rights. At a
time when political radicalism is on the wane in the West, some
activists sought to recover their old campaigning spirit by taking
potshots at the easy target of a beleaguered African state. Indeed,
radicals often led the charge for tougher economic and political
punishment of Zimbabwe - and frequently, they got what they asked for.
From the late 1990s to today, Zimbabwe became the West's favoured
punchbag in the 'Dark Continent'. Yet Western governments have chosen
striking forms of intervention. Instead of militarily and directly
intervening in Zimbabwean affairs - despite loud demands from the
colonialist/radical alliance that they should do so - governments in
the West pursued a more hands-off form of meddling in Mugabe's regime.
They used sanctions and economic blackmail; they funded opposition
parties and 'events'; and most revealingly they put pressure on South
Africa, Tanzania and other nearby states to use their muscle to try to
push Mugabe from power. This was effectively 'blacked-up imperialism',
an attempt by Western powers nervous about being seen smashing their
way into Africa to use local proxies to do their dirty work for them.
To their credit, many African officials refused to play the game. The
African Union turned down Western suggestionss to send forces to
Zimbabwe in 2005, arguing that 'it is not proper for the AU commission
to start running the internal affairs of members' states'. Though
South Africa's Mbeki has become involved in Zimbabwean politics, he
has also, to the irritation of Western observers, insisted that the
future of Zimbabwe 'has never been a South African
responsibility' (16).
Zimbabwe captures both the West's sense of caution in international
affairs and also its inexorable drive to interfere wherever and
however it can. As the former British foreign secretary Margaret
Beckett argued, Britain cannot be seen explicitly interfering in
Zimbabwe because we are 'the old colonial power' - yet at the same
time Britain apparently has a 'responsibility' to spread democracy
around the world (17). The end result of this schizophrenic approach
to African affairs and international affairs more broadly - a
political defensiveness combined with a desire to do something
seemingly purposeful and proper - is an unpredictable, ravenous,
behind-the-scenes form of meddling in other countries' affairs, a kind
of 'cowardly colonialism'. And it can have dire consequences for
people in the third world.
On the basis of little more than the fact that they needed a focus for
their international pretensions, Western governments have put Zimbabwe
into an economic straitjacket and warped its internal political
process. If the sanctions, blackmail and withdrawal of trade have
helped to push Zimbabwe's economy into freefall, then the relentless
backdoor political interventions have disempowered the people of
Zimbabwe. The dynamic of Western intervention caused Mugabe to become
more entrenched and paranoid about outsiders - and it encouraged the
MDC to look to Western officials and radicals for their favour and
flattery rather than to build a meaningful grassroots movement inside
Zimbabwe. Indeed, for all the talk of a 'revolution' in Zimbabwe, both
during minor street protests last year and during the elections this
week, many people actually seem quite resigned about Zimbabwe's fate.
As one report recently said: '[T]he opposition hasn't been able to
mobilise tens of thousands of people...' (18) Lots of the current news
coverage continually shows Zimbabweans queuing up for hours to buy a
newspaper for a few thousand dollars so that they can read about the
elections. This imagery is supposed to show how bad inflation has
become in Zimbabwe, but it also reveals something else: that the
West's attempted strangulation of Mugabe's regime reduced the people
of Zimbabwe to observers rather than masters of their fate, who look
to the front pages of newspapers to find out what might happen next in
their country.
Brendan O'Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his website here.

 elezioni truccate.
la demonizzazione di Mugabe è tutta colpa di chi governa i massa
media: non sono zimbabwiani, se ci fai caso.

 Adesso vediamo dove riescono a ficcarlo il "colonialismo"...
all'epoca di Adamo ed Eva, ovviamente. Se non ci fosse stato quel
peccato originale....

 elezioni truccate.
Vabbe', non conosci Spiked. Brendan O'Neill, essendo un mediocre 
giornalista, non aveva modo di assurgere alla notorietà se non quella di 
fare un po' di carriera per meriti politici e poi "fare scandalo" a 
bella posta sostenendo sempre e comunque opinioni assurde.
Srebrenica? Non esiste neanche un paese con quel nome
I campi di concentramento in cui i bosniaci erano rinchiusi? Non 
esistono, i giornalisti hanno eretto delle reti e *ci si sono chiusi 
dentro* per filmare la folla dall'altro lato della recinzione (il 
giornale che dirigeva prima, Living Marxism, organo del Revolutionary 
Communist Party, ha dovuto chiudere dopo aver perso una causa per 
diffamazione intentata dai giornalisti che aveva accusato di usare 
questo particolare trucco)
Il genocidio in Darfur? Mai accaduto, stanno meglio che a Kensington
I cambiamenti climatici? Non esistono, è un complotto elitista per 
cancellare i voli a basso costo
Saddam? L'unico vero democratico del pianeta
L'obesità infantile? Fa bene, se pure esiste.
Le estinzioni di massa? Ci sembrano una cosa cattiva solo perchè 
antropomorfizziamo gli animali
L'omofobia? In Inghilterra è una brutta cosa, ma che in Giamaica gli 
omosessuali vengano ammazzati in strada è uno dei trionfi della 
decolonizzazione.
Le proteste contro la caccia giapponese alle balene? "ecoimperialismo" 
(stessa accusa mossa a chi protesta per la deforestazione in Amazzonia)
Insomma, non dargli troppo peso. Deve sparare cazzate sempre più grosse, 
sennò non se lo fila nessuno. In effetti, un po' come Torrieri.
-- 
http://inminoranza.blogspot.com

 restaurando? Intendo il Vulcan... 
È stata lanciata un'idea geniale: gli si cambia lo schema di colori e 
gli si mette una stella rossa sulla coda, così diventa uno sfavillante 
strumento di riscatto e liberazione del proletariato attraverso 
l'utilizzo di ordigni nucleari pacifici e difensivi.
Già mi vedo il Socialist Worker Party che fa le sottoscrizioni e Sergio 
che si vende la collezione di libri di Nolte e Irving per mandare due soldi.
:)
-- 
http://inminoranza.blogspot.com

 Vabbe', non conosci Spiked.
io lo ho letto negli ultimi mesi, finché non ha iniziato a occuparsi
di Tibet.

 questo particolare trucco)
Vediamo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Marxism#ITN_vs._LM
I due giornalisti hanno pubblicato una foto di un tizio denutrito e
rinchiuso in quello che sembrava un campo di concentramento.
LM ha sostenuto che il tizio non era rinchiuso:  Il "campo" era un
centro dove i "detenuti" sono venuti di loro spontanea volonta' (nel
campo, i detenuti erano in qualche misura protetti da milizie Serbe
locali) e da dove potevano uscire.
Il processo, nei fatti, ha dato ragione a LM.  Ma li ha trovati lo
stesso colpevoli perche' :
"due to the quaint nature of British libel law, the decisive issue in
court was NOT the truth about the wire fence. Rather, it was whether
or not the ITN reporters had "deliberately" sought to deceive the
public.   The issue become one of intentions and emotions. The judge,
in his summing up, acknowledged that the ITN team reporters were
mistaken as to who was enclosed by the old barbed-wire fence, adding,
"but does it matter?" The jury decided it did not"
ITN ha vinto, come vince il 94% degli accusatori nei casi di
diffamazione in UK:  Nel sistema legale britannico, l'onere della
prova nei casi di diffamazione e' non nell'accusa ma nella difesa
(Cioe, per vincere LM deve provare
senza ombra di dubbio che ITN _aveva intenzione_ di ingannare il
pubblico.
In questo caso LM ha dimostrato che ITN _ha_ ingannato il pubblico ma
e' rimasto il dubbio che "non l'hanno fatto apposta".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law#Burden_of_proof_on_the_defendant
(E infatti la legge in materia e' stato sonoramente condannata dalla
corte Europea:  
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/feb/16/foodanddrink
)
Non ti piace LM o Spiked? Liberissimo, molti dei loro articoli e punti
di vista non piacciono neanche a me.   Non toglie che il modo con cui
ITN gli ha tappato la bocca e' degno di un paese fascista.
GT

 ITN gli ha tappato la bocca e' degno di un paese fascista.
Ah, quindi almeno un po' l'UK ti piace
-- 
http://inminoranza.blogspot.com

 sennò non se lo fila nessuno.
su metà delle cose che hai elencato, se lo filano anche in troppi