#ZimbabweanLivesMatter: Evidence of a bald-faced US foreign policy?

Gibson Nyikadzino

 

Following its bombing of Iraq in 1991, the United States of America (USA) wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Following its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the USA wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia. When it bombed Afghanistan in 2001-2, the USA ended with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti.

 

This is not a very subtle foreign policy. It is a clear trajectory and certainly not covert. With these examples, those who run US Foreign Policy are men and women who are not easily embarrassed. There is a reason why they do so. They engineer foreign interference with gusto. The one that pops quickly in Africa is the Libyan case and the murder of Col. Muammar Gaddafi on October 20, 2011. Col. Gaddafi’s death ‘excited’ then USA secretary of State Hillary Clinton who famously said: “We came, we saw, he DIED!” Libyans were made to believe the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) alliance was fighting for their freedoms and rights. Today Libya is a ground of everything inhuman and colonial.

 

Between 1945 and 1991, the USA government through the military and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had over 55 military interventions that destabilised nations, deposed and imposed leaders, mortgaged nations’ resources over small loans and created wars that led to splits of nations.

 

Even in the post-millennium global order, the USA appears to be in that path even in the name of democracy. In 1996, the White House and Pentagon made a declaration from a policy paper that said: “We will engage in terrestrial targets someday - ships, airplanes and land targets – from space. We are going to fight in space. We are going to fight from space and we are going to fight into space.”

 

As argued by Nancy Fraser in her Transnationalising the Public Sphere essay, the space to fight has broadened and even the digital space is now a battleground that is easily manipulated by “international citizens from wherever they are.” Zimbabwe recently got an “adversary” label from the USA administration for using the digital space to make US streets turbulent under the #BlackLivesMatter movement following the murder of a black man by a white police officer. Zimbabwe was alleged to be torpedoing USA tranquility by “fighting in (cyber) space.”

 

Zimbabwe today is experiencing a fragile and delicate socio-economic and political order that has “pro-democracy activists” calling for its replacement or transformation. The #ZimbabweLivesMatter movement has generated interest adequate to pressure the government of president Emmerson Mnangagwa to respond. As usual, government spokesperson Nick Mangwana has denied there is a crisis in Zimbabwe.

In international media, headlines like “Economic Chaos! Zimbabwe on Brink of Doom” are raising the specter of civil war, if not actually calling for it, literally.

 

While government has to address the concerns of the people and ensure the environment is secure and free of “oppression, intimidation and brutality,” the right of people to be heard should be respected. That president Mnangagwa won the vote with a 50.8% victory, it should not be a way to disregard the voices of the 49.2%. Democracy is not a winner takes all scenario. The concerns of those who voted other candidates are a “threat to national security” if they are not addressed, hence the birth of the #ZimbabweanLivesMatter trend.

 

As the government and “pro-democracy activists” make their contests apparent, some of those leading the protests have been arrested and others reportedly fled their homes.

 

One of the delightful things about most Zimbabweans is that they absolutely have no historical memory. There is no conspiracy needed to understand such. Most are functionally illiterate about the history of their surroundings. The troubled African country has people who are easily swayed by anything that rings new, fresh, trending and exciting. Only a few months ago, opposition parliamentarian Job Sikhala had a photo moment with guests from the USA embassy in Harare at his Chitungwiza home. Since 2001, ZANU-PF has on many occasions said the main opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is an appendage of western interests. A few months ago, opposition leader Nelson Chamisa was on national television addressing supporters in Mutare saying he was in western capitals calling on western leaders to tighten the screws on Zimbabwe under the ZANU-PF government. It was his “sunga-one-sunga-dozen” moment.

 

It is Chamisa who has, according to WikiLeaks cable, been advocating for a military intervention in Zimbabwe to remove ZANU-PF. Either there is truth or not in these cable reports does not matter to ZANU-PF because it has always used the association between MDC and USA as a pretext to dismiss the former’s cause. On the other hand, it is undeniable that president Mnangagwa has performed an economic miracle. He has taught Zimbabweans to live without money, eat without food and live without life. He has of late been using radical and inflammatory language to dismiss the concerns of those claiming they did not vote for him. There is some evidence that the most supporters of the #ZimbabweanLivesMatter movement have no ideological commitment but are mainly Zimbabweans who are disillusioned with the corruption and irresponsibility that has characterised the Mnangagwa administration.

 

“To die for an idea, it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true,” said American journalist Henry Louis Mencken in 1919.

 

While there is legitimacy in protesting, the intentions of the “western backers” of the MDC cannot be cleansed because they have led to destruction of states. Those that want to go in the streets to act as protestors, they should not be provocateurs or shock troops, determined to act for other people. Events in Zimbabwe should not merely be looked as protests by the people against government, there is much that citizens have to understand.

 

In every war, the enemy is undefined. It adapts to any environment and uses every means, both licit and illicit, to achieve its aims. It disguises itself as a priest, a student, as a defender of democracy or an advanced intellectual, as a pious soul or as an extremist protestor. The enemy goes into the fields and the schools, the factories and the churches, the universities and the magistracy, if necessary, it will even wear a uniform or civil garb, in sum, it will take any role that it considers appropriate to deceive, to lie and to take in the faith of the Western peoples.

 

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